The U.S. has more teen moms than any other industrialized nation due to limited economic opportunities, according to a recent study. 

If teenagers are on a "low economic trajectory," even increased access to birth control doesn't improve their chances of making it to 20 without getting pregnant, according to the NBER study, in which researchers analyzed national surveys on teen behavior.

Teen pregnancy rates were found to be especially high among poor people in communities with high levels of inequality.

That's something that sex-ed won't solve. Pregnancies won't decrease until more opportunities exist for teens in poverty.

Here's how America compares to the rest of the world:

U.S. teens are two and a half times as likely to give birth as compared to teens in Canada, around four times as likely as teens in Germany or Norway, and almost 10 times as likely as teens in Switzerland. Among more developed countries, Russia has the next highest teen birth rate after the United States, but an American teenage girl is still around 25 percent more likely to give birth than her counterpart in Russia.

Don't miss: 18 Countries Where Women Have It Better Than In America >

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Do you remember what you were doing when you were 14?

We do. It involved sleepovers, prank calls and pretend-kissing our pillows.

It certainly didn’t include buying houses. Or being on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show.”

That’s where we differ from Willow Tufano, an awe-inspiring 14-year-old from southwest Florida, who has been all over the news lately after she co-bought a foreclosed home with her mom.

Tufano’s story was so incredible, LearnVest had to find out how she did it. How—besides normal things like allowance and babysitting—did a teenager save up enough money for a down payment? Do her friends want to follow in her footsteps? And, if you’ve achieved the American dream before you turn 15, what next?!

We called up the mini-mogul (who can be found longboarding around her neighborhood in her free time) to find out.

So you bought a house. That’s awesome! How did you get interested in real estate to begin with?

My mom and my grandma have definitely been big influences on me, since they’re both real estate agents. My mom got her license when I was 6, and when I was around 8 years old I started going around with her on real estate calls because I was too young to stay home alone.

At first it wasn’t very much, and I looked at it more as a chore, but about two years ago I started getting more interested, and going with her all the time. I thought it was so cool, seeing how my mom buys a home for $80,000 and flips it and sells it for $120,000, after spending only $15,000 in work.

I never, never, never want to borrow money from the bank. I hate that feeling of being in debt and owing someone money.

What made you finally decide you wanted to buy a house of your own?

I got the idea to buy the house about a year ago—or at least that’s about the time that I started saving for it. It started that I was saving money just because, and I didn’t know what I was saving for. Then I thought it would be cool if I bought a house.

My mom and I split a little house down in Port Charlotte, Florida, where we live. The house was worth $100,000 in 2006, and in 2012 it was being sold for $16,000. I told my mom to offer them $12,000 instead. She said they would never go for it. They countered with $14,000, and we said, no, $12,000. And they said okay.

Nice negotiating! That’s something we’re big fans of at LearnVest. How did you save up the money to buy it?

Whenever I was out with my mom, I noticed that with the foreclosed houses, a whole bunch of stuff from the houses was just getting thrown out by the investors and I thought, “Why not sell it?”

When investors buy the houses, most times they just want to get all the stuff out and flip it as soon as possible. Some investors take stuff out and sell it themselves, but others just want to get rid of it. I got the idea to sell it myself.

The first time I did this, the house had a sort of tropical theme, and there was a bunch of furniture, and a whole bunch of brand new tires, still in the bubble wrap. I didn’t sell those: I gave them to a family friend who needed them. They still have them, so that worked out well. I end up giving away a lot of things, too, but I sell the rest at garage sales, in swaps on Craigslist or with people I know.

How Are You Teaching Your Kid About Money?

Willow says her mom is a big influence on her. What ways are you teaching your kids about money? Do you have regular conversations with them about it?
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I also go to auctions and Goodwill to buy things and resell to people online. The website Freecycle [which allows people to advertise and donate items they no longer need to other people] is also a really good source to get free stuff to resell—there’s just a whole bunch of ways that people can make money.

