Protecting The World
25%: Share of the world’s population that the U.S. is legally bound to defend thanks to pacts and treaties signed with over 60 countries, according to a report from the Harvard Belfer Center.
Read moreTag: facts
It was a bad week for . . .
. . . the Ukrainian navy, after the Russian military seized control of the country’s combat-dolphin program, which had been based in Crimea. “Dolphins get used to the people they work with,” said a Ukrainian official. “It’s not so easy for them to change allegiance.”
Read moreLack of Psychiatrists
After eight years of war, bombings, and brutal sectarian violence, Iraq’s civilian population is now suffering an epidemic of depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and other mental illnesses, health officials there say. But there are only 100 psychiatrists to serve a population of 39 million.
Read moreAdult ADHD
Adults obtained 53 percent of the 63 million prescriptions for medications treating attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) last year.
Read moreIt was a good week for . . .
. . . painless budget cuts, after 14-year-old Suvir Mirchandani of Pittsburgh calculated that government agencies could save $370 million a year in ink and paper costs by printing all documents in the thinner Garamond typeface instead of Times New Roman.
Read moreRACE AND WAGES
75%: The percentage of wages earned by full-time black and Latino retail workers relative to their white counterparts, according to a June 2 report from the NAACP and the liberal think tank Demos.
Read moreVoyager 1 Escaping Our Solar System
On the 35th anniversary of its launch, the Voyager 1 spacecraft is close to becoming the first man-made object to escape our solar system. The spacecraft—run by a 1977 computer 100,000 times less powerful than an iPod Nano—is currently 11.3 billion miles away. In 2004, Voyager 1 entered the turbulent boundary zone beyond Pluto, where solar winds encounter plasma pushing […]
Read moreWeight Gain In America
The average American woman now weighs 166.2 pounds, about the same as the average American man weighed in the early 1960’s. Over the same time period, U.S. men have gained nearly 30 pounds, from 166.3 in the ’60’s to 195.5 today.
Read moreMILITARY ANIMALS
2,500 – Number of U.S. military dogs on duty worldwide $2,000,000 – Amount the U.S. spent on developing a robotic mule
Read moreUnruly Passengers
Reported incidents of unruly passenger behavior on airplanes soared from 339 in 2007 to 8,217 in 2013.
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