Author: condor

Neptune And Uranus: Now Documented With Three “New” Moons…

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Our fine long time commenters point us to more of the dark night — of ignorance… being pushed aside, as ground-based telescopes have now confirmed three “new” additional, but very faint, moons circling Neptune and Uranus.

It was only about three centuries ago, that neither of those planets, let alone their bevy of graceful moons, were known to exist.

Would that we might now push back the dark ignorance of all war, as readily, and easily. In any event, here’s the bit:

…The solar system just got three new official residents — a trio of tiny moons, one of which orbits Uranus and two more that circle Neptune.

The three moons were all spotted several years ago but were recently confirmed by the International Astronomical Union’s (IAU) Minor Planet Center — the organization responsible for naming new solar system objects such as moons, asteroids and comets. The new trio, which have been given numerical designations, will be given formal, literature and mythology-inspired names in the coming years.

Uranus’ new moon, S/2023 U1, is only around 5 miles (8 kilometers) across, making it one of the smallest known moons around any of the eight planets in the solar system, alongside Mars’ minute companion Deimos. The diminutive moon, which takes around 680 days to orbit around Uranus, brings the planet’s total moon count to 28. Like the other Uranian moons, S/2023 U1 will eventually be named after a character from the plays of William Shakespeare, joining the likes of previously discovered moons such as Titania, Oberon and Puck….

Onward, with another three hour dinner mystery in the offing, for tomorrow night, courtesy of my daughter, residing across the pond. Woot!

नमस्ते

New Moons Tomorrow; Tonight We Look At How Pantetheine (A Proto-Vitamin B5) May Have Formed, In Early Volcanic Pools Four Billion Years Ago — In Just Months.

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For more than a two-thirds of a century, various paleobiologists have puzzled about how the early Earth could have given rise to complex and fairly fragile proteins, the ones all life depends upon, for its building blocks… and ultimately, for what becomes… DNA. It seems that the first big leap — to pantetheine, a very simple form of vitamin B5 — almost (sort of!) self-assembles in only a few months, in the right sorts of geo-thermic (warmed) concentrated liquid baths / pools.

Pools like those found near even some modern active land-based volcanos. Here’s the latest on the story — from the WaPo’s science pages — do go read it all:

…“I think it’s very surprising that no one tried it. If you just mix them all together, they’re all mutually reactive with each other,” said Jasper Fairchild, a Ph.D. candidate at University College London who led the experiment. “You’d think you would get a mess, but you don’t. You just get pantetheine. And for me, that’s very beautiful.”

On early Earth, the reaction could have taken place in small pools or lakes of water, the authors said. Large oceans, though, would have probably diluted the concentration of the chemicals.

“This is another beautiful example of how the molecules of life, even more complex ones like coenzymes, are predisposed to form,” said chemist Joseph Moran, who was not involved in the study.

The simple recipe for such a complex-looking molecule could reimagine how life started on Earth. Historically, Powner said, scientists proposed that biological molecules appeared stepwise — like an early world of RNA that later gave rise to proteins and other chemicals….

So it seems… life might have fairly easily “found a way” on other very old exo-planets, as well. What a fascinating time to be… alive. Onward, to the newly seen moons around Neptune, tomorrow. Grin — g’night….

नमस्ते

In Fifth Cir., DoJ On Behalf of CBP & DHS, Responds To State Of Texas’ Nonsense Re Kirtz — Waiver Of Immunity Sophistry On Land Razor Wire At Shelby Park.

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A few days ago, Texas Gov. Abbott and AG (for now only!) Ken Paxton made a stupefyingly dumb argument, trying to say that a farming credit reporting case — should control in the face of unmistakable statutory and Constitutional provisions that grant the federal government (and only the federal government) the right to handle border matters.

That was poppycock — and this morning, the DoJ Civil Division made it all clear as day, for the Fifth Circuit — lest those judges are unable to read the cases, for themselves.

Here’s the money bit, from the able AUSAs in DC:

…The government respectfully responds to Texas’s letter concerning Department of Agriculture v. Kirtz, No. 22-846 (U.S. Feb. 8, 2024).

In Kirtz, the Supreme Court held that the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) waives sovereign immunity for damages claims asserting violations of that federal statute. Contrary to Texas’s suggestion that the Court “rejected” clear-statement rules, Letter 1 (citation omitted), Kirtz reiterated that “a waiver of sovereign immunity must be unmistakably clear in the language of the statute,” Kirtz, slip op. 5 (quotation omitted). The Supreme Court then held that this standard was satisfied by FCRA’s particular text, which is not at issue here.