What’s the easiest stuff to sell?
Things like cribs and bouncers. Also bunk beds, video games, appliances–those all sell well, too. Except for dish washers: Usually investors don’t keep dishwashers from short sale homes because they’re sort of older, and people want stainless steel appliances now. So no one wants a dishwasher when I try to sell it.

I have a lot of garage sales during the summer for little things like clothes, because no one buys that kind of stuff on Craigslist, but it’s the number one item for garage sales. There are a lot of other little household items— toys, coffee makers, things like that—that people aren’t looking for on Craigslist, but they go within the first hour of a garage sale.

I also trade things on Craigslist, or also just with my friends. One of my favorite trades was when I bought an Xbox 360 for $200 and traded it for a brand new, $1,200 paddle board, which was so cool. I was going to work at the grocery store Publix as a cashier, but then I figured out that I could make more money selling stuff, and I don’t spend a lot of time doing it, either. All told, I saved up $6,000 from just selling stuff I found.

What are you doing with the house you bought?
We did some renovations, and we’re renting it out for $700 a month. Right now I don’t get any of that money, because I’m paying my mom back $350 per month to make up for the money she put in to update the house. But within the next year and a half, I’ll have paid her back for that.

Do you think you’ll ever live in it?

I don’t want to live in it, I want to live by the beach, and it’s probably about a 40-minute drive to the beach from there. Living right off the beach would be off-the-chain expensive, but I’m planning on keeping this house and just renting it out. I like the idea of having money every month—$700 per month coming in to pay the bills and stuff, instead of one big blast of money when you sell it.

Do you have plans to purchase another house?

Yeah, we have a contract in with another house right now. They asked for $20,000, and we put in a bid for $17,000. My mom would be paying the $17,000 for the house, and I would pay for the renovations, which I don’t think should be even $10,000. I think we can rent it for $800 per month, but she’ll have spent more than me on the house, so we’ll have to figure out a percentage for who gets that rent. We’re still waiting to hear back on that, though.

A lot of times short sales aren’t really short. (Editor’s Note: A short sale is when a homeowner in financial distress sells their home for less than the mortgage on it, and gets the mortgage bank to erase the remaining loan balance.Learn more about it here.) Owners will accept the offer, and you have to wait forever for the bank to accept it, and that takes a month or two. When I was on Inside Edition I was saying that by the time I’m 18, I’d love to own five houses, so that’s sort of my goal right now. Five houses in four more years.

So you’ve still been selling stuff and saving up money?

Oh yeah, I’m still selling stuff. I never, never, never want to borrow money from the bank. I hate that feeling of being in debt and owing someone money.

What do you want to be when you grow up?

I think I want to be an investor when I grow up, but not in real estate. I know I want to go to college and get a business and marketing degree, in case I ever do decide to work for someone else. That’s just a good all-around degree to have.

But on a side note—it’s not really a job–but I want to foster animals, too. I would foster them now, but we already have seven pets, so it’s crazy. 

What advice do you have for other kids who might be interested in doing something like this?

I would say it’s a really good idea to start now. The way I see it, starting now, I’m thinking I won’t have to work as much later in life, and I can relax more. Right now I can get all these houses because the market is really bad, so it’s a great opportunity. But I’d say if you want to do it, go around your neighborhood during garbage day, go to Goodwill, or find things to sell on Craigslist or eBay.

Because I can’t drive, and my mom doesn’t want to drive me every day, I ride my bike all around town, and my longboard, so I can still gather stuff. I’d say just put your mind to it. I wanted to buy a house, so I sold things and priced things and had garage sales, and it really paid off.

Do your friends know how famous you’ve become, or that you bought the house?

No one’s even asked me about how I did it. With a lot of people it doesn’t register. They’re like, “You did what?” I don’t think they absorb it. They watch the shows I’ve been on–most have probably seen me on “Ellen”–but pretty much everyone just asks for shout outs, and that’s it. No one’s asked me to show them how to do it.

What would you say to any critics out there?

There’s a lot of people saying that I’m making money off of people’s misfortunes. But if I had a way to contact the people who used to live in these houses, I’d call them and say, “Hey, I have your stuff here, want to come pick it up?” But you have no way of finding out who they are, because they’re long gone. They also could have sold those things if they wanted to. Sometimes, I walk into a house and see price tags on things, so it looks like maybe they did have a garage sale, and these are just the leftovers.

