Month: August 2016

Enlarge / Heather Bresch, chief executive officer of Mylan. (credit: Getty | Bloomberg)

Facing public and political wrath for steep price hikes on life-saving EpiPens, the devices’ manufacturer, Mylan, announced Monday that it will offer a cheap generic. But the generic isn’t that cheap.

Since Mylan bought EpiPens in 2007, the company has increased the price from around $50 for a single pen to a little more than $600 for a two pack—a more than 400 percent increase in costs. The new generic option, which the company said will be identical to EpiPens and available in a few weeks, is a two-pack with a list price of $300. That’s half of the current list price for a two pack, but still triple the 2007 cost of the devices.

EpiPens—auto-injectors that deliver a dose of epinephrine to reverse deadly allergic reactions, namely anaphylaxis shock—cost just a few dollars to make and have not changed considerably since Mylan acquired them. Since the price hikes, Mylan has raked in more than $1 billion in revenue each year. The company's chief executive, Heather Bresch, saw her salary increase by more than 600 percent, topping $18 million last year. She’s one of the highest paid executives in the industry.

Enlarge (credit: Valentina Palladino)

The rumors were true: Fitbit isn't done for the year. The company just announced two new fitness trackers that add second iterations of existing products to its lineup: the Charge 2 and the Flex 2. The Charge 2 is an improved Charge HR, now with new features, a larger display, and interchangeable bands, while the swim-capable Flex 2 is an upgraded Flex with a completely new design that focuses on versatility.

Let's start with the Charge 2: its biggest physical improvement is the 1.5-inch display that replaces the Charge HR's small, narrow screen. It's like a wider version of the Fitbit Alta's display, finally big enough to show the time at the top and tap-to-scroll stats beneath it. Those stats include steps, heart rate, active time, and more. The Charge 2's bands are interchangeable, so you can swap the silicone, active band for more fashionable leather and jewelry-like bands. However, since the Charge 2 is just a wider version of the Alta, its overall attractiveness is in the eye of the beholder.

The Charge 2 has new software and tracking features that the Charge HR doesn't have. Its connected GPS lets it pair with your smartphone's GPS to map running routes and get better distance calculations, while its interval workout mode lets you to customize routines that alternate bursts of intense exercise with periods of low-intensity activity. The Charge 2 also has reminders to move, while calling, texting, calendar alerts, and activity profiles are accessible from the band's display. These profiles let you quickly track your most-completed exercises, like running, walking, biking, Pilates, and more. You decide which appear on the band and which don't.

Enlarge / The RATAN-600 radio telescope, in Zelenchukskaya, Russia. (credit: Wikimedia commons)

It remains only the barest of probabilities that astronomers have just found evidence of extraterrestrial, intelligent life. Nevertheless, in the community of astronomers and other scientists who use radio telescopes to search the heavens for beacons of life there is considerable excitement about a new signal observed by a facility in Russia.

According to Paul Glister, author of the Centauri Dreams website, the Italian astronomer Claudio Maccone and other astronomers affiliated with the search for extraterrestrial intelligence have detected "a strong signal in the direction of HD164595." HD 164595 is a star of 0.99 solar masses about 95 light years from Earth, with an estimated age of 6.3 billion years. The system is known to have at least one planet, HD 164595 b, which is similar in size to Neptune and orbits its star in 40 days. Other planets may exist in the system as well.

The observation was made with the RATAN-600 radio telescope in Zelenchukskaya, in southern Russia, Glister reports. He cautioned that the evidence is very preliminary:

Enlarge (credit: Q Family)

We've all been there: you're at a pick-up roleplaying group at your local game shop, and that noisy munchkin to your right—who is playing some kind of half-dragon triple-multiclassed character from an out-of-print rulebook that he found a PDF of online—seems to roll more than his fair share of natural 20s. Okay, maybe we haven't all been there, but let me tell you: it's annoying when someone appears to be awfully lucky with their rolls.

The issue is slightly less pronounced with board games, where everyone tends to use the same pool of dice, but having dice regularly come up high or low can obviously affect how the game plays out.

Putting aside cases of intentional cheating, did you know that dice—particularly polyhedral dice like d20 or d8—are almost universally unbalanced? Some are more balanced than others, but as you'd expect from mass-produced objects, small flaws in manufacturing and materials nearly always push each individual die either above or below the expected average roll.