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Heat and Learning
"We provide the first evidence that cumulative heat exposure inhibits cognitive skill development and that school air conditioning can mitigate this effect. Student fixed effects models using 10 million PSAT-takers show that hotter school days in the year prior to the test reduce learning, with extreme heat being particularly damaging and larger effects for low income and minority students. ... New data providing the first measures of school-level air conditioning penetration across the US suggest such infrastructure almost entirely offsets these effects."
Experiential or Material Purchases? Social Class Determines Purchase Happiness
"Across multiple studies using a range of methodologies, we found that individuals of higher social class, whose abundant resources make it possible to focus on self-development and self-expression, were made happier by experiential over material purchases. ... lower-class individuals were made happier from material purchases or were equally happy from experiential and material purchases."
Did Rwanda’s Paul Kagame trigger the genocide of his own people?
"Millions of lives were lost in the ethnic and political violence that embroiled Rwanda in the 1990s. Rwanda’s current president Paul Kagame was initially hailed as a hero for stopping the genocide, but, as Canadian journalist Judi Rever reveals in her new book, the truth is much darker". More from OpenCanada.