I haven’t really thought about it a lot, but I guess, in general, I’d just tell my critics … think differently.

More From LearnVest

Want even more ways to encourage your own kid’s entrepreneurial spirit? We’ve got ‘em.
What if we told you there was a discipline technique that could make your kid behave and help you earn more.Well there is, and you can learn about it here.
Ready to build your own career? Get started with this bootcamp.

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Cassandra Bankson is a 19-year-old model whose face can be seen in magazine pages and in her extremely popular YouTube videos.

But underneath her flawlessly applied makeup, Bankson is hiding severe acne—her YouTube videos show millions of people how to help hide their own blemishes with makeup tips.

Her videos have been so helpful that they now garner around six million hits.

But it hasn't been an easy road.

Watch Cassandra's physical transformation >

Bankson left school after bullying from classmates about her skin and instead completed high school as an independent study. This allowed the teen much more time to try out new beauty products, routines and tricks that Bankson now shares with her millions of viewers.

Bankson's most popular video to date is one in which she documented her complete transformation, from a fresh, acne-ridden face to a fully made up model.

“I was crying before I filmed the video and it didn’t go up for four months until after I filmed it," Bankson said while appearing this week on "Today." "I always wanted to help people but it wasn’t until my boyfriend actually told me, 'You’ve always wanted to help people. This is how you can do it; it’s your duty.'”

Almost seven million hits later, Bankson's courage has paid off.

Cassandra starts her video fully made up, explaining that she is about to take off all of her makeup and reapply it so viewers can see how she covers her severe acne.

Cassandra comes back to the screen with zero makeup on. "Taking my makeup off is one of my most insecure things I can possibly do."

She shows viewers that the acne isn't just on her face, but also her neck and back.

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With a new wave of tween-tailored financial tools hitting the Web, it's becoming easier for time- and cash-strapped parents to outsource finance lessons to the pros. 

Tykoon, a new personal finance management tool for parents and kids to use together, is one of the best models we've seen so far. 

Mom and dad get complete control over their purse strings and kids learn how to spend, save and give wisely. 

We were treated to a preview of the beta site last month.  We're taking you along for the ride now.

DASHBOARD: Here's where parents set tasks, assign allowances and track their kids' progress.

CASH FLOW: You're not just handing your kids a blank check. They have to allocate their earnings over three categories: Charitable donations, savings and petty cash. You handle allocations here.

This is way easier than a chore chart. Choose tasks from Tykoon's list – laundry, dishes, walking the dog, etc. – or make up your own.

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The high acidity level in sports and energy drinks permanently dissolves teeth enamel after only five days of regular exposure, according to new research published by Academy of General Dentistry (AGD).

The study, published in the May/June 2012 issue of General Dentistry, simulated consistent consumption by placing samples of human tooth enamel (i.e. the outer layer of the tooth) in 13 sports drinks and nine energy drinks for 15 minutes each and then soaking them in artificial saliva for two hours. 

Researchers found that erosion of enamel began after five days, and energy drinks caused twice as much damage as sports drinks.

Enamel protects teeth against sensitivity, cavities and decay. If eroded it does not naturally grow back.

The U.S. energy drink industry is anticipated to reach a staggering $19.7 billion in revenue in 2013.

In a press release, AGD spokeswoman Dr. Jennifer Bone recommended that people minimize their intake of sports and energy drinks, chew sugar-free gum and/or rinse their mouths with water after drinking them.

She also advised that people refrain from brushing their teeth until at least an hour after consumption because doing so will increase deterioration by spreading the acid onto the surfaces of other teeth.

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Even teenage girls who shop at Hollister have standards for the teeny-tiny shorts they buy.

While skimpy summer attire is nothing new, Hollister caused a stir with its Arrow Point short--which appears to be the shortest ever with only a 2-inch inseam.

