Poor air quality can dampen childhood spirit
February 10, 2021
Study finds pollution can increase stress, reduce self-esteem in children
The toll that air pollution takes on a person’s physical health is well documented. But new University of Georgia research suggests there could be another price too: a child’s drive to be successful.
UGA researchers investigated noncognitive traits patterns of thoughts, feelings and behaviors in adolescents who lived in areas of concentrated air pollution in China. These noncognitive traits, sometimes called “soft skills,” are associated with a child’s ability to find academic, social and professional success.
Their findings were troubling.
• Investors offload assets
• Moghalu knocks CBN over ‘knee-jerk’ approach
• Directive good for anti-money laundering war, says Gwadabe
Exchanges and investors in cryptocurrencies have started reviewing their business strategies as the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) sticks to its gun, saying its restriction of transaction in the digital assets is in the interest of the country and parties involved.
Nigerian investors across coin exchange platforms are cashing out to hold until they fully understand how the CBN’s directive would affect them, just as the platforms urged them to switch to card deposits as they equally monitor the new regulation.
In an extensive engagement, yesterday, former deputy governor of the apex bank, Prof. Kingsley Moghalu, disagreed with the CBN, saying there are better ways to regulate than adopting a “knee-jerk” approach. Moghalu, who was part of the CBN team that initiated the Bank Verification Number (BVN) and other inno
Advances in modeling and sensors can help farmers and insurers manage risk
Insurance Daily News
News Reporter-Staff News Editor at
Insurance Daily News When drought caused devastating crop losses in
Malawi in 2015-2016, farmers in the southeastern African nation did not initially fear for the worst: the government had purchased insurance for such a calamity. But millions of farmers remained unpaid for months because the insurer’s model failed to detect the extent of the losses, and a subsequent model audit moved slowly. Quicker payments would have greatly reduced the shockwaves that rippled across the landlocked country.
While the insurers fixed the issues resulting in that error, the incident remains a cautionary tale about the potential failures of agricultural index insurance, which seeks to help protect the livelihoods of millions of smallholder farmers across the globe. Recent advances in crop modeling and remote sensing - especially in the availability and use of hig
By Josh Paine | University of Georgia Feb 7, 2021
Feb 7, 2021
Agritourism has been steadily growing in Georgia over the past decade, and a new consumer survey by UGA economists shows that rural travel and agritourism is expected to rise in 2021, rebounding quicker than urban markets.Â
 Andrew Davis Tucker
The pandemic has put a strain on all sectors of the economy, and the agricultural and food industries were no exception. From supply chain disruptions that led to dumping milk and crops to increased consumer demand for plants, there were many ups and downs in 2020 markets.
University of Georgia agricultural economists recapped the unique year and prognostications for 2021 through the Georgia Ag Forecast seminar presented via webinar Jan. 29 and the
Diether W. Beuermann, Kirabo Jackson
Friedman (1955) famously argued that giving households freedom to choose schools would improve outcomes, including educational performance. At first pass, this is a straightforward claim, since it extends standard results from markets for consumer goods to education. Yet rigorous empirical work has produced mixed results on Friedman’s prediction. For example, voucher experiments suggest that choice can impact students’ measured skills in ways that are highly positive (Eyles and Machin 2015, Bettinger et al. 2017), modest (Muralidharan and Sundararaman 2015, Cohodes et al. 2019), or highly negative (Abdulkadiroglu et al. 2018).
Considering the mixed evidence on the effects of access to selective schools, Beuermann and Jackson (2020) observe that “the lack of robust achievement effects of attending schools that parents prefer is something of a puzzle”. The same puzzle emerges in other realms, including choosing residential neighbourhoods t