Tell a journalist that understanding how to read a financial statement could lead to some story ideas, and they’ll likely run as far away as possible. He or she got into writing for a living to avoid numbers.
A sustained period of fast economic growth nations such as China, Japan and South Korea has corresponded with an ever-increasing demand for energy. To meet this demand, these countries have invested significantly in green technology. The significant progress made is underscored in 2009 as China is reported to have passed the U.S. in clean energy investment and finance.
Over the past decade, funding for and participation in after-school programs has grown substantially. To ensure that their promise is effectively delivered, evaluating their relative benefits and required factors for success is critical.
Prisoners suffering from mental illness or showing its symptoms are common among criminal justice populations. The potential relationship between crime and mental illness could have important policy implications, particularly if increased more widespread mental health treatment could prove to have wide effects on rates of criminality.
The issue of gender gap in test scores has long been part of the education-policy debate, and explanations remain highly contested. While the gaps between men and women in the math and science fields have closed in recent decades, strategies to address the disparities are still evolving and being tested in the classroom.
Hearing loss in the United States has been shown to be on the rise — a 2008 survey found that 35 million Americans suffer from the partial or complete loss of the ability to hear. While some of this is due to the aging of the baby boomer generation, hearing loss among younger Americans has also increased.
The benefits associated with being physically active include higher levels of fitness and lower risks of developing a number of chronic diseases. In terms of weight management, however, most people who lose weight from increased physical activity are not able to sustain the loss over time.
Efforts to create healthy workplaces generally focus on safety. Programs that support employees’ choosing healthier behaviors — being more physically active or adopting a better diet, for example — are less common.