Eric Beder, an analyst at Brean Murray Carret & Co. first tipped us off about the controversy, which ensued after the shorts were posted to the Abercrombie offshoot's Facebook page.

About half the customers Beder observed said the shorts "showed off too much."

Responses from teenage girls ranged from "the shorts are getting shorter!" to "I wouldn't even be able to get my leg in that" to "WTF."  Some customers also complained the $34.50 item was "overpriced."

Responses from teenage boys on the page were predictably positive, and a countdown for summer broke out.

Don't miss: Abercrombie & Fitch Just Isn't Cool Anymore >

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It's always interesting to see the intense detail businesses put into wooing the public, and this age-by-age guide to courting new bank customers by Financial Brand's Margie Church is no exception.

Church suggests banks target customers before they're even old enough to get a license. The key to attracting tweens (ages 9-14), she says, is basically double-pronged: Birthday cards and their parents. 

The latter is a given—Mom and Dad will probably intercept the mail anyway—but it was the card idea that stood out. 

A birthday shout-out makes sense, given the fact that there really isn't a reason for a bank to be corresponding with a fifth grader. It'd also give parents an easy way to strike up a conversation about finances – and hopefully keep their kids off their couch after college.

"Sending an annual birthday greeting is a simple, friendly way to start your campaign," Church says. "Incentives and rewards are good motivators for children." 

The B-Day method works for teens, too, along with revved-up invitations to start their own checking and savings account, especially with college just a few years away. 

After college, banks have their customer base all figured out: "Email is a powerful tool for these nomadic young adults, who may change their physical address three to four times during this period." 

All in all, these methods are a lot less desperate-sounding than others we've seen recently. Financial Brand was quick to champion Florida's C1 Bank's Mercedes Benz sign-up bonus last month, even going so far as to encourage more rewards for the Gen Y crowd: 

"This could be a particularly deadly approach to take with the next generation of CD investors — Gen-Y, also known as Gen Now."

DON'T MISS: The 10 biggest banking trends you'll find this year >

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A dessert bar, free swag, and exclusivity: they are all part of the VIP lounge at an upcoming spring dance at a Los Angeles-area middle school.

According to mommy-blogger Marcy Magiera, who writes BellaNoise, her son's school is offering VIP access to students who pay an extra $5 on top of the regular $15 ticket.

Awkward adolescents will get to socialize as if they were celebrities, and have the non-popular kids gawk at their presence,

Magiera writes that the VIP lounge tickets are part of a fundraiser for a larger high school. But even with the charitable angle, Magiera is outraged at the idea--and rightly so--of adding another social issue to all the other problems middle school-aged kids face.

The invisible red rope that normally exists around the popular kids is now literally visible.

Magiera writes, "What’s next, bottle service? $10 for a jug of Coke maybe, served by a high-schooler in short shorts? While everyone else gets Capri sun pouches grabbed out of a tub full of ice??"

[via NY Times]

DON'T MISS: The 31 Most Expensive Private Schools In America >

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One Canadian high schooler decided to find a far affordable route when shopping for a graduation dress this year – by recycling dozens of pages of old homework into a handmade gown.  

“For me, it's not a big, spend your money, you have to look this nice, you have to fit into this mold of a grad,” Kara Koskowich told CBC News. 

Other than the cost of the thread (and one busted sewing machine), the dress was basically free, right down to the colorful band of Post-It notes she used as a belt. 

Koskowich isn't the only teen getting creative with teen fashion lately. A slew of students have made headlines with creative takes on prom dresses. They've been made out of everything from Doritos bags, coffee filters and gum wrappers to bubble wrap and plastic grocery bags. 

DON'T MISS: 15 crazy homemade prom dresses >

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About 100 students at New York City's top-performing public high school wore skin-bearing outfits yesterday in protest of the school's dress code.

The dress code was introduced in the fall and bans obscene t-shirts and showing your back or midriff. Shorts and skirts have to be longer than students' fingertips when they extend their arms at the sides.

