Month: February 2019

Enlarge / Man wipes really expensive cream from his face. (credit: Getty | Boston Globe)

The Chicago-based pharmaceutical company that made headlines in 2016 for dramatically raising the price of cheap skin creams has now filed for bankruptcy. The filing cites, in part, profit-scorching backlash from the price increases, the Chicago Tribune reports.

In September of 2016, Ars reported that the company, Novum Pharma, had repeatedly raised the price of an old, cheap skin cream, bringing its list price from $241.50 to $9,561 a tube—a 3,900 percent increase total. The cream, called Aloquin, is “possibly effective” for treating eczema and acne, according to the Food and Drug Administration. It’s composed of a generic antibiotic and extracts from the aloe vera plant.

Novum raised Aloquin’s price after acquiring the rights to it from Primus Pharmaceuticals in May of 2015. The company similarly raised the price of another skin cream, Alcortin A, to $7,142, the Financial Times reported at the time.

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  Fig. 1: Just a few months out, RDR2 is already approximating the sales of some much older and more storied franchises.

It seems like every few weeks, some major publisher puts out an earnings call or press release trumpeting some ridiculously large number of sales for its latest big-budget blockbuster. This week it's Take Two, which yesterday announced that Red Dead Redemption 2 has shipped 23 million copies since its October 26 launch last year.

That's the kind of really big number that defies easy comprehension in an everyday human scale. So to put that number in context, we decided to put it next to some other really big numbers from the game industry's past. As you can see, Red Dead Redemption 2 is selling at or above the pace for some of gaming's biggest franchises.

See also: Our previous contextual looks at Nintendo Switch sales.

Enlarge / 22 January 2019, Lower Saxony, Sarstedt: Lower Saxony's science minister Björn Thümler (l, CDU) and Karsten Danzmann, director at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute) are in the GEO600 detector. The German-British GEO600 detector in Ruthe near Sarstedt south of Hanover is a highly sensitive measuring device and has contributed to the spectacular detection of gravitational waves. The proof of gravitational waves was awarded the Nobel Prize in 2017. Photo: Julian Stratenschulte/dpa (Photo by Julian Stratenschulte/picture alliance via Getty Images) (credit: Picture Alliance | Getty Images)

Today is a good day: I learned something new. Many of you have probably heard of gravitational lensing of light (if not, don’t worry, I will inflict an explanation on you below). But it never occurred to me that gravitational waves are also subject to gravitational lensing. Not only that, but unexpectedly, the current generation of gravitational wave observatories might be able to observe gravitational lensing. If this turns out to be the case, all sorts of small, heavy dark objects might be revealed.

Specsavers don’t stock these lenses

One of Einstein’s predictions for general relativity was that light would be bent by a gravitational field. In effect, every planet, star, and galaxy bends light to a greater or lesser degree. We have used this effect to our advantage: distant galaxies provide lenses that allow us to see objects far beyond the galaxy itself. In some cases, distant objects appear as a ring around the lensing galaxy.

This effect is due to mass' distortion of space-time, and it will happen to any waves that pass nearby. Gravitational waves are just another form of wave, and, yes, they are also subject to gravitational fields from nearby masses. That means that a source of gravitational waves that passes through a lens should produce a similar ring of gravitational wave images as well.

The Black Thunder mine in Wright, Wyoming produces 90 million tons of coal a year, which is distributed by rail throughout the country. (credit: Robb Kendrick)

In President Trump's State of the Union speech last night, he didn't mention coal once, while touting oil and natural gas as having "unleashed a revolution in American energy."

The president, who has baselessly challenged the science behind climate warnings, was not expected to address renewable energy or climate change. But his omission of coal in his speech last night was notable, given that he campaigned vigorously on bringing back coal.

Just one year ago, in his 2018 State of the Union address, the president claimed that his administration “ended the war on beautiful, clean coal.”

You might be surprised to find out that a medieval superstition remains a viable business to this day, but it's true. Dowsers, also known as water witches, claim to be able to find water flowing under ground simply by holding sticks and walking around a property. They charge a fee to tell you where to dig wells.

Dowsers have been around for millennia, and you can still hire them today—they even have a professional society in the US (and no, we're not going to link it). What can explain this persistence?

As you'll see in our video, they're actually preying on ignorance. If there's any ground water present at all, geology dictates that it's going to be hard to miss if you dig a well. As a result, dowsers can tell you to dig your well just about anywhere, and you can be assured that the service will "work," in that you'll find some water. As our own Scott Johnson says, it's like hiring someone to tell you which window to open to find some air.