Blog for Youth

International sensation The Black Eyed Peas has announced earlier this week that they would very soon be opening a music school in New York.

This music school will help local kids and students learn about music and many other aspects of the music industry such as video and music production.

From Kozmedia.com:

The six-time Grammy Award winning group announced that their Peapod Foundation will partner with the Adobe Foundation to open the Peapod Adobe Youth Voices music and multimedia academy in lower Manhattan, New York. The foundation is among the most prestigious academies to be opened in the area and will be able to provide opportunities to those who are interested in the music industry.

The Peapod Foundation is the Black Eyed Peas’ charity organization and is administered by the Entertainment Industry Foundation. The Adobe Foundation is the philanthropic arm of software maker Adobe Systems Inc., whose most recognizable products include computer software Adobe Acrobat, Adobe Flash and Adobe Photoshop. Both foundations are already involved in running three Youth Voices Academies in California, located in Los Angeles, Oakland and Redwood City.

“Our passion for music and media was fueled by many generous people on our road to success,” Black Eyed Peas member, will.i.am said. “Expanding the network of Peapod Adobe Youth Voices academies enables us to pay it forward, giving more youth the skills and encouragement they need to realize their dreams.”

The New York Academy by The Black Eyed Peas will start offering classes to students from the age of 13 to 19 this coming July and would prioritize kids who cannot afford to enter such arts programs and exhibit talents and skill.

A warning was recently issued by doctors who were of the view that expectant mothers who eat for two could jeopardize their health for decades.

It was revealed by doctors that women who put too much of weight in pregnancy are more than four times as likely to be obese as twenty years later as those who follow guidelines of doctors.

From Dailymail.co.uk:

Being obese can take nine years off a person’s life and raise the risk of health problems including diabetes, heart disease, stroke, infertility, depression and some cancers.

Experts said there had been too much emphasis on ensuring babies were born at a healthy weight and not on the health needs of mothers.

The news came as it also emerged that men who are obese at 20 are twice as likely to die young.

The research on mothers-to-be questioned the traditional approach of encouraging them to eat more.

Philip James, an obesity advisor for the Government and the World Health Organisation, said: ‘We need to move from the old story of saying eat what you fancy and put on 26lb.

‘The study is the first to show that excess pregnancy weight gain tends to persist for decades’, said Dr Abdullah Al Mamun, of the University of Queensland.

The youth development program at each of the S-League clubs would get a great boost if the Football Association of Singapore’s (FAS) ongoing negotiations with potential sponsors bear fruit.

FAS deputy director for competitions and marketing, Ridzal Saat, told MediaCorp yesterday his team are looking at signing on sponsors for helping clubs defray costs like equipment and the rental of pitches for their centres of excellence (COEs), a programme for the development of players at under-14, under-16 and under-18 level.

From Todayonline.com:

“We have spoken to around 30 companies already to explore a potential tie-up. If we are successful, the savings will help clubs invest more in developing young talent.”

On Monday, the FAS revealed each of the nine local clubs will receive S$110,000 for their respective COEs, which must be up and running next month.

Only five clubs – SAFFC, Home United, Tampines, Geylang and Woodlands – have been running COEs, and Gombak, Hougang, Tanjong Pagar and Balestier will now follow.

While the under-16 and under-18 leagues for COEs will continue, the FAS will resurrect the under-14 tournament in September.

Ridzal said: “Once all the COEs are fully functioning, we will start tournaments from under-8 onwards within the next two to three years. This is part of the FAS plan to expand the talent pool for Singapore football to feed our national squads.”

“Clubs previously had to pay for equipment and fields out of their operating budget and it constituted a substantial amount over a calendar year,” said Ridzal, formerly the head of rugby at SingaporeRugby.

A recently concluded survey has revealed that the youth may be India’s demographic dividend, but they are also among the most vacation deprived in the world.

India has emerged as the fourth most vacation deprived country after Japan, the US, and Australia as per a Vacation Deprivation survey.

From in.finance.yahoo.com:

The study says that on an average, Indians are entitled to 26 annual leave days but are able to avail of 22 leave days on an average. However, 35 percent of those surveyed said they were not able to take more than 15 days of annual leaves.

