Green Options

The complexity and cost of clearing land mines, which are still responsible for to twenty to thirty thousand casualties a year, has lead to a microorganism based detection method that should speed the location mines.

The awesome power released by a detonating mine

The New Mine Detection Technology

Researchers at the University of Edinburgh have engineered a bacteria using the latest BioBrick technology. BioBrick an open source technology of the BioBricks Foundation, a not-for-profit organization founded by engineers and scientists from MIT, Harvard, and UCSF. Simplistically stated, it offers the ability to introduce standardised strands of DNA with known function into bacteria. In this case the Bricks gave the ability to detect the chemicals leaked by buried explosives and to produce chemicals that cause it to glow green. Linking these new functions together produces a safe, easy to grow bacteria that after application to the ground in a coulourless liquid glows green within a few hours. With the location of the mine noted, de-mining can be undertaken quickly without the risk of undetected mines.

Hong Kong magnate Stanley Ho is at it again. Not formulating a “Ho Plan” for Hong Kong energy security that centers around wind power, as the growing similarities between him and T. Boone Pickens might suggest. Stanley Ho’s investment du jour, while on par with his recently established eco-trend, will not be in Asia. Rather, the biofuel play will be located off of the Western coast of Africa.

Geocapital, a Macau-based investment holding company started in 2007 and comprised of partner investors Stanley Ho and Jorge Ferro Ribeiro, is in negotiations with the Government of Cape Verde to install a biofuels research and development center on the African archipelago, Portugal’s Lusa news agency recently reported.

The pair hopes to take advantage of Cape Verde’s experience producing biofuels from jatropha, a crop that yields ten times the output of corn plants. Jatropha-based biofuel is considered one of the best candidates for future biofuel production, and has already been successfully tested as a substitute for jet fuel in commercial airplanes. The poisonous seed has a long history as a fuel source: in the early 1900s, it was exported to France and Portugal for use in streetlamps.