Word: lowerings
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...qualify for free or reduced-price lunches rank in the top quartile. Expand the category to include children whose families make less than the median U.S. income, and the total rises to 3.4 million--more than the entire population of Iowa. Now the bad news: nearly half of lower-income students in the top tier in reading fall out of it by fifth grade. As economically disadvantaged brainiacs get older, 25% of them drop ranks in math in high school, and 41% don't finish college. "We're losing them at every stage in education," says Joshua Wyner, executive vice...
...groups: 3-year-olds and 8- and 9-year-olds. Over three one-week periods, the children were randomly assigned to consume one of three fruit drinks daily: one contained the amount of dye and sodium benzoate typically found in a British child's diet, a second had a lower concentration of additives, and a third was additive-free. The children spent a week drinking each of the three mixtures, which looked and tasted alike. During each seven-day period, teachers, parents and graduate students (who did not know which drink the kids were getting) used standardized behavior-evaluation tools...
Stevenson found that children in both age groups were significantly more hyperactive when drinking the beverage with higher levels of additives. Three-year-olds had a bigger response than the older kids did to the drink with the lower dose of additives, which had about the same amount of food coloring as in two 2-oz. (57 g) bags of candy. But even within each age group, some children responded strongly and others not at all. Stevenson's team is looking at how genetic differences may explain the range of sensitivity. One of his colleagues believes that the additives...
...carry Japan out of the political quagmire his deep unpopularity had created. "I've decided to create a new situation by resigning," the 52-year-old Abe told a national TV audience. Abe's ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) - which has a solid majority in the Diet's Lower House and therefore controls the government - announced that it would hold leadership elections on Sept. 19 to choose the country's next Prime Minister. The top candidate is LDP Secretary-General and former Foreign Minister Taro Aso, who emerged as the most influential member of Abe's cabinet...
...biggest loser is likely to be the LDP itself, the party that has dominated Japan for nearly the entire postwar era. Though it holds, along with coalition partners, a two-thirds majority in the Diet's Lower House, and new elections aren't scheduled until Sept. 2009, sagging public support means that the next Prime Minister will almost certainly be forced to call early polls. Barring a new leader who can engineer a miracle turnaround - something none of the well-worn LDP candidates seem capable of - the party could well be tossed out of government altogether. "Abe has thrown...