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The data nerds are fighting back.After watching data sets be altered or disappear from U.S. government websites in unprecedented ways after President Donald Trump began his second term, an army of outside statisticians, demographers and computer scientists have joined forces to capture, preserve and share data sets, sometimes clandestinely.Their goal is to make sure they are available in the future, believing that democracy suffers when policymakers don’t have reliable data and that national statistics should be above partisan politics.“There are such smart, passionate people who care deeply about not only the Census Bureau, but all the statistical agencies, and ensuring the integrity of the statistical system. And that gives me hope, even during these challenging times,” Mary Jo Mitchell, director of government and public affairs for the research nonprofit the Population Association of America, said this week during an online public data-users conference.The threats to the U.S. data infrastructure since January have come not only from the disappearance or modification of data related to gender, sexual orientation, health, climate change and diversity, among other topics, but also from job cuts of workers and contractors who had been guardians of restricted-access data at statistical agencies, the data experts said.“There are trillions of bytes of data files, and I can’t even imagine how many public dollars were spent to collect those data. But right now, they’re sitting someplace that is inaccessible because there are no staff to appropriately manage those data,” Jennifer Park, a study director for the Committee on National Statistics, National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, said during the conference hosted by the Association of Public Data Users (APDU). ‘Gender’ switched to ‘sex’ In February, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s official public portal for health data, data.cdc.gov, was taken down entirely but subsequently went back up. Around the same time, when a query was made to access certain public data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s most comprehensive survey of American life, users for several days got a response that said the area was “unavailable due to maintenance” before access was restored.Researchers Janet Freilich and Aaron Kesselheim examined 232 federal public health data sets that had been modified in the first quarter of this year and found that almost half had been “substantially altered,” with the majority having the word “gender” switched to “sex,” they wrote this month in The Lancet medical journal.One of the most difficult tasks has been figuring out what’s been changed since many of the alterations weren’t recorded in documentation.Beth Jarosz, senior program director at the Population Reference Bureau, thought she was in good shape since she had previously downloaded data she needed from the National Survey of Children’s Health for a February conference where she was speaking, even though the data had become unavailable. But then she realized she had failed to download the questionnaire and later discovered that a question about discrimination based on gender or sexual identity had been removed.“It’s the one thing my team didn’t have,” Jarosz said at this week’s APDU conference. “And they edited the questionnaire document, which should have been a historical record.”Among the groups that have formed this year to collect and preserve the federal data are the Federation of American Scientists’ dataindex.com, which monitors changes to federal data sets; the University of Chicago Library’s Data Mirror website, which backs up and hosts at-risk data sets; the Data Rescue Project, which serves as a clearinghouse for data rescue-related efforts; and the Federal Data Forum, which shares information about what federal statistics have gone missing or been modified a job also being done by the American Statistical Association.The outside data warriors also are quietly reaching out to workers at statistical agencies and urging them to back up any data that is restricted from the public.“You can’t trust that this data is going to be here tomorrow,” said Lena Bohman, a founding member of the Data Rescue Project. Experts’ committee unofficially revived Separately, a group of outside experts has unofficially revived a long-running U.S. Census Bureau advisory committee that was killed by the Trump administration in March.Census Bureau officials won’t be attending the Census Scientific Advisory Committee meeting in September, since the Commerce Department, which oversees the agency, eliminated it. But the advisory committee will forward its recommendations to the bureau, and demographer Allison Plyer said she has heard that some agency officials are excited by the committee’s re-emergence, even if it’s outside official channels.“We will send them recommendations but we don’t expect them to respond since that would be frowned upon,” said Plyer, chief demographer at The Data Center in New Orleans. “They just aren’t getting any outside expertise and they want expertise, which is understandable from nerds.” Follow Mike Schneider on the social platform Bluesky: @mikeysid.bsky.social Mike Schneider, Associated Press
