Most Americans on Brink of Financial Disaster
Pew Charitable Trusts | READ STORY

Despite reports of economic recovery, most Americans' household financial security is anything but secure. So finds a report released Thursday by Pew Charitable Trusts which looks at three elements of a household balance sheet - income, expenditures and wealth - over the past several decades, and reveals the "financial tightrope" most families are walking.

The Most Common Job In Every State
University of Minnesota | READ STORY

Researchers from the Minnesota Population Center at the University of Minnesota have gathered information relating the most common held occupation in each state from 1978 to 2014.

Lower oil prices may temper 2015 food price inflation
USDA | READ STORY

Despite lower oil prices, Economic Research Service (ERS) currently predicts overall food prices to rise between 2 and 3 percent in 2015, closely in line with 2014 food price inflation. Information on ERS's food price forecasts can be found in ERS's Food Price Outlook data product.

New map shows America's quietest places

AAAS | READ STORY

Based on 1.5 million hours of acoustical monitoring from places as remote as Dinosaur National Monument in Utah and as urban as New York City, scientists have created a map of noise levels across the country on an average summer day. After feeding acoustic data into a computer algorithm, the researchers modeled sound levels across the country including variables such as air and street traffic.

U.S. students improving - slowly - in math and science, but still lagging internationally
PEW Research Center | READ STORY

In a new Pew Research Center report, only 29% of Americans rated their country's K-12 education in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (known as STEM) as above average or the best in the world. While U.S. students are scoring higher on national math assessments than they did two decades ago, they still rank around the middle of the pack in international comparisons, and behind many other advanced industrial nations.

This is How the World Ends: Twelve Risks That Threaten Human Existence
Oxford University | READ STORY

A new report from researchers at Oxford University urges readers to consider a new category of global risks - low-probability, high-impact scenarios that hover at the extreme end of the spectrum. The report looks only at events that could trigger a civilization's collapse - "defined as a drastic decrease in human population size and political/economic/social complexity, globally for an extended time."