Month: September 2018

Hi! We notice you’re using an ad blocker. Please consider whitelisting Autoblog.

We get it. Ads can be annoying. But ads are also how we keep the garage doors open and the lights on here at Autoblog – and keep our stories free for you and for everyone. And free is good, right? If you’d be so kind as to whitelist our site, we promise to keep bringing you great content. Thanks for that. And thanks for reading Autoblog.

Hey again!

You still haven’t turned off your adblocker or whitelisted our site. It only takes a few seconds.

An estimated 50 million user profiles were affected by a security breach, Facebook confirmed in a blog post today. The breach allowed attackers to take over the accounts of affected users.

The breach, which the company says it discovered on Tuesday, “exploited a vulnerability in Facebook’s code that impacted ‘View As’, a feature that lets people see what their own profile looks like to someone else.” Currently the company’s internal investigation “is still in its early stages” and no indication has been given as to who might be behind the attack or what user data (if any) was exfiltrated.

Login tokens have been reset for the 50 million users directly affected, as well as an additional 40 million that the “view as” feature was used on within the past year. The vulnerability allowing the exploit, according to Facebook, “stemmed from a change we made to our video uploading feature in July 2017.”

News of the security breach comes at a particularly vulnerable time for Facebook, which is currently facing federal investigation and regulation over its role in the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Early this year, it was revealed that the firm misused data from some 87 million Facebook users. Cambridge Analytica shut down in May in the wake of the privacy debacle.

In a press conference shortly after Facebook made the blog post, CEO Mark Zuckerberg described the breach as an “attack,” and mentioned that those responsible had attempted to query Facebook’s database for personal information about the those whose profiles had their login tokens taken.

The “view as” feature has since been turned off, and Facebook’s VP of Product, Guy Rosen, stated that the company is working alongside law enforcement and the FBI to gather more information.

This story is developing.

A brand-new Japanese re-entry capsule, designed to bring back experiments from space, is gearing up for its first test flight after hitching a ride to the International Space Station aboard a robotic cargo ship. 

The space capsule arrived at the space station Thursday (Sept. 27) along with 5 tons of supplies on Kounotori7, the seventh uncrewed H-II Transfer Vehicle resupply ship (also known as HTV-7) launched to the orbiting lab by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). Kounotori is Japanese for “White Stork.” 

The HTV Small Re-Entry Capsule (HSRC) took its first trip toward the International Space Station on Sept. 22, when Kounotori7 launched into orbit from the Tanegashima Space Center in southern Japan.

The HSRC is designed to transport experiment samples back to Earth protected 3 ways: with passive, non-electric cooling, a “vacuum double layer insulation container (thermos bottle) and a heat storage unit (refrigerant),” according to JAXA’s mission page.

To prep this capsule to send back to Earth, astronauts living and working on the space station will first load experiment samples into a payload container. Another prep-step is to add a separation mechanism, which absorbs heat that would otherwise affect the parachute, onto a cylindrical structure.

 This cylindrical support (made exclusively for the HSRC) goes onto the hatch at the entry of HTV-7 spacecraft’s Pressurized Logistic Carrier (PLC) and makes sure the enclosure stays airtight when the hatch of the vehicle is left open, according to the space agency.  

When HTV-7 undocks from the space station, the spacecraft will perform a deorbit burn to head toward Earth. Next, officials on Earth will command the release of HSRC from the vehicle, and the capsule will start re-entering our planet’s atmosphere. HSRC will splash down with a parachute. 

The Kounotori7’s payload also included a delivery of astronaut basics, like food. The launch also sent up several spacelab units, or experiment racks, including two US experiment racks called Express Rack 9B and 10B; the second large-scale glove box for scientific experiments on the space station, called the US Life Sciences Glovebox; and the European Space Agency’s Life Support Rack, which will attempt to recycle carbon dioxide and water on the space station. 