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Motorbike helmets can protect your head against fatal injury, but they leave you to breathe the noxious fumes of traffic. A Spanish startup called Zyon claims that its helmet addresses this problem by combining medical grade filtration with the most advanced shock-protection technology available, transforming every breath into clean air while keeping your coconut in one piece. Premium helmet models like the $900 Shoei Neotec 3 look cool and offer ECE 22.06 P/J certificationthe latest European standard for motorcycle helmet safety, which includes more stringent testing procedures and impact points than any other certification in the worldbut leave riders completely exposed to pollutants. One budget optionthe $56 Indian Shellios Purosprovides basic HEPA (high efficiency particulate air) filtration for but fails both European and U.S. safety standards. Only the $850 Zyonavailable now for preorder and delivery later in the yearoffers both medical grade air purification and top-tier impact protection in a single system. [Image: Zyon Helmets] “There is currently no approved helmet on the market that includes an integrated filtration system,” Tanguy Uzel, founder of the Madrid-based Zyon Helmets, tells me via email. “The only exception is a model developed by an Indian brand, which does not have homologation or European and American safety standards.” The core of the Zyon is its Breath Safe System, which the company claims processes every molecule of air before it enters your body. How much do you need this? Motorcyclists suffer PM2.5 exposures of 75 micrograms per cubic meter, 5 times more than pedestrians and 15 times more than car occupants. This pollution penetrates lung alveoli and enters the bloodstream, causing chronic inflammation that has been linked to cardiovascular disease and cognitive decline. HEPA filters have demonstrated 48% to 60% reductions in allergic symptoms, outperforming many pharmaceutical treatments. Activated carbon neutralizes gases like carbon monoxide, whose exposure above 9 parts per million significantly reduces lung function in commercial drivers. While no portable system completely eliminates gas exposure, partial reduction provides significant health benefits during chronic urban exposure. [Image: Zyon Helmets] Multilayer filtering The Zyon has three layers located inside the chin guard, where you can see its honeycomb openings and a mechanism to change the air-intake according to your speed. The first hydrophobic barrier blocks water and insects. The second layer employs H13 HEPA filters that capture 99.95% of particles down to 0.3 microns, including the dangerous PM2.5 particles that penetrate deep into the respiratory system and enter the bloodstream, causing chronic inflammation. A third layer uses activated carbon to absorb poisonous gases like carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxides that escape from exhaust pipes, the company says. A final layer protects the assembly and maintains filter integrity for one to three months of use, depending on the quality of the air during easy rides. This multi-layer filter design eliminates 99% of the pollution that motorcyclists would normally inhale in a city, where concentrations of toxic particles reach levels that would trigger health warnings if they occurred indoors. Thats for your lungs. For your cranium, the helmet uses the Swedish multidirectional impact protection system (MIPS), which reduces rotational forces during a crash. A low-friction layer allows the helmet to move 10 to 15 millimeters relative to the head during impact, deflecting energy that could damage the brain. This technology functions without interfering with the filtration system or the neck sealing necessary to maintain clean air, the company points out. The ECE 22.06 P/J certification (introduced in the EU in 2022) triples the number of impact points tested compared to previous regulations and includes oblique impacts that simulate real accidents. The U.S. uses the Department of Transportations FMVSS 218 standard, which is legally required but is considered a Mickey Mouse-level protection that provides minimum helmet performance rather than optimal protection. [Image: Zyon Helmets] Three-mode ventilation The company claims its helmet maintains effective ventilation, even when stopped at traffic lights, through three modes without the need for electric fans. It offers Urban for slow traffic, Road for medium speeds, and Touring for highway use. A single mechanism switches between modes according to riding conditions. The company says that air enters through the front intake, filters through the four layers, circulates through internal channels, and exits through rear vents. This continuous current maintains positive pressure inside the helmet, preventing dirty air from entering through small leaks in the sealinga critical detail that makes the filtration effective. “Our filter acts by electrostatic attraction to capture fne particles and by chemical reaction with a layer of active carbon to neutralize toxic gases. Unlike mechanical filters (such as those of masks), this system allows better breathability, but also requires regular replacement,” Uzel tells me. The Zyons shell combines fiberglass with organic materials in an integrated matrix. The materials are chemically bonded together during