Science Archive:

The statistics don’t look good.

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 Strava has created a global heat map of running and biking data (77,688,848 rides and 19,660,163 runs).

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I’m loving Weather Underground’s forecast data layout nowadays. Clear icons combined with layered charts. When something is done well, it seems so simple. **Muah**

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And annotated interactive narrative of about 20 charts on trends in death. This was done by Bloomberg, which has a number of these well done data mining narratives.

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Elements

In: Science

16 Mar 2014

Periodic table distorted by how abundant each element is on earth.

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The above is from 1970, so we’ve gotten a little more precise since then. Here are a few other versions:

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ew:

image showing Abundance in Earth's crust: cylinders logs periodic periodicity in a 3d cylinder style for the chemical elements

One theory is the it’s because it takes a while to absorb the knowledge of your predecessors.

Scientists spend ages 5 through 18 in school, and then ages 18 through 30ish getting their academic degrees. Then a few years of learning on the job, and presto! . Meanwhile, scientific breakthroughs tend to be less common in old age because we invest less in learning as we get older, and our skills gradually become less relevant.

Personally, I’m not sure I buy the explanation of the drop-off.

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And the age continued to get older over the 20th century.

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Another unique chart by xkcd.

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Josh Worth created a horizontal map of the solar system using a scale of 1 pixel = diameter of moon.  There’s a lot of nothing out there (but Josh does add some amusing commentary to help pass the time scrolling between planets).

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In theory, the sun should hit it’s apogee (highest point overhead) at noon. But that doesn’t happen in much of the world, for a variety of reasons. The below map by Stefano Maggiolo details the discrepancies.

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Map of all kinds of energy related things: coal fields, mines, oil/gas pipelines/storage, electrical transmission lines, wind turbine potential, offshore windspeeds, solar potential, etc. You get the idea.

It’s not the smoothest operating interactive map I’ve ever seen (lots of delays in loading, etc) – but it works if you’re patient.

Thanks to Mr. Brown for sending me the link.

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You wouldn’t know it is you lived on the East Coast, of course, but January 2014 was the 4th hottest on record, globally.

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Plots outbreaks of measles, mumps, whooping cough, polio, rubella, and other diseases that are easily preventable by cheap and effective vaccines. (via)

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24 hours of global airplane traffic.

The Solar System

In: Science Video

16 Dec 2013

A very well executed videographic. Well paced with clear visualizations.

Interesting research and simulation of how pandemics propagate in the modern world: (via FastCoExist)

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