A new report by Melissa Kearney and Philip Levine at the University of Maryland, suggests that common ideas about teenage pregnancy might be backwards.  

Teenagers in the United States are more likely to become teen parents than teenagers in other western countries. They aren’t having more sex -- they’re using less contraception, according to a study in 2011. The study suggests that this phenomenon is due to limited access to healthcare and contraceptives and also less social acceptance of teenage sexuality.

But Kearney and Levine suggest something different -- that teenage girls growing up in poverty don't see a downside to pregnancy.

This may sound surprising -- it's a contrast to the familiar assumption that teenagers accidentally get pregnant, drop out of school, and become financially distressed.

Instead, Kearney argues that teenage girls who are getting pregnant already have low economic prospects, and this lowers the opportunity cost of having a baby.

Their analysis takes a look at correlations between teen mothers and poverty rates, and sets them against ethnographic and sociological research about causation. “We know [from correlations] that girls who give birth as teens, go on to have higher rates of poverty, welfare use, lower rates of labor force attachment and lower wages. Children of teen moms are more likely to drop out of high school, live in poverty,” said Kearney.

But if the teen mothers had waited until their twenties to have children, would their economic prospects have been any better? The data argue no, according to Kearney.

Teens in Tech, a tech and youth-centric company that encourages young entrepreneurship, recently created a jobs board that will allow startups to post jobs for high school students. It costs $15 to post a listing and some of the current ones including positions like Mobile Engineer Intern at Backplane in Palo Alto, California and Technical Analyst Intern at Kiip in San Francisco, California.

With new innovations and technologies being created every day, youthful perspectives are like gold for startup companies who want to stay current. But one of the largest contingents of tech consumers, high school-aged folks, are often forced to stand on the sidelines until they are in or have graduated from college. Teens in Tech wants to change that.

Just about everyone has used Google Maps to explore their neighborhoods. Admit it; it’s a lot of fun to leave the house without having to move from the safety of your rolling chair. Well, now, thanks to a partnership between The Catlin Seaview Survey and Google, soon anyone will be able to stalk the Great Barrier Reef located off the coast of Australia with the help of Google Maps. I imagine it’s kind of like your own private snorkeling trip minus the high prices and wetness.

The Seaview Survey is using a specially designed panoramic camera—imagine a small torpedo-like submarine with a camera inside it.  Their website describes their aim as, “to carry out the first comprehensive study to document the composition and health of coral reefs on the Great Barrier Reef and Coral Sea across an unprecedented depth range”

The Survey recently headed to Heron Island where they surveyed nearly 10km using the camera. Though was it was only pilot expedition, they returned with some pretty amazing snapshots of lively reefs inhabited by turtles and fish, and a beached ship rotting in a shallow water reef.

On their website they have some examples of photographs they have already taken and even an example of what the map will look like.

Check out the video below explaining their expedition and what's to come.

Read more...

With just a ten millimeter wrench and a screwdriver, Brian Simmons has built and sold more than 100 motorized bicycles in Oakland, CA, under the label Rebelbikes. The company has been around for three years and it’s a two-man shop based out of the comfort of his living room.

His two wheeled creations are motorized pedal assisted bicycles that can go up to 35 mph. Simmons’ ultimate goal is to see bicycles replace cars, and he knows it’s a stretch, but despite that, he is taking his dream on one bike at a time. 

This just in: chocolate is not a taste.

That was one of many interesting lessons Youth Radio's core class ingested last week as part of food scientist Barb Stuckey's "Science of Taste" talk. The event, part of our Brains and Beaker's series, explored the difference between flavors (like chocolate, for example) and our five tastes: salty, sweet, bitter, sour, and umami. Other "tastes," like chocolate or spiciness for example, are actually related to our sense of smell or touch.

In order to explain the difference between taste and our other senses, Stuckey suggested various food-related experiments from her recent book, "Taste What You're Missing." Some standouts included holding then releasing your nose while eating a flavored jelly bean (woah, intense flavor!), holding a spoonful of butter against your tongue (did you know it doesn't have a taste?), and breathing in air from a container filled with blue cheese (potent!).

She also demonstrated an easy way to experience the most elusive of our tastes, umami. Have you heard of it before? Check out the video to find out how to bring this savory new flavor to your diet. 

The Center for Information Technology Research in The Interest of Society (CITRIS) is at it again. A few months ago Youth Radio interviewed Greg Niemeyer, a professor at UC Berkeley and director of the Data and Democracy Initiative at CITRIS, who collected air pollution data and turned it into music. This time the project led by engineers at the University of California, Berkeley called The Floating Sensor Network, isn’t air-based but instead takes place in the water, specifically the Sacramento River.

