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LY BD © oF VEN? GENETIC FOOD FEARS PROMPT RUSH ON ORGANIC PRODUCE specific amounts at specified times. » It may even be possible to create a microchip that could be put in television sets to release scents. Scenes of oceans could be matched with salt-air smells or gardens with floral aromas. The device is the first of its kind enabling the storage of one or more chemicals inside of the microchip with the release of the compounds on demand. A microprocessor, remote control or biosensor can be used as a trigger mechanism. The researchers say they could reduce the size of the chip to as small as 0.08 inches (2 millimetres), depending on its desired use. There is also the potential for more than a thousand, maybe thousands of reservoirs if the reservoirs are smaller. Another benefit of the chip is that it's cheap. Dr Langer and his team are making them in a research lab for about $20 each, but, if produced in larger batches, a chip could cost just a few dollars or less. (Sources: Reuters; Nature, vol. 397, 28 January 1999) n the UK, sales of organic food have increased so much in the past year that supermarkets are finding it hard to keep up with demand. Major chains say organic produce has become so popular that it has made the unprecedented shift from niche market to mainstream. Tesco, one of Britain's largest supermarket chains, reports a 100 per cent growth in sales of organic goods, and is currently sponsoring research at Aberdeen University, Scotland, aimed at helping farmers convert to organic practices. Supermarkets in Australia are also getting in on the act, with Coles and Woolworths trialling ranges of organic produce—with overwhelming results. Scott Kinnear, chair of the Organic Federation of Australia, claims that the European organic food market alone is now worth around A$6 billion per year and growing. (Sources: Daily Telegraph, 7 Jan 1999; Independent on Sunday, /0 Jan 1999, London; The Australian, 2 Feb 1999) Instead of packing it with data, scientists plan to load the tiny chip with drugs. Programmed to release tiny quantities of drugs at precise times, it would then be implanted under the skin, or swallowed if necessary. The prototype has been developed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology scientist Dr Robert Langer, working with John Santini and Michael Cima. They claim the chip could be used to deliver pain relief or cancer drugs, or used in medical diagnostic tests, in jewellery to emit scents, or in any capacity to deliver one or more chemical compounds in WEB WARFARE: THE INTERNET VERSUS BIG BROTHER Yr will probably not have read much about the collapse, in Paris, of the Multinational Agreement on Investment, or MAI (see article in NEXUS 5/04). That is hardly surprising, as it was one of the most clandestine events of 1998. Delegates from the 29 richest countries in the world, treasury officials, bankers and civil servants had been meeting for two years to negotiate what might have been the most far-reaching international agreement this century. But you didn't read or hear much about that either, because they did it more or less in secret. There were those who had been suspicious of the agreement from the outset. When it was launched in 1995, its sponsors trumpeted it as the final pillar in the globalisation of the world's economy, but to its opponents it was a plot by multinational companies to shake off the controls that democracies might legitimately place upon their activities. The posting of all this on the Internet, after two years or more of semi-secret negotiations, changed everything. The secrecy which had initially bred only mild MICROCHIP IMPLANTS TO REPLACE PILLS & POTIONS Asie microchip could one day replace painful injections, difficult-to- swallow pills and foul-tasting medicines. 4 a Ly Sow Lhe ~~ WweE Lcome AND THANK You Fog CHOOSING THIS STATE - OF -THE -ART SOFTWARE , UNFoRT~ NATELY, BECAUSE You ARE A BY THE 6 = NEXUS APRIL — MAY 1999 Sore Lhe