MIT Develops Portable Device That Spits Out Drugs On-Demand

Researchers at MIT have developed a portable system that can produce biologic drugs on-demand, obviating the need for expensive centralized manufacturing and potentially enabling doctors working in remote or developing parts of the world to create biopharmaceuticals that may be otherwise inaccessible. The DARPA-funded work is described this week in the journal Nature Communications.

Biopharmaceuticals, or biologics, are pharmaceutical drugs produced from biological rather than chemical sources. They may consist of proteins, sugars, and-or nucleic acids, or they may involve entire living cells. Examples include most vaccines, antibody therapies, and viral gene therapies (where viruses are genetically manipulated to have some medical benefit). The earliest example is biosynthetic insulin, created in 1982 and sold under the name Humulin, crafted using recombinant DNA.

Creating and manufacturing biologics is, however, expensive, owing largely the complexity and time scales involved; the MIT study notes that biologics represent a key driver in escalating health-care expenditures. Deploying biologics in developing regions of the world, in battlefield scenarios, and in emergency situations is a formidable challenge with consequences for basic drug availability.

"Currently, manufacturing of biologic drugs in the biopharmaceutical industry relies heavily on large-scale fermentation batches that are frequently monitored offline, to ensure a robust process and consistent quality of product," the paper explains. "However, as personalized medicines, single-use technologies and the desire for global and decentralized access to biologics are becoming increasingly important, there is a growing need for rapid, flexible, scalable and portable biomanufacturing systems that can be monitored/controlled online for affordable, safe and consistent production of biologics."

The platform developed by the MIT group is based on two basic components. The first is a system engineered to kick out multiple therapeutic proteins in response to programmed (chemical) cues, while the second is a millimeter-scale microfluidics production platform for actually producing the biologic end product. The result is a microbioreactor that is so far able to produce near-single dose levels of human growth hormone and the antiviral interferon-α2b.

Image: MIT

The platform is based on a programmable variety of yeast known as Pichia pastoris. When exposed to estrogen β-estradiol, the cells are engineered to spit out growth hormones, while methanol causes them to produce interferon. Because the yeast cells can be grown in very high densities on top of relatively simple and expensive carbon substrates, it's possible to achieve large protein yields.

Within the microbioreactor, yeast cells are confined to a microfluidic chip where they live within the tiniest amount of liquid—which delivers the chemical signals—surrounded on three-sides by an impermeable polycarbonate wall, and, on the fourth, by a gas-permeable membrane. The membrane is used to both "massage" the cell-containing liquid to ensure it remains homogeneously mixed and to pass oxygen in and carbon-dioxide out. To ensure the optimal environment for cell growth, the system constantly monitors oxygen levels, temperature, and pH within the chamber.

When it comes time to produce a new biogenic, the liquid surrounding the yeast cells is flushed out and filtered to ensure that no cells escape. New liquid containing the new signal is piped in and the yeast cells begin producing a new protein. This flushing process—particularly the retaining of old cells for reuse—has apparently been a difficulty in prior microbioreactor research.

Future work will focus on making combinatorial therapeutics, e.g. treatments in which multiple biogenics are used together. With each one requiring its own production line, this is currently an expensive proposition. "But if you could engineer a single strain," offers MIT bioengineer Tim Lu in a statement, "or maybe even a consortia of strains that grow together, to manufacture combinations of biologics or antibodies, that could be a very powerful way of producing these drugs at a reasonable cost."

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MIT Develops Portable Device That Spits Out Drugs On-Demand

'God Hand' Mod for 'Doom' Lets You Punch Your Way Through Hell

Even if your direct experience with video games remains limited to the likes of Candy Crush Saga and Angry Birds, there's still a good chance you've at least heard of the seminal first person shooter Doom. Only those fans familiar with the deep cuts, though, will likely recall God Hand, the 2006 cult favorite for the PlayStation 2 that's based on beatin' up the bad guys with a healthy dose of humor. And as a testament to the seemingly limitless appeal of modding Doom, modder Edy Pagaza has gone and mashed the two together in a new mod appropriately called God Hand Doom.

Unfortunately, unlike the mod that injects Duke Nukem into Doom or the one that recreates Goldeneye 007with Doom's engine, we can't actually play this one yet. It's just a video, although the "Coming Soon" at the end suggests a real release is presumably on the way for the ZDoom port used for the mod.

I'd like to be one of the first to play it when it drops. Doom may be a legendary shooter, but I find the thought of running around and punching the same demons with the music, interface, and hero of God Hand all the more cathartic. In fact, if anything, I want more. God Hand may have placed a heavy emphasis on solving problems with kicks and punches, but it was also a game about clobberin' goons with six-foot 4"x4"s and button-prompt attacks. Here's there's none of that, although Pazaga's Patreon page says he plans to bring in the '"fatalities thing' from God Hand (a.k.a. spanking, pummel, supplex, etc.)" in the future.

