Science

Young women learn tech skills at Girls Who Code club

In the meeting room at the Oakland Public Library’s Cesar Chavez Branch, girls grades 6 to 12 gather for their Tuesday club meeting. They remove their school backpacks and power on the laptops provided by the library. With some instruction from their club advisor, they immerse themselves in learning a new language: the language of coding. This Girls Who Code club is one of the hundreds nationwide. This particular club location was launched four years ago. During each school year,…

Oakland school district tests water at schools for lead

Following the discovery of lead in the water at McClymonds High School in August, water testing has begun throughout the entire Oakland Unified School District. Currently, 13 additional schools in the district have been reported to have lead in their water. At a school board meeting on November 8, Superintendent Kyla Johnson-Trammell read from a statement regarding the status of lead of Oakland schools. “In August 2017, water safety concerns regarding the lead levels of water at McClymonds High School…

Techies race (and crash) self-driving DIY Robocars in Oakland

Every month, a group of technology enthusiasts meet in an Oakland warehouse to build tiny self-driving cars. “DIY Robocars” was organized by Chris Anderson, who also runs drone company 3DR. While these cheap, disposable cars aren’t as sophisticated as the ones being developed by Tesla or Google, Anderson says that the advantage of using these “Robocars” is that there is lots of room to fail.

Birthing inequities: Combatting racial disparities in the health of newborns

This article is part of “Birthing Inequity,” an Oakland North project on maternal and infant health disparities in Oakland. See the full multimedia report here. In 2003, while she was carrying her third child, Tanisha Fuller had to convince her hospital caretakers that something was really wrong. Six months pregnant, and unsure of what was happening to her, she’d rushed to the emergency room with pain in her back, feeling like she couldn’t breathe. At the hospital, she was told that…