Boarding Schools for Girls

A March 20 article by Whittier Daily News staff writer Brian Charles reports that the desire to attend college is now more common among female student than among their male counterparts:

According to a study by the Center for Education Policy, 85 percent of girls in grades three through 12 said they planned to attend college, while 77 of boys planned to attend college.

Girl were also 13 percent more likely to see a four-year college in their future than boys, and 10 percent more likely to do more than the bare minimum amount of work to pass a class.

"We have closed the attitudinal gap between boys and girls," said Kathy Onoye, chief executive officer for elementary education at Pasadena Unified School District. "We were very aware 20 years ago about the gap in math, for instance, and we've closed that gap."

Labels: colleges, education, school

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Using computer counseling to help teenage girls prevent pregnancy may be more cost-effective than other interventions, according to a new study from the University of Maryland School of Medicine.

• Researchers studied 235 pregnant teenagers under 18 years old.
• Some received the usual care, and others received computer-assisted counseling in which teenagers use customized software to assess their health risks, behaviors, and other factors.
• The idea was to help them prevent further pregnancies.

The computer-assisted counseling was much less expensive than other interventions, and its results compared favorably with other programs. This study appeared in the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine.

Labels: pregnancy, prevention

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According to a March 16 article by Ani Esmailian of celebrity news and gossip site hollyscoop.com, actress Angelina Jolie has contributed $75,000 toward the establishment of a school for girls in the war-torn nation of Afghanistan:

Jolie visited the Tangi region in the war-torn country in October 2008 and instantly knew she had to help out in any way she could. And 18 months later, the all girls school opened its doors.

Speaking at the opening ceremony, 14-year-old Laila praised Jolie and the U.N. for pouring money into education.

She said, "I always had hopes and dreams of going to school. The hope to become a qualified teacher has revived in me."

The ability of Afghani girls to attend school has been severely curtailed in recent years, as Taliban sympathizers continue a violent campaign against the education of girls and women.

Labels: afghanistan

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Teenagers form friendships based on common ethnicity, even in schools which have diverse populations, according to a new study from Stanford University.

• Dr. Matthew Jackson used data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, and found that high school students are more likely to meet and be friends with people of their own race.
  
• Black students value friendships with students of other races at 55 percent compared to friendships with other blacks.
  
• For Asians, that figure is 90 percent.
  
• For white and Hispanic students, friendships with students of other races are valued at between 55 and 90 percent.
  
• Dr. Prudence Carter, a Stanford University sociologist, said that black students may segregate for a sense of community because they tend to be in the minority.

This study was presented at the National Proceedings of Science.

Labels: ethnicity, relationships, friendships

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Thinking about volunteering to help students at a local school or after-school program? The benefits of this activity may be even greater than you expect.

According to a new study from Washington University and Johns Hopkins University, older volunteers who help children learn provide benefits to themselves as well as the students,

• Researchers looked at the Experience Corps, a program in which 2,000 volunteers over 55 years old work with 20,000 students in 22 different cities.
  
• They found that students in the program gained 60 percent greater progress with reading comprehension and sounding out words compared to students not in the program.
  
• However, the researchers also found that the volunteers showed improved physical activity and health compared to adults of similar age and demographics.

Labels: tutor, mentoring

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What your children fight about may have an impact on the relationship, according to a new study from the University of Missouri.

• If the children are fighting over physical and emotional personal space, such as becoming angry when a brother borrows a shirt without asking or when an older sister hangs around the friends of a younger sibling, the siblings will report less trust and communication.
  
• However, if the children are fighting about fairness and equality issues, such as taking turns and sharing chores, their fights had no impact on the quality of their relationship.

"Parents need to establish and enforce family rules about respecting privacy, personal space and property," she said. However, when children fight, parents should usually let them work it out because when parents stepped in, fighting usually escalates.

Professor Nichole Campione-Barr and her associates studied pairs of siblings ages 8 to 20 years old, in a report published in the journal Child Development.

Labels: relationships, siblings, parenting, fighting

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Girls who are obese as teenagers may suffer from infertility as adults, according to a study in the journal Endocrine Today.

Researchers from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine asked 3154 women ages 42 to 52 years old to tell them how heavy they were during high school. Adolescent obesity was associated with an increased likelihood of childlessness.

"Perhaps young obese girls will listen more carefully to advice about weight loss and exercise if they learn about the potential harmful effects of excessive weight," said lead author, Alex Polotsky, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology.
 

Labels: obesity

Posted By: Jane St. Clair 0 Comments

If your daughter is spending too much time in a tanning both, skin cancer may not be your only worry.  

According to a new study in the medical journal the Archives of Dermatology, teens who overuse tanning booths are more likely to overuse alcohol and drugs too.

Researchers from the Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and State University of New York studied 421 college students, asking them questions that would reveal an "addiction" to indoor tanning salons such as "Do you ever feel guilty that you are using tanning beds too much?" and "Do you try other non-tanning related activities but find you really like spending time in tanning booths?"

About 42% of the students in the survey who were compulsive about indoor tanning reported using more than one drug in the previous month. They were more likely to drink alcohol and smoke more marijuana than other students.

A new federal law provides that tanning booth customers pay an extra 10% tax starting this summer. Studies from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration found that indoor tanning causes skin cancer, premature aging, and eye damage.
 

Labels: alcohol, tanning, drug_use

Posted By: Jane St. Clair 0 Comments

Granddaughters of women who eat high-fat diets while they are pregnant may be at greater risk for breast cancer, according to an animal study from Georgetown University.

• Dr. Sonia de Assis gave one group of pregnant rats a high-fat diet while a control group were fed a normal one.
• If both maternal and paternal grandmothers ate the high fat diet, their granddaughters had a 30% greater chance of breast cancer.
• If only one grandmother did, their risk was 20% greater than normal.

This study was presented at the annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research.
 

Labels: health, abortion, cancer

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