Month: September 2019

Enlarge / Some of the black-market vaping products that have been found to contain vitamin E acetate, according to the New York State Department of Health. (credit: Flicrk | New York State Department of Health)

Federal and state officials investigating the mysterious eruption of lung illnesses linked to e-cigarette use have turned up a vitamin in vape products that is normally found in supplements and skin creams.

The chemical is vitamin E acetate or alpha-tocopherol acetate, which is a less acidic, more shelf-stable form of vitamin E. It has an acetate group where an alcohol is usually found on the vitamin’s chemical structure. It’s used in a wide range of personal care products based on (largely unproven) health claims about vitamin E’s antioxidant effects. The more stable form of the vitamin appears in anti-aging wrinkle creams, shave gels, lip balms, shampoos, and soaps, as well as vitamin pills.

Vitamin E acetate is generally considered safe for ingestion and topical use. It’s unclear how the oily supplement might affect the lungs when inhaled from vape products. But, based on the latest evidence in the vaping investigations, officials are beginning to suspect the effects are not good.

Enlarge / The mighty Delta IV Heavy rocket takes to the skies. (credit: Aurich Lawson/United Launch Alliance)

Welcome to Edition 2.14 of the Rocket Report! Not a whole lot of big rocket news this week, as the approach of Hurricane Dorian shut down so many operations along the space coast in Florida. However, that didn't stop happenings from around the world, including the completion of an investigation into the failure of the Italian-made Vega rocket.

As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar. (Note: the Rocket Report will not publish next week due to the author's travel schedule).

Vega rocket failure report finds cause. The Independent Inquiry Commission, tasked with analyzing the failure of Vega Flight VV15 in July, submitted its findings on Wednesday. The Commission identified the most likely cause of the anomaly as "a thermo-structural failure in the forward dome area of the Z23 motor." This is located in the second stage of the smallsat launcher.

Enlarge / If you go searching for more information about Taimanin Asagi, you will find screens that are a lot less safe for work than this one. (credit: Taimanin Asagi)

Over a year has passed since Valve announced it would "allow everything" short of illegal and "straight-up trolling" content on the popular Steam game distribution platform. But some adult game makers are discovering there are a few apparent unstated exceptions to this policy.

Visual novel Taimanin Asagi is the latest such game to apparently be pulled from the platform without warning this week. The "eroge" visual-novel series, which was first listed on Steam last month, had all four episodes come down from the service late Tuesday, according to tracker SteamDB.

If Steam still had explicit standards against adult content, Taimanin Asagi is definitely the kind of title you'd expect to be censored on the platform. The game's overarching story about ninjas and demons fighting over the fate of a futuristic Tokyo society quickly devolves to a character being "captured and trained/transformed against their will into a sex slave," according to one synopsis. Extreme scenes of nonconsensual sex and torture are apparently plentiful; Sankaku Gamer noted (NSFW) the game is known for its "colossal amount of rape scenes."