In today’s Bulldog wrapup of technology and life science news:

  • Amazon unveils a “make an offer” service
  • More new solar sites in North Carolina
  • Congress told U.S. trails in drones for commercial use
  • A Merck breast cancer drug advances

Th details:

  • Amazon introduces ‘make an offer’ service

Amazon wants you to make an offer sellers won’t want to refuse.

For the first time, the largest U.S. online retailer is letting some third-party sellers offer an option where interested buyers can make an offer on an item lower than the listed price. The seller can then accept, counter or reject the offer. The new service comes in the midst of the busy holiday shopping season, which can account for 20 percent of a retailer’s annual revenue.

About 150,000 of the millions of items for sale on Amazon are eligible for the service, but that will expand to more third-party sellers in 2015. It is not available for the items that Amazon sells directly.

The eligible products are mainly collectibles, including sports and entertainment collectibles like signed jerseys, posters and helmets, fine art paintings and historical documents.

The service lets “sellers looking to communicate and negotiate directly with customers in an online marketplace environment just like they do normally in their own physical store or gallery,” said Peter Faricy, vice president for Amazon Marketplace.

Three more N.C. solar projects

Strata Solar in Chapel Hill plans three additional solar projects in eastern North Carolina.

Sites are planned for Bladen, Duplin and Wilson Counties.

Working with Solar are Sol Systems and National Cooperative Bank.

The Triangle Business Journal has the details at: http://www.bizjournals.com/triangle/news/2014/12/10/strata-solar-to-set-up-three-new-nc-solar-farms.html

  • Congress told US lags other nations on drones 

Commercial drone flights are taking off in other countries while the U.S. lags behind in developing safety regulations that would permit unmanned aircraft operations by a wide array of industries, witnesses told a House panel Wednesday.

The Federal Aviation Administration bars all commercial use of drones except for 13 companies that have been granted permits for limited operations. Permits for four of those companies were announced Wednesday, an hour before a hearing of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee’s aviation subcommittee. The four companies plan to use drones for aerial surveillance, construction site monitoring and oil rig flare stack inspections. The agency has received 167 requests for exemptions from commercial operators.

Several European countries have granted commercial permits to more than a 1,000 drone operators for safety inspections of infrastructure, such as railroad tracks, or to support commercial agriculture, Gerald Dillingham of the Government Accountability Office testified. Australia has issued more than 180 permits to businesses engaged in aerial surveying, photography and other work, but limits the permits to drones weighing less than 5 pounds. And small, unmanned helicopters have been used to monitor and spray crops in Japan for more than a decade.

Canada has had regulations governing the use of unmanned aircraft since 1996 and, as of September, had issued more than 1,000 permits this year alone, Dillingham said. Canada recently revised it regulations to grant blanket permission for flights of drones weighing less than 5 pounds and imposed certain restrictions on the operation of drones weighing between about 5 pounds and 55 pounds.

The FAA has been working for years on developing safety rules to give small drones broader access to U.S. skies and agency officials have said they expect to propose regulations before the end of this month. But it could be at least two or three years before regulations become final, Dillingham said.

  • Merck advancing breast cancer drug to mid-stage

Drugmaker Merck & Co. said Wednesday that it will advance a new cancer drug into bigger patient tests, after promising findings in an early study against a very aggressive, common type of breast cancer.

Merck said its Keytruda shrank tumors to some extent in one-third of 27 patients evaluated in a study called KEYNOTE-012. All had what’s called triple-negative breast cancer that had spread outside the breast, and about 85 percent had worsened after multiple rounds of chemotherapy and other treatments — some five or more treatments.

The drug is in a hot new class of medicines, mostly still experimental, called immuno-oncology drugs. They harness the body’s immune system to fight cancer through a mechanism that “uncloaks” a substance called PD-1 on hidden cancer cells so they can be spotted and attacked by key immune cells called T cells.

Merck, based in Kenilworth, New Jersey, said it will start mid-stage patient tests of Keytruda in the first half of 2015. It’s received accelerated approval for advanced melanoma, but needs further testing for permanent approval.