Statistics_Data_Facts

While the brain represents just 2% of a person’s total body weight, it accounts for about 20% of the body’s energy use. Source:  Raichle ME, Gusnard DA. Appraising the brain's energy budget. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2002;99(16):10237-10239. doi:10.1073/pnas.172399499

Total worldwide sales (in millions of units) per platform. For all platforms that are no longer manufactured, all figures are total shipments from manufacturers. For current platforms, all figures are current sales as measured by VGChartz. As of 6/18/2020

This week we take a look at Marriage and Divorce rate trends per 1,000 people in the United States.  As you can see, the marriage rate declined during the harsh period of the Great Depression. It also spiked when the United States entered World War II, with couples marrying before the husband shipped off overseas. There was a similar, albeit lower uptick in US weddings at the start of World War I. "Marriage rates stayed low during the years of the conflict, then soared again immediately after the war’s end in 1945. Divorce likewise tapered off during the Depression, when few people had the resources to make any substantial life changes. The war brought many couples together, but it also drove many apart. The stress of deployment strained some fragile partnerships to the breaking point. Wives left husbands for new partners they met while their spouse was overseas. Husbands left wives for the English or German girlfriends they’d met on deployment. And many of those couples who m...

Expensive placebos work better than cheap placebos. People's perceptions of the cost of a drug may affect how much they benefit from the drug, even when they are just receiving a placebo. That's according to a study of patients with Parkinson's disease published in the January 28 2015, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. For the study, 12 people with Parkinson's disease were told that they would receive shots of two formulations of the same drug, with the second shot given after the first shot wore off. They were told that the formulations were believed to be of similar effectiveness, but that they differed in manufacturing cost--$100 per dose versus $1,500 per dose. Participants were told that the study was intended to prove that the drugs, while priced differently, were equally effective. In reality, the participants received a placebo for both injections but were told they were receiving either the "cheap" o...