5 Inventors Under 20 That Are Changing the World

Remember that list teachers had you make in elementary school? It was filled with all of the amazing things you wanted to accomplish in your life, most of which were grandiose. And while most of us probably won’t have the opportunity to cure cancer or travel to the moon, some teenagers are already making an impact. All under 20, these kids are using their ingenuity and everyday objects to solve the world’s problems.
Eesha Khare
Just 18 years old, Khare knows more about batteries than most of us combined ever will. This Saratoga, Calif. teenager revolutionized their function by inventing one that can be charged in 20 seconds and keeps power 10 times longer than the average battery. [ph]
Param Jaggi
With carbon dioxide emissions (particularly from cars) becoming a more prevalent environmental hazard, Jaggi decided to look to the environment for a solution. The answer? Algae. Using the water weed, the 17-year-old Jaggi created Algae Mobile – a device inserted into the tailpipe of a car, which converts exhaust into oxygen. [ph]
Marion Betchel
The daughter of geologists and a music lover herself, Betchel found a way to combine her experience with both to fight violence. Using the sound waves from the piano, Betchel created a keyboard-based device that can detect hidden land mines — which, in many areas, are still a huge cause of death, particularly among children. Betchel’s device could prevent many of those unnecessary deaths. [ph]
Ryan Patterson
In Colorado, 17-year-old Patterson just found a way to ease the lives of the deaf using a glove. Equipped with sensors, a radio frequency transmitter and a microcontroller, this glove can interpret hand motions, thereby, translating sign language for the user. [ph]
Raquel Redshirt
In New Mexico’s Navajo Nation, poverty runs rampant while electricity is scarce. Many of the residents can’t afford an electric oven — making food options very limited. That is, until 16-year old Redshirt created a solar-powered one. Comprised of anything lying around — old tires, aluminum foil, shredded paper, dirt — Redshirt created a simple device that’s changing the lives of her family and community. [ph]
Considering all of these great things were accomplished during their teen years, just imagine what these youth are going to do in the next 50 years.
To read about more teenage inventors, click here.
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These Schools Are Opening Their Doors to Struggling Communities

College campuses are expanding, and it’s not due to higher acceptance rates. Rather, it’s because, more and more universities are emphasizing service as a core mission and integrating with the communities around them through service.
Here are a few leading the way in neighborhood engagement.
Penn Alexander School, Philadelphia
In the early 2000s, the University of Pennsylvania started a series of programs targeting the rejuvenation of the nearby Spruce Hill neighborhood. Many of UPenn’s faculty and students live in the area, so the school decided to invest in its stabilization through lighting programs, safety patrols and homebuyer incentives.
Their biggest initiative, however, was the formation of the Penn Alexander elementary school, (previously called the Sadie Tanner Mosell Alexander University Penn Partnership School). What started as a simple public school in a struggling neighborhood is now so vibrant with families that school acceptance is determined by lottery.
Creating Community Connections, Boston
Sponsored by MIT, this program started back in 2000 and benefits the residents of Camfield Estates. MIT connects the area with technology through computer training, free laptops and high speed internet connection. Three-quarters of the residents chose to participate in the program when it was first announced. Called “C3,” it has recently been expanded to provide training and equipment to businesses and institutions in the area, as well as a new computer lab available for residents of the Estates and the neighborhood.
Center for Civic Leadership, Rice University, Houston
At Rice University, the administration has created a curriculum dedicated to service through the Center for Civic Leadership. Students and faculty alike participate in community service projects, research and programs benefiting Houston’s Fifth Ward. For students, service isn’t a one- time deal, but a four-year-long commitment. Freshmen start college with a first-year orientation to the surrounding community, and, if passionate, students can even earn an undergrad certificate in civic leadership. Recently, the Washington Center for Internships and Academic Seminars granted up to four $5,000 scholarships to Rice University to participate in the Center’s activities.
To learn more about universities participating in neighborhood engagement, click here.
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How Farmers Are Implementing a Sharing Economy

From a young age, we’re taught to share. And now as adults, it seems like we’re really putting that lesson into practice — from ride shares to community gardens and even shared farm equipment.
That’s right, in Maine, local farmers are sharing efficient and costly equipment that most could never afford on their own — all thanks to the Shared-Use Farm Equipment Pool (SUFE).

Organized through the partnership of the Maine Farmland Trust (MTF) and the Maine Organic Farms and Gardens Association (MOFGA), the Pool was started after MTF staff member Mike Gold saw a discrepancy between the needs of farmers and the equipment available to them.

