shorts
 

STATISTIC: More than a third of Americans say alcohol has caused trouble in family. More than a fourth report family troubles because of drug abuse. Altogether, 46% have experienced one or the other issue. Close to half of U.S. adults, 46%, have dealt with substance abuse problems in their family: 18% have had just alcohol problems and 10% have had just drug problems, while 18% have experienced both.


STATISTIC: 46% of Americans worried about being a victim of terrorism

45% worried about being a victim of a mass shooting

Partisans' levels of worry changed after President Trump took office. As mass shootings and acts of terrorism have increased in the U.S. and are even tied together in some high-profile incidents, Americans are now equally worried that they or a family member will be a victim of each. Similar slim majorities of Americans are not worried that they or a family member will be a victim of terrorism or a mass shooting.



STATISTIC: WASHINGTON, D.C. -- As children across the U.S. begin a new school year, a majority of Americans (74%) continue to believe most children in their country have the opportunity to learn and grow every day, but they are solidly less likely to think so today than they were a decade ago. As a result of this downturn, the U.S. has dropped from 31st to 69th in the world on this measure since 2008, putting its current ranking well behind those of many wealthy economies and global competitors, including China. — Gallup


STATISTIC: The U.S. has deficits other than trade to worry about with China. Since the early days of the global economic crisis, China has led the U.S. by as much as 20 percentage points on Gallup's question of whether most children in their respective countries have the opportunity to learn and grow every day.

In 2018, 92% of Chinese adults said most children in their country have these types of opportunities, while 74% of U.S. adults said the same.


STATISTIC: Research released by caterer.com has found that 97% of school pupils and those leaving education have “written off” the idea of working in the hospitality industry. That may be wise. Another study by the Royal Society for Public Health found that 62% of hospitality workers don’t feel looked after by their employers; 74% have suffered verbal abuse and 24% have required medical or psychological help. — Gallup




STATISTIC: Americans of all ages increasingly take life sitting down, researchers found, but adolescents sit more than other groups. The study found adolescent Americans typically increased their total sitting time from seven hours to just over eight hours a day in the decade to 2016, the largest amount of time spent sedentary and the biggest jump of all the groups studied, experts said. Adults also sat for about an hour a day more over that decade, but sat less overall, increasing sitting time from an average of just over five hours a day to just over six hours. Dr Yin Cao of Washington University in St Louis, the author of the study, said: “It’s very concerning when there’s such an increase in sitting time on a national level across all age groups, especially taking into consideration the health risks that come with this.” — Washington University in St Louis


STATISTIC: Nearly 20% of Americans say that it’s acceptable for business owners to refuse to serve Jews if doing so would violate their religious beliefs, according to a new survey. The 19% who said such discrimination was acceptable is up from 2014, when 12% thought it was okay. — Public Religion Research Institute.


STATISTIC: Record 20% of Russians Say They Would Like to Leave Russia — A new high of 20% of Russians say they would leave Russia if they could -- and Russian President Vladimir Putin might be partly to blame. — Gallup


STATISTIC: Preference for Environment Over Economy Largest Since 2000 — With the U.S. unemployment rate around 4%, Americans' preference for prioritizing environmental protection over economic growth is at a two-decade high. — Gallup


STATISTIC: This Earth Day, Americans living in the East (67%) or the West (67%) are more likely than those living in the Midwest (60%) or the South (53%) to believe climate change is now occurring. — Gallup


STATISTIC: Nurses remain the most revered of 20 occupations rated for their honesty and ethics. Members of Congress and telemarketers are the least revered. — Gallup


STATISTIC: In contrast to most prior refugee situations, Americans are more likely to approve (51%) than disapprove (43%) of letting Central American refugees into the U.S. — Gallup


STATISTIC: Seventy-two percent of Americans say religion is important to them, but few think its influence on U.S. life is increasing, and a record-low 46% say it can solve most problems — Gallup


STATISTIC: What people don’t know is the environmental damage almond plantations are doing in California, and the water cost. It takes a bonkers 1,611 US gallons (6,098 litres) to produce 1 litre of almond milk,” says the Sustainable Restaurant Association’s Pete Hemingway. Over 80% of the world’s almonds are grown in California, which has been in severe drought for most of this decade.


