Vital Statistics - Archive

by Trevor Butterworth and Jenna Krall

Cutting Statistics
In Chicago, the rate of lower limb amputation is five times higher for African Americans than Caucasians even as the total number of amputations declined. High rates of diabetes are a significant causal factor.

Source: Journal of Vascular Surgery, May 2008, via Science Direct.

Life Expectancy Decline in U.S.
In the U.S., life expectancy among the worst off is declining, due mostly to lung cancer, obesity and overweight, homicide and other non-communicable diseases, which have stepped in to offset the gains made by reducing heart disease.

Source: The Reversal of Fortunes: Trends in County Mortality and Cross-County Mortality Disparities in the United States in PLoS Medicine.

Trontastic
In 2007, there were 281 billion gigabytes of digital information worldwide, or 45 gigabytes per person. Yearly growth is estimated at 60 percent and, if growth continues at this rate, there will be 1.8 zettabytes of digital information by 2011...

Biofuel Bombshell
A one-way commercial flight from London to New York would require the annual yield from 30 football pitches of land (plus add in fertilizer, processing, distribution costs)...

Source: Royal Society of Chemistry

Take that Neil Armstrong!
One third of British children between four and ten years of age believe Winston Churchill was the first man to walk on the moon. Two in five believed that Mars referred only to a candy.

Source: Survey of 1,400 British children conducted by the Royal Astronomical Society and Walt Disney, via The Daily Telegraph.

Kaboom!
The average frequency of a catastrophic earthquake is three per century; but new research also shows they are more randomly distributed than previously thought...

Source: Discovery News

Ouch!
Americans have a one in 15,942 chance of sustaining a non-fatal injury opening or closing their garage doors.

Sources: U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (NEISS) Online.
Annual Estimates of the Population by Five-Year Age Groups and Sex for the United States: April 1, 2000 to July 1, 2006. U.S. Census Bureau, Online.
Annual Estimates of the Population by Sex, Race, and Hispanic or Latino Origin for the United States: April 1, 2000 to July 1, 2006. U.S. Census Bureau, Online.

Truck stopped
Truck drivers are 49% more likely to die of heart attack than the general population.

Source: Harvard Medical School, via Sacramento Bee

Infectious disease among U.S. infants
The national infectious disease hospitalization rate in 2003 (the latest date for data) was 7010.8 hospitalizations per 100000 live births. "Infectious disease hospitalization rates were highest among boys and nonwhite infants. The most commonly listed diagnoses among the infant infectious disease hospitalizations included lower respiratory tract infections (59.0%), kidney, urinary tract, and bladder infections (7.6%), upper respiratory tract infections (6.5%), and septicemia (6.5%). The median cost of an infectious disease hospitalization was $2235, with total annual hospital costs of approximately $690 million, among infants in the United States."

Source: Infectious Disease Hospitalizations Among Infants in the United States, Pediatrics, February 2008, Volume 121, Issue 2

Unhappiness is a U-shaped curve
Women on average are most miserable in the U.S. when they hit 40; men, when they hit 50. Ditto for 70 other countries, according to a study. The American and British researchers looked at 35 years worth of data on two million people from 80 nations.

Source: Social Science & Medicine via Scientific American

Ad ADD
Only 5.5 percent of people pay full attention to television commercials on a regular basis.

Source: BIGresearch, 11th Simultaneous Media Survey.

Study: Generation Google Not Web Literate
Those who were born or grew up in Internet age are, paradoxically, not very web-literate: "Research-behaviour traits that are commonly associated with younger users – impatience in search and navigation, and zero tolerance for any delay in satisfying their information needs – are now becoming the norm for all age-groups, from younger pupils and undergraduates through to professors," according to the first ever virtual longitudinal study by researchers in Britain.

Source: Information Behaviour of the Researcher of the Future, CIBER, University College London.


Drug Coated Stents Safe
Drug coated stents reduced arterial re-narrowing by one-third compared with bare-metal stents in a study of 6,551 people.

Source: A Comparison of Bare-Metal and Drug-Eluting Stents for Off-Label Indications,New England Journal of Medicine, January 24, 2008

If You're Happy and You Know It, Eat a Cake
A Japanese study of 30,722 people aged 40–64 found that extraversion was associated with being overweight, whereas neuroticisim was associated with being underweight.

Source: Journal of Psychosomatic Research, January 2008.

Ladies Night
Harvard researchers say women have better odds of winning an Oscar than men because of arithmetic: same number of awards, fewer female performers in movies.

Source: Los Angeles Times

So That Explains It
Survey: Journalists are moderately exhausted and highly cynical.

Source: Newspaper Journalism in Crisis, Scott Reinardy, Ph.D. Ball State University Department of Journalism

Cheers!
The World Anti Doping Code allows for three times more alcohol per litre of blood for powerboating than for motorcycling or archery (.3g/L vs .1g/L).

Source: The World Anti Doping Code 2008 Prohibited List.

Marriage is Not a Key to Happiness
(at least if you're German)
A survey of 24,000 Germans found that marriage did not fundamentally alter people's level of happiness: Even though people reacted positively to getting married, they ultimately eturned to their previous set level of happiness or unhappiness.

Source: Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, March 2003, via Psychology Today

Black Death
There were 2,118 worldwide cases of the “Black Death” plague in 2003. Annually, 10-20 people in the U.S. contract the “Black Death” plague each year, however no transmissions between people have occurred since 1924.

Source: National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Biodefense, general information.

Lead Leaders
Missouri tops the U.S. in lead released into the soil (40,656,278 lbs) and water (4,408 lbs) between 1987 and 1993.

Source: Consumer factsheet on lead in drinking water, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

Wealth Woes
" In a sample of 314 tenth-graders in a wealthy suburban community, the rate of “clinically significant anxiety” was 5 to 9 percent higher than the national average, and among girls, the rate of “clinically significant depression” was three times the national norm."

Source: Jennifer Senior citing research by Suniya Luthar of Columbia Teacher's College in " Rich Kid Syndrome," New York Magazine

Have the Dutch Peaked?
Since 2001, the average height of Dutch men, which had increased by an inch since 1980, has remain stuck at a little over 5'11 (180.6 centimeters). Gains for women since 2001 have been just a fraction of an inch, with the average being 5'6 (160.6 cm).

Source: Holland's Central Bureau for Statistics via the Associated Press

Belt Up
Obese Americans are less likely to use seatbelts than the rest of the population; 82.6% percent of drivers with a Body Mass Index (BMI) lower than 25 always wore a seatbelt, compared to 80.1 percent of drivers with a BMI between 25-29, 76.6 percent for those with a BMI between 30-39, and 69.8 percent with a BMI of 40 and higher.

Source: Obesity, November 2007.

Toasted

*Note, all loss measures like the graphs as followed are a 3-year average of given years

• Over 100 fires each year are caused by children during New Years

• In the U.S., 2 residential structure fires occur per day throughout the year, while 9 residential structure fires occur per day during the winter holiday season

Source: Residential Structure Fires During the Winter Holiday Season, U.S Fire Administration, Topical Fire Research Series, 2002