So, how does the program work? According to Modern Farmer, for an annual fee of $100, farmers have access these six tools: seedbed cultivator, two-shank sub-soiler, plastic mulch layer, strip tiller, ridge tiller and tine weeder. All of the equipment improves farming efficiency, but is so expensive that it’s unattainable for the average local farmer. For instance, the 1,200 pound plastic mulch layer retails for about $2,000.

“The equipment we choose is relatively simple, fairly easy to understand and operate,” Gold tells Modern Farmer. “They see the opportunity to use that one piece of equipment that they may only use one year or once every few years.”
After joining the Pool, farmers participate in a springtime orientation where they learn how to use all of the machinery. Following that, sharing and coordination is managed via a Google Calendar, which members check for availability.
Equipment can be rented for up to three days, and SUFE does charge members for anything that’s returned late or dirty. According to Gold, there have been very few problems, as most respect the system.
Right now, most of the members are newer vegetable farmers, but the Pool’s number of senior farmers is growing as well. And, with increasing membership, Gold hopes to add more equipment to the inventory also.
For now, though, these farmers are just taking advantage of a great opportunity and learning the value of sharing along the way.
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For These Inmates, Class Is in Session

At California’s San Quentin Prison, inmates are intensely concentrating on the project at hand: learning the vast world of computer coding and programming.
That’s right, prison inmates now have the opportunity to learn computer skills and develop a business model that can be used upon their release. According to Fast Co. Exist, inmates are enrolled in Code 7370 for six months, a class brought to San Quentin by the nonprofit The Last Mile that teaches inmates about the world of business and entrepreneurship. The class is very selective, with only 18 of 100 applicants accepted.
Class meets four days a week, for eight hours each day, and during that time, inmates learn the ins-and-outs of Javascript, CSS and HTML. Their three instructors are from the San Francisco boot camp Hack Reactor and teach in-person or virtual lessons twice a week. For the other two days each week, the inmates practice their skills under the watch of Jonathon Gripshover of the California Prison Industry Authority.
The computer lab at the prison is stocked with refurbished computers, which used to belong to state employees and are now being used by the student inmates. However, none of the inmates have Internet access, so all of their work is completed in a custom off-line coding environment.
The most startling aspect of the program, perhaps, is that none of the participants have coding experience and many have never even used a computer before.
Jason Jones is one such example. Even though he has never used a smartphone and only used the internet for browsing, he has the plans for an app called In Touch that would instantly upload a student’s test scores and other information for parents to review in order to be more invested in their child’s education.
Once released, job opportunities for former inmates are very limited, but the hope is that through this training, employers will be open to hiring them.
For Aly Tamboura, Code 7370 gives him something he never had before: a marketable skill that makes him attractive to employers.
“I get these a-ha moments where a concept or certain element of what we’re learning makes sense,” Tamboura tells Fast Co. Exist. “When I get out, I’ll have a marketable skill.”
And that’s the greatest benefit of the program — a chance for a better life.
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The City of Los Angeles Could Fund Your Big Idea

Because they’re frustrated with their jobs, cities’ employees are brimming with ideas. And as more cities are embracing civic innovation, Los Angeles is creating an in-house venture capital fund to do something about it.
Mayor Eric Garcetti recently announced the creation of a $1 million Innovation Fund for the city to invest in ideas hatched by city workers. The fund, backed by City Administrative Officer (CAO) Miguel Santana and the Innovation and Performance Commission (IPC), will be open throughout the year to city employees, who can submit ideas through the website innovate.lacity.org.

“We don’t think innovation should live in just one office,” says Abhi Nemani, the city’s chief data officer. “It should be democratized across the organization, across the city, and we should empower everybody to be able to say, ‘This doesn’t make sense, let me change this.’ And this is our big push in making that happen.”

The idea stems from several ongoing city projects that Mayor Garcetti liked, including an initiative to update paper maps to tablets in the sanitation department as well as a recreation and parks employee who designed a red button to turn off air conditioning systems at the end of the day, according to Nemani.

The city council, general managers, CAO and IPC will all be involved in reviewing submitted ideas, and criteria will be based on originality, potential for execution and enhancing efficiency and improving quality of life, Government Technology reports. The website will also feature selected projects and the status of each. There is no deadline and no maximum amount of projects the Innovation Fund will invest in, which leaves the door open to incredible opportunity.

Los Angeles’ fund follows the launch of GovTech Fund, a $23 million venture capital fund aimed at investing in companies that improve government technology, as well as the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ recent “Shark Tank” model competition to spark ideas among its employees.