This case does not involve an assertion that Congress waived immunity to suits under federal law, but rather Texas’s contention that the APA waives the United States’s immunity to suits under the law of every state. The government has explained that 5 U.S.C. § 702 does not apply to state-law claims at all, see DHS Br. 25-30, and that in particular, it does not waive immunity to state tort claims because the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA) “grants consent to suit” against the United States under state tort law and “expressly or impliedly forbids the relief which is sought,” 5 U.S.C. § 702; see DHS Br. 30-33. Kirtz involved neither § 702 nor state-law tort claims, and sheds no light on either.

Texas suggests that Kirtz “rejected the idea that another federal statute” can “impliedly preclude[] waiver.” Letter 1 (citation omitted). But while Kirtz applied a “strong presumption” that “federal statutes touching on the same topic” can “coexist harmoniously,” Kirtz, slip op. 20 (quotation omitted), Congress departed from this presumption in § 702, expressly making it inapplicable where “any other statute that grants consent to suit expressly or impliedly forbids the relief” sought. 5 U.S.C. § 702. “Congress has dealt in particularity” with state-law tort claims and “intended a specified remedy” (damages), such that Texas “cannot use the APA to end-run” the limitations the FTCA imposes. See Match-E-Be-Nash-She-Wish Band of Pottawatomi Indians v. Patchak, 567 U.S. 209, 216 (2012) (quotation omitted)….

Now you know. There is essentially zero chance MAGA Abbott will prevail bere, in the end. Onward.

नमस्ते

Confidential Tangerine Note: When A NY Trial Court Finds You Liable For $464 Million IN FRAUDS — You Aren’t Allowed To Just Say “Trust Me, I’m Good For It.”

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Not that this should be in any manner surprising, but in order to stop around $112,000 per day in interest owed, and just to file his appeal in the NY AG matter, an appellate court just ruled he’ll need to post the full amount as a bond. That’s nearly a half billion — and over a half billion dollars — when one considers he must post another $83 million to appeal the E. Jean Carroll loss (defamation).

This is the way… the Trumpy ends. Not with a bang, but a whimper. He literally doesn’t have that on hand. He’s going to have to sell assets — perhaps several buildings, and even, perhaps… Mar-a-Lago. Excellent, as once you’re found by the courts to be a tax- and loan cheat, we shouldn’t accept your IOUs, any longer, son.

…[Tangerine] lost big today in his desire to hit pause on the $464 million judgement he owes out of a New York fraud trial….

In his second swing at getting the big bucks judgment and $112,000 per day in interest personally halted, the self-declared billionaire former president and de facto Republican nominee had already been forced to eat crow earlier.

Pulling a typical Trump move, the ex-Celebrity Apprentice host pleaded relatively poverty and admitted that he would be forced to sell some of his real estate properties if the court declined his stay request….

That’s… justice — and it couldn’t happen to a nicer guy. Out.

नमस्ते

U. of Colo. Science Programs Have Long Powered NASA Exoplanet Searches; New One Uses A “Mini-Me” Approach To Track “Goldilocks” Worlds…

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The human biology / life sciences departments have also long been first-rate contributors to medical innovations, world-wide. But I do need to brag — from time to time — on my university’s space science leadership. See below, and at right.

This tiny craft allows much more cost-effective, and nuanced longer term searches for atmospheric and magnetic signatures from transiting exo-planets. It was designed and built in Boulder, by Dr. Kevin France — a wunderkind. It has been logging transits now for over a year, and has offered the first concrete evidence of what may be a magnetosphere around a “Goldilocks” exoplanet. That would be a pretty powerful indicator of the right conditions for biology, as we understand it. Here’s the latest, from CU Astrophysics — and overnight, NASA is reworking its presser — as I speak. Do take a look:

…The Colorado Ultraviolet Transit Experiment (CUTE) is a 4-year, NASA-funded project to design, build, integrate, test, and operate a 6-unit CubeSat (30 cm x 20 cm x 10 cm). CUTE is planned to have a 1-year nominal mission lifetime and will launch in late September 2021. Using near-ultraviolet (NUV) transmission spectroscopy from 255 to 330 nanometers (nm), CUTE will characterize the composition and mass-loss rates of exoplanet atmospheres by measuring how the NUV light from the host star is changed as the exoplanet transits in front of the star and passes through the planet’s atmosphere. Transit light curves created from CUTE observations will provide constraints on the composition and escape rates of these atmospheres, and may provide the first concrete evidence for magnetic fields on extrasolar planets.

