MetaFilter posts tagged with visualization and science

291 diseases and injuries + 67 risk factors + 1,160 non-fatal complications = 650 million estimates of how we age, sicken, and die

hat — Fri, 14 Dec 2012 11:08:08 -0800

As humans live longer, what ails us isn't necessarily what kills us: five data visualizations of how we age, sicken, and die. Causes of death by age, sex, region, and year. Heat map of leading causes and risks by region. Changes in leading causes and risks between 1990 and 2010. Healthy years lost to disability vs. life expectancy in 1990 and 2010. Uncertainties of causes and risks. From the team for the massive Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study 2010. The data visualizations page also includes a large number of static figures from the GBD 2010 study. The GBD 2010 team at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), an independent global health research center at the University of Washington, "spent almost 5 years building [the database of causes of death]; we have included almost 800 million deaths from 1950 to 2010, and the data come from different sources," resulting in "the biggest database for cause of death analysis in the world," according to Rafael Lozano at the University of Washington. The GBD 2010 includes:

291 diseases and injuries
67 risk factors
1,160 sequelae (nonfatal health consequences)
Estimates for 21 regions
Estimates for 20 age groups

Takeaway points from the press release (emphasis mine):

Child mortality has dropped by more than 60%, falling "so quickly that it has beaten every published prediction," though diarrhea and other infectious diseases still kill well over a million children under the age of 5 every year.
Deaths among adults aged 15 to 49 increased by 44% between 1970 and 2010, "in part because of increases in violence and the ongoing challenge of HIV/AIDS."
Undernutrition has "successfully been cut by two-thirds," and now physical inactivity and macronutrient overnutrition contribute to a 10%-and-rising fraction of the disease burden.

However,

The trends identified in GBD 2010 occur across regions with one notable exception: sub-Saharan Africa, where infectious diseases, childhood illnesses, and maternal causes of death account for as much as 70% of the burden of disease. By comparison, these conditions account for only one-third of the burden in south Asia and Oceania, and less than 20% in all other regions.

Research findings from the main publication summary (emphasis mine):

In 2010, the three leading risk factors for global disease burden were high blood pressure [...]; followed by tobacco smoking, including secondhand smoke [...]; and alcohol use [...] This reflects a substantial change from 1990 when the leading risk factors were childhood underweight [...]; followed by household air pollution from use of solid fuels [...]; and tobacco smoking, including secondhand smoke [...].
Regional differences are significant. While much of the world is burdened by obesity and high body mass index, underweight is still the leading risk factor in sub‐Saharan Africa. Other prevalent risk factors in the region include household air pollution and nonexclusive and discontinued breastfeeding.
Although child undernutrition has fallen significantly as a risk factor for all ages, it remained the leading risk factor worldwide in 2010 for children under 5, accounting for 12.4% of global DALYs [disability‐adjusted life years], followed by nonexclusive or discontinued breastfeeding at 7.6%.
A number of risks that primarily affect childhood communicable diseases, including unsafe water and sanitation and micronutrient deficiencies, declined in significance in the past 20 years, with unsafe water and sanitation accounting for only 0.9% of global DALYs in 2010.
At the same time, GBD 2010 findings show the importance of household air pollution from solid fuels and ambient particulate matter pollution as major risk factors. One or both rank in the top 10 as causes of disease burden in 13 of the 21 regions. In south Asia, they are the leading cause of burden.

From the Guardian's reporting (more: 1, 2, 3):

Since 1970 the largest gains in life expectancy have taken place in the Maldives (27.3 years for men and 29.4 years for women) and improvements in life expectancy at birth in excess of 20 years were recorded in Bangladesh, Bhutan, Iran, and Peru. But life expectancy fell by one to seven years in Zimbabwe and Lesotho, where populations were severely affected by HIV/Aids, and for men in Ukraine and Belarus, where an alcohol crisis took hold.

If you'd like to read the papers themselves, the full text is currently available for free (but registration required) at The Lancet. In addition to the data visualizations, the IHME provides GBD 2010 publication summaries: Global and regional mortality from 235 causes of death for 20 age groups in 1990 and 2010: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2010

Healthy life expectancy for 187 countries, 1990–2010: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2010

A comparative risk assessment of burden of disease and injury attributable to 67 risk factors and risk factor clusters in 21 regions, 1990–2010: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2010

Age‐specific and sex‐specific mortality in 187 countries, 1970–2010: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2010

Years lived with disability (YLDs) for 1,160 sequelae of 289 diseases and injuries, 1990–2010: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2010

Disability‐adjusted life years (DALYs) for 291 diseases and injuries in 21 regions, 1990–2010: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2010

Common values in assessing health outcomes from disease and injury: disability weights measurement study for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2010
Each of the data visualizations again:

Causes of death by age, sex, region, and year
Heat map of leading causes and risks by region
Changes in leading causes and risks between 1990 and 2010
Healthy years lost to disability vs. life expectancy in 1990 and 2010
Uncertainties of causes and risks

The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation adds,

The findings are being announced at the Royal Society in London on Dec. 14 and published in The Lancet, the first time the journal has dedicated an entire triple issue to one study.