Maybe we'll see it in the real release, if it ever shows up. Pagaza's YouTube page showcases a few other Doom-related mods he's made, such as one that imported the weapons from Killing Floor 2 that he had to abandon after a lightning strike ruined his computer. Here's to hoping he finishes it, as God Hand Doom might then evolve into that precious rarity—the cult classic of a cult classic.

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'God Hand' Mod for 'Doom' Lets You Punch Your Way Through Hell

Why the Rumor That Facebook Is Listening to Your Conversations Won’t Die

Not long ago I watched a video in my Facebook timeline—I don’t remember what it was, only that it was something very sad. Whatever it was, I felt overwhelmed, and I put my head down on the bed beside my computer and did about sixty seconds of crying.

When I lifted my head I saw something new at the top of my timeline: some garbage ad, like any one of thousands of garbage ads that speckle my social media usage with background noise. But this one was worrying: It was for “online counseling services”, or something like that. I was alarmed.

Did Facebook hear me crying? No, Facebook has said clearly, but it really felt like it did, which is probably why this rumor won’t die.

It’s not even that crazy of a conspiracy theory. Two years ago Facebook began experimenting with using your phone and your computer’s inbuilt microphone to recognize and predict what you were listening to or watching at the time you made a status update. For example, if you’re listening to a certain artist or watching a certain film, rather than typing about it, Facebook would “hear” and identify the source of the sound and supply it for you. When the feature launched in 2014 Facebook promised that the feature was “entirely optional,” that it didn’t record or store any of the audio it captured, including personal conversations, and that it mainly just uses your audio data to harmlessly note popular matches.

Image: Shutterstock.

The feature saw a massive backlash—one online petition against it gained more than 500,000 signatures, according to reports, forcing Facebook to backpedal and clarify. But “backpedal and clarify” is de rigeur for lots of apps and networks that overreach. The same thing happened to pro-social anti-sedition psyop Pokémon Go, which supposedly just had no idea that people wouldn’t like allowing Pikachu a totalitarian look into their Google accounts until they had to amend it later. Wow, we’re from Silicon Valley and we are wildly educated and make millions of dollars but shucks, understanding this whole “privacy concerns” stuff that arises literally every time we launch something sure is tuff!

Eventually, Facebook denied in plain language that it spies on your microphone to serve you ads. But it took two years after the initial backlash for it to get to that, which seems a little long. And there are still some considerable “ifs” in its official statement after we only access your microphone if. Maybe amid some of those ifs, it spies on your microphone not even for ads, but for some other reason entirely. I just don’t trust it.

The truth is out there, says University of South Florida professor and fellow tinfoil-hatter Kelli Burns, who warns that despite the party line that Facebook only listens to certain things for certain reasons, it does appear to adapt based on things you discuss in its earshot. In fact, it seems lots of people have had these anecdotal, eerie experiences—I made one exploratory Tweet, and tons of replies came in reporting similar suspicions. One user was talking to a family member on the phone about another relative’s cancer diagnosis, only to find ads for treatment centers. Another was offered a coupon for a restaurant they were chatting about with coworkers.

Maybe I cannot face the fact I am simply dangling in the adept crosshairs of demographic targeting like a motionless red apple. I am easy.

Even if I don’t trust Facebook, this whole listening thing is probably not happening. The tech muscle required to continuously capture all that audio and run it through voice recognition systems is supposedly infeasible. With all the metadata it has already to target you with ads—and it’s working—why would Facebook or Google need to spend processing power on that scale just to listen to you talking, too?

There are a lot of other logical explanations for these experiences, too. It could be that by the time you think to discuss something with someone, you’ve probably Googled or chatted online about the same topic, or similar ones, recently—and those in-platform chat logs are often used to suggest ads. There’s also a sort of confirmation bias known as the “Frequency Illusion”, or the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, defined in 2006 as a principle whereby something you heard about recently just suddenly seems to be everywhere. When something new occurs to you, you unconsciously start looking for signs of it in your environment—even, let’s say, an event related to a movie you just watched, or a dress branded with a character from a game you just played.

Image: Shutterstock.

Maybe I began to suspect Facebook of spying on me, and therefore now I see correlations between my advertisements and my conversations everywhere. Maybe I feel stupid because I’ve been tricked—I’m an adult and I bought a Pikachu dress!—so now I need to believe the trick is global and massive. Maybe. Maybe I cannot face the fact I am simply dangling in the adept crosshairs of demographic targeting like a motionless red apple. I am easy.

