Student Reporter Damon Weaver Interviews President Barack Obama

I love the questions Damon is asking President Obama. He's right on the money and is a very good interviewer. President Obama is on the right track— America's future is dependent on lasting and effective education reform.


As a kid who went to a 'not-so-great' high school I know that we have a major problem. It's an inconvenient truth that there are great disparities between quality of education in America and that should not be so. We need to encourage charter schools so that ALL parents have a reasonable choice in their children's education. Parents need to take responsibility for their children's education— They can no longer sit back and assume that everything is taken care of. Too many children fall through the cracks. We need to fund our Gifted and Talented programs more while still paying attention to the special education programs. Preschool and kindergarten must be taken overhauled so that kids are prepared to read ad write when the grow older.We have enough money and resources to make lasting and effective education reform possible— the question is: "Will we?"

♥ Efe ♥

'60 Minutes' Video: The Pentagon's Bionic Arm

"When Americans are wounded in Afghanistan or Iraq, no expense is spared to save their lives. But once they're home, if they have suffered an amputation of their arm, they usually end up wearing an artificial limb that hasn't changed much since World War II.

In all the wonders of modern medicine, building a robotic arm with a fully functioning hand has not been remotely possible. But as 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley reports, that is starting to change. One remarkable leap in technology is called the DEKA arm and it's just one of the breakthroughs in a $100 million Pentagon program called "Revolutionizing Prosthetics."


This is precisely the kind of stuff I want to get into when I'm done with my Bioengineering degree. In fact, for a Freshman Engineering Conference, I collaborated with a partner and wrote a professional grade paper on the military applications of tissue engineering. Maybe I'm closer to achieving my goals than I think.

♥ Efe ♥

Doctor Journeys to Ghana for Triple Negative Breast Cancer Clues

Dr. Lisa Newman travels 16 hours from Michigan to Ghana in search of cancer clues. She collaborates with other doctors to find the origins of triple negative breast cancer. Women most affected by TNBC are younger, pre-menopausal and of African ancestry. Dr. Newman is conducting ground breaking research on the possible link between Ghanaian women and African-American women with TNBC. It's stories like this that make me excited to go to Medical School and become a doctor.

♥ Efe ♥