Researchers from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have recently developed a new technique to help detect and clear landmines. They have created a form of Escherichia coli, a bacterium widely studied by geneticists, that creates a fluorescent protein in response to traces of vapour given off by the explosives of a landmine.

According to their report in Nature Biotechnology, researchers Shimshon Belkin, Aharon Agranat and Amos Nussinovitch have tested the effectiveness of their invention as a mine-detector. For more information on this story, please click here.