Don’t worry, spinach is not the latest culprit in spam emails. At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology MIT, researchers put nanotubes in spinach to sense impurities and explosives in groundwater. The spinach is very responsive to environmental changes, which triggers the embedded carbon nanotubes to emit fluorescent light signals with measurable differences from the baseline.  The technology allows for a wide variety of applications to monitor plants, plant growth and environmental conditions. While the research was conducted in 2016, an Euronews publication made the story go viral just now. Also, this company was founded based on this research.

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Picture Credit Susanne Kuehne

Posted on 19 February 2021