Even the most intellectual of teenagers can be dumb sometimes. Neurologically, this makes sense. “It’s a paradoxical time of development,” Frances E. Jensen told Harvard Magazine. “These are people with very sharp brains, but they’re not quite sure what to do with them.” 

New research suggests that adolescent brains are only 80 percent developed. Some sections have high-learning potential while other parts are still unconnected. MRI scans suggest that brain development isn’t finished until people are in their late 20s, flying in the face of previously held beliefs. The researchers hope the results will help parents and children understand adolescents a little better.

(Thanks, 3 Quarks Daily.)

A newly developed piece of clothing called the Speed Vest is giving bicycle safety some much-needed visibility.

The reflective vest displays its wearer’s speed in bright neon numbers on the back, increasing the rider’s visibility while addressing the common complaint that bikes slow car traffic. Automobile drivers’ impatience might be mitigated if the Speed Vest confirms that the bike in front of them is traveling at or near the car’s speed.

The Speed Vest is still in the prototype stage, but its designers—Brady Clark, of Minneapolis, and Mykle Hansen, of Portland, Oregon—have already won the Bike Gadget Contest held by the Hub Bike Co-Op in Minneapolis and showcased their invention at the Minnesota State Fair this summer. The bike blog Urban Velo has some playful suggestions for alternative messages bicyclists could convey via the Speed Vest.

Image by Nathaniel Freeman, courtesy of Speed Vest.

Twitter isn't the only new website that's changing the party conventions. This week’s gala also has the distinction of being the first Demcoratic National Convention of the YouTube era. Throngs of delegates, protestors, and journalists (professional or otherwise), armed with video cameras, are descending on Denver and swarming the Pepsi Center in hopes of capturing a politician’s gaffe, a protestor’s stunt, or a police officer’s unwarranted action.

The footage is already piling up: There's a Fox News crew accosted by angry protestors, a clash between anti- and pro-abortion rights advocates, and disgruntled protestors being corralled by police (though the inclusion of the word “RIOT” in the clip’s title might be overselling the scuffle). There’s also an interview with Hillary Clinton supporters—not quite as formidable as the media would have us believe—reasoning that their candidate still has a chance of clinching the nomination.

Inside the convention itself, small gatherings and speeches that might get passed over by national networks are being captured by the video sharing site. These include a standout speech by Representative Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) at a breakfast meeting. Also inside the walls of the convention center, a video meme is growing in strength as conventioneers shoot “I Nominate Barack Obama Because…” clips at the YouTube booth in the lobby. 

For busy people who missed the live television broadcasts, YouTube is also a good place to find clips from network coverage of the convention, such as Ted Kennedy’s opening-night speech. Though interested viewers should watch these clips now, since they clearly violate copyright laws.

Image courtesy of jonsson, licensed by Creative Commons.

For more of Utne.com’s ongoing coverage of the Democratic National Convention, click here.

The Democratic National Convention holds the honor of being the first presidential convention featuring  Twitter, the microblogging site launched in 2006. Many prominent journalists, bloggers, and tech-savvy people are using Twitter to share their thoughts in fewer than 141 characters. Here are some of the more interesting observations, or “tweets,” on the Democratic National Convention that have been published so far. If you see any others, be sure to share them in the comments.

Howard Kurtz, Washington Post
“Riot police everywhere. My first perk: a smoothie from Google.”

Jay Rosen, PressThink, journalism professor at NYU
“Do family melodrama better than the networks do family melodrama and you can defuse the pundit's impulse to disrupt party messaging.”

Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist
“I need to spend more time re why this time and convention is so important”

Ana Marie Cox, Time
“Landed. Apparently bunking with Obama Girl. Probably the closest I'll get to the Obama entourage all week. But the view will be good.”

Slate
“Delegates dancing—catastrophic”

Mark Ambinder, the Atlantic
“Trojan, the condom manufacturer, has set up shop near the press mags. They're handing out condoms”

Micah Sifry, the Personal Democracy Forum
“Romney v Biden debate would pit great hair against great hair plugs.”

Joe Trippi, Howard Dean’s 2004 presidential campaign manager
“Roaming convention floor looking for a story - not sure there are any. Obama delegate trackers have gotten a lot of HRC Delegates to switch”

The American Prospect
“teddy sounds good! also, he pledges to live at least till january, and we at tap mean to hold his feet to the fire on that.”

Jane Hamshire, Firedoglake
"McCain may name VP on Thu. My early call that he'll steal Dem convention bounce by naming Lieberman on track"

Spencer Ackerman, Firedoglake
“word from inside the pepsi center press room: NO ALCOHOL! Coverage sure to be negative”

Lindsay Beyerstein, Freelance investigative reporter
“I just got back from the 'free speech zone' at 7th and Auraria. How depressing.”

Matt Cooper, Portfolio magazine
“At the benediction, the minister is praying for teacher pay hikes! That's a father who knows his congregation.”

Ben Smith, the Politico
“949 Frontier to Denver: so far, many tattoos, no political types”

The Uptake
Quotes ollypriesmeyer, "Have you ever been arrested at one of these things? Trust me not as exciting as one might think once they load you up."

