2024.05.08 edition
US greenhouse gas accounting. The Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks, published annually by the EPA, “provides a comprehensive accounting of total greenhouse gas emissions for all man-made sources in the United States,” as well as the removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere attributable to “land use, land-use change, and forestry.” The reports contain a slew of data tables. Those in the latest edition, which covers 1990 through 2022, include total emissions by year and economic sector; transportation-related emissions by vehicle type and gas emitted; removals by land-use category; and more. Previously: EPA’s facility-level emissions data (DIP 2023.09.20). [h/t Ben Young et al.]
Emergency room visits. The CDC’s National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey, conducted annually since 1992, is based on patient records from a strategic sample of emergency department visits in “noninstitutional general and short-stay hospitals”. Its public, anonymized data indicate the patient’s time of arrival, length of wait, and length of visit; the their demographic information, vital signs, and reasons for visiting; the hospital’s diagnoses, medications given, tests and procedures conducted; and much more. The most recent release includes 16,000+ visits that occurred in 2021. As seen in: “Grabbing the NHAMCS emergency room data in python,” a blog post by Andrew P. Wheeler. [Update, 2024.05.15: Reader Brad Skillman helpfully flags that, alas, the NHAMCS has ceased collecting new data. Per the CDC: “Although NHAMCS is ending data collection, emergency department data collection and estimates will continue to be available […] through the National Hospital Care Survey.]
Global entrepreneurship. The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, active since 1999, considers itself “the world’s foremost study of entrepreneurship.” A collaboration between Babson College and the London Business School, the project publishes national and response-level data from two main surveys. The Adult Population Survey, answered over the years by millions of respondents around the world, examines “the characteristics, motivations and ambitions of individuals starting businesses, as well as social attitudes towards entrepreneurship.” The National Expert Survey, meanwhile, assesses factors such as access to financing, physical infrastructure, and government support.
Video gaming layoffs. Game Industry Layoffs, run by @dekaf, lists known staffing cuts at video game studios, publishers, and related companies. Each entry provides the company’s name, type, parent company (for subsidiaries), layoff date, estimated number of employees laid off, and source link. In 2023, the site tallied 10,000+ employees affected by 170+ layoffs; in 2024 so far, the employee count is already nearly that high, spread across ~100 layoffs. As seen in: “Visualizing Games Industry Layoffs,” by Ben Oldenburg. [h/t Vivien Serve]
Poisonous book bindings. As recently as the 1800s, green pigments containing arsenic were in fairly wide use. The Arsenical Books Database — part of the Winterthur Museum and the University of Delaware’s Poison Book Project — has identified hundreds of examples of 19th-century books that used these colorants in their covers and other binding components. The database lists each book’s title, author, imprint, publication year, arsenical material, testing method, and owner. [h/t Tom Merritt Smith]