• To serve restroom users in a public park in China's Hunan Province's picturesque Shiyan Lake area, architects gave users in toilet cubicles a view of the forest through ceiling-to-floor windows. To discourage sightseers who believe the better view is not from the cubicles but into them, the bottom portion, up to the level of the toilet, is frosted -- though that stratagem probably blurs only a pair of legs, seated. (CNN reported in October that China has at least one other such restroom, in Guilin province, viewing distant mountains.) [CNN, 10-4-2016]
• Martin Shkreli became the Wall Street bad boy in 2015 when his company Turing Pharmaceuticals bought the right to market the lifesaving drug Daraprim and promptly raised its typical price of $18 a pill to $750, but in November, high schoolers in the chemistry lab at Sydney Grammar in Australia created a molecular knockoff of Daraprim for about $2 a tablet. Their sample of "pyrimethamine" (Daraprim's chemical name) was judged authentic by a University of Sydney chemistry professor. Daraprim, among other uses, fights deadly attacks on immune systems, such as for HIV patients. [Washington Post, 12-1-2017]
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