Bionic Spinach; an Effective Bomb Detector

Scientists turn their inspiration on one of Mother Nature’s nutritious foods to build an advanced military defense system against concealed explosives. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology uses the humble spinach to detect land mines and other buried munitions.

The co-author and a Professor at MIT, Michael Strano said, “The plants could be used for defense applications”.

Scientists from MIT in Cambridge install tiny tubes which are part of the plant’s leaves. The tubes are designed to pick up chemicals found in explosives and can connect the data to a computer. It then transmits immediate findings to a mobile phone or other handheld devices.

How it works

Once scientists implanted the nanoparticles and carbon nanotubes in the plant’s leaves they dispensed the nitro-aromatics into the water. The spinach only takes about 10 minutes to fully absorb the chemicals from the roots going to the leaves.

To get the findings, experts point a laser directly to the leaf. This directs the implanted nanotubes to produce ‘near-infrared’ luminous light. Using an  inexpensive Raspberry Pi computer or a smartphone with a deactivated infrared filter, scientists can detect the light.

Professor Strano said on the BBC website that their “paper outlines how one could engineer plants like this to detect virtually anything”. He pointed out that their research confirms that exact principle.

Bionic plants as monitoring devices

Prof. Strano invented other remarkable uses of carbon nanotubes which act as sensors to detect hydrogen peroxide and other gas compounds. The nanotube changes its luminosity when the subject particle bonds with the polymer material.

He said plants can also act to “monitor public spaces for terrorism-related activities since we show both water and airborne detection”. Strano confirms that since plants can sip groundwater it can detect “buried munitions or waste that contains nitro-aromatics.”

In a laboratory setup, the experiment shows a significant result in which the spinach can detect buried munitions chemical compounds 1 meter away. MIT Scientists are working on how to expand the distance of the plant’s detection for future endeavors.

Nature Materials, a science journal magazine published the entire ‘bionic spinach’ research of MIT.

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Another Apartment Stormed in Germany in Hunt For Refugee Planning Bomb Attack

Police commandos held a man in connection with a hunt for a Syrian refugee believed of plotting a bomb attack. They assaulted his apartment in the eastern city of Chemnitz on Sunday.

Saxony state criminal investigation office spokesman Tom Berhardt said that there were no casualties and no shots were fired during the incident. They’ve taken the man into custody and are questioning him now.

In another apartment the police stormed in the city on Saturday, they found explosives but lost track of Jaber Albakr, the 22-year-old suspect. He slipped through their hold after police spotted him at the door of the apartment block.

The quantity of explosive discovered suggests that the person was preparing to carry out an Islamist-motivated attack, a Federal Prosecutor’s Office spokesman said.

The apartment the police raided on Saturday yielded several hundred grams of explosives.

Unpopular policy

This development is unwelcome news for German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Her open-door migrants policy has caused her conservatives to lose support to the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.

Merkel said last month that she wished she could turn back time by several years. She wanted to better plan for last year’s inflow of close to one million refugees. The leader has yet to declare if she will pursue a fourth term as chancellor in next year’s election.

Islamic State claimed responsibility in July for attacks at a music festival in Ansbach and on a train near Wuerzburg.

Albakr is still at large with hundreds of police officers trying to track him down.

The government officially recognized Albakr as a refugee after he entered Germany last year. The police did not previously know him when they raided the first apartment after a tip-off from the domestic intelligence service.

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