This column of mine, Oracles of the Web, seeks to capture moments of magic, haunting, faith and belief within the technology space. But as they say at dialogue hub Haunted Machines, any system we don’t fully understand is fundamentally “magic”, or divine, or haunted—that is how the human mind works. I have an idea of how Google and Facebook could be listening to us, following us, but I don’t yet know exactly how, where it ends and begins. To test it out once and for all, I have been saying the phrase “motorcycles” into my laptop and phone mic alike all day. I called my partner while he was sitting right next to me to artificially discuss “motorcycles” over the phone. I opened a status window and chanted “motorcycles” softly at it, like a mad prayer. I opened a YouTube tab and murmured “motorcycles” to it, typed and erased “motorcycles” in the search field.

Still, even my most computer-savvy colleagues, those who’ve been the most dismissive of my paranoia, will eventually admit to switching off microphones and taping up cameras “just to be safe”.

I’m not interested in motorcycles at all, so any sign of motorcycle ads on my page would be absolute proof. Yet so far, nothing. Maybe it’s onto me and it knows I’m trying to catch it. Maybe it knows enough about me to know I can’t afford a motorcycle and my driver’s license has lapsed. Who can tell? Without facts, this is just a belief—a paranoid conspiracy theory.

And like all systems of belief, maybe it sprung up in me in response to a subconscious need to believe there is an orderly force behind it all, a definitive map across the great, starlit night that these technology mega conglomerates have stealthily draped over me and my life while I wasn’t looking.

Still, even my most computer-savvy colleagues, those who’ve been the most dismissive of my paranoia, will eventually admit to switching off microphones and taping up cameras “just to be safe”. Many sites offered instructions like these for how to shut those microphone permissions off on your phone, so my unease must be popular enough. We may know certain things are unlikely, but it is enough to know they are possible. Mark Zuckerberg himself has sealed his camera and his microphone with tape. He, better than us all, maybe, knows what is possible.

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Why the Rumor That Facebook Is Listening to Your Conversations Won’t Die

Ransomware Is So Hot Criminals Are Sabotaging Each Other's Ransomware

Ransomware, the strain of malware which cryptographically locks a victim's hard drive until they pay the author an electronic ransom, is super popular among cybercriminals right now. The strategy is so successful, in fact, that some ransomware-makers have apparently begun sabotaging each other's ransomware to try and take out their competition.

Earlier this week, 3,500 keys for a ransomware known as “Chimera” leaked online, purportedly allowing anyone targeted by it to safely decrypt their ransomed files without having to pony up bitcoins. The decryption keys were apparently posted by the authors of a rival ransomware package called Petya and Mischa, who claimed they had hacked Chimera's development system, pilfered the keys, and stolen parts of the code.

"Earlier this year we got access to big parts of their deveolpment [sic] system, and included parts of Chimera in our project," the authors write in a post on Pastebin. "Additionally we now release about 3500 decryption keys from Chimera."

Chimera is a particularly nasty strain of ransomware which not only locks a victim's hard drive but threatens to leak their private files online if the ransom isn't paid. It’s still not clear whether the supposedly-leaked keys will actually decrypt machines affected by the malware, however—the security firm MalwareBytes, which first noticed the leak, says that verifying all the keys will take some time.

In any case, Petya and Mischa's authors seem to have timed the leak to promote their own ransomware, which is based on the stolen Chimera code and is now being offered as a service to any two-bit cybercriminal willing to shell out bitcoins for it.

The in-fighting seems to indicate another significant, albeit predictable shift in the criminal hacking economy. Previously, ransomware authors have expressed anger at a recent rash of fake ransomware, which display scary messages but don't actually lock or unlock a victim's hard drive when the ransom is paid; the thinking is that enough of this fake ransomware could cause people to stop believing they can get their files back when they're hit with the real thing, endangering future profits.

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Ransomware Is So Hot Criminals Are Sabotaging Each Other's Ransomware

Watch This Flying Ring Propel Itself Around the 'Flying Machine Arena'

That ring flying in circles around the room looks like it has a life of its own. It's going at 1.4 meters per second, and engineered from a quadrotor (also known as a quadcopter or quadrotor helicopter), a helicopter propelled by four rotors.

In this video by Rajan Gill from the Institute for Dynamic Systems and Control, ETH Zurich, he explains that while quadrotors are agile and have high load carrying capabilities, they're not very efficient in forward flight. Their lift to drag ratios are comparable to that of a fruit fly, he says. The flying ring, on the other hand, can fly on its side, allowing the blades to propel it forward faster than a typical quadcopter.

The flying ring in the video is the first prototype of the augmented quadrotor with an angular wing, acting as a lifting surface which also conceals propeller blades for safety. The prototype's autonomous controlled flights, as seen in the video, allowed researchers to identify its aerodynamic properties.