One ninth-grader, Lucy Greiner, told the New York Post she's been sent to the office 10 times this year for various offenses: 

“Sometimes, the teachers will call you out in the hallway, [but] I like what I wear. I want to have my own style in school,” she added. “A lot of the classrooms don’t have a/c’s and when it is 80 degrees outside and it is really hot, it’s perfectly OK to show a little skin.”

Students told NY1 that the dress code unfairly targeted women or people with "long limbs" because they couldn't get away with baring as much flesh.

We noticed that while the dress code is more difficult for women to follow, a majority of the protesting students featured in NY1 were boys.

SEE ALSO: The Hollister Shorts Tiny Enough To Even Creep Out The Teenagers Who Shop There >

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While preparing for summer camp, female adolescents check lists are shaping up to look something like this: Bug spray? Check. Sneakers? Check. Waxing treatment?!

Before heading up to Maine for the summer, mothers are taking their tween and teenage daughters to the beauty salon to have their legs, under arms, and even bikini lines waxed, in addition to keratin treatments to tame frizzy hair, the The New York Times reports.

While it may seem completely unnecessary to subject young girls to these treatments, moms swear its to reduce the stress for their daughters who now won't have to worry about blowing drying their hair or bringing a pink razor to camp.

“If you do it once or twice a year, it’s not that much chemical for a young kid, and you’re relieving them of their own insecurities,” Rita Hazan, founder of a Manhattan salon that carries her name, told the Times.

Prices can run up to $350 for a keratin treatment, $130 for a "teen clean" facial, and $25 just to wax the upper lip.

Even grown-ups don't usually get so pampered when they're about to go camping--why a 12-year-old girl would feel the need to do so is totally beyond us.

DON'T MISS: Wine Baths, Sexy Salons, And Other Bizarre Spas Around The World >

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A Bronx woman reportedly ran over and killed her underage boyfriend because he dropped and shattered her iPhone.

The two got into a drunken fight over the incident until she got into her SUV and hit 17-year-old Frankie Hernandez, who was standing in front of the car, the New York Post reported.

Jasmine Diaz babysat Hernandez when he was younger and began dating him when he was 15 and she 23, according to the New York Daily News.

The man's brother told the Daily News he ran to Diaz's apartment after he saw Hernandez's mangled body outside his building.

The brother heard Diaz screaming "I just hit Frankie. I hit him. I don't know what to do," according to the Daily News.

Hernandez reportedly was rushed to the hospital but was declared dead on arrival.

Diaz was charged with manslaughter and escaping the scene, the New York Post reported. 

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Brace yourselves, Mom and Dad.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture just released its annual report on family expenditures and it's more expensive than ever to raise a kid in the U.S.

The average middle-class family who had a child in 2011 will shell out $234,900 to keep it fed and a roof over its head for the next 17 years––between $12,290 and $14,320 per year. 

The figure represents a 3.5 percent increase from last year's report, which isn't too surprising given the well-documented rising cost of food, transportation and education this year. 

But the largest expenditure by far was housing, according the report:

For middle-income families, housing costs are the single largest expenditure on a child, averaging $70,560 or 30 percent of the total cost over 17 years. Child care and education (for those incurring these expenses) and food were the next two largest expenses, accounting for 18 and 16 percent of the total cost over 17 years.

Then again, that's not even counting what today's parents will have to pay for higher education 17 years from now. 

Here are some other interesting findings: 

Geography matters. Child-rearing costs the most for families living in the urban Northeast, followed by the urban West and urban Midwest. It's most affordable in Urban South and rural areas.

More kids equals more savings. Buying in bulk helps families save on groceries and it might apply to childcare, too. "Families with three or more children spend 22 percent less per child than families with two children," the report says. "As families have more children, the children can share bedrooms, clothing and toys can be handed down to younger children, food can be purchased in larger and more economical quantities, and private schools or child care centers may offer sibling discounts."

Change over time. Since the report first ran in 1960, the cost of raising children has jumped significantly. It cost about $25,000 back then ($191,720 in today's dollars), although housing remained the biggest expenditure even four decades ago. See how much has changed in the graph below: 

DON'T MISS: How this family raised 19 kids without going into any debt > 

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Chinese state-run newspaper People's Daily has a long article today about a new scourge for Chinese society — teenage dating.

