A study by Yuegang Zuo of the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth and colleagues has found that about 90percentt of banknotes contain traces of cocaine.
During the apartheid era, when the country's white-minority regime ruled through restrictive legislation, banknotes contained historical figures associated with that regime.
Dr Habip Gedik, of Istanbul's Sadi Konuk Research Hospital, who conducted the study with Dutch counterparts, said: "Banknotes containing plastic substances are more likely to carry and transmit bugs.
En route he takes in the history of monetisation, the notion of the collapse of trust in money (the bank run); and orchestrates a vigorous bidding war for an unspecified number of banknotes contained in a sealed envelope.
Banknotes containing it would produce distinctive colours when stretched, unlike counterfeits made from other materials.To use the film to detect food spoilage, Dr Baumberg proposes adding a sprinkle of carbon particles even smaller than the polystyrene spheres.
This includes: tea and coffee bags, sausage casing paper, currency notes (Japan's yen banknotes contain up to 30% abaca), cigarette filter papers, medical /food preparation/disposal papers, high-quality writing paper, vacuum bags and more.
The obverse of each banknote contains an image of Kemal Atatürk, the founder of modern Turkey and its first president (1923 38).
Upon pulsed excitation of the section of the banknote containing the membrane, laser action was readily observed (Fig. 3d).
To study the stability of our devices further, we repeatedly recorded the lasing spectrum of a banknote containing a membrane with three different gratings over the course of several months (Fig. 3f, Supplementary Fig. 5).
Jackson didn't notice that Buggy's suitcase, supposedly full of banknotes, mainly contained scraps of old newspaper.