The keys to unlocking the diagnostic potential of these systems are spectral coverage in the appropriate bandpass and the ability to follow the systems for several orbital periods. CUTE is designed to provide exactly that – low resolution spectroscopy of critical atmospheric tracers (Fe II, Mg II, Mg I, OH) that are inaccessible from the ground, and a dedicated mission architecture that enables the survey required to characterize atmospheric structure and variability on these worlds.

CUTE was assembled and tested at the University of Colorado, Boulder and the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP). It is operated with LASP’s flight operations facilities. Dr. Kevin France is the Principal Investigator of the CUTE mission at LASP….

According to NASA, CUTE was launched as a secondary payload on NASA’s LANDSAT-9 mission on September 27, 2021 into a Sun-synchronous orbit with a 560 km apogee. The small craft / scope was deployed two hours after launch and then deployed its solar arrays. Spacecraft beacon signals were identified by the amateur radio community on the first orbit and communications were established with the ground station at the University of Colorado the following day. On-orbit commissioning of the spacecraft and instrument concluded in February 2022 and the mission has been conducting science operations since that time….

Onward, grinning ear to ear, even though it is only 22 degrees out now — down from 76 yesterday afternoon. Whoosh!

नमस्ते

Gee, Lloyd — MAYBE Because She Knowingly Relied On An Already FBI-Outed Russian Asset And Serial Liar, For Much Of Her “Reporting”?!

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Billingspuss is up to his old nonsense.

The real truth has been told by EmptyWheel, here (via public document federal court filings) — as we mentioned.

But “old Lloyd” wants us to believe a former reporter is being scape-goated.

Or… sumthin’ — by his imagined “deep state“.

Preposterous. She was willfully reporting lies… as facts.

Take a seat, son.

Yet Another Front, In The US Anti-Competitive Practices Wars — In Health Care Delivery, And Reimbursement — United Healthcare (Insurance) Now…

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So, just as we said — in both life science and health care delivery and reimbursement, antitrust is going to be an important gating variable.

Today the WSJ sourced a story saying that United Health, and its Optum (docs’ practice groups) businesses… are under a non-public civil investigation, centered on potential Sherman and Clayton Act (anticompetitive practice) issues. We will keep an eye on this, just like the M&A marketplaces, for buying and selling companies. Here’s a Reuters summary (since the WSJ is a paywalled site):

…UnitedHealth’s unit, Optum Health, offers a range of healthcare solutions, from pharmacy benefit management to financial consultation and mental health support.

Americans are facing soaring healthcare costs, with the estimated healthcare spending per person standing at about $13,493 in 2022, according to federal data released late last year….

Lawmakers and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) have been investigating the role of these middlemen in rising healthcare costs. Several bills have been in the works since last year that would require them to make their business dealings public, including the fees they earn on transactions.

The WSJ also reported that the DOJ is examining the company’s Medicare billing practices to see if doctors are aggressively characterizing their patients’ illnesses to wrongly increase payments from the government….

Onward — while it was 75 degrees (the warmest February day in Chicago’s history here) this afternoon, it fell almost 40 degrees in 45 minutes… and now we await overnight snows. Hail has already blown through. Hilarious!

नमस्ते

Merck’s Bridion® Generated ~$1.84 Billion In Sales In 2023 — Now Hikma And Five Others Seek Early Generic Copy Authority Under Hatch-Waxman…

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We have followed the chemical known generically as sugammadex, since about 2008, when it was a nascent Schering-Plough candidate, then one of Fred Hassan’s “five stars”. It is sold in the OR to help awaken patients, post surgery. [Except that it was seven years late in arriving, it is/was a success.] Indeed, it has slowly grown over the years — to be a nice blockbuster for Rahway.

The molecule is fairly easy to synthesize. . . and thus makes a rather promising “at risk” launch project, under Hatch-Waxman (even prior to 2026, in the US). And so it is not surprising that it has attracted the attention of at least five US generic manufacturers, since 2023 — seeking to compete with it. It went off patent in the EU as of 2023, and will soon be so, in Japan here early in 2024.