Of course, we're being hyperbolic, but its true the article does give an interest insight into a society that was perhaps once more prudent than Western culture (for example, the minimum age for marriage is 22 for males and 20 for females), uncomfortably butting into more Western style-dating cultures.

Data found by reporter Zhou Wenting that the average age of dating has dropped to 12 last year, from 14 in 2009, and even bigger drops

Perhaps more worrying to Chinese parents is the practice of "hotel dates", where by young boys and girls spend a few hours together in a budget hotel. Most of these hotels require ID cards, which are usually not given out until minors reach 16, but can be borrowed from older teenagers.

Curiously, the practice is apparently taken from a US teen drama:

A 15-year-old girl in Shanghai, surnamed Guan, said minors are following the rage for hotel dates because they think it's an international practice, something they've learned from US TV series.

"The free and open life in Gossip Girl - a US-based teen drama - seems fancy and we yearn for that," she said. "When we see how open they are, we believe that we behave too conservatively. We should learn from the West," she added.

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This profile is part of our series on the most impressive kids graduating from high school this year. You can see the full list here.

Michaela DePrince is just a teenager, but she has already lived through more than most of us do in our lives. She survived a brutal civil war in the war-torn African nation of Sierra Leone as a child, which left her orphaned.

Many thought she would never leave the orphanage, where she was tormented, often called cruel names like "Devil Child" due to a disease called vitiligo which caused irregular white splotches on her skin.

"I was physically and emotionally abused in the orphanage because of my vitiligo," DePrince wrote to us in an email. "It took a long time for my [adopted] mom to convince me that I wasn't ugly."

Then one day her luck changed. An American couple, Elaine and Charles DePrince, arrived at the orphanage and adopted Michaela, then four years old.

DePrince said that she has very little memory of the civil war in Africa, but she does remember the incident that sparked her love of ballet: While in the orphanage, she found a picture of a ballerina in a magazine, tore it out, and quickly hid it in her underwear.

"She looked so happy," DePrince told ABC News of the ballerina. "That's the only thing I lived for--to become this person, to be exactly like this ballerina."

Once in the U.S., DePrince enrolled in ballet classes and forged ahead to a successful dancing career. When she was just 13 years old, she earned a full scholarship to the prestigious American Ballet Theater's Summer Intensive program in New York City. Soon after, she won a full scholarship to the Youth America Grand Prix, an annual ballet student competition. DePrince went on to study ballet at the Jacqueline Onassis School at the American Ballet Theater in New York City for about eight hours a day, while still attending a cyber high school, Keystone National High School.

"Ballet is my passion," Michaela wrote to us in an email. "I live it and breathe it. What I need to survive is food, water, shelter, love and ballet. If I didn't have any one of them I'd probably wither away."

Today--over a decade later--she is seeing her dreams come to life. She graduated from the prestigious Jacqueline Onassis School at the ABT, she has appeared on "Dancing with the Stars," and she has performed on stages around the world. She is also a star in “First Position,” a ballet documentary that explores the lives of children in the cut-throat world of ballet; the documentary premiered in early May.

Yet despite all of this success, DePrince has felt the effects of racism in her ballet career.

"Being a dark black ballet dancer, there's a lot of pressure on us, " Michaela told ABC News. "I feel like I have to work ten times harder than everyone else."

She is determined to break down the unfortunate--and often unspoken--race barriers that define the ballet world. DePrince said that she hopes to play the white swan in Swan Lake one day, hoping that people see past racial stereotypes.

Though she barely has any free time for herself, she tries to squeeze in some normal teenage activities when she can. Besides dancing, she loves swimming, reading, camping, canoeing, knitting, singing and dancing with her sisters, and putting on makeup. (Her mother told us that she loves makeup so much that when she was a little girl, she used markers when she didn't have access to real makeup.)

She also loves working with kids. She worked as a teacher's assistant for two years in the Young Dancer's Program at ABT, and said that she is looking forward to teaching ballet to little kids.

