+++ EURESCOM for the first time demonstrates seamless access with a PDA. +++

Premiere at the EURESCOM workshop `Wireless Access` in Heidelberg on 12 March: The EURESCOM project on `Bluetooth Access` presented the first PDA, which can seamlessly connect to different access networks, like LAN, Bluetooth, Wireless LAN, and GPRS.

In co-operation with the software company Birdstep from Norway and access point supplier Patria Ailon from Finland, the European project team implement

Chemists copy from cells to make a tunnel for salt

Chemists have finally achieved what every human cell can do. They have designed and built from scratch a gate for electrically charged chlorine atoms to pass through 1 .

George Gokel and colleagues at Washington University in St Louis, Missouri, based their gate on biological proteins that transport chloride ions from one side of our cell membranes to the other. Like these, the synthetic channel can be opene

Bouncing laser beams could bring quantum strangeness to the everyday world.

The quantum world of atoms and subatomic particles is full of intuition-defying phenomena such as objects existing in two different states at once. We don’t normally have to worry about such weirdness impinging on our everyday macroscopic world. But Italian physicists have worked out how to invest something we can see and touch with quantum strangeness.

Stefano Mancini, of the University of Mila

An inventive breakthrough from the Applied Optics Group at the University of Kent at Canterbury (UKC) is set to revolutionise current methods of eye examinations.

Professor David Jackson, Dr Adrian Podoleanu and Dr John Rogers, who gained his doctorate at Kent, have developed an instrument known as an Optical Dual Channel Tomograph. The instrument blends together two imaging technologies. Although in its early stages, it is already being used by ophthalmologists and researchers at New York`

Many chemicals commonly used in medications such as over-the-counter painkillers or birth control pills end up far from their intended destination – in American streams. According to a new report, published online today by the journal Environmental Science and Technology, a number of the waterways contain complex cocktails of compounds.

The 30-state study, conducted by the U.S. Geological Survey, tested 139 streams for 95 organic contaminants – ranging from medications and hormones to inse

The tobacco industry has deliberately deceived the public with “low tar/light” cigarettes, reveals an analysis in a special supplement to Tobacco Control. Industry documents show that companies recognised that low tar products were as dangerous as regular cigarettes, yet marketed them as healthy alternatives.

The authors analysed trade sources and internal US tobacco company documents. These show that the industry feared mounting evidence linking tobacco with lung cancer would discourage smo