Most people know the mitochondria as “the powerhouse of the cell.” Yet, when one has mitochondrial disease, it is like “running a house on a battery” as student, Nadia Maciejewski puts it. Nadia, a junior at Valencia High School, is one of approximately 20,000 people in the United States affected by this rare condition…
Category: Science, Technology, Health, and Environment
I Look Like an Engineer: A Visit from Women in STEM
On the morning of January 27, 2020, our AP Computer Science Principles teacher abruptly announced that we would be walking up three flights of stairs to another classroom filled with middle-school students. Complaining and dragging our barely-awake bodies up to the third floor, we were caught by surprise by two unfamiliar faces in the room. …
What is Vex Robotics?
Vex robotics is a worldwide robotics competition that is hosted all around the world. Each year, Vex Robotics introduces students to a new challenge. The 2019-2020 theme is Tower Takeover. The goal of Tower Takeover is to earn a higher score than the opposing alliance, by stacking cubes. Thirty-five different teams from California joined the…
[Editors Column] The Benefits of Job Shadowing
Jobs in the adult world are frightening to think about. There’s a plethora of diverse jobs in this nation; yet, none of them seem like a good fit for us. The fact that we, as students, have to go to school every weekday is dreadful. Then, as the transition into adulthood approaches, we come into…
CodeDay LA Fall 2019
Starting at 11:00 am on a Saturday morning in Westlake Village, around 50 students aspiring to code a project or learn how to code, streamed into the doors of Hub101, where CodeDay LA was taking place. They came in, each with their own fresh ideas, and with a burning passion to code that sparked within…
Valencia High School is Taking Steps Toward a Healthier Community
On November 2nd, the Saving Hearts Foundation hosted a free heart screening at Valencia High School to help people stay healthier in the community. The Saving Hearts Foundation is a national non-profit foundation started by three UCLA undergraduates. Their goal is to prevent sudden cardiac arrest (SCA) by providing free heart screenings for young athletes,…
The Good Neighbor Initiative Helps Clean up La Crescenta
Crescenta Valley High School has many activities that help students take action and help the community, one of which is the Good Neighbor Initiative, a project in which Crescenta Valley High School students clean the La Crescenta neighborhood during lunch and after school. Many clubs take part in this program, including the National Honors Society,…
Workshop to Help Stop Student Vaping
In recent years, youth E-cigarettes (also known as vaping) use is rising. Last week I saw a newspaper article that said “after vaping related illness, teen now has the lungs of a 70 year old”. I was very shocked when I heard this mysterious news article. I thought one of the biggest problems is that…
Will the Amazon Fire be a Tipping Point for the Global Climate?
The Amazon rainforest, which is the largest rainforest in the world, has been appearing on the news recently due to massive fires. While many people are trying to raise awareness, these fires are yet to be put out. The fires have been affecting people everywhere and it is important for us to realize this. …
Self Degradation in Teens and its Effects
We see it almost everywhere in social media, posts that have comments like “Why am I so stupid?”, “I’m a failure”, “Why is my life such a mess?”, etc. At first glance, adolescents will regard all these remarks as jokes and think that these comments are derived from humorous intentions. Of course, while these comments…