Check out some of the highlights from Youth Radio's tech coverage in 2012. For tech junkies, check out our sister site Turnstyle News.

***

What's Going On: The Youth Radio Remix

Marvin Gaye’s album, What’s Going On, has been called one of the great soul music records of all time. The album was showcased at a 1972 concert at the Kennedy Center in Marvin’s hometown of Washington DC. This week, the Kennedy Center is commemorating that live performance, and has asked select musicians to re-imagine “What’s Going On” -- and I'm one of those musicians.

Halo 4: A Hero Evolves

Thousands of Americans lined up last night, not to vote, but to buy one of the most anticipated new video games of the year. Halo 4 is the latest installment of the popular franchise for the Microsoft XBox 360. Some gamers refer to Halo as their Star Wars.

 The Federal Trade Commission has just updated and tightened rules protecting children’s online privacy. Existing restrictions prevent sites from collecting information from minors under the age of 13 without first obtaining parental consent. The new amendments apply that rule to mobile technology and tablets. Jon Leibowitz, the chairman of the trade commission, has called it a "landmark update of a seminal piece of legislation."

Youth Radio’s Malachi Segers has been following the legislation and is concerned that stronger protections could mean less internet freedom. He says, “it should be up to kids and their parents to decide how much they disclose online.”

The Direct Marketing Association and the Association of National Advertisers agrees that heavier restrictions could handicap online marketers' ability to tailor their advertisements to users’ online habits. The industry group’s lawyer, Mr. Stuart P. Ingis, tells the New York Times, “there might be overreaction that would limit just general third-party collection of data, which is very useful to businesses and consumers.”

Take a look at the final changes to the Children's Online Privacy Protection rule and tell us what you think. Here are some highlights:

Change the paramaters of "personal information” that cannot be collected without parental notice and consent, to include geolocation information, photographs, videos and audio files that contain a child’s image or voice.

Disallow kid-directed apps and websites to permit third parties to collect personal information from children through plug-ins without parental notice and consent;

Require website operators and online service providers to take reasonable steps to release children’s personal information only to companies that are capable of keeping it secure and confidential;

Expand the definition of a website or online service directed to children to include plug-ins or ad networks that have actual knowledge that they are collecting personal information through a child-directed website or online service.

Require sites and services that target children only as a secondary audience to differentiate among users, and provide notice and obtain parental consent only for those users who identify themselves as being younger than 13.

Cold temperatures, Christmas songs, and family gatherings. That can only mean one thing: it’s list season. Here’s Youth Radio’s top science stories of the year.

10. Liquid Nitrogen Makes Ice Cream "Cooler": A classic science-room experiment teaches students to make kick-the-can ice cream by shaking it in a bag. But maybe the kids of the 21st century will skip the shaking and reach for a tank of nitrogen.

9. The Color of Green Chemistry: The things you eat and the things you wear are full of obscure, unpronounceable and potentially harmful chemicals. Learn about healthier living through “green chemistry.”

8. Artists Create Music You Can See and Touch: Meet a musical maker who invents instruments and transforms sound waves into a dynamic, planetarium light-show.

by Chantell Williams

Annie always said tomorrow’s always a day away, but will that be the case come December 21, 2012? Because if the Mayans are right, the end is near.

My mom and I watched a movie where the world ended in flames. I was already scared but my mom made it worse by mentioning the 2012 doomsday prophecy. She said “Chantell, we have to be prepared.” Prepared? Prepared for what? There’s no scientific evidence for the world ending this month, but that isn’t all that comforting. What if the scientists are wrong? That’s the eerie thought I can’t get out of my mind.

By Ashley Williams

My grandparents' generation didn’t know the dangers of smoking cigarettes, but now we do. The major health question for my generation could be cell phones. There's still a lot we don't know about the risks, but some experts say we know enough to be concerned. Some recent studies have shown that the radiation from cell phones may be linked to brain and other forms of cancer in the body.

Joel Moskowitz, the Director of the Center for Family and Community Health in the School of Public Health at University of California Berkeley, has read the reports and become a loud advocate for informing users of the dangers. On a recent visit to his office at UC Berkeley, he offered three suggestions for what people can do to decrease their exposure to cell phone radiation:

By Brandon McFarland

On this episode of Youth Radio, we explore the new installment of the Halo video game series, and hear about the effort to mentor talented college students of color and get them on the fast track to top Silicon Valley firms.

Listen to Youth Radio's podcast on Stitcher Radio.

By Ashley Williams

Are you trying to get new speakers in your car but they’re too expensive? Have you ever considered making your own? It’s easy, and the price is right.

For Youth Radio’s latest installment in our science series, Brains and Beakers (or should I say Brains and Speakers?), the Explainers from the Exploratorium came to teach us how to make our own speakers. Being teens themselves, the Explainers can relate to wanting to have music on all the time. So it was exciting when they told us that we can blast our favorite songs whenever we wanted, with just a few items from the local hardware store. All you need are magnets, alligator clips, copper wire, a cone (that could be made out of anything), and of course, a music player.

Hypnosis is the oldest form of psychotherapy.  Researchers have proven its effectiveness in reducing certain kinds of stress and pain.  Yet hypnosis isn't taken as seriously as other forms of therapy. Youth Radio’s Chantell Williams visited Stanford University to find out about new research aimed to support hypnosis with hard science. 

When Katie Duchscherer, a 21 year old Senior at Stanford University, gets anxious during a psychology final exam, she takes a deep breath and puts herself into a hypnotic state:

By Denise Tejada and Ike Sriskandarajah

On a foggy night, a little yellow submarine is docked in Monterey Bay. The research submersible is about to introduce a group of young people to a whole new world and possibly a new line of work. Youth Radio's Denise Tejada went along for the ride.

Chris Randolph and Bailey Da Costa are juniors at Aptos high school in Aptos, CA. They are part of the school’s robotics club. Last year they built a small, remote-controlled submarine that actually explored a shipwreck. Now, team-member Michael Sheely is looking forward to stepping up their game, with some help from the pros. He says, "This year the theme for our robotics competition is going to be observation, so we’re just getting a feel for how the professionals do that sort of thing."

By: Jamal Jackson, Turnstyle News

Last week, iTunes update to version 11 has completely revolutionized the user experience, making the application easier and smarter to use. What makes it different from the other software updates is that there are more dynamic and interesting changes. These changes have given a more unique look to your collection of media. There are fewer text tables (this is a good thing). Larger graphics make things better to view. The most interesting feature to me is the “Up Next” option. This allows the user to select songs to play next while a song is currently playing. If you hold down the playlist-specific play button, you will see it immediately switch into a plus sign. After you finish, when you navigate to your “Up Next” playlist it opens and displays songs you would usually see in a neat classic iTunes list.

Overall, I really like what they’ve done with this application. Everything has been compressed, organized, made more accessible, and simplified for occasional/new/not tech savvy users, thus creating a more intuitive iTunes user experience for anyone to enjoy.

Every time you launch iTunes, it asks you to update the newest version. Mostly likely iTunes users like myself would ignore each update notification, because there’s a lack of noticeable adjustments and it seems like the same old iTunes as of before. But this version is so much better.