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Uranium was considered a highly strategic material by socialist Czechoslovakia and thanks to the country's rich reserves mining was quite extensive. It has had a serious impact on the environment which will take decades to clean up. Czech scientists have come up with a solution tailored for one particular mining area - using the by-products of uranium mining to produce - commercial fertiliser.

Like other post-communist countries, the Czech Republic has seen a large increase in the number of drug addicts in the last decade. The 'traditional' Czech drugs have been alcohol and tobacco, but in recent years cannabis and so-called 'party drugs' like ecstasy have become increasingly popular. To deal with this problem a new degree course has just been established at Charles University in Prague.

The Czech Academy of Sciences has a new president. After Professor Helena Illnerova's four-year term expired, Professor Vaclav Paces, the former head of the Institute of Molecular Genetics, was elected to chair the institution for the next four years. When I met Professor Paces recently, we first discussed the perennial problem of lack of finances.

This week the South Bohemian town of Cesky Krumlov is hosting an annual meeting of an interesting international organisation. It is called Women in Nuclear and is a worldwide association of women working in the nuclear field.

A company based in the city of Brno recently announced the creation of what they call the first Universal Information Robot. The company says that the robot can help software firms to radically reduce costs for the creation and maintenance of information systems. Also, at the moment, the robot is helping to sort out 30 years' worth of data collected on cancer treatment.

Stem cells have the ability to become many kinds of tissue, and scientists believe stem cell research holds a great promise for treating a range of diseases in the future. Both ethical and legal debate is being held in many countries, especially over the research of stem cells harvested from human embryos.

The brain is the most complex structure of the human body. Despite enormous advances in brain research, in industrialised countries disorders of the brain and the central nervous system remain the leading cause of disability, and account for more hospitalisations and prolonged care than almost all other diseases combined. This week the Czech Republic is joining other countries in Brain Awareness Week - a series of events held around the world to increase public awareness the progress and benefits of brain research.

Alzheimer's disease is a progressive, degenerative and irreversible brain disorder that causes intellectual impairment, disorientation and eventually death. Every fifth person over the age of 65 is believed to be affected by the condition - that's around 25 million people worldwide. A recent discovery by researchers from Masaryk University in Brno is a step forward in the preparation of anti-Alzheimer's drugs.

Furry mammoths with long white tusks wading through snow, a hairy stone-age man chopping wood with a hand-axe... Several generations of Czechs have grown up daydreaming over these photo-like paintings of prehistoric animals and people. The Czech artist Zdenek Burian, one of the great illustrators and painters of prehistoric life, was born a hundred years ago. Even in this age of computer generated images, Zdenek Burian remains unmatched.

In previous editions of Czech Science we reported on a couple of computer systems, specialising in speech recognition, developed by the Laboratory of Computer Speech Processing or SpeechLab at the Technical University in Liberec. In today's Czech Science we'll look at another voice recognition programme devised by the SpeechLab team.