In November 2011 there was a study conducted by Temple University public-health doctoral candidate, Clare Lenhart. The study examined 44,000 teens who were surveyed about their weight, lifestyle, health issues, and how often they exhibited unhealthy behavior, according to Education Week.

It was discovered in the study that many kids want to lose weight, but a lot of them consistently do things that are detrimental to their health like consuming unhealthy snacks and drinks and also smoking.

The study found that of the 44,000 teens, 5,944 of those them were considered to be overweight. The factors for gaining weight were different for females and males. According to the study results, females that wanted to lose weight would exercise for twenty minutes. However, these same females were likely to drink sodas, which counteract their workout. The most common things keeping some males from losing weight is playing video games too much and not exercising.

Lenhart suggests that doctors not only check young people’s weight but keep track of the way young people are losing weight.

It is clear that Lenhart is serious about young people’s health. She suggest that we see how youth work towards losing weight and analyze what they are doing right and what they are doing wrong. Lenhart believes this will help guide teens toward healthier weight loss activities.

A version of this story aired on NPR's All Things Considered, 11/22/11.

Nina Porzucki, Turnstyle News

A few weeks ago, in the middle of Zuccotti Park 21-year-old Victoria Sobel set up a webcam on her refurbished laptop or “hackintosh,” as she called it, and logged into Livestream.com. Looking into the camera she called out to viewers watching all over the world, “Hi Livestream, are we live?”

A string of messages from people watching Sobel filled the screen. They wrote questions to her.

“Someone is asking if there’s a march today?” she said to me and then looked back into the camera to talk to viewers and answer the question. “I’m going to take you to the calendar board so we’ll find out. And I’m going to take a walk around the park.”

The Occupy Wall Street livestream feed and its offshoots in other cities are changing the way in which thousands of people around the world have viewed the protests – live and unedited.

Here’s how it happened. Protesters in Zuccotti Park in September wanted to get the word out. They set up a free Livestream account and began broadcasting. Initially not many people tuned in but then stuff started happening, like the arrests during the march across the Brooklyn Bridge on October 1. Suddenly, there were hundreds of people going to Livestream.com to watch what was happening.

All this attention has caused a big bump for the company Livestream.com, but with odd consequences. Back in September, when the occupiers first set up their free channel, viewers sympathetic to the movement complained – loudly. As they watched the movement unfold, they were subjected to advertisements. The concept “Live from Zuccotti Park brought to you by TMobile, Hyundai, or Toshiba,” didn’t sit so well with Occupy supporters.

After high school, I needed to take a year off before going to college. I felt like I had been actively learning since I was born. According to scientists, I started before that...

In her TED Talks video, Annie Murphy Paul author of Origins: How the Nine Months Before Birth Shape the Rest of Our Lives, reveals the research being done about the learning we do before we’re born. Thanks to a field of research called Fetal Origins, researchers have found that everything from food preferences to language recognition are determined in the womb.

Read more...

By Kayla Ritchey

I nervously signed onto a strange video chat room that I had seen advertised somewhere.  I was anxious because I’d never been on a video chat site that allowed millions of people to see me.

All of a sudden, a private message popped up on my screen and the user said he knew where I was. He said he would post an inappropriate video of me, if I did not do what he told me, and threatened to knock on my door with a gun and kill me. I was so frightened that I left the site for a whole day.

However, I still continued to go on the site— after all, the purpose of the site is to meet new people and make friends. I know I’m taking a risk by logging on to a chat site, where someone could stalk me, threaten me, or steal my personal information. But the temptation of meeting people outweighs the risk for me.

To be a smarter “chatter” I learned to handle these kinds of messages by turning off my own camera and reporting the user. I realized that no matter what site you go on there will always be that one person you want to avoid.

By Rayana Godfrey

Gratitude, research psychologists have found, is an abstract concept. It requires reflecting on not only how another person has done right by you, but also how you might return the favor. Perhaps that’s not something we need experts to tell us, but it’s worth bearing in mind when considering whether gratitude might be beyond the capabilities of the teenage brain.

Take for example the popular YouTube clip “Greatest freak out ever (ORIGINAL VIDEO),” in which a teenage boy goes ballistic in his bedroom after his mom cancels his World of Warcraft account. “I'm going to run away! You'll never see me again! I swear!” he shouts, as he slams himself repeatedly into his bed, tears off his clothes and screeches like someone out of an Exorcist movie.

What goes around, comes around, seems to be one of the takeaways from the results of “Crossing the Line (2011),” a study done by the American Association of University Women about sexual harassment in school, in May and June of 2011. 

Notably, a third of those students who reported being harassed, also admitted to being harassers. And almost all of the students who reported being harassers, experienced some form of sexual harassment themselves.

Out of the 48 percent of students surveyed who said they had been sexually harassed, 87 percent of them said the harassment had a negative effect on them. Half of those students did nothing in response to the harassment.

Different kinds of sexual harassment were identified in the survey, verbal harassment being the most common. One third of students reported being harassed on Facebook or online, and those students were also likely to be harassed in person.