Officials also sent up a special radiator equipped with a loop heat pipe, for an in-orbit demonstration at the Japanese Kibo Laboratory on the space station.

こちらは、本日機体移動し、射点にて最終準備中のH-IIBロケット7号機です。



「こうのとり」7号機を搭載した、H-IIBロケット7号機の打ち上げライブ中継は、明朝9月15日（土） 5:35～6:25から！

明朝は早起きして、打上げ応援して下さいね！https://t.co/VtDRmw8xWl pic.twitter.com/AmYLsggTvJ

— JAXAウェブ (@JAXA_jp) September 14, 2018

JAXA had previously scheduled the launch of the Kounotori7 for 5:59 a.m. on Saturday, Sept. 15 (in Japan Standard Time), but they canceled the launch because an ”additional investigation became necessary of the H-IIB F7 propulsion system,” JAXA officials said in a statement released that day. (H-IIB Vehicle No. 7 is the rocket that launched Kounotori7 up into space.)

Typhoon-related and unfavorable weather conditions had also prompted JAXA and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries to postpone the rocket’s earlier scheduled flights for Sept. 11 and Sept. 14 .

David Herzberg was alarmed when he heard that Richard Sackler, former chairman of opioid giant Purdue Pharma, was listed as an inventor on a new patent for an opioid addiction treatment.

Patent No. 9861628 is for a fast-dissolving wafer containing buprenorphine, a generic drug that has been around since the 1970s. Herzberg, a historian who focuses on the opioid epidemic and the history of prescription drugs, said he fears the patent could keep prices high and make it more difficult for poor addicts to get treatment. “It’s hard not to have that reaction of, like … these vultures,” said Herzberg, an associate professor at the University of Buffalo.

James P. Doyle, vice president and general counsel of Rhodes Pharmaceuticals, the Purdue subsidiary that holds the patent, said in an email statement that the company does not have a developed or approved product and “therefore no money has been made from this technology.”

He wrote, “the invention behind the buprenorphine patent in question was developed more than a dozen years ago. If a product is developed under this patent, it will not be commercialized for profit.”

Yet, the patenting of a small change in how an existing drug is made or taken by patients is part of a tried-and-true pharmaceutical industry strategy of enveloping products with a series of protective patents.

Drug companies typically have less than 10 years of exclusive rights once a drug hits the marketplace. They can extend their monopolies by layering in secondary patents, using tactics critics call “evergreening” or “product-hopping.”

Lisa Larrimore Ouellette, a patent law expert at Stanford University, said the pharmaceutical industry gets a greater financial return from its patent strategy than that of any other industry.

AztraZeneca in 2001 famously fended off generic versions of its blockbuster heartburn medicine Prilosec by patenting a tweaked version of the drug and calling it Nexium. When Abbott Laboratories faced multiple generic lawsuits over its big moneymaker Tricor, a decades-oldcholesterol drug, it lowered the dosage and changed it from a tablet to a capsule to win a new patent.

And Forest Laboratories stopped selling its Alzheimer’s disease drug Namenda in 2014 after reformulating and patenting Namenda XR to be taken once a day instead of twice.

Another common strategy is to create what Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb calls “patent thickets,” claiming multiple patents for a single drug to build protection from competitors. AbbVie’s rheumatoid arthritis drug Humira has gained more than 100 patents, for example.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office awards patents when an innovation meets the minimum threshold of being new and non-obvious. Secondary patents are routinely granted to established drugs when an improvement is made, such as making it a once-a-day pill instead of twice a day, said Kristina Acri, an economist and international intellectual property expert at the Fraser Institute and Colorado College.

“Is there a better way? Maybe, but that’s not what we’re doing,” Acri said.

The controversial patent that Sackler and five co-inventors obtained is widely known as a “continuation patent.” (The original patent application for the wafer was filed in August 2007.)

Continuation patents do not necessarily extend the patent life of a drug, but they can have other uses. In 2016, Rhodes filed a lawsuit against Indivior alleging patent infringement.

