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You don't need to be a social scientist to know there is a gender diversity problem in technology. The tech industry in Silicon Valley and across the nation is overwhelmingly male-dominated.

That isn't to say there aren't women working at tech firms. Marissa Mayer, the CEO of Yahoo! and Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook have raised the profile of women at high tech firms. But those prominent exceptions do not accurately portray who makes up the engineering ranks at those and other tech companies.

Visit Silicon Valley and you will hear many people talk about the need to increase the number of female hackers. The conventional wisdom about why there are so few women coders usually points a finger at disparities in the talent pool, which is linked to disparities in tech education. In fact, starting as early as adolescence, girls and boys often choose different academic paths. When the time comes for young people to elect to go into engineering school, serious gender disparities become visible.

A new study by University of Texas sociologist Catherine Riegle-Crumb in the journal Social Science Quarterly offers an interesting new perspective on this divide. Along with co-author Chelsea Moore, Riegle-Crumb decided to dive into the gender divide in high school physics courses. (Even as the gender divide in some areas of science has diminished, a stubborn gap has persisted for decades in high school physics.)

Riegle-Crumb had a simple question: The national divide showed boys were more likely to take physics than girls. But was this divide constant across the country?

In an analysis of some 10,000 students at nearly 100 schools, Riegle-Crumb found that the divide was anything but constant.

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As part of our reboot of All Tech Considered, we've been inviting contributors to blog about big-picture questions facing tech and society. One theme we're exploring is the lack of women and people of color in tech — a gap so glaring that ridiculously long lines at tech conferences have inspired photo essays and Twitter feeds.

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This is the first of a series of stories on the changing car culture in America.

When you're a teenager, there are many things you desperately want to find: friends, fun, a future, freedom.

In American Graffiti, the iconic movie about teenagers set in 1962, the kids find all of that just by getting in their cars. The teenagers spend a whole lot of time tooling around in their cars — looking, cruising.

But the deep relationship between American teen culture and the automobile depicted in the film has changed. Young people are driving less, getting their licenses later and waiting longer to purchase their first new car.

The movie was set — but not filmed — in Modesto, Calif., and I wanted to see if any part of the city was like the movie. So on a hot Friday and Saturday summer night, I drove around Modesto.

With its downtown and long, wide streets, the city seems a perfect place to cruise. But that's not what's happening.

Celene Murrillo and her friends were among the many teens getting dropped off at the movie. Murrillo is 19, and she doesn't have a driver's license.

"If there was something that was out there forcing me to get out there and actually get my license I probably would," she says. "But there's, like, your parents, so you have something to depend on — and so maybe that's why."

She says her parents don't mind dropping her off around town — and she doesn't mind it either.

Blanca Correa, 16, doesn't have a driver's license, and she has no immediate plans to get one. "I've never actually thought it was that important," she says.

Movies

On Location: Cruising With 'American Graffiti'

Basil is growing thick and leafy in many backyard gardens throughout the U.S. right now, which means many people are thinking about pesto. It's one of the more basic sauces you can make — in addition to basil, all you need is Parmesan or Romano cheese, a little garlic, some extra virgin olive oil and Italian pine nuts.

But if you've looked for them at the grocery store recently, you know those little Italian nuts sport a big price tag. Hungry bugs and warmer temperatures have severely diminished harvests. Now it's not uncommon to see them selling for $60 to $120 a pound.

Julia della Croce, author of Italian Home Cooking, says it's a global problem.

"Even in Italy, where they're also very expensive, they keep them under lock and key in the shops," she says. "So even the Italians can't afford them."

More From Julia della Croce

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