Many Europeans are now learning to deal with a new currency. But also cash dispensers and cigarette machines must distinguish clearly between euros, the old currencies and counterfeit money. A miniature computer now checks the coins by means of digital image processing.

For users of the new European currency, having adequate safeguards against forgery is a matter of great importance. The paper money incorporates features such as holograms, watermarks, a security thread, and embossed text to

Scientists from Newcastle University are using llama droppings to help combat environmental problems caused by polluted water seeping from abandoned silver and tin mines in the Bolivian Andes.

The project is being spearheaded by Paul Younger, Professor of Hydrogeochemical Engineering at Newcastle University. It has been adapted from a community-based natural regeneration technique which uses waste materials to treat polluted mine waters. Professor Younger pioneered the technique, along with

Researchers grapple with wilt-causing bacteria

It’s the Mike Tyson of plant bacteria,” says Gerry Saddler, of the Scottish Agricultural Science Agency, Edinburgh.

Saddler is referring to Ralstonia solanacearum , the cause of southern bacterial wilt possibly the most important plant disease in the world. French researchers have now sequenced the bacteria’s genome – information that should lead to a better understanding of plant disease, and perhaps new ways to fight it

Female embryos exert a greater influence than male embryos over the hormone that nurtures early pregnancy, and the difference can be detected as little as 16 days after conception, according to new research published (Wednesday 30 January) in Europe’s leading reproductive medicine journal Human Reproduction.*

Israeli scientists have demonstrated that levels of maternal serum HCG (MSHCG) – the hormone that reveals in blood or urine tests whether or not a woman is pregnant – are nearly a fifth

Researchers from the University of Amsterdam have demonstrated that the climate in South Mexico changed following the collapse of the Maya empire. From preserved pollen grains the paleoecologists could deduce that the climate quickly became dryer.

The climate becoming dryer, explains the decrease in the population following the collapse of the Maya empire. The climate researchers have therefore helped to solve an archaeological mystery.

With the help of pollen grains, the paleoeco

Brain researchers in Amsterdam have observed a double control system in the hippocampus. This double control system contributes to the memory and ensures that the brain does not `crash`, as is the case during an epileptic seizure.

The neurobiologists from the University of Amsterdam carried out their observations on the hippocampus of rats. The hippocampus probably plays an important role in converting the short-term memory to the long-term memory.

The hippocampus contains two sorts