Word: lands
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...scrubby flatland outside Copenhagen Airport, Jarne Elleholm and Carsten Meier are watching green foliage turn red. This is no autumn leaf-peeping exercise. Rather, they're keeping an eye on a swath of weeds they're growing that should turn red in the proximity of land mines. If the weeds change hues as designed, Elleholm and Meier could save thousands of lives and limbs...
Their company, Aresa, a Copenhagen-based biotech start-up, has genetically modified a common weed called thale-cress so that its leaves turn red when the plant comes in contact with nitrogen dioxide--a compound that naturally leaches into the soil from unexploded land mines made from plastic and held together by leaky rubber seals. Aresa is growing large patches of the stuff on old army shooting ranges that have been seeded with land mines...
...Geneva-based International Campaign to Ban Landmines says there are an average of 15,000 to 20,000 land-mine deaths or injuries annually as innocent victims wander onto the leftover devices. Unknown numbers of unexploded mines are waiting to find victims in Angola, Cambodia, Sudan, Afghanistan, Bosnia and Herzegovina and many other countries...
Unless the mines can be found first. "There are a lot of promises in land-mine detection, but still, what people often come back to is the guy poking around with a stick," says Elleholm, speaking of technologies such as ground-penetrating radar, infrared devices and thermal neutron activation. Many current methods are slow and cover no more than 1% of the estimated 77,220 sq. mi. of the world's land-mine-infested territory every year. Elleholm says Aresa's technique can cover five times as much ground in the same amount of time as other detection techniques...
...Fred seizes the reins from his ailing brother and makes the Christmas Eve round-the-world tour himself. He brings the joy of getting to every child, including the Afro-American orphan, and there is joy in every land, and at the North Pole. It's all meant to bring edifying moisture to audiences' eyes. The more susceptible moviegoers may shed a tear or two, but they risk hating themselves in the morning. On the upside, they don't have to wait to hate Fred Claus...