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The Innovative Combat Medic That Has Developed a Life-Saving Device for the Battlefield

For more than two decades, John Steinbaugh served as a Special Forces medic in the Army, and now he’s reinvented himself as an inventor.
Steinbaugh is the man behind the company RevMedx, which is developing new technologies to keep soldiers wounded at war alive. Back in February, NationSwell reported that the company’s first invention, XStat, was awaiting FDA approval, a hurdle it cleared in April. Now, RevMedx is gearing up to supply XStat to the military, plus developing additional technologies.
Steinbaugh’s innovation grew out of his observation that people have been using gauze to staunch bleeding for centuries, but the material doesn’t work well for wounds on certain parts of the body, such as the armpit and pelvis.
Steinbaugh tells Cat Wise of the PBS NewsHour, “Back in 2006-2007, at the height of the war, medics were getting fed up with the standard gauze. And we started seeing wounds that were much worse than what we were seeing at the beginning of the war. Medics were having more difficulties stopping the bleeding. And the way the medics described the device they wanted was fix-a-flat. So if you think of your tire, you inject the fix-a-flat into your tire, it finds the escaping air, it plugs it, and done.”
Steinbaugh couldn’t provide Army medics with fix-a-flat for people, but the product inspired his idea for a syringe loaded with tiny, compressed sponges that instantly expand when inserted into a wound, thereby stopping the bleeding. When Steinbaugh retired from the military he started RevMedx in Portland, Ore., and a $5 million grant from the Army sustained the company during the three years needed to develop XStat.
The sponges in an XStat are coated with blood-clotting medicine and expand 15 times their original size — applying pressure to the wound and stopping arterial bleeding within 20 seconds, according to testing the company has done. Additionally, each sponge includes markers detectable by X-ray so that surgeons can easily locate and remove them.
The company has starting shipping XStat to the military and is already modifying the idea for civilian applications, as well as developing a gauze with XStat sponges inside: XGauze.
Steinbaugh says, “Ever since the first day we started working on this, there’s been an immediate interest for other types of products, smaller shrapnel wounds, or small-caliber pistol wounds, and even in the civilian community, like law enforcement, or prison knife wounds and stabbings.”
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[ph]

Can Girls Dance Their Way Toward Computer Programming Careers?

Lately, educators have stressed the importance of attracting more girls to STEM areas of study (science, technology, engineering and math) — especially computer programming, since men outnumber women 7 to 3 in tech industry careers. But now, a group of researchers at South Carolina’s Clemson University have hit upon a unique way to spark girls’ interest in software engineering: through dance.
Dr. Shaundra Daily, an assistant professor of computing at Clemson who was the lead author in a study published in Technology, Knowledge and Learning, found that the computational skills of fifth and sixth grade girls improved after they interacted with dance choreography software. Daily hit upon this idea because she was a competitive dancer who now leads her own computer lab at Clemson.
Through the Virtual Environment Interactions (VEnvl) software, the girls were able to program three-dimensional characters to perform dance moves just by moving their own bodies. The girls learned to develop new computing strategies to improve their choreography.
Dr. Alison Leonard, an assistant professor of education at Clemson who co-authored the study, says in a press release that dance and software engineering have more in common than you might think: “Executing one bit of code or movement one after the other exists in both programming and choreography. Likewise, loops or repeating a set of steps, also occur in both contexts.”
One of the goals of Daily’s research is to determine how to encourage more girls to become involved with computing. “We want more diverse faces around the table, helping to come up with technological solutions to societal issues,” she says. “So we’re working with girls to create more pathways to support their participation.”
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The Bay City’s Latest Plan to Combat Homelessness

