VizWorld.com

According to the CDC, the number one cause of death in women in the United States, at 25.8%, is heart disease. This is closely followed by cancer, at 22%. In the United States, skin cancer is the most prevalent form of cancer in women. Breast cancer is the second most common form of cancer in women, followed by lung cancer. However, that is just the prevalence of cancer. Lung cancer kills more women in the United States than breast cancer, which comes in second. In 2006, some 40,820 women in the United States died from breast cancer. Fortunately that is decreasing at a rate of about 2% per year.

The on-line magazine Good has published an infographic comparing the progress that has been made in the fight against breast cancer.

In honor of National Women’s Health Week, we’ve looked at the fight against breast cancer around the world. We’ve looked at how the United States—and other member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development—are performing in three categories: improvement in the five-year survival rate for breast cancer, the mortality rate per 100,000 women, and the percentage of women who have mammography screenings. In some areas, we have made extraordinary progress; in others we still have a long way to go.

via The World’s Progress on Breast Cancer – GOOD Blog – GOOD.

Graphics infographic

Red Giant Software has rev’ed their Trapcode Particular suite with support for the new Adobe CS5 products, but has gone way beyond a simple re-release and added several new features.

But Particular 2.1 goes way, way beyond the basics, with realistic natural effects, lighting control for shaded particles, 3D camera integration, custom shapes, depth of field, and physics controls such as air resistance, gravity and turbulence. Particular is used in motion pictures like Spider Man 3 and Angels & Demons

via Red Giant Software: Trapcode Particular 2.1.

Graphics cs5, redgiant, software, trapcode

Almirall, an international pharmaceutical company located in Spain, has just signed informatics provider Dotmatics Limited as their provider of visualization and analysis software.

Dr. Johannes Floeckner Head of R&D Information Systems at Almirall said “We are very pleased to be working with Dotmatics. After we evaluated their solutions Vortex and Browser we were very impressed by their tools and the speed that they were able to customise them specifically for our needs. We found the software and the company to be very user friendly and we will continue to work with Dotmatics to explore other possible uses for their solutions.”

Dotmatics has an interesting suite of software that provides visualization and analysis of biological and chemical datasets, and provides web-based interfaces for several of them to aid not only in analysis, but in decision making.

via Dotmatics Licenses Vortex and Browser to Almirall | Earth Times News.

Science almirall, biomed, chemistry, dotmatics, pharmaceutical

Infographics are everywhere these days (VizWorld included), and seem to serve multiple purposes ranging from educating the public to simply directing eyeballs for advertising dollars.  So many infographics seem to fall into that latter category that the entire field is beginning to develop a bad reputation for simply overcomplicating trivial data with splash but pointless visuals.  Robert Kosara has a new article online that reminds us that good infographics do exist, and provides a few tips on how to keep your own graphics from becoming internet fodder.

Perhaps the most obvious use of infographics is giving readers a sense of scale. This is a very typical use in magazine and newspaper articles, where the purpose of the infographic is to provide some perspective on the numbers mentioned in an article.

via The Fascinating World of Good Infographics | EagerEyes.org.

Science cell, infographic

If you’re a fan of Edward Tufte and just happen to be lounging in London tomorrow evening, then you should consider picking up tickets to his talk at the Royal Geographical Society.  But alas, it’s all sold out. However, all is not lost thanks to the organizers and Information Is Beautiful:

Lord of information design, Edward Tufte is making a rare appearance in London this Wednesday (19th May)

It sold out months ago. But we’ve got two complimentary tickets to give away, thanks to the generous organisers, IntelligenceSquared.com.

To enter, just email [email protected]

If you can’t make it (or don’t win), don’t fret as you can still check out a webcast of the event (live or afterwards) for a mere 2.99 £ .

Win Tickets To See Edward Tufte In London.

Science contest, tufte

In an experiment that the sheer thought makes my own skin crawl, researchers in Spain have conducted research in using Augmented Reality headsets to “virtually” swarm a patient with roaches in a type of extreme exposure therapy.

