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  • Spring 2016

    Spring 2016: Premium Blend

    Found in everything from space shuttles to dental fillings, composite materials have thoroughly infiltrated modern society. But their potential is still greatly untapped, offering researchers ample opportunity for discovery.

  • Fall 2015

    Fall 2015: Collision Course

    Within the particle showers created at the Large Hadron Collider, answers to some of the universe’s mysteries are waiting.

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    Model systems like pigeons can help illuminate our own evolutionary and genomic history.

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    UT Arlington's tiny windmills are bringing renewable energy to a whole new scale.

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    Winter 2014: Overdue for an Overhaul

    The stability of our highways, pipelines, and even manholes is reaching a breaking point.

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    2012: Mystery solved?

    Scientists believe they have discovered a subatomic particle that is crucial to understanding the universe.

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    UT Arlington researchers unlock clues to the human body’s most mysterious and complex organ.

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    UT Arlington researchers probe the hidden world of microbes in search of renewable energy sources.

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    Wounded soldiers are benefiting from Robert Gatchel’s program that combines physical rehabilitation with treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder.

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    2007: Sensing a solution

    Tiny sensors implanted in the body show promise in combating acid reflux disease, pain and other health problems.

  • 2006

    2006:Semiconductors: The next generation

    Nanotechnology researchers pursue hybrid silicon chips with life-saving potential.

  • 2005

    2005: Imaging is everything

    Biomedical engineers combat