Glowing Bugs and Landmines - Innovation, Invention and Discovery in Edinburgh, Tuesday November 17 2009

Edinburgh has a rich tradition of invention and discovery - after all, the telephone, logarithms, colour photography, wave energy, the hypodermic needle, the Encyclopædia Britannica, Dolly the Sheep and even the digestive biscuit all stem from the city, while hundreds of other theories and creations have their roots in the capital.

Even now, Edinburgh continues to lead the way in stem cell research and regenerative medicine, biotechnology, engineering, microelectronics, informatics, genomics, optoelectronics and renewable energy.

But what must rank as one of the most unusual inventions was revealed this week by scientists at the University of Edinburgh: Glowing bugs which can find landmines.

Ok, so they’re not quite the radioactive spiders from Mars that can smell landmines from 3 miles away that we envisaged when we first saw the headlines, but that is a pretty amazing discovery. Not much use on the Royal Mile perhaps, but given that around two fifths of the world’s countries are plagued with landmines, you can start to see the potential. So, as far as inventions go,  this one is definitely streets ahead.

And as with all inventions that begin life as something important, chances are they’ll end up being developed for commercial purposes too. Just think of the untold multitudes of spondoolicks waiting for the person that can adapt the technology in order to help us locate our car keys...