San Francisco is a city of paradoxes. Walking around, you can see evidence of the booming tech scene and expensively-clad citizens, yet it also has a chronic homelessness problem. But the City by the Bay finally thinks it may have a solution by combining the needs of both the homeless and corporations: tax breaks for community projects.
With 6,436 homeless people and 3,401 living on its streets, according to the Human Services Agency, San Francisco has to be inventive. And that’s where this new initiative comes in. As more and more tech companies, (like Twitter) move to the area, San Francisco is hoping that its new “community benefit agreement” will encourage these businesses to stay and improve the city.
Through the initiative, tech companies will receive multi-million dollar tax breaks if they set up residence in a troubled neighborhood and invest a portion of those tax breaks into improving it.
While some remain skeptical about the amount of money that a company will actually put towards a neighborhood, this program offers unique possibilities for great change. For instance, many tech companies will set up micro-apartment communities for their employees; if created for homeless people, there’s the potential to drastically reduce the problem.
Salt Lake City is a model for this type of project. Ten years ago, the Utah city started a program to combat homelessness through these micro-apartments communities. Apartments were set up outside of troubled neighborhoods, and residents were quickly placed into them, removing them from the negative influences.
In each housing complex, on-site counseling was available. These counselors helped residents beat drug addictions, find jobs and diagnose and treat mental diseases. The result? Salt Lake City now only has about 400 homeless persons.
Although there are differences in cost of living and other factors between Salt Lake City and San Francisco, there is possibility for replication and improvement.
For Matt Minkevitch, who runs Road Home, the main nonprofit homeless agency in Utah, these houses serve as a stepping stone.
“The idea is, we don’t want people to just live in this shelter,” Minkevitch tells San Francisco Gate. “We want to make it as comfortable as possible, but we want them to move on to housing — on to better lives.”
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Being Severely Burned Didn’t Stop This Veteran From Hitting the Links

Before enlisting in the Army, Rick Yarosh of Windsor, N.Y., had taken up golf and was getting good at it. He planned to continue his pursuit of the sport when he returned from deployment.
But in 2006, while Yarosh served as a sergeant in Iraq, an I.E.D. exploded, burning 60 percent of his body and causing him to lose his nose, ears, a leg and several fingers. Since then, Yarosh has been continuing his physical therapy while also working at Sitrin Health Care Center, helping with its military rehabilitation program.
Yarosh was eager to try golf again, but he couldn’t find an adaptive club that worked with his disabilities. Luckily, two students from SUNY-Polytechnic Institute (near Utica, N.Y.) stepped in to help.
Nicholas Arbour and Adam Peters had a class assignment to solve a real-world problem and started meeting with Yarosh in January to design a golf club that would accommodate his needs. Arbour and Peters studied professional golfers’ swings and created three prototypes on a 3-D printer to develop their final design, which includes a wrist guard and a handle that Yarosh can hold while he swings the club.
On October 28, Arbour and Peters presented Yarosh with his new golf club at a ceremony at Sitrin Health Care Center. “I’m so happy,” Yarosh tells Syracuse.com. “I tried the club and I could hit the ball with it quite a distance. Now I can go out with my friends again and play golf. It’s an incredible feeling…I used to wrestle and play football, and I like to be competitive. It was another piece of my life that I lost, and these two helped me get that back.”
Arbour and Peters earned top grades from their professor for their project. “I would have written to their professor and protested if they didn’t get an A,” Yarosh says. “They worked really hard at this, and it means a lot to me.”
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This App Hopes to Reduce Mass Shootings By Addressing Mental Illness

In the wake of tragedy, particularly the string of mass shootings across the country as of late, we often seek out answers as to why it happened.

More recently, the national conversation has focused on recognizing mental illness. While there is not a direct correlation between mass shootings and mental illness, educating the public on the subject is one step Americans are beginning to take to prevent tragedy from striking again.

The Center of Health Care Services is joining the movement with the release of Mental Health & You (MHU), a mobile app and crisis intervention tool providing resources on mental illness, according to Emergency Management.

“We know that one in four people will be diagnosed with a mental illness in this country, but most go untreated,” says Leon Evans, executive director of the center. “We know that people with mental illness are more likely to be victims of violent crime, rather than perpetrators of it.”

The app provides information on signs and symptoms of mental disorders including anxiety, depression, attention-deficit disorder, post-traumatic-stress-syndrome (PTSD) and schizophrenia. Users can also find direct links to local and national advocacy groups like the National Alliance for Mental Illness and the San Antonio Coalition for Veterans and Families, according to Allison Greer, vice president of external relations for the center.

More interestingly, Mental Health & You also includes a section devoted to debunking myths and “stigma-busters,” correcting misinformation that often is associated with the subject. It also mentions famous people who grapple with mental illness including Abraham Lincoln and actress Catherine Zeta Jones. To further dispel the taboo of mental illness, the app lists movies that illustrate the issue such as “Silver Linings Playbook.”

But most importantly, the app is a tool for individuals who may be concerned about a friend or loved one and for law enforcement looking for crisis training on how to respond to a situation with a person struggling with mental illness.

“For example, they know not to use their ‘command voice,’” Greer says.

The app features a “get help now” button that immediately connects a user with a local hotline, where trained staff available to provide advice or call in a mobile crisis intervention outreach team to help the situation. The app also has a button that can connect users with 911 as well.

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