Life explained through Graphs

Walmart in China

Old and Naughty British Postcards

Those were the days. Just good old saucy fun! Where have all the postcards gone.....

16-Year-Old Dies In Tragic Bowflex Exercise Accident

There aren't too many details on just how 16-year-old Justin Butler got entangled in his Bowflex exercise machine, but we do know that the incident, unfortunately, led to his death.

Authorities did reveal that they don't believe this to be a case of intentional self-harm. Instead it's simply a very tragic accident which ended with Butler's parents finding their son in a terrible condition and the young man dying in a hospital the next day.
After the initial and vague news release from the Nevada County Sheriff's department was posted, Butler's uncle, Bill Buus, chose to speak out about the incident and shed more light on the death.

According to Buus, the tragedy was the result of a choking game. Such "games" are intended to produce a natural high of sorts and usually something we hear about only in the occasional sensational news stories intended to frighten parents, but a report in the Sacremento Bee reveals how they led to Butler's death:

Buus said his nephew was playing the "choking game." The CDC reports that in such an activity young people either choke each other or use a noose to choke themselves. Butler's parents have since discovered that other teens in the community are also playing the game that led to their son's death, Buss said.

The CDC reports that participants either pass out, which can lead to serious injury, or die from hanging or strangulation.
Buss confirmed that the teen choked himself by using a strap anchored on a piece of exercise equipment. He said the strap was part of the exercise apparatus. Please understand that this additional information came from Butler's family in an attempt to raise awareness of what occurred and to perhaps save another child's life.

Children Born by IVF Perform Above Average on Standardized Tests Compared to Their Peers, Study Suggests

Children conceived by in vitro fertilization (IVF) perform at least as well as their peers on academic tests at all ages from grade 3 to 12, according to a new University of Iowa study.
In fact, the study, published in the October issue of the journal Human Reproduction, found that children who were conceived by IVF actually scored better than age- and gender-matched peers on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills and the Iowa Test for Educational Development (ITBS/ED).
"Our findings are reassuring for clinicians and patients as they suggest that being conceived through IVF does not have any detrimental effects on a child's intelligence or cognitive development," said lead study author Bradley Van Voorhis, M.D., UI professor of obstetrics and gynecology and director of the Center for Advanced Reproductive Care at UI Hospitals and Clinics.
To investigate whether being conceived by IVF had long-term negative effects on children's cognitive development, Van Voorhis and colleagues compared the academic performance of 423 Iowa children, ages 8 to 17, who were conceived by IVF at UI Hospitals and Clinics with the performance of 372 age- and gender-matched peers from the same Iowa schools. The researchers also analyzed whether different characteristics of the children, parents or IVF methods affected children's test scores.
The study found that children born by IVF performed above average on standardized tests compared to their peers, and that a number of factors were linked to higher test scores, including older age of the mother, higher education levels of both parents and lower levels of divorce.
Importantly, the study also showed that different IVF procedures -- using fresh versus frozen embryos -- and different methods of insemination had no effect on children's test scores.
Although the study was not able to fully explain why children conceived by IVF performed better that their peers, Van Voorhis speculated that parents of children conceive by IVF might be older and have higher levels of education than average.
"By using age- and gender-matched children from the same classrooms as a control group to compare to our study participants, we attempted to control for any socioeconomic or environmental differences between the children born by IVF and their peers," Van Voorhis said. "But there still may have been some differences between the IVF children and the controls that we could not see from our data."
Among children born by IVF, the researchers did find a potentially concerning trend toward worse test scores for multiple births -- single babies performed better than twins, who performed better than triplets. However, this trend was not statistically significant and the triplets still did better that the average score of non-IVF children.
"This trend fits with our thinking that singleton births are healthier than multiple births, but we would need further study to find out if this trend is a real effect," Van Voorhis said.
IVF is generally considered safe but the technology has only been used for about 30 years, so there is a lack of data on long-term health outcomes for children conceived this way.
The UI study is the largest to date and followed children to an older age than previous studies. Additional strengths of the study included having a suitable control group and using the ITBS/ED, which is a widely accepted, objective measure of educational outcomes.

Graphene Just Won Two Guys the Nobel. So What the Hell Is It?

Today, two professors won the Nobel prize for physics "for groundbreaking experiments regarding the two-dimensional material graphene." The Nobel is the Olympic gold of science. But what is graphene, and why did it earn these guys over a million bucks?

Some Nobels in physics are (relatively) straightforward. In 1935, James Chadwick discovered the neutron. A huge deal, of course, but something you can understand by 11th grade. But today's award—presented to Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov—is for a two-dimensional material. A what? Not exactly high school stuff. So let's break it down.

Graphene is, put most simply, carbon atoms—the same stuff in your pencil—arranged in linked hexagons. (Fun fact: the pair started their work with graphene by peeling off layers of actual pencil lead with scotch tape). This doesn't sound like anything special, except for the fact that, as Geim himself explains, "Everything in our three-dimensional world has a width, length and height. That was what we thought, at least." Geim and Novoselov's work expands our understanding of materials that don't have any of these dimensional properties, because they are only one atom thick. They are lacking an entire dimension.

It's hard to imagine—but that's sort of the point. The duo's work is on the frontier of an entire class of stuff that we're only just now starting to be able to conceive of. Geim himself says he has no idea the extent to which a material such as graphene could be useful. But we do know that it is super cool. Despite (or rather, because of) its measly two-dimensionality, graphene is the strongest and thinnest substance in the known universe, can be stretched like rubber, and is impregnable by liquid or gas. It also conducts electricity, allowing it to (someday) beat the pants off the copper and silicon we use in, well, pretty much everything. Still unimpressed? A layer of graphene could hold up a truck atop a pencil. You don't look so great now, do you, neutron.

So what's next? "Optimists say we are entering a carbon age. Even pessimists argue only that the impact will be somewhat less," says Geim, who is, naturally, excited: "I hope that graphene and other two-dimensional crystals will change everyday life as plastics did for humanity." So we'll have to wait and see, but still—job well done, gents