Word: microchip
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Waste Management may specialize in garbage, but it isn't the only outfit accused of playing dirty. Far from it. Just last week, Motorola sued Intel for allegedly hiring away key employees to obtain its microchip trade secrets. Minneapolis-based agribusiness giant Cargill recently acknowledged that a rogue employee may have lifted proprietary genetic material from a competitor, an admission that effectively killed a $650 million deal to sell its North American seed division to a German biotech venture...
Just when parents thought toy-buying season was safely behind them, manufacturers began unveiling their lineup for next Christmas. At the annual Toy Fair in New York City, it's hard to find anything without an imbedded microchip. Mattel's X3 Microscope ($100) comes with a built-in digital camera and hooks up to a PC, so kids can view magnified objects through the scope's lens, then save the images on the computer. Meanwhile, Lego is unveiling its Robotics Discovery Set ($150), which lets kids age 9 and up build elaborate creations like a moving robot that can follow...
Researchers at M.I.T. reported last week in Nature that they had built the first prototype "pharmacy on a chip," a tiny reservoir-filled microchip that could be made small enough to be swallowed or injected and smart enough to release drugs or hormones in a predetermined order...
...problem is this. Many of the world's computers and microchip circuitry, the ones that run everything from cash machines and VCRs to interstate electric-power grids and intercontinental ballistic missiles, contain a programming oversight that makes them incapable of reading the date 2000. To represent years, computers generally use just the last two digits. When 1999--that's 99 in computer language--rolls over at midnight to 00, computers that have not had the glitch repaired will conclude that the date is 1900. That can lead to a surprising range of malfunctions, and not just in such obviously date...
...oncologist takes a few cells from Jose's tumor and places them on a microchip. Within minutes, the chip identifies five mutant genes that, like some kind of diabolical cheerleading squad, have pushed Jose's cancer to grow, grow, grow. Someday, perhaps soon, doctors will be able to fix the wayward genes themselves. Until then, they will have to rely on the next best thing: drugs developed by pharmaceutical firms that block the destructive messages generated by the errant genes. Jose's physician selects a combination of treatments that matches the tumor's genetic profile. Six months later, no trace...