A trial currently underway at Southampton General Hospital's intensive care ward has so far shown that health conditions such as high and low blood pressure do not seem to affect a patient's finger vein pattern to the extent that they become unrecognizable.
By installing a small digital camera above a cash machine criminals can literally watch people keying in their pin codes to access their accounts. They then trap the accompanying cards in the machine, sometimes using metal loops or false sleeves - to recover afterwards.
American cash machines still read data from a magnetic strip on the back of cash cards, so UK cards also have to contain this strip so that they can be used abroad.
The good people there tell me the formal payment for my ticket from my credit card company arrived four minutes after my train left the station. That means, they say, that I bought my ticket on the train - and that is not allowed.
The diplomatic appeals to Moscow come ahead of Sunday's referendum in Crimea, in which citizens will be asked if they want to stay with Ukraine or join Russia.
They do seem to have the respectful relationship of old adversaries. In the past, they have not been warm and tactile with each other in the way, say, Mrs Merkel and US President Barack Obama were when he visited Berlin (before the revelation that his people were listening in on her phone). But that is not her way, or his.