The Lancet includes The story of GBD 2010: a “super-human” effort:

“Running the programs to map the data to our cause list of 291 causes and correcting the bias can take days, even using a powerful cluster of more than 100 computers. The data that we have to store after the modelling process can take 3 terabytes.” [Rafael] Lozano estimates that the storage needed for the causes of death data was 400 times bigger than that for GBD 1990 [...] Majid Ezzati, chair in global and environmental health at the School of Public Health, Imperial College London, UK, told The Lancet, As researchers, we tend to believe that more ‘data’ are better than less. I still believe so. But more data, but not all the perfect data we could wish for, means that we need to fundamentally think differently about when to stop searching for more and how to use it [...] The study brought out the well-known but far too frequently overlooked issue that people of different scientific traditions—clinicians, basic scientists, epidemiologists, and quantitative scientists—think and speak differently about the same problem. This can of course be a very powerful resource for bringing together different ways of looking at a problem and solving in the most comprehensive and interesting way—a true systems approach. It can also be a challenge, and at times a source of tension.

(Previously on the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation: Is there a market for years?)

Small Is Beautiful

Egg Shen — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 11:11:07 -0800

[raises envelope to temple] Human bone cancer. Sea gooseberry larva. Bat embryos. [tears open envelope, blows inside, removes paper, reads] Some of the winners of the 38th Nikon Small World microphotography competition.

Painting the first of life's molecules, circa 1961

Blazecock Pileon — Wed, 08 Aug 2012 16:31:09 -0800

These days, it's easy to take visualizations of biological molecules for granted, what with the easy availability of an ever-increasing supply of high-resolution X-ray and neutron crystallography data, as well as freely available software that render them into beautiful and useful images that help us understand how life works. The lack of computers and computer networks in the mid-1950s made creating these illustrations a painstaking collaboration, requiring an artist's craftsmanship and aesthetic sense, as well as, most importantly, the critical ability to visualize the concepts that scientists wish to communicate. One such scientific artist was Irving Geis, who painted the first biological macromolecule obtained through X-ray data: an iconic watercolor representation of the structure of sperm whale myoglobin, as seen in the third slide of this slideshow of selected pieces. His first effort was a revolutionary work of informatics, including coloring and shading effects that emphasized important structural and functional features of the myoglobin protein, simultaneously moving the less-important aspects into the background, all while stressing simplicity and beauty throughout. The techniques that Geis developed in this and subsequent works influenced the standards for basic 2D protein visualization that are used today.

The Art of π, φ and e

Blazecock Pileon — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 14:27:04 -0800

The Art of π, φ and e The creator of Circos and hive plots plays around with visualizing a few irrational numbers and their odd characteristics.

JavaScript InfoVis Toolkit

Blazecock Pileon — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 14:31:07 -0800

JavaScript InfoVis Toolkit (JIT) - providing tools for creating interactive data visualizations for the web

The rise and fall of personal computing

Blazecock Pileon — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 09:45:30 -0800

The rise and fall of personal computing - A neat (and in some ways, stark) visualization of the impact of mobile devices on computing

Buzzing about network graphs

Blazecock Pileon — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 02:07:51 -0800

A hive plot (slides) is a beautiful and compelling way to visualize multiple, complex networks, without resorting to "hairball" graphs that are often difficult to qualitatively compare and contrast. Hive plots were conceived by Martin Krzywinski, the primary author of the Circos software package, used to represent genomic and other data that render well in circular form. To make your own hive plots, take a look at Krzywinski's linnet library, or if you like R, there's HiveR.

Art of Science

dhruva — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 10:15:19 -0800

Princeton's 5th annual Art of Science Competition "The Art of Science exhibition explores the interplay between science and art. These practices both involve the pursuit of those moments of discovery when what you perceive suddenly becomes more than the sum of its parts. Each piece in this exhibition is, in its own way, a record of such a moment."

R-via-REST

Blazecock Pileon — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 13:09:12 -0800

OpenCPU provides a RESTful interface to the popular open-source statistical package R, enabling the user to perform calculations and create publication-quality or web-embeddable visualizations via standard web requests.

The Bolshoi Simulation - visualization of dark matter

nickyskye — Sun, 02 Oct 2011 05:35:26 -0800

Visualization of the dark matter in 1/1000 of the gigantic Bolshoi cosmological simulation, zooming in on a region centered on the dark matter halo of a very large cluster of galaxies. ... The Bolshoi simulation is the most accurate cosmological simulation of the evolution of the large-scale structure of the universe yet made (“bolshoi” is the Russian word for “great” or “grand”). (The Formation of the Milky Way and its Neighbors is cool too.)