STATISTIC: “Like the canary in the coal mine now 97% gone”. In the 1980s between 10 million and 4.5 million monarchs spent the winter in California. The last count, conducted annually by volunteers each November, showed that in 2018 there may be as few as 30,000 across the state – a number that’s 87% lower than just the year before.


Anurag Agrawal, an ecology and evolutionary biology professor at Cornell University, suggests that the butterflies are like the canary in the coal mine. In a blog about his work, he said that because they travel across North America every year, monarch migration can be helpful in determining the “health of our entire continent”. But saving them could require big changes. “We have to take a step back and ask ourselves the harder questions that none of us want to deal with.”He said monarchs are “are exhibiting multi-decadal declines that point to very big systemic problems. We shouldn’t fool ourselves”.


STATISTIC: SAD, so sad, it’s a sad sad situation... and thiings are even worse in the UK, especially after the kind of long, hot summer that we have just enjoyed. “Cloud cover is very important, historically, Britain is a cloudy nation. It’s an island nation, there’s a lot of fog and cloud coming off the sea. More recently, your summers have been more like ours – hot and sunny and dry. Now, when you have a hot, sunny and dry summer and a cloudy, dark winter, that’s when the seasonality of the problem becomes more apparent.” The further north you go, the gloomier it gets. In the winter, there are parts of northern Scotland that get an average of just 64 minutes of sunlight a day, according to the Met Office.


SAD is characterised by the typical features of depression – poor sleep, low mood, irritability, social withdrawal and perhaps overeating, too,


When the night falls, don’t fight it too hard. “Our tendency to turn on blazing lights as soon as the light drops is bound to confuse our body,” Norton says. “Try to keep lights dim in the evening and let your body clock tell you when it’s time to sleep. Getting to bed early enough to get a good eight hours will help your mood and so much more.” And stay away from screens for at least two hours before you go to bed. “They suppress the sleep hormone melatonin, making it more difficult to drift off and reducing sleep quality.  Sally Norton — writing for The Guardian.


STATISTIC: POLITICS — Americans Still Tilt Toward Favoring Less Active Gov't Role

Half of Americans now say the government is doing too much, while 44% hold the belief that the government should do more to solve the nation's problems. Gallup



STATISTIC: POLITICS — Majority in U.S. Still Say a Third Party Is Needed

More than half, 57%, of Americans say a third major political party is needed, continuing a trend of majority support over the last five years. Gallup



STATISTIC: WORLD — Afghans' Misery Reflected in Record-Low Well-Being Measures. Gallup's 2018 Afghanistan survey reveals record-low well-being levels. Asked to rate their future lives on a zero-to-10 scale, Afghans give an average response of 2.3 -- the lowest recorded for any country worldwide over the past 12 years. Gallup


STATISTIC: The just-released 2017 civics survey conducted by the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania found, among other things:


More than a third of American adults (37 percent) can’t name any of the rights guaranteed under the First Amendment.

Only a quarter of American adults (26 percent) can name all three branches of government.


More than half of American adults (53 percent) incorrectly think it is accurate to say that immigrants who are here illegally do not have any rights under the U.S. Constitution.


STATISTIC: Last year’s survey by the Annenberg center found:


Nearly 4 in 10 (39 percent) incorrectly said the Constitution gives the president the power to declare war. Just more than half (54 percent) knew the Constitution gives Congress the power to declare war.


A vast majority (83 percent) correctly said the Constitution gives Congress the power to raise taxes.


A majority (77 percent) know the Constitution says that Congress cannot establish an official religion — though almost 1 in 10 agreed with the statement that the Constitution says, “Congress can outlaw atheism because the United States is one country under God.”


STATISTIC: A majority of people on Facebook are now dead


STATISTIC: A quarter of Americans surveyed could not correctly answer that the Earth revolves around the sun and not the other way around, according to a report out Friday from the National Science Foundation. The survey of 2,200 people in the United States was conducted by the NSF in 2012 and released on Friday at an annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Chicago. To the question "Does the Earth go around the Sun, or does the Sun go around the Earth," 26 percent of those surveyed answered incorrectly. Reuters


STATISTIC: When Americans are asked to identify the country from which America gained its independence, 76% correctly name Great Britain. A handful, 2%, think America's freedom was won from France, 3% mention some other country (including Russia, China, and Mexico, among others named), while 19% are unsure. Reuters