The study surveyed almost 2,000 students between 7th and 12th grades.

For more details on the study results, view the entire report here.

Also check out a personal commentary about sexual harassment from Mikki Robinson.

CAPTION: Musician, Alex De Grassi (background) and author, Daniel Levitin (foreground) sign books and CD's at Inforum. Photo Credit: Meles Gebru

The Commonwealth Club in San Francisco hosted an Inforum event last week that featured a conversation between Daniel Levitin, author of This Is Your Brain on Music and musician Alex de Grassi, a Grammy Award-nominated Fingerstyle Guitarist.

Levitin, who is also a Professor of Psychology and Behavioral Neuroscience at McGill University, provided the technical know-how about music and cognitive functions while De Grassi brought years of musical experience as a guitarist. The conversation had something for everyone, neuroscientist or music nerd.

While this was Levitin and De Grassi’s first time formally working together, De Grassi happens to be one of Levitin’s favorite musicians. When he wasn’t bouncing information off of De Grassi, Levitin was requesting he play bits of his favorite songs.

One interesting topic they discussed was about the chemicals the body releases while listening to music. Oxytocin, the same chemical that is found in breast-milk and is also released during sex, is present when people listen to music together. “I’m not saying that listening to music is the same thing as having sex or doing drugs, but our bodies do react in a lot of the same ways to it,” said Levitin.

So while questions like, “Is musical talent genetic?” remained unanswered, the audience got a little more insight into why, for example, it feels good to go to shows.
 

Meles Gebru also contributed to this post.

In October 2011 a study, conducted by the Lawrence Hall of Science and SRI International of Menlo Park entitled “High Hopes:--Few Opportunities: The Status Elementary Science Education in California,” was released about the state of elementary science education, according to The Mercury News.

There has been much debate in the U.S. on whether or not students should begin studying science as soon as they enter Elementary school. This study shows that California schools spend very little time teaching science compared to math and English. The study also argues this is the reason state test scores in science are low. Science only makes up six percent of a school’s test scores while subjects like English make up 57 %.

Rob Zaccheo of Pioneer High in San Jose who has been teaching for seventeen years, told the Mercury News that the amount of scientific thinking among students has shrunk. He said that while one’s scientific knowledge depends on what they have practiced in the past, many students would tell the teachers to, “just tell me what I need to know to past the test.” 

The study shows that the lack of elementary science can affect not only the students, but even the teachers. Studies show that 85% of elementary teachers have received no training in science in the past three years. Holly Jacobson of the Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning at WestEd told the Mercury News that mastering science at a young age is beneficial. But Jacobson also stated that at the end of the day there is no time left for subjects like science.  

 Whether or not science is added to elementary school one thing is for certain, there will be much debate about this topic for a long time. Let’s see what happens next.

The California STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) Learning Network in collaboration with Superintendent Tom Torlakson hosted the California STEM Summit at UC Davis last week. The summit was intended to spark STEM innovation in education, as well as highlight some outstanding STEM achievement that students are currently doing.

Chris Roe, the CEO of the CA STEM Learning Network, said the summit was a success and generated a lot of energy around re-vamping STEM education. One of the highlights he said, was Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom who spoke to the group about the drop in California’s economic competitiveness. According to Roe, Newsom said that there are 500,000 unfilled jobs in CA and 2 million unemployed Californians. Roe said this issue is all tied in to reforming the way we think about STEM education.

Students participated in a panel discussion called STEM Learning 24/7. “The education system is geared towards the school day, but so much learning goes on outside of the school day. There are opportunities to use that time outside of school,” said Roe. “Students that participated in the panel provided an eye-opening perspective on how they view the world... Adults need to listen to student voices when planning lessons,” said Roe.

As part of the student showcase, Superintendent Torlakson met with 15 different groups of students, doing hands-on activities and interacting with their projects. One such group was the Youth Aviation Academy, led by retired Air Force Colonel Thomas Sherman, who is also a member of the Tuskegee Airmen. He has developed a program to get kids involved in physics and aviation. As a supplement to the program, he provides flight-simulation training to students, and is specifically reaching out to girls and minority students, said Roe.

There’s often a perception that only “gifted” students or honors students get to do neat science projects, said Roe, and that things like robotics are reserved for kids at the head of their classes. “All students--any student can do this,” he said.

By the Mobile Action Lab

OAKLAND--Have you ever felt like singing your heart out, but you didn't have the moxie to perform your vocals in front of a live audience? There's an app that lets you karaoke to your favorite song with the option of adding Auto-Tune, which corrects your voice to stay on key. Only when you're sure you have a masterpiece do your friends get to hear it. The app's called StarMaker Karaoke with Auto-Tune, and here's one of the company's founders, Nathan Sedlander, demo-ing how it works. 

Youth Radio invited StarMaker's other founder and CEO, Jeff Daniel, to our Oakland studios to bring us behind the scenes in the making of StarMaker. In addition to being potential users, we produce apps through Youth Radio's Mobile Action Lab. So our young minds are always seeking lessons from the pros on how to make our products legit.