Indivior, formerly part of Reckitt Benckiser, sells a film version of the popular addiction treatment drug Suboxone that is placed under the tongue — an oral medicine similar to what Rhodes has patented. Indivior’s comes in a lime flavor.

Indivior’s film, which federal regulators approved in 2010, dominates the market with a 54 percent average market share, according to the company’s most recent financial report. And the company has vigorously fought rivals, including filing lawsuits against firms such as Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, which sought approval to manufacture generic versions. Indivior declined to comment.

The Rhodes Pharmaceuticals version would be a wafer that melts quickly in the mouth. The inventors list potential flavors including mint, raspberry, licorice, orange and caramel, according to the patent.

For opioid historian Herzberg, the patent battles between companies like Rhodes and Indivior are “absolute madness.”

Decisions on what is available on the market to treat addicts should be based on what is the best way to treat the people who have the problem, he said.

Patent battles, Herzberg said, are “not how you want drug policy getting made.”

Attempts to change the patent system have intensified over the past decade as prices of prescription drugs continue to climb.

In 2011, President Barack Obama signed the America Invents Act, which included the creation of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board. The PTAB is an alternative to using the cumbersome U.S. court system to challenge weak patents. Generic drug manufacturers have used the board’s “inter partes review” process and overturned 43 percent of the patents they challenged, according to recent research.

Critics of the administrative process, including the pharmaceutical industry trade group PhRMA, said it creates “significant business uncertainty for biopharmaceutical companies.” Often companies have to defend their products twice — both in the courts as well as before the PTAB, said Nicole Longo, PhRMA’s director of public affairs.

Drug giant Allergan attempted to overcome the PTAB’s review process by arguing that the patent couldn’t be challenged at the review board because they sold the patent to the St. Regis Mohawk Tribe, which had sovereign immunity. A federal appeals court ruled this summer that Allergan could not shield its patents from the PTAB review this way.

This year, several members of Congress proposed bills that would unwind or limit changes made by the America Invents Act, though nothing is likely to happen before the midterm elections. The STRONGER Patents Act, introduced in both the House and Senate, would weaken the PTAB board by aligning its claims standards with what has been established by court rulings.

Kaiser Health News is a nonprofit news service covering health issues. It is an editorially independent program of the Kaiser Family Foundation that is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.

KHN’s coverage of prescription drug development, costs and pricing is supported in part by the Laura and John Arnold Foundation.

Updated 8:40 p.m. Eastern.

WASHINGTON — United Launch Alliance announced Sept. 27 that it has selected Blue Origin to provide the main engine for its next-generation Vulcan launch vehicle, a decision long expected by the industry.

In a statement, ULA said it will use a pair of Blue Origin BE-4 engines, using liquid oxygen (LOX) and liquefied natural gas (LNG) in the first stage of its Vulcan rocket, expected to make a first launch in mid-2020. The company did not disclose the terms of its agreement with Blue Origin.

“We are pleased to enter into this partnership with Blue Origin and look forward to a successful first flight of our next-generation launch vehicle,” said Tory Bruno, president and chief executive of ULA, in a statement. [Watch Blue Origin Fire Up Engine for Huge New Glenn Rocket (Video)]

“Today is a great day for the Blue Origin team. We are very honored that United Launch Alliance has selected Blue Origin’s LOX/LNG BE-4 as the engine that will power the first stage of their Vulcan rocket,” said Bob Smith, chief executive of Blue Origin, in a company statement. “We can’t thank Tory Bruno and the entire United Launch Alliance team enough for entrusting our engine to power Vulcan.”

Latest BE-4 engine test footage where we exceeded our Isp targets. We continue to exercise the deep throttling of our full-scale 550,000 lbf BE-4, the reusability of our hydrostatic pump bearings and our stable start/stop cycles. More to follow from ongoing tests. #BE4 #NewGlenn pic.twitter.com/fw5zvtwpJ6

— Blue Origin (@blueorigin) January 8, 2018

The announcement comes four years after the companies first announced their partnership to develop the BE-4. While ULA also considered the AR1 engine being developed by Aerojet Rocketdyne, Bruno long made clear that BE-4 was the front-runner to power Vulcan.