The ring flies inside a "flying machine arena," described as a "sandbox environment" for testing mobile robots. The size of the room allows the machines enough space for fast-paced experimental motion, in the air or on the ground. "The Flying Machine Arena offers ideal conditions to test novel concepts thanks to a high-precision localization system, high-performance radio links, easy-to-use software structure, and safety nets enclosing the space," its website describes. The space is used in various projects by various research labs, including the Institute for Dynamic Systems and Control.

With more efficient forward flight, speed and carrying capacity, the quadrotor, as shown in the video, can be used for various lifting and transportation tasks to assist humans.

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Watch This Flying Ring Propel Itself Around the 'Flying Machine Arena'

This Crazy Lizard Is the Mascot of the Latest US Spy Satellite Launch

Image: National Reconnaissance Office.

The US National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) has become known for branding its spy satellite launches with strange and sometimes menacing imagery. But unlike the Office's infamous world-devouring octopus, the logo adorning NROL-61, which carried yet another classified payload into geosynchronous orbit on Thursday, is just flat-out bizarre.

Launched from Cape Canaveral at 1237 GMT on Thursday, NROL-61 sent up a classified NRO satellite innocuously designated USA-269. The launch featured the image of a wild-eyed lizard straddling a rocket Major Kong-style as it blasts The lizard mascot's name is “Spike,” which also serves as the mission's code name.

But what's really interesting about the mission patch is that it shows Spike riding what seems to be the cargo-launching Ares V rocket, rather than the mission's actual launch vehicle, the Atlas V. The Ares was a cargo-carrying rocket designed for NASA's now-defunct Constellation program, which planned to replace the space shuttle before being scrapped in 2010.

That suggests that Spike's designer either made the logo as a tribute to the abandoned program, or that it was originally designed for Constellation and was simply re-appropriated for the NRO launch after that program was canceled.

Just like with the launch of NRO's Mentor-7 eavesdropping satellite in late June, amateur satellite-spotters wasted no time tracking down Spike. Paul Camilleri, a hobbyist in Australia, was able to spot both the NROL-61 payload and its separated upper-stage Centaur rocket booster in the night sky just an hour after launch.

It's also worth noting that the Atlas V 421 configuration deployed by NROL-61 has not previously been used in any of the surveillance agency's missions. While the purpose of NRO satellites can normally be puzzled out by carefully analyzing the size and details of its launch vehicle, this unusual configuration means that the satellite's exact function remains a mystery.

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This Crazy Lizard Is the Mascot of the Latest US Spy Satellite Launch

There's a Fan-Made 'StarCraft' MMO, and Blizzard Isn't Going to Shut It Down

It's been a fascinating year for Blizzard Entertainment as regards player creations using its properties. Earlier this year the celebrated gamemaker ended up looking like a big, bad bully when it forced the closure of the popular World of Warcraft private server Nostalrius Begins, and there was much gnashing of digital teeth.

Flash forward a couple of months, and now we have the open beta release of StarCraft Universe, a massively multiplayer game using assets from StarCraft II. It's got the "third-person action RPG elements of World of Warcraft, the combat mechanics of Diablo, and the starship mechanics of FTL with the StarCraft setting." And wonder of wonders, even after the Nostalrius fiasco, Blizzard's apparently okay with it.

It wasn't always this way. The tale of StarCraft Universe goes way back to 2011, when a group of modders headed by Ryan Winzen announced that they'd made a mod for StarCraft II that turned the real-time strategy game into a MMO kind of like that other game of Blizzard's with orcs and purple elves. Appropriately enough, they even called it World of StarCraft. Blizzard bristled, and within hours YouTube pulled Winzen's videos showing his progress. In the uproar, League of Legends developer Riot even offered Winzen to apply for a position at the studio.

It all kind of blew over, and Blizzard even gave its blessing to the project after Winzen changed the name and learning that Winzen really did intend for his creation to be a mod and not a separately existing game. They invited him out to the studio, and Winzen followed up with a successful Kickstarter campaign in 2013 that reached $84,000.

And now it's finally here in open beta form, with the proper release scheduled for next month and with an Indiegogo campaign to raise more money for maintenance (since Winzen can't actually sell the game proper). It looks, ahem, stellar. Just look at that announcement trailer above—it's the kind of thing Blizzard itself could have made, and it proves they've got the right person heading this. If you want to play, you'll need either StarCraft II installed or the free Starter edition and then download it from this link to the Battle.net shell.

You can check out some of the gameplay below:

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There's a Fan-Made 'StarCraft' MMO, and Blizzard Isn't Going to Shut It Down