THIS IS NOT A DRILL! Several Waffle Houses in Florida are closing due to Hurricane Matthew. Even FEMA knows that’s a bad thing. They have an informal "Waffle House Index". When these diners start closing they know they have a disaster on their hands and raise that index to "red".Â
Even people not involved with a national disaster agency know this means things are serious:
Kuazhiou 11, the larger of Expace’s launch rockets, is geared towards launch demand for cheaper, smaller satellite constellations. While the first customers are Chinese, foreign customers are eventually likely to sign up for cheap prices and fast turnaround.
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Ready for some hardcore science about transistor elements that are a fraction of the width of a human hair? Good, because that’s what this post is all about. "The semiconductor industry has long assumed that any gate below 5 nanometers wouldn’t work, so anything below that was not even considered," University of California at Berkeley researcher Sujai Desay says. In recent years, though, that assertion has looked shaky, and now it’s been thoroughly disproved thanks to the discoveries made by scientists at UC Berkeley and the magic of carbon nanotubes. Or, as they’re more commonly known, graphene.
Ali Javey, Jeff Bokor, Chenming Hu, Moon Kim and H.S. Philip Wong crafted a transistor with a 1-nanometer gate. In theory this could shrink the weight and size of our already-thin electronics even more. For context, current silicon transistors have 20-nanometer gates. However, it’s worth noting that graphene isn’t the only material in use here. The UCB researchers also used molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) to achieve this result.
A problem with using anything but silicon for these ultra-small transistors is that with anything under 5nm in size, it gets harder to control the flow of electrons through the material, and the transistors can’t be powered off. But since electrons are "heavier" when they’re pushed through MoS2, smaller gate lengths can be used. Hence shrinking down to 1nm.
Now, it’s important to note that while this is a huge discovery, it isn’t precisely the first time for achievement the way that UCB says it is. Back in 2008, researchers from the University of Manchester used graphene to create a transistor 1nm across containing only a few carbon rings. And in 2006, Korean scientists used FinFET to make a transistor with a 3nm channel length.
So maybe relax, because it looks the reports of Moore’s Law’s demise have been slightly exaggerated or at least delayed.
The federal Medicaid program had accused Mylan of underpaying required rebates for the EpiPen, which is used to reverse serious allergic reactions.
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Drew Angerer/Getty Images
The federal Medicaid program had accused Mylan of underpaying required rebates for the EpiPen, which is used to reverse serious allergic reactions.
Drew Angerer/Getty Images
Drug maker Mylan N.V. announced Friday that it had reached a $465 million settlement with the U.S. Justice Department and other government agencies to resolve questions over rebates required by the Medicaid program.
The deal settles allegations by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services that Mylan had misclassified the EpiPen as a generic drug and had not paid the appropriate rebates that are required by law.
Andrew Slavitt, the acting head of CMS, detailed the allegations in a letter to Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) this week.
Slavitt told Wyden that Mylan had misclassified EpiPen as a “non-innovator” or generic drug, when it should have been classified as a brand-name product. Slavitt said the agency had informed Mylan multiple times of the misclassification.
Drugs companies pay rebates to the Medicaid program of 23.1 percent for brand-name drugs and 13 percent for generics. Mylan paid only the 13 percent for $1 billion worth of Epipens that Medicaid bought between 2011 and 2015. That cost state and federal taxpayers $163 million, he said.
Mylan was facing potentially large penalties. Companies are required to report a drug or device’s correct classification, or else they can be fined up to $100,000 per violation under the terms of the Medicaid Drug Rebate Program.
Mylan has come under increasing scrutiny by lawmakers on Capitol Hill, federal agencies and state attorneys general after the company raised the price for the EpiPen more than 500 percent since 2008. The device is an auto-injector used to reverse serious allergic reactions.
Mylan said the settlement “did not provide for any finding of wrongdoing.”
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