This month, Michaela is traveling to South Africa to dance the role of Gulnare in Le Corsaire with the South African Ballet Theatre. She will return to the U.S. in late July, and will then begin rehearsing with the Dance Theatre of Harlem, who she will perform with throughout the year.

Watch an interview with Michaela on ABC News:

Now Meet The Most Impressive Kids Graduating From High School This Year >

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This profile is part of our series on the most impressive kids graduating from high school this year. You can see the full list here.

Angela Zhang is just a teenager who recently graduated from Monta Vista High School in Cupertino, CA, but she's already on her way to curing cancer.

Zhang won the grand prize--a $100,000 scholarship--in the 2011 Siemens Competition in Math, Science & Technology for her research on a nanoparticle system that she likens to a Swiss army knife because of its many functions: It is capable of targeting tumors, eradicating cancer cells, and monitoring treatment responses all at the same time.

Her project is called Design of Image-guided, Photo-thermal Controlled Drug Releasing Multifunctional Nanosystem for the Treatment of Cancer Stem Cells.

"At the heart of my nanosystem is the drug delivery capabilities," Angela wrote to us in an email. "My nanoparticle was designed to be preloaded with a cancer drug that would be released directly and selectively at the tumor site to eradicate cancer cells. The greatest advantage that a drug delivery system has over many current cancer treatments, such as chemotherapy, which tends to attack cancer and healthy cells, is minimization of toxicity to non malignant/healthy cells."

She said that the hope of the project was to "personalize cancer treatment" by improving treatment efficacy while improving the patient's quality of life during cancer treatment.

Zhang said that it took years to come up with the idea. She began researching this project in her spare time as a mere freshman in high school, when she began reading doctorate level papers on bio-engineering and attending numerous scientific talks. By sophomore year she started working in a lab at Stanford, and by junior year was doing her own research.

Zhang tested her nanoparticle system on mice, and was thrilled to find that the cancer tumors almost completely disappeared.

"It was a great feeling to find that my project worked," she wrote. "It was a culmination of hours of hard work, but I also concede that my project is perpetually a work in progress. That aspect of research makes research such an exciting and interesting field to me. I value the failures as much as the success that I have encountered in my project because of the great learning opportunities that the failures have provided."

It could still take years to know if this research might work on humans, but Zhang has certainly paved the way to a possible cancer cure with her nanoparticle system.

When she's not working in the lab, Zhang, who is the daughter of Chinese immigrants, is like any typical teenager. She loves shoes, and in her free time, she kayaks, hikes, and reads as much as she can. She said that one of the items on her bucket list is to read every novel on the Modern Library's 100 Best Novels list.

"I adore Fitzgerald," she said. "In fact, after winning the competition, I begged my mom if I could buy a first edition copy of The Great Gatsby."

Zhang plans to attend Harvard in the fall.

"I definitely would love to pursue research in the future and hopefully this project," Zhang said. "I enjoy research greatly because it provides a great intellectual challenge that also has a societal impact. Cancer research has always been an exciting field to me; however, I am also open to other activities and other fields of research. I am excited to see what the future holds!"

Watch Angela Zhang explain her love of science on a TedX Talk:

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It isn't the twentieth century anymore.

It turns out today's teenagers hate talking on the phone. Only 4% of them consider talking on the phone their "favorite" way of talking to friends.

They prefer commenting publicly on each other's Facebook profiles, or even better: texting.

Even email and instant messages are passé for this crowd.

Know what isn't? 

Wiping the browser's history so Mom and Dad won't know which porn sites their teen just went to. Also: minimizing windows at the sounds of footsteps.

We learned all this working with Nielsen, Ericsson, McAfee, and Common Sense Media to put together a massive research report called: "The Secret Lives Of Teenagers Online."

We care because today's teenagers are tomorrow's adults – so we better be prepared.

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While any homeless child or teenager is cause for concern, those who don't conform to gender norms have it even tougher.

We sat down on Wednesday with Lee Strock, the head of the Urban Justice Center's Peter Cicchino Youth Project to find out just how difficult it is to be not only a homeless teen, but a gender-questioning homeless teen.

