Cancer Maps

Dr. Jospeh Fraumeni, a pioneering researcher of epidemiology, died a couple of weeks ago. Among his achievements were the first maps of cancer deaths in the United States. Here are two early maps.

These maps eventually became an atlas of cancer mortality published by the National Cancer Institute. You can see the entire atlas here but be warned, it’s huge and may take a long time to load.

The atlas maps begin with overall maps, broken down by race and gender before breaking them down further by types of cancer.

There is a bias in that there are many more maps showing white people than black and no other races (or genders) are accounted for. Anyway it is interesting to see the male/female contrasts here-above is white male, below white female.

One difference that really stands out is “cancer alley” in Louisiana. Are males contracting cancer at work, where presumably there are fewer females employed in these chemical industries? Similar disparities appear in coastal parts of Georgia, the Carolinas and Texas. Here are the maps for blacks. Notice the they do not have the finer county breakdown, nor is there data for the earlier 1950-69 time period.

All of these maps show a similar pattern of lower rates in the southeast and southwest. You can see more, including interactive and story maps at gis.cancer.gov. Here is a sample from the urban-rural disparity story map. I manipulated this image slightly so the legend and map appear together.

This quote from the gis.cancer site summarizes Dr Fraumeni's ideas that led to developing these maps. “The spatial context in which people live is an important factor in cancer etiology and outcomes influencing a person’s risk of developing cancer, accessibility and quality of preventive and treatment services, and quality of life after surviving cancer.“

Skpe a Scientist

Skype a Scientist is an organization that matches scientists with classrooms across the United States. Their annual United States of Science Challenge seeks to fill a certain number of classrooms in each state with donations. This map is a bit, ummm, unscientific maybe but it shows empty bubbles as classrooms waiting to be matched (?)

I’m not sure what the Philadelphia Flyers mascot Gritty is doing inside two of the three Wyoming bubbles, or for that matter why Wyoming only has three bubbles. He’s also hiding in small bubbles in Minnesota and Wisconsin. Also, the colors only seem to exist as some kind of regional differentiation. Most states appear to be full but there are still opportunities within most regions of the country. 

Maps for the U.S. Semiquincentennial

Semiquincentennial is a mouthful. So much that my spell check doesn’t believe it’s a word. The Bicentennial, which I’m old enough to remember well was easier to pronounce, and celebrate. I won’t make any grand statements, instead here are some fun, interesting or alternative maps of the United States to celebrate its 250th birthday.

I’ll start with the original inhabitants of this land. This is one of the maps of Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, previously featured here in this post.

Tribal Map 2000

You can see the whole map here.

License Plate Map (one of many)

-via Photowall

If the states were based on watersheds: The United Watershed States of America

-via Next City

The United States drawn as Fifty States with Equal Population

This is an attempt from Neil Freeman to make the Electoral College more fair - good luck either way that! More here.

Speculative fiction - USA in the Man in the High Castle

The Man in the High Castle is a 1962 novel by Philip K. Dick, which imagines a world in which the Axis powers won World War II. Map from Wikimedia Commons. It looks like Long Island might be safe. I’m not sure where some of these oddly specific boundary jogs come from.

A less depressing speculative map (unless you hate rail) - Sci fi coast to coast high speed rail network. 

-via Greater Greater Washington

Finally, for dessert here is the Most Popular Pie by State

-via Holiday Calendar