Pharmaceutical Mathematics

So today's question is:

If a 40mg tablet costs $x how much does a 20mg tablet of the same drug cost?

In the case of Astrazeneca's nexium the answer is a surprising $x.

So why don't people buy the 40mg tablets and split them? Well apparently they are not designed to be split like that.

I suppose we are supposed to be happy that Astrazeneca have decided those that need a large dose of their drug should be subsidised by those requiring a smaller dose.

I'm wondering how prevalent this sort of pricing is.

Mixing bikes and pedestrians

It has been a bad summer for cycling in Ottawa, another cyclist died yesterday.

Over the summer I have read a number of pieces suggesting increasing tension between cyclists, pedestrians and drivers.

I've seen claims that cyclists and pedestrians don't mix any better than cyclists and cars.

One wrote that there is little difference between a cyclist doing 30km/h plus car doing 60km/h or a cyclist doing 30km/h and a pedestrian doing close to 0km/h.

I have to disagree with this. First off, 30km/h is top end of the range for cyclists, 0 bottom for pedestrians and 60km about par for a car, assuming 60km/h limit. Realistically thoug, the cyclist will be doing more like 20km/h and the pedestrian 6km/h, so the speed difference is as 14km/h in that case and 40km/h car to cycle.

The relative speed is of course a factor in generating accidents, but then you have to consider the damage when there is an accident. The energy involved is proportional to the square of the velocity. So, even if you ignore the mass of the car, there is 4 times the energy in a car/bike collision than bike/pedestrian. Throw in the mass of the car and it is off the scale.

Now on Sunday, I went for a run along the canal. It was a lovely sunny afternoon, some of the trees just starting to turn colour with joggers, cyclists, walkers and people casually strolling all mixing with no problems at all. Cyclists were courteous, ringing their bells to warn of their approach, slowing if necessary. Walkers were keeping to the right side of the path, aware they are sharing with others. Lots of give and take, everyone having a safe and fun time.

If only there was the same give and take between cars and cycles.

Multi-tasking

On a moped, smoking, drinking and phoning

Watching the final day of the Ashes

I spent a great afternoon watching the final (actually 4th) day of the Ashes at the Oval. Well not actually at the Oval, rather in the local pub in Sheffield.

Despite the Aussies needing 546 to win it was still tense, if any team can snatch defeat from victory in that sort of situation, England are the ones.

There was a friendly crowd in the bar. Everyone getting increasingly tense until Freddie threw the stumps down to run out Ponting. After that it was a steady procession of wickets, just when you felt it was starting to get tense again another would fall.

Great win for England, but credit to the Aussies and Ponting in particular for being dignified throughout this series. The series could have gone either way and the Aussies probably had the raw end of umpiring decisions this time.

Looking forward to Australia 2010/11.

More pictures here

Revenue on line (ie)

I just had to log onto the Irish revenue site to renew a digital certificate.

I was greeted by the a message to the following effect:

Security on this site is provided by software from The legion of the bouncy castle.

No link to bouncycastle.org was provided, so I ended up googling to check the thing out. It was all seeming a bit pythonesque.

Turns out it is all fine, an open source set of tools for cryptography.

So, after a slight fright I went ahead and renewed.

More annoyingly, the ROS service still does not support linux as a client. So whilst they use open source software for their site they still insist that you pay the Mac or Microsoft tax to file your taxes

A day late, but better weather

The clouds were a little more cooperative tonight. As well as that I lowered the exposure somewhat and so in many of the photos you can pick up the position of the transmitter.

You can find all the photos here.

I'll have to get a tripod for next year.

Summer Solstice

There I was thinking I live in a condo block. It turns out I'm living in an astronomical clock, used to signal the summer solstice.



The picture above was taken on the evening of 21st June 2009, looking towards the Gatineau Hills and the mast shows Ryan Tower at the top of Camp Fortune in the Gatineau Hills.


The above photograph was taken a few minutes later as the sun crossed the horizon. Unfortunately the picture did not capture it, but Ryan Tower was exactly bisecting the sun in this shot (next year I'll lower the exposure somewhat).

Now the question is, will my condo block last as long as Stonehenge?