"CSI is a hot topic, and that makes it fascinating to kids. But it's also applied science, and it's a powerful way to get kids involved in the scientific process: carefully documenting observations and analyzing results." Merle Hunsaker, RET and science teacher.

Demonstrates a new class of Quantum Dots that are not toxic but fluoresce throughout the visible by varying the dopant.

Center for Materials for Information Technology at University of Alabama have recently gone live with 5 computer games targeted at middle school students. The games are designed to teach them about the periodic table and one is designed to teach about rock classifications.

Michael M. Baksh, Esther M. Winter, Nathan G. Clack and Jay T. Groves: University of California, Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Lab

Jia Sun, Brad Payne, Greg Szulczewski, and Silas Blackstock (February, 2006)

When conjugated polymer crystals nucleate off of the gate dielectric, the conjugated backbones, shown in red, are all aligned. Charge can easily hop from one grain to another. Proven strategies for nucleating crystals on the dielectric * Make the dielectric smooth * Coat the dielectric with OTS * Use high boiling point solvent or anneal the film * Use high molecular weight polymers.

Bohdana Discher

Working collaboratively, research groups at the Chicago MRSEC have developed new label-free analytical systems that utilize ultra-small sample sizes of cellular lysate, yet allow these single samples to be assayed for multiple kinase activities. The systems involve the integration of solid-phase biochip peptide arrays, mass spectrometric detection, and microfluidic networks.

When a marble or ball-bearing is dropped onto a bed of fine, loose sand, one first observes a broad splash of sand at impact. Then, a tall jet of granular material shoots up vertically. Experiments at the Chicago MRSEC in collaboration with researchers from the APS at Argonne have tracked the birth and evolution of these granular jets using the fastest x-ray based imaging performed to date (6000 video frames per second)[1].

A team of Princeton researchers has developed an enabling technique for manufacturing electro-optical devices from organic semiconductors. The method relies on a modeling framework to describe different material transfer modes that occur when the organic materials are "stamped" onto an already patterned substrate, which allowed the Princeton team to cleanly transfer an organic thin film from a stamp to a patterned substrate without leaving any voids.