Apparently, last week a sixth generic entrant emerged — Hikma Pharmaceuticals’ generics arm. Merck’s Form 10-K discloses it is still deciding whether it might allow one or more versions of an “authorized” generic, to blunt Hikma and the others — possibly with some other purveyor. Here is that bit — but overall, this is not likely to be material, since Bridion is only about Merck’s sixth largest franchise (see page 106):

. . .As previously disclosed, in June 2023, the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey ruled in Merck’s favor. The court held that Merck’s calculation of PTE for the sugammadex patent covering the compound is not invalid and that the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office correctly granted a full five-year extension. This ruling affirms and validates Merck’s U.S. patent protection for Bridion through at least January 2026. On June 29, 2023, the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey issued a final judgment prohibiting the FDA from approving any of the pending or tentatively approved generic applications until January 27, 2026, except for any subsequent agreements between defendants and Merck or further order by the court.

In July 2023, defendants filed a notice of appeal with the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. The appeal is currently pending.

On February 5, 2024, the Company received another Paragraph IV Certification Letter under the Hatch-Waxman Act notifying the Company that Hikma Pharmaceuticals USA Inc. has filed an application to the FDA seeking pre-patent expiry approval to sell a generic version of Bridion Injection. The Company is currently considering its options. . . .

Now you know — with just one of my older backgrounders, here. Search “sugammadex” in the box at upper left — for over 45 other entries.

Be excellent ot one another. Smile. . . .

नमस्ते

What The Smirnov Indictment… Really Reveals: Do Read EmptyWheel, On It All.

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First, the caveats: if you’ve not closely followed the actual court filings, you are likely operating from a convoluted series of false narratives, and premises — largely created by hard-right media outlets. [Cough; Power-liners.]

But if you’ve been reading the actual filings and motions, then you know. EmptyWheel is by far the most reliable narrator you’ll ever find, on matters Hunter Biden.

And so, today — please do read all of hers, here — she offers a “kill-shot” of sorts, on the whole Cotton / GOP / MAGA bullcrap mischaracterization of / about the 51 former intelligence agents’ letter.

She also makes plain that more than a few career AUSAs were simply trying to apply the law, as written. Nothing more.

And that the then AG (Bill Barr) was trying his level best to “muddy the waters” with various forms of stupid agit-prop distractions. These have caught up to… Smirnov.

See EW’s concluding bit here — but do read it all:

…It seems clear that Lesley Wolf left the Smirnov allegation well enough alone, knowing that the project generally was producing garbage that could only endanger the case.

Leo Wise seemingly used the Smirnov allegation as an excuse to reopen the case against the President’s son, only to discover it opened a nasty can of worms. It gave Abbe Lowell the evidence to prove that the prosecution of Hunter Biden was infected by an effort by the Attorney General to accommodate the dirt that Trump’s lawyers picked up from Russian spies. And it gave Wise a real headache of a prosecution to deal with.

Lesley Wolf probably didn’t decline all the garbage from Scott Brady for noble reasons. She was just protecting her case. But having made the opposite decision, Wise may end up blowing that case.

You know who is vindicated by the Alexander Smirnov indictment? Lesley Wolf….

Yep. That’s… flawless (do take heed, Scott Johnson and John Hinderaker). Out.

Just As We Said — The DoJ/FTC (and State AGs) Are Clearing Their Throats — On US Antitrust Enforcement. Do Take Heed, Pharma…

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As we mentioned a lil’ more than a week ago, the US antitrust authorities have once again… found their collective voice. And now, as we predicted, the FTC has sued, to either enjoin or reform the Albertsons / Kroger merger.

This will, at a minimum, involve the parties divesting outlets each controls in certain markets (to an independent competitor), to preserve real competition in grocery prices. And it would behoove the people circling the Sanofi consumer health businesses to take into account that — in certain mature therapies the proposed deal may unlawfully harm natural price competition, for say shoe inserts and OTC allergy meds. This is going to change the way parties bid for, or at least set “hold backs” — in the mature life sciences brands as well. In any event, here’s the latest:

…The Federal Trade Commission sued to block a proposed merger between grocery giants Kroger and Albertsons, saying the $24.6 billion deal would eliminate competition and lead to higher prices for millions of Americans.

The FTC filed an administrative complaint against the companies Monday, which will be considered by an administrative law judge at the agency. It also filed a lawsuit with the U.S. District Court in Oregon requesting a temporary injunction blocking the merger. That lawsuit was joined by the attorneys general of eight states and the District of Columbia.

Kroger and Albertsons, two of the nation’s largest grocers, agreed to merge in October 2022. The companies said a merger would help them better compete with Walmart, Amazon, Costco and other big rivals. Together, Kroger and Albertsons would control around 13% of the U.S. grocery market; Walmart controls 22%, according to J.P. Morgan analyst Ken Goldman….

Now you know… onward — grinning in the sunshine — for a cool afternoon bike ride.

नमस्ते