The Urban Justice Center handles issues related to discrimination and oppression and claims it defends "the rights of people who are overlooked or turned away by other organizations" from sex workers to street vendors to Iraqi refugees.

Modern society doesn't have the means to "accommodate the needs of these people," Strock said, referring to transgender individuals.

Those needs could be as simple as choosing a gender on an official form to as complicated as finding a safe place to sleep for the night.

"We see a lot of incidents where people experience violence at the hands of peers, family, anyone in life," he said, explaining why these teenagers end up coming to the center for advice.

But it's not just family members. New York City homeless shelters are not the safest places, especially for anyone who doesn't fit societal norms, Strock said.

"Our clients are generally more vulnerable," he said.

While the center doesn't work on criminal cases, it handles everything from helping asylum-seeking immigrants find a home in the country to helping teens work with their legal aid attorneys.

The center operates on a strict policy of confidentiality so they couldn't tell us much about individual cases, but we did learn that Strock and his team often see lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals leave countries in Central and Latin America, as well as Africa, after experiencing discrimination.

DON'T MISS: This Prominent Legal Advocate For New York's Homeless Tells Us Which NYC Mayor He Hates The Most >

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"Galvan noted that the response pattern of teen brains is essentially the same response curve of a seasoned drug addict.

Their reward center cannot be stimulated by low doses—they need the big jolt to get pleasure."

Via NurtureShock:

Is it possible that teens are just neurologically prone to boredom?

According to the work of neuroscientist Dr. Adriana Galvan at UCLA, there’s good reason to think so.

Inside our brains is a reward center, involving the nucleus accumbens, which lights up with dopamine whenever we find something exciting or interesting or pleasurable. In a study comparing the brains of teens to the brains of adults and young kids, Galvan found that teen brains can’t get pleasure out of doing things that are only mildly or moderately rewarding.

And:

Young kids find any sort of reward thrilling, so their brains lit up the same amount, no matter how much gold they won. Adult brains lit up according to the size of the reward: single coin, small pleasure response, big pile, big pleasure response. The teen brains did not light up in response to winning the small or medium reward—in fact, the nucleus accumbens activity dipped below baseline, as if they were crestfallen. Only to the big pile of gold did their reward center light up—and then it really lit up, signaling more activity than kids or adults ever showed.

Galvan noted that the response pattern of teen brains is essentially the same response curve of a seasoned drug addict. Their reward center cannot be stimulated by low doses—they need the big jolt to get pleasure.

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Sometimes campaigns can work too well and backfire on the company that produces them.

The ad campaign for AXE body spray was so successful that teenage nerds everywhere began dousing themselves in it—hurting the brand's image and smelling up schools everywhere.

Via Brandwashed: Tricks Companies Use to Manipulate Our Minds and Persuade Us to Buy:

However, the brand’s early success soon began to backfire. The problem was, the ads had worked too well in persuading the Insecure Novices and Enthusiastic Novices to buy the product. Geeks and dorks everywhere were now buying Axe by the caseload, and it was hurting the brand’s image. Eventually (in the United States, at least), to most high school and college-aged males, Axe had essentially become the brand for pathetic losers, and not surprisingly, sales took a huge hit.

Then Axe faced another big problem. Insecure high school students had been so convincingly persuaded that Axe would make them sexually appealing that they began completely dousing themselves in it. After all, if Axe = sex, then more Axe = more sex, right? According to CBC News, “Some boys have been dousing themselves in Axe, apparently believing commercials that show a young man applying the deodorant and being immediately hit on by beautiful women.” It got to the point where the students were reeking so heavily of it that it was becoming a distraction at school. So much so that in Minnesota, school district officials attempted to ban it, claiming that “the man spray has been abused, and the aerosol stench is a hazard for students and faculty.” The principal of one Canadian school started actually confiscating bottles of Axe. “They spray it all over their heads and their necks,” one teacher said. “They don’t realize how powerful the odor is. . . . They have no idea how much it takes to be a walking stink bomb [which is] basically what they are.”

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