manufacturing to create a single, unified composite material rather than separate layers glued together. The glass fibers provide strength and prevent cracking, while the organic resin allows controlled flexibility that absorbs crash energy by deforming slightly instead of transmitting all the impact force directly to your head, which your brain will be happy about. The helmet is loaded with some clever electronics too, including integrated air quality sensors that can talk to a mobile app that monitors what goes through the filtering system and warns when the filter needs changing. “The duration of the filter depends on the environment, but it is recommended to change it every one to three months. Once opened, even without use, it begins to lose properties due to exposure to air,” Uzel says. “The helmet detects flights and air conditions in real time. From that data, the app generates custom statistics on the filtered contamination level and filter performance, and notifies the user when to replace it.” The helmet also has aviation-class accelerometers, which will identify accident patterns and automatically alert emergency services in your phonea potentially lifesaving technology for riders who crash in remote areas. The rear light activates when braking through the same motion sensors whenever they detect deceleration, improving visibility especially in low-light conditions or high pollution. The battery provides 18 hours of autonomy and charges via USB-C. It looks like a great design, if it works like they say. The combination of medical filtration, MIPS protection, and smart electronics should protect you against the two main threats that motorcyclists face: accidents and pollution. For riders who spend hours daily breathing toxic urban air, this could be the solution.
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The fertility rate in the U.S. dropped to an all-time low in 2024 with less than 1.6 kids per woman, new federal data released Thursday shows.The U.S. was once among only a few developed countries with a rate that ensured each generation had enough children to replace itself about 2.1 kids per woman. But it has been sliding in America for close to two decades as more women are waiting longer to have children or never taking that step at all.The new statistic is on par with fertility rates in western European countries, according to World Bank data.Alarmed by recent drops, the Trump administration has taken steps to increase falling birth rates, like issuing an executive order meant to expand access to and reduce costs of in vitro fertilization and backing the idea of “baby bonuses” that might encourage more couples to have kids.But there’s no reason to be alarmed, according to Leslie Root, a University of Colorado Boulder researcher focused on fertility and population policy.“We’re seeing this as part of an ongoing process of fertility delay. We know that the U.S. population is still growing, and we still have a natural increase more births than deaths,” she said.The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released the statistic for the total fertility rate with updated birth data for 2024.In the early 1960s, the U.S. total fertility rate was around 3.5, but plummeted to 1.7 by 1976 after the Baby Boom ended. It gradually rose to 2.1 in 2007 before falling again, aside from a 2014 uptick. The rate in 2023 was 1.621, and inched down in 2024 to 1.599, according to the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics.Birth rates are generally declining for women in most age groups and that doesn’t seem likely to change in the near future, said Karen Guzzo, director of the Carolina Population Center at the University of North Carolina.People are marrying later and also worried about their ability to have the money, health insurance and other resources needed to raise children in a stable environment.“Worry is not a good moment to have kids,” and that’s why birth rates in most age groups are not improving, she said.Asked about birth-promoting measures outlined by the Trump administration, Guzzo said they don’t tackle larger needs like parental leave and affordable child care.“The things that they are doing are really symbolic and not likely to budge things for real Americans,” she said. Increase in births in new data The CDC’s new report, which is based on a more complete review of birth certificates than provisional data released earlier this year, also showed a 1% increase in births about 33,000 more last year compared to the prior year.That brought the yearly national total to just over 3.6 million babies born.But this is different: The provisional data indicated birth rate increases last year for women in their late 20s and 30s. However, the new report found birth rate declines for women in their 20s and early 30s, and no change for women in their late 30s.What happened? CDC officials said it was due to recalculations stemming from a change in the U.S. Census population estimates used to compute the birth rate.That’s plausible, Root said. As the total population of women of childbearing age grew due to immigration, it offset small increases in births to women in those age groups, she said. The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content. Mike Stobbe, AP Medical Writer
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