The Floating Sensor Network, which is led by associate professor Alexandre Bayen, uses sensor robots with GPS-enabled smartphones inside of them to monitor water flow and its influence on anything from the spread of pollutants to the movement of salmon in water.  The Network hopes that this new tool can be used to help manage fresh water in more efficient ways.

The Utah Senate passed a bill that will allow schools to decide not to teach sex education, and prohibits teachers from talking about homosexuality to their students.

If teachers decide to teach sex education, they will be restricted to an abstinence-only curriculum, according to the Huffington Post. Currently, parents can opt to remove their children from a sex education class. But under the new legislation, parents must opt to have their children participate in sex education classes.

Sen. Ross Romero, D-Salt Lake City, was just one of the democratic senators to object to the bill. He said that expecting kids to receive healthy information about sex from parents is unreasonable, as kids come from all different home situations. He also attempted to amend the bill to allow teachers to support and provide information to gay teenagers, according to the Salt Lake Tribune.

Sen. John Valentine, R-Orem said, "I recognize that some parents do not take the opportunity to teach in their own homes, but we as a society should not be teaching or advocating homosexuality or sex outside marriage or different forms of contraceptives for premarital sex,” according the Tribune.

Check out some Youth Radio storis on the issue:

* Real Health Education Act Proposed in California

* Sex Ed Through The Ages

* Teens Talk About Sex Education

* A New Bill To Fund Abstinence Programs

Yesterday was Career Day at Oakland Charter High School, in downtown Oakland, CA. A doctor, a news reporter, and someone from the DEA came to talk to students about career possibilities. But to see the DEA in action, students just needed to walk a few blocks over to where Oaksterdam University was being raided by the DEA and IRS for dispensing marijuana too close to schools. 

The university reports to offer training for the cannabis industry, and was founded by Richard Lee, one of the fathers of the movement to legalize marijuana in 2007, the same year that Oakland Charter High School moved into the neighborhood. Since Oaksterdam put down roots, multiple marijuana dispensaries have popped up nearby.

How does this affect students at Oakland Charter High School, which is just one of many schools in the area? According to Physics and Biology teacher Gabriela Jimenez, she tries to focus on what goes on inside the walls of school, and not look outside the window. Check out an excerpt from an interview with Jimenez below.

***

A lot of my colleagues here at the school -- we’ve noticed students coming in with a lot of leaflets and pamphlets. People just come up to them on the corner, 'Oh, there's a pot club over there.' [The students] come inside and saying it’s freedom of speech. Then we look like the bad guys because we’re about academics and teaching them everyday.

I’m not gonna lie, we did have an incident with pot here on campus. This person was very high. The father was very disturbed and he made a comment and said there’s a lot of clubs around here. We said it’s sad that we don’t have control over what’s outside our walls. It’s disheartening that we try to be good inside of our schools, and outside there’s a lot of stuff that our kids are being pushed towards.

Perhaps it’s not so much that they’re looking for the outlet of marijuana, but there’s adults that take advantage of their innocence. Give them a leaflet, the kids get confused. There was a purpose for this building -- for school. Our neighbors are nice people, nice business owners. They like our students, they’re well-behaved. It just takes one incident to mess a kid up.

The following aired on KCBS. 

By: Venus Morris

Being healthy isn't easy when you're homeless.

At one point in high school at was out in the world living alone. For that time, I ate at fast food restaurants like Taco Bell or I ate nothing at all, and this habit was hard to break.

By the time I went back to my parent's house, I had trained my self not to eat, and It got to the point where I passed out on my way to Spanish class from dehydration. I realized at that moment that being healthy means more than knowing about proper nutrition. It starts with having some peace of mind.But living in today's society, is not that easy.

My community tells me I need to eat organic and shop at Whole Foods and my doctor told me that ideally, I'd be 15 pounds lighter. But when your mind is being pulled into 50 different directions, its difficult to prioritize what you eat.

 A new study shows that the amount of teenagers who have used marijuana increased by 21 percent since 2008. The Partnership at Drugfree.org published the study, and says the upward trend indicates a broader acceptance of the drug.

In particular, the heavy monthly use among teenage boys has increased by 57 percent since 2008, and usage among Hispanic youth is 43 percent higher than Caucasion teens and 25 percent higher than African American teens. 

A year ago, Youth Radio's Sayre Quevedo wrote about being a high school student in Berkeley, CA, where marijuana is readily available. However, he found that while marijuana use in Berkeley was higher than the state average, it had remained steady over recent years. Teens had a perception that high numbers of their peers used marijuana, but that wasn't necessarily correct. 

Meanwhile, the Drugfree.org study shows that more teens are smoking marijuana, AND more teens think that all their friends are smoking as well. Only 26 percent of survey respondents agree that "most teens don't smoke marijuana."

Check out Quevedo's commentary that aired on NPR here.