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Building and evaluating artifacts specifically for K-12 education, technologists committed to design sciences are needed along with an approach to evaluation increasing the systemic transfer from research and development into school settings. The authors describe THE VIRTUAL LAB scanning electronic microscope simulation, including (a) its development from a design and project management perspective at NASA and (b) the formative evaluation, drawing on a usability study conducted in high school science classrooms by University of Central Florida. The authors offer a four-level assessment that begins with the overarching vision that guided developers. Over time, a team of evaluators (a) verify (the artifact), (b) check variation (of content), (c) verify (in context), and (d) document value (in the field of education). THE VIRTUAL LAB usability study is offered as a specific example in the evaluation process using both quantitative and qualitative data while responding and contributing to an overarching vision for education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers news briefs related to the field of science and technology. For more than 2 decades, photomicroscopist Dee Breger of Drexel University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, has used artistic photographs from scanning electron microscopes (SEM) to lure the public into learning about science. Last fall, she offered an hour-long guided session on an SEM as part of an auction to raise money for educational software. The auction, organized by Galaxygoo, a San Francisco nonprofit, featured works of art inspired by science, including Breger's own SEM image of a penguin feather. In 2000, Aristides Patrinos brokered a truce between a U.S. government project to sequence the human genome and a competing, private effort led by J. Craig Venter. Now, the 59-year-old engineer-turned-science administrator is leaving the Department of Energy after 3 decades to run a company founded by Venter. Great Britain's Nicholas Shackleton died on January 24, 2006. He started out studying physics, switched to measuring minuscule isotopic differences in microscopic bits of ocean mud, and ended up establishing the metronomic qualities of climate change.