Oh dear lord, do I ever want the PocketLab: “A Swiss Army Knife of Science.”

Launched via Kickstarter, the small device contains numerous sensors to measure acceleration, force, angular velocity, magnetic field, pressure, altitude, and temperature and send that data to smartphones or laptops. According to inventor Clifton Roozeboom, it’s a tool for students and citizen scientists who can’t afford to spend tens of thousands of dollars on lab equipment and will get the data they need from this $100 gadget.

Here’s an IEEE article, too, and here’s a direct link to their home page. Check out the video!

[Good 2009 article by Andrew Gelman, in American Scientist, about some of the ways that statistics can go badly wrong. -egg]

Realistically, a researcher on sex ratios has to make two arguments: a statistical case that observed patterns represent real population effects and cannot be explained simply by sampling variability, and a biological argument that effects on the order of 1 percent are substantively important. The claimed effect size of 26 percent should have aroused suspicion in comparison to the literature on human sex ratios; in addition, though, the papers managed to survive the review process because reviewers did not recognize that the power of the studies was such that only very large estimated effects could make it through the statistical-significance filter. The result is essentially a machine for producing exaggerated claims, which of course only become more exaggerated when they hit the credulous news media (with an estimate of 4.7 percent ± 4.3 percent being ramped up to 26 percent and then reported as 36 percent).

Click to access 3.5.Beauty.pdf

Visual artist Noell Osvald creates startlingly bold works through simple gestures all performed in black and white. The self-portraits rarely show the 25-year-old artist’s face, instead expressing emotion through the way she tilts her head or slightly crooks her neck. Emphasizing line, her works incorporate a strict horizon or eliminate it altogether, segmenting the image from left to right…The self-taught artist’s works are mostly composites that only allude to being photographs. She explains that she does not pre-visualize any of her works, all are completely spontaneous. “I find post-processing the most enjoyable part of creating,” she told Lines magazine. “I build my pictures up from several different ones, much like a jigsaw puzzle.”

Source: New Black and White Surrealist Self-Portraits by Noell Oszvald | Colossal

[This is pretty amazing to watch. -egg]

https://goo.gl/o1veLu

Specialists in infectious disease are protesting a gigantic overnight increase in the price of a 62-year-old drug that is the standard of care for treating a life-threatening parasitic infection.The drug, called Daraprim, was acquired in August by Turing Pharmaceuticals, a start-up run by a former hedge fund manager. Turing immediately raised the price to $750 a tablet from $13.50, bringing the annual cost of treatment for some patients to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Although some price increases have been caused by shortages, others have resulted from a business strategy of buying old neglected drugs and turning them into high-priced “specialty drugs.”

Cycloserine, a drug used to treat dangerous multidrug-resistant tuberculosis, was just increased in price to $10,800 for 30 pills from $500 after its acquisition by Rodelis Therapeutics. Scott Spencer, general manager of Rodelis, said the company needed to invest to make sure the supply of the drug remained reliable. He said the company provided the drug free to certain needy patients.

Doxycycline, an antibiotic, went from $20 a bottle in October 2013 to $1,849 by April 2014, according to the two lawmakers.

The Infectious Diseases Society of America and the HIV Medicine Association sent a joint letter to Turing earlier this month calling the price increase for Daraprim “unjustifiable for the medically vulnerable patient population” and “unsustainable for the health care system.” An organization representing the directors of state AIDS programs has also been looking into the price increase, according to doctors and patient advocates.

[Abridged]

Drug Goes From $13.50 a Tablet to $750, Overnight – The New York Times