Science Archive:

“More than half of the energy produced in the U.S. isn’t put to use.” A lovely interactive sankey diagram of energy production and waste. As you rollover the diagram it highlights different flows. (via)

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Lifespan Calculator

In: Science

12 Aug 2011

Answer a series of questions about your health and lifestyle choices and see how long you’ve got to live.

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There’s also a slightly more entertaining version called the Longevity Game:

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Scientists: how accurate is this?

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Real-time mapping of ~13,000 satellite in Google Earth (updated every 30 seconds). Completely ridiculous.

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Bloodstain Analysis

In: Science

21 Jul 2011

A very informative, but gruesome info-poster.

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USA is an outlier. Hahaha! USA! USA! USA!

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Why is it so hard to believe we’re just a bunch of monkeys?

Sunscreen

In: Culture Science

13 Jul 2011

David McCandless and his team over at Information is Beautiful did a ton of research into sunscreen and threw it all into one massive infographic. It’s rather overwhelming and I’m not sure it turned out that great – and it’s kind of blurry for some reason (the excerpt over at the Guardian looks fine).

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Topically speaking, I can’t help but agree with Lewis Black that it’s odd that we’ve all assimilated the idea that smearing chemicals on our skin is the healthy thing to do. Being in the sun isn’t unhealthy – not going in the sun until July and then burning to a crisp is what’s unhealthy.

Thanks to Caryn Sykes for sending in the link!

Most of the US is quite warm today. This map is from NOAA which maintains the Environmental Visualization Laboratory, which is chock full of cool maps and data and worth exploring.

 

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An assortment of cool graphics charting the history of the space shuttle. I watched a launch in person back in 1989 – it was awesome.

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Bonus: HD video compilation of launches from different angles:

a study conducted in 1983 by the Rural Advancement Foundation International … compared USDA listings of seed varieties sold by commercial U.S. seed houses in 1903 with those in the U.S. National Seed Storage Laboratory in 1983. The survey, which included 66 crops, found that about 93 percent of the varieties had gone extinct.

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Average life expectancy varies a lot by location, gender, and race. International comparisons done by the original study conclude that the US is falling behind the rest of the industrialized world.

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From a design point of view, take a look at the below version of the map from the original study — the use of a higher contrast color scheme and non-linear legend ranges results in a more striking view of the results. I’m not sure which one I like better. The top one is more information rich and cleaner – but the bottom one slaps you in the face with meaning.

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I abstain.

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A structured sankey diagram showing 2005 energy production and consumption, broken down several different ways.

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Carstations.com lets you search for local charging sites, add new ones, and read reviews/comments about each.  Personally, I was surprised there were this many out there.

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Information is Beautiful has updated their interactive visualization of the effectiveness of various health supplements, based on scientific research. You can also view the raw research data they dug up to draw your own conclusions.

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What is Chart Porn?

An addictive collection of beautiful charts, graphs, maps, and interactive data visualization toys -- on topics from around the world.

  • edj: The bodies predisposition to get fat from carbs is a wonderfully outdated survival method/instinct t [...]
  • RJS: Highly entertaining this, however misleading it might be--if indeed it is misleading. The problem is [...]
  • Al: Designers out there will enjoy this 'making of', walking through the designs they tried and discarde [...]
  • Matt: Totally misleading. The recent spending cuts were not an Obama policy; Afghanistan was overwhelmingl [...]
  • Mike Liveright: Two comments, though I do like the look and results... 1) Since $'s are linear, I think that a 2 [...]