The Welikia Project

Trurl — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 21:05:28 -0800

The Welikia Project goes beyond Mannahatta to encompass the entire city, discover its original ecology and compare it what we have today.

The Information Sage

Blazecock Pileon — Tue, 17 May 2011 15:53:53 -0800

“If you display information the right way, anybody can be an analyst,” Tufte once told me. “Anybody can be an investigator.” - The Washington Monthly interviews informaticist Edward Tufte [via]

The International Science & Engineering Visualization Challenge 2010

Blazecock Pileon — Sat, 19 Feb 2011 06:26:45 -0800

The International Science & Engineering Visualization Challenge 2010 - "Researchers are generating mind-boggling volumes of data at exponentially increasing rates. The ability to process that information and display it in ways that enhance understanding is an increasingly important aspect of the way scientists communicate with each other and—especially—with students and the general public. That's why, for the past 8 years, Science and the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) have co-sponsored annual challenges to promote cutting-edge efforts to visualize scientific data, principles, and ideas. This year's awardees span scales from nanoparticles to colliding galaxies, and from microseconds to millennia."

a shell of largely undisturbed cola that is only menticulated at its very core

staggernation — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 14:14:53 -0800

Fuck Yeah Fluid Dynamics celebrates fluid dynamics in all their fuck-yeahness.

Visualizing data: scientific sculptural weaving

madamjujujive — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 07:24:22 -0800

Nathalie Miebach translates scientific data related to meteorology and ecology into woven sculptures and musical scores. She discusses her work in an interview with the Peabody Essex Museum. (via Mira y Calla)

Asteroid Discovery From 1980 - 2010

brundlefly — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 13:14:36 -0800

Asteroid Discovery From 1980 - 2010: an animation of the solar system that highlights asteroids as they are discovered. I would suggest watching it in a high resolution.

Open Earth

netbros — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 19:19:18 -0800

One of the great things about Google Earth is how extensible it is using KML. You can use it to show off placemarks, build 3D structures, track wildfires or hurricanes, and much more. Google Earth can be used as a scientific visualization platform. OpenEarth is an open source initiative that archives, hosts and disseminates Data, Models and Tools for marine and coastal scientists and engineers. Their KML data visualizations using Google Earth display some of the possibilities. [via] OpenEarth provides some tutorials on how to get started with these types of visualizations. NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab at Cal Tech has a similar project called OnEarth. The mosaic is continuously updated with images from MODIS TERRA. Info about the KML layers.

Cell Size and Scale

grumblebee — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 06:50:05 -0800

Cool app lets you zoom in from a coffee bean to a carbon atom, so that you can compare sizes. Along the way, you see a grain of sand, a skin cell and many other tiny things. This is the first time I've ever had a sense of these objects' sizes. Cells are actually bigger than I thought they were. I wish the zoomer would keep going. I want to see some sub-atomic particles on the scale.

cosmic spiral visuals

nickyskye — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 07:56:21 -0800

The Anatomy of Spiral Arms, shows how galaxies naturally evolve to form grand-design two-arm spirals. The Hubble Ultra Deep Field in 3D. A Visual Dictionary of Special Plane Curves. Spiral galaxies make up approximately 60% of galaxies in the local Universe. The Equiangular Spiral Grand Design Spiral Galaxy M81 l Barred Spiral Galaxies Are Latecomers to the Universe From SpiralZoom, an intriguing tidbit on spiral consciousness, from I am a Strange Loop Previously.

Map of Science

homunculus — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 20:55:29 -0800

Knowledge, in Real Time. "A new picture of science — and possibly future innovation — comes into focus with the mapping of scientists’ online research behavior."

science visualization

dhruva — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 11:01:26 -0800

2008 Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge "The winners -- in categories including photography, illustration, informational graphics, and multimedia -- captured the crystalline beauty of diatoms, the expanse of the human circulatory system, a fairy tale tea party re-invented, and the dynamic life of a plant cell." (previously)

She blinded me with science!

dmd — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 13:59:35 -0800

Gorgeous images, selected solely for their artistic appeal, from the pages of Physical Review B.

Surrealistic Lilliputian Realm

homunculus — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 17:56:09 -0800

The Inner Life of an Intelligently Designed Cell? Remember The Inner Life of a Cell animation (discussed here)? Apparently the Discovery Institute (recently discussed here) is showing it in presentations with a new title and narration, and without attribution.

Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge 2006

dhruva — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 22:13:23 -0800

Scientific visualization challenge 2006: This year's winners captured inner details of a child mummy, mathematical surfaces rendered as glass objects, the highest mountain on Earth, air traffic by night, etc...

Proofs and Pictures: The Role of Visualization in Mathematical and Scientific Reasoning

Chuckles — Sun, 20 Aug 2006 12:08:20 -0800

Proofs and Pictures: The Role of Visualization in Mathematical and Scientific Reasoning [video] "The picture is a telescope for looking into Plato's heaven." -- James Brown [cached]