Rachel Sklar, the Huffington Post
“Leslie Sanchez says Republicans don't tweet. Hmmm.”

Jeff Jarvis, BuzzMachine
“I am sad to see bloggers coopted into giving these political publicity fests. Why join the mob? It's already too big.”

Image by  Steve Bott , licensed under  Creative Commons .

For more of Utne.com’s ongoing coverage of the Democratic National Convention, click here.

Therapy and 12-step groups are two of the most popular routes to recovery for people addicted to alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs. But some scientists are looking to pharmaceuticals in hopes of breaking the cycle of addiction.

Anti-stress pills are one drug that scientists believe could fight addiction to alcohol, Melinda Wenner reports for the Scientific American. Researchers at the National Institutes of Health and University College Lon­don administered a stress-reduction drug to highly anxious recovering alcoholics, which reduced their craving for a drink, especially in high-stress situations. The study didn’t prove whether stress medication could help alcoholics long-term, but represents another step forward in efforts to treat addiction with pharmaceuticals. 

A more radical drug therapy for addiction is being pioneered in Canada. Writing for This Magazine, Peter Tupper profiles a nonprofit rehabilitation facility in British Columbia called Iboga Therapy House, where addicts are administered ibogaine, a drug classified as Schedule I in the United States (meaning its in the same category as cannabis, heroin, and LSD). The extremely powerful drug induces “a dream-like state lasting anywhere from 24 to 36 hours,” during which patients are monitored by medical professionals. Ibogaine's main benefit seems to be relief from painful withdrawal symptoms, and many subjects report a near or total cessation of cravings after the treatment ends. Ibogaine is unregulated in Canada, and its questionable legality makes the drug’s efficacy difficult to track, but facilities like Iboga House appear to be part of a growing subfield of pharmaceutical addiction treatment.

Image by  Dan4th , licensed by  Creative Commons .

The U.S. Army Research Office has awarded $4 million to scientists from three universities to study “the neuroscientific and signal-processing foundations of synthetic telepathy.” Put simply, the military wants to read minds. According to an offical press release, researchers at the University of California, Irvine, Carnegie Mellon University, and the University of Maryland will collaborate to construct a “brain-computer interface,” where soldiers’ thoughts will be recorded by an EEG and transcribed by a computer-based speech recognition program for others to read. The project’s supporters say that synthetic telepathy would help both wounded soldiers and civilians as well (for example, those sustaining brain damage from trauma or stroke). Critics worry that the technology could be used for interrogation, even though the lead researcher, UC-Irvine's Michael D’Zmura, told the Associated Press that the program "will never be used in a way without somebody's real, active cooperation.”

This is by no means the first time the military has poured money into researching psychic activities like mind-reading or “remote viewing.” Writing for Maisonneuve (article not available online), Alex Roslin details the long history in the US of military psychic research, which stretches all the way back to 1953. The idea reached its peak in the 1970s and ‘80s with Stargate, the CIA’s cinematically titled program for developing remote viewing and precognition techniques.

(Thanks, Democracy Now!)

Image by The She-Creature, licensed under Creative Commons.

Back in November, Google.org (Google's philanthropic branch) announced it was launching a massive effort to support renewable energy. On Tuesday the company reached a milestone in their endeavor by earmarking $10 million for the research and development of geothermal energy, specifically that of Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS). The official Google.org blog post explains EGS as expanding “the potential of traditional geothermal energy by orders of magnitude. The traditional geothermal approach relies on finding naturally occurring pockets of steam or hot water. The EGS process, by comparison, replicates these conditions by fracturing hot rock, circulating water through the system, and using the resulting steam to produce electricity in a conventional turbine.”

The money will go to AltaRock Energy and Potter Drilling, two startup EGS companies, and will fund a research grant for Southern Methodist University to study and map US geothermal distribution. The effort is a part of the company’s RE<C initiative, a project geared towards reducing the cost of renewable energy to less than that of coal.

(Thanks, CNET News.)

Psychologists have figured out why Olympic gymnast Nastia Liukin looked so frustrated last night after she won a silver medal. Her reaction was typical of silver medalists, who are often more disappointed than the athletes who win bronze medals. According to the Boston Globe, “close-call counterfactuals” explain the disappointment of second place: Silver medal winners, like Liukin, focused on how close they came to the gold, while bronze winners focused on how close they came to not winning a medal. Studies have also found that media expectations and performance in qualifying rounds, were determining factors in the athletes’ emotions.

A new camera being developed by the University of Washington gives doctors a clear look at patients’ insides, and the ability to fine tune the view. The camera is so small, ScienCentral News reports that patients can literally swallow it like a pill. Earlier models of internal cameras were often as large as an adult index finger, requiring that patients be sedated before usage. The new system employs a fiber optic wire as small as a human hair. Researchers believe the technology could make medical procedures less invasive, and could lead to easier screening for diseases such as lung cancer. In fact, the system is so small that Eric Seibel, one of the technology’s developers, conducted an interview about the innovation with one of the cameras down his throat.

You can watch that video below.