Data Dive

British citizens are heading to the polls today in what is expected to be the closest election in decades, but the real outcome may not be known for some time.

Millennials are famous for disrupting many of their parents’ institutions, but they may be fairly traditional investors.

As this Reuters graphic shows, since launching a counter-attack against Boko Haram in January, the Nigerian army and some 8,700 allied troops have systemically contained the Islamist fighting force. 

Solar energy’s time in the sun may be at hand. Prices have fallen so low that, in some countries, electricity from the sun can be far cheaper than that generated by fossil fuels.

Is libertarianism a growing trend or a red herring?

As this Reuters graphic shows, a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted earlier this month found that one in five Americans self-identify as libertarian, with percentages skewing higher the younger the cohort. One in three respondents aged 18-29 consider themselves libertarian, but just 12 percent of those 60 or older similarly self-identify. Additionally, 25 percent of independents consider themselves libertarian, a rate considerably higher than that of either major party.

As this Reuters graphic shows, in 2013 Baltimore had 2,829 police officers serving a community of 622,671 residents, according to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report. That equals one police officer for every 220 people, a significantly higher ratio than the national average for cities of that size. Despite this, Baltimore saw 233 murders in 2013, and the rate of 37 murders per 100,000 residents was fifth-worst in the nation. Overall, crime in the city fell, mimicking the national trend.

Two new and particularly virulent forms of the avian flu virus are threatening to upset the domestic poultry industry’s egg cart.

As this Reuters graphic shows, editing DNA using the CRISPR/Cas9 technique works similarly to the “find and replace” function in a word-processing program. First CRISPR — short for ”clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats” — searches for a unique string within the DNA sequence. Once found, the Cas9 enzyme cuts the DNA at the prescribed location, and replaces it with healthy DNA.

When people hear that one company is buying another for however-many billions of dollars, most assume it’s a done deal. The truth is that regulators and shareholders have been know to ax mergers and acquisitions both large and small. Despite the fame of the names involved, Comcast’s $45 billion deal for TimeWarner Cable doesn’t even make it into the top 10 of failed mergers.

Until now, Russia’s control of the gas pipeline that warms much of Europe has given Moscow, at minimum, an implied choke point to lord over Ukraine and its neighbors. That situation escalated this week, when the European Union used antitrust laws to charge the state-controlled Gazprom with price gouging, a move that inspired Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite to declare, ”The era of Kremlin-backed political and economic blackmail draws to a close.” But if the Baltic States have their way, a bid for power independence could flip the script and leave a strategic Russian enclave out in the cold.