In an April 2017 interview, Bruno said he was waiting for Blue Origin to complete a set of tests of the BE-4 before making a decision. “The economic factors are largely in place now and the thing that is outstanding is the technical risk,” he said at the time.

Blue Origin first hotfired the BE-4 in an October 2017 test, and since then has gradually ramped up the test campaign.

“It’s performing quite well,” Smith said of BE-4 on a Sept. 11 panel at the World Satellite Business Week in Paris. “We’ve gone through several hundred seconds of firing, including an over 200-second firing of that engine, so we’re feeling very good about its progress and what we’re going to be able to deliver to the market, as well as for our own consumption.”

However, ULA remained tight-lipped about when it would pick an engine, with Bruno saying only that a decision would come “soon” or, more recently, “very soon.”

Blue Origin joins an industry team that includes Aerojet, who will provide the RL10 engine for the rocket’s upper stage, Northrop Grumman for solid-fuel strap-on boosters, L-3 Avionics Systems for the rocket’s avionics and Ruag for the rocket’s payload fairing.

“ULA has chosen the best systems available to create the Vulcan Centaur,” Bruno said in the statement. “These engines and components will ensure ULA continues to lead the way in space exploration, maintain our record of success and remain America’s launch vehicle for our nation’s most vital missions.”

Aerojet officials have played down the AR1 competition more recently, particularly after renegotiating an agreement with the Air Force that slows down engine development. The company now says the AR1 could serve as a main engine for future medium-class launch vehicles, although no such vehicles have yet been identified.

“A medium-class launch vehicle powered by a single AR1 is ideally suited to become a new workhorse rocket for the nation,” Aerojet spokesman Steve Warren said Sept. 24. “AR1 is the ideal engine for many possible solutions; it brings the right thrust level, size and performance to a wide variety of launch vehicles.”

This story was provided by SpaceNews, dedicated to covering all aspects of the space industry.

A glowing, branching web slowly grows more and more tiny connections, with thin white tendrils reaching in to a black void. It looks like a fractal art piece. But in fact, it’s someone’s science research—the developing nervous system of a zebrafish embryo.

Nikon announced the winners of the eighth annual Small World in Motion contest, the video portion of its Small World still-photography competition. The contest highlights videos that demonstrate the intricate and beautiful world of biology beneath the microscope. This year’s big winners were Elizabeth Haynes and Jiaye “Henry” He from the University of Wisconsin-Madison for their visualization of a zebrafish embryo developing its sensory nervous system over 16 hours.

“We’ve been taking this sort of data for a while,” Haynes told Gizmodo. “This was really the perfect movie. It contains so much information that we can use to study biology, and it’s also a piece of art as it is.”

Microscopist He and biologist Haynes imaged the zebrafish embryo beginning around 17 hours after fertilization. The video shows two lines of cells in the spinal cords, then the branching nerve cells somehow properly arranging themselves. The fish are genetically modified so that the sensory neurons express green fluorescent protein, or GFP, which glows green when exposed to certain wavelengths of light.

Typical imaging processes might harm the embryo, explained He. But here, the team uses a specially shaped, faster laser pulse while imaging to minimize harm during development. They’re studying proteins called kinesins that walk along microtubules, the cellular scaffolding, transporting cargo in the cell. They hope to learn how specific subunits of this protein can select different pieces of cargo, and how that cargo might affect neural development or contribute to neurodegenerative disease.

The top five winners included other incredible videos as well, like a psychedelic video of a laser pulsing erratically through soap or a water flea giving birth.

Ultimately, Haynes and He entered the video to show people just how amazing biological development is. Said Haynes: “The take-home point for me is that so much goes right in the development of an organism.”