The survey was carried out amongst service class professionals at managerial levels and above in 11 countries in 2010, with over 1,000 respondents per country. The India survey was conducted in Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore.

Japan, the most holiday-deprived nation for the second year in a row, receives on average 16.5 days of annual leave. However, 94 per cent of Japanese do not take all their leave days, taking on an average just 9 days of their entitled annual leaves.

On the other hand, in France, which ranks as the world’s most holiday-rich nation, the average employee receives 37.5 annual leave days per year (and takes on an average 34.5 of those days).

‘This is the first time that we have undertaken the annual Vacation Deprivation survey in India. The study provides interesting insights into the key factors discouraging most Indians from taking their vacation – lack of choice and flexibility in the holiday offers emerged a few factors,’ said Expedia.co.in marketing head Manmeet Ahluwalia.

The study by online travel company Expedia.co.in revealed young Indians have a tendency of being workoholics as a ‘as a means to achieve faster career growth.’

In the YouTube video on bodybuilding, Paul Vinson who has 20 years of experience as a professional bodybuilder offers tips on nutrition can be carefully regulated and supplemented with powder protein drinks. This video from a professional bodybuilder will help you access great tips on proper diet habits and ways on how to build muscles in quick time.

The prospects of future treatments revolving around Alzheimer’s disease have received a boost after five genetic links to the disease were discovered.

The discoveries mean ten genes that play a role in the late-onset of the disease are now known to the mankind.

From Dailymail.co.uk:

Eradicating the effects of all of them would remove 60 per cent of the illness in the population, or 300,000 cases.

Lead researcher Professor Julie Williams, of Cardiff University, said the findings mean it may one day be possible to identify those most at risk. ‘In 10 to 15 years’ time we may be taking drugs to prevent the onset of Alzheimer’s in the same way as we take statins to prevent the onset of heart disease,’ she said. Some 750,000 people in the UK are living with dementia. By 2021 this is set to soar to almost a million as the population ages.

Up to 79 per cent of a person’s susceptibility is thought to be determined by genes.

The findings are published in the Nature Genetics journal.

A new study has revealed that teenage fatherhood results in a decrease in years of schooling.

This study from Economic Inquiry evaluated the negative educational and economic outcomes of teenage fatherhood, a topic far less researched than teenage motherhood.

From in.news.yahoo.com:

Authors utilized the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, a school-based, nationally representative longitudinal study of 7th to 12th graders in the United States beginning in 1994-1995. Their dataset included 362 men younger than 18 years and nine months. The authors compared young men whose partners experienced a pregnancy but suffered a miscarriage, with those whose partners gave birth.

The authors found that while only 64 percent of the study participants received a high school diploma and 16 percent received a general Educational Development (GED), the experience of teenage fatherhood dramatically shifted these outcomes by reducing the chances of graduating high school by fifteen percentage points and increasing the chances of receiving a GED by eleven percentage points.

“Educational interventions may need to target new teenage fathers in order to increase their chances of completing their high school diplomas,” according to co-authors Jason Fletcher and Barbara Wolfe.

An expert has claimed that parents who shun traditional fairy tales in favour of ‘more politically correct’ modern books are missing vital chances to teach their children a moral code of life.

More and more parents have been avoiding traditional fairy tales such as ‘Cinderella’ and ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarves‘.

From Dailymail.co.uk:

Sally Goddard Blythe said that the traditional tales show children how good can triumph over bad and that they can foster kindness and generosity.

Mrs Goddard Blythe argues in her book, The Genius of Natural Childhood, that the seven dwarves show children the physical diversity of life.

‘When you don’t give children these stereotypes, you don’t give them a moral code on which to develop their own lives.

‘Fairy tales help to teach children an understanding of right and wrong, not through direct teaching, but through implication.

‘Far from demonising the dwarves, the story of Snow White shows that underlying the physical diversity there can be greate kindness and generosity than is found in the stereotypes of beauty and wealth so lauded by celebrity-worshipping cultures.’

Traditional stories passed down through generations are vital to a child’s development, according to the leading child development expert.