Participants in the study sit at a desk with a computer wearing a virtual reality headset. The headset has a camera attached, such that the person wearing it will see a video representation of the desk that they’re looking at. But with cockroaches.

They wrote a paper about the research which is in the latest “Cyberpsychology” journal. The initial test was only on 6 individuals, making it a rather small sample.  NeoAcademic claims that it might be because it is difficult to find people with Cockroach phobias.  That must be a Spanish thing then, as I know dozens of people (myself included) who can’t stand the little buggers.

The research does remind me of some earlier work done with CAVE’s and HMD’s on things like Vertigo and other fears.  Seems Virtual Reality and Psychology have always had an interesting relationship.

via Fight Your Fear of Cockroaches With Augmented Reality | Thoughts of a Neo-Academic.

Science augmented reality, psychology, research

MAXON’s close integration with the Adobe suite has long been one of their key success areas, with the tight integration of Cinema4D and AfterEffects being unparalleled in the industry.  They’re taking the lead with the new CS5 suite and going on a cross-country tour of the US (with a quick stop in Vancouver) to demonstrate how they maintain their integration with the new CS5 tools and show off their new 64-bit capabilities as well.

At each road show stop in the Partner Solutions Pavilion area, MAXON artists will demonstrate the intuitive interface and logical workflow of the company’s leading 3D modeling, painting, animation and rendering solution CINEMA 4D and its seamless integration with Adobe After Effects. MAXON will also showcase the new CINEMA 4D exchange plug-in for After Effects – 64-bit capable – further demonstrating its superior capability with After Effects and addressing artists’ needs for a powerful 2D/3D cross platform solution and improved workflow efficiency.

See the full release, with tour dates & locations, after the break. First stop is tomorrow in NYC!

Read more…

Graphics adobe, cinema4d, cs4, maxon

Virgin Galactic is a company with plans to provide sub-orbital spaceflights to the public, if they can afford the cost of the ticket: $200,000 per person with a $20,000 deposit. The craft will hold six passengers and two pilots. It is planned to go to a sub-orbital height of 68 miles (360,000 feet 70,000 feet). The passengers and crew will be weightless for up to 6 minutes.

While 70,000 feet sounds really high, how does it compare to other spacecraft? DVICE has posted an infographic which answers the question “How high will Virgin Galactic really go?” Just for the record, the U-2 spyplane flies at 70,000+ ft.

via : Infographic: How high will Virgin Galactic really go? @ DVICE

Science Virgin Galactic

On December 14, 2009, NASA launched the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) telescope. This space-born telescope has a 16 inch diameter and surveys light in the infrared wavelengths. The telescope’s focal planes and optics are cooled with a two-stage solid-hydrogen cryostat. This gives the mission an expected lifetime of 10 months. Over that time, it will take one image about every 11 seconds for about 1.5 million images in total.

The WISE team recently released an image of the Tadpole nebula, which is approximately 12,000 light-years from Earth. As WISE was capturing this mosaic of pictures, two asteroids crossed into the images. The first is 1719 Jens which appears near the middle of the image, while the second is 1992 UZ5 apearing in the upper left-hand side.

Twenty-five frames of the region, taken at all four of the wavelengths detected by WISE, were combined into this one image. The space telescope caught the 1719 Jens in 11 successive frames. Infrared light of 3.4 microns is color-coded blue: 4.6-micron light is cyan; 12-micron-light is green; and 22-micron light is red.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/WISE Team

via : Tadpole Nebula with Asteroid

Science astronomy, nasa

The euro is the official currency of the European Union. At the beginning of 2010 it took $1.43 to buy one Euro. Currently it takes $1.27 to buy one Euro. That is a decrease of about 12%. Visual Economics has a nice infographic covering the current state of the Euro. If you notice the graphic shows a decrease of 7%. That is because they are using data through May 1^st, which was before most of the problems in Greece really came to the forefront.

Since its inception, the Euro has tried to economically link Europe through a common form of currency. Currently, however, many analysts are worried that the state of some countries’ economies might put the Euro (and its countries) into more economic peril.

via : Visual Economics

Graphics infographic