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United States Italy Dem. Rep. Congo Population mid-2008 305 million 60 million 67 million Population 2050 (projected) 438 million 62 million 189 million Lifetime births per woman 2.1 1.3 6.5 Percent of population below age 15 20% 14% 47% Percent of population ages 65+ 13% 20% 3% Life expectancy at birth 78 years 81 years 53 years Annual births 4.3 million 568,120 2.9 million Annual deaths 2.4 million 575,300 0.8 million Annual births minus deaths 1.9 million -7,200 2.1 million Percent of population undernourished <2.5%

Pieces are not dreamed up by trained editors nor commissioned based on submitted questions. Instead they are assigned by an algorithm, which mines nearly a terabyte of search data, Internet traffic patterns, and keyword rates to determine what users want to know and how much advertisers will pay to appear next to the answers.

To appreciate the impact Demand is poised to have on the Web, imagine a classroom where one kid raises his hand after every question and screams out the answer. He may not be smart or even right, but he makes it difficult to hear anybody else.

But what Demand has realized is that the Internet gets only half of the simplest economic formula right: It has the supply part down but ignores demand. Give a million monkeys a million WordPress accounts and you still might never get a seven-point tutorial on how to keep wasps away from a swimming pool. Yet that’s what people want to know.

It is now late October. Have any of your students already missed more than a month of school? Are any on track to? Can you even know? Educators understand the importance of school attendance -- as we often say, "You can't teach an empty desk." And schools have mechanisms in place to track it, including average daily attendance (ADA) and truancy. But neither of those measures addresses chronic absenteeism. Chronic absenteeism is typically defined as missing 10 percent or more of a school year -- approximately 18 days a year, or just two days every month. And across the nation, 5 to 7.5 million students are chronically absent.

Last year, more than two million prescriptions for Ritalin and other ADHD drugs were written specifically for children under 17, and at least 75 per cent of them were for young males. Part 3 of a 6-part series.

taking a drug for attention deficit disorder each morning has become as commonplace as downing a vitamin.

prescriptions for Ritalin and other amphetamine-like drugs for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder shot up to 2.9 million in 2009, a jump of more than 55 per cent in four years.

"We must use technology to empower teachers and improve the way students learn," said Joel Klein, a former New York City schools' chief who now leads News Corp.'s education tablet program. "At its best, education technology will change the face of education by helping teachers manage the classroom and personalize instruction."

"We must use technology to empower teachers and improve the way students learn," said Joel Klein, a former New York City schools' chief who now leads News Corp.'s education tablet program. "At its best, education technology will change the face of education by helping teachers manage the classroom and personalize instruction."

Over the last 40 years, America’s inmate population has quadrupled, from 500,000 to 2.3 million, giving the U.S. 5 percent of the world’s population, but 25 percent of its prisoners. The country now spends $70 billion a year — $50 billion of it at the state level — locking up all of these people, many of whom are nonviolent offenders snagged in the war on drugs.

Up until the 15th century, the cultures of Eastern Africa lived in relative isolation, building up kingdoms and empires, spreading agriculture and civilization throughout the region.

n the 15th century, the Portuguese began exploring the coast of East Africa, seeking to seize control of the spice trade from the Muslim presence in the Middle East. Islamic resistance to this led to a large-scale Arab colonization of the coast, which lasted until European colonialism began in earnest in the 19th century.

There are hundreds of languages spoken throughout East Africa, ranging from those spoken by only a few thousand to those spoken by millions. The most widely-spoken language, by far, is Swahili, with more than 5 million native speakers, and millions more who speak it as a secondary trade language. The island nations of East Africa, such as Madagascar, do not speak Swahili, instead speaking their own native languages, such as Malagasy.