Family Life
Percentage of U.S. children in 1960 who lived in households headed by heterosexuals in their first marriage: 73 Who do today: 46
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Water, Water Everywhere
Estimated minimum gallons of water used annually to produce Coca Cola products: 8,000,000,000,000 Portion of the world’s population that amount would supply with drinking water each year: 1/4
Read moreBullying teens into suicide
Children and young adults who are bullied are more than twice as likely to consider suicide and two and a half times as likely to try to kill themselves, a new study has concluded—and those taunted online are even more vulnerable. The findings are based on more than 40 studies, involving more than 284,000 young people ages 9 to 21, […]
Read morePleading Guilty
Percentage of all criminal defendants in the United States who forgo a trial by pleading guilty: 97 Percentage of U.S. convicts exonerated last year who had previously pleaded guilty without a trial: 17
Read moreIndia’s Dangerous Smog Problem
Toxic air pollution in the Indian capital of Delhi has given some 2.2 million children irreversible lung damage, according to a 2010 study from the Kolkata-based Chittaranjan National Cancer Institute that surfaced this month. The report has raised fresh concerns in a country where carbon emissions are forecast to increase for decades.
Read moreCORAL-REEF DECLINE
Heat and acidity are also bad for coral reefs, which have declined by 40% in some areas since the 1970s. Coral organisms reproduce just once a year, making it hard for reefs to bounce back.
Read moreGreat Art
Ripley’s Believe It or Not! museum is already home to an artist’s rendition of da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” made from burned toast, and now comes a recent version by Laura Bell of Roscommon, MI — da Vinci’s masterpiece made with clothes-dryer lint. Bell said she did about 800 hours of laundry of various-colored towels to obtain lint of the […]
Read moreNot Becoming A Statistic
Trameka Pope has a lot to be proud of. The 19-year-old was homeless as a child and had a daughter right before she entered ninth grade, but next week she’ll graduate as valedictorian of Chicago’s Wendell Phillips Academy High School. The teen mom is a cheerleader and member of the National Honor Society, and in the fall she’ll attend Western […]
Read moreAIR TRAVEL
THE PROBLEM Flight delays, a large share of which are caused by weather, cost the U.S. economy $31 billion annually. Regulators have been slow to approve technology that could provide pilots access to weather data. THE INNOVATION Mobile technology can keep pilots abreast of the latest weather information and plan ways to avoid bad weather in advance, even if they’re […]
Read moreAverage American Income
The average American’s income declined almost 1 percent in 2014, to $64,432.The income of the poorest fifth of the population fell by 3.5 percent, to $9,818, while the income of the wealthiest fifth rose by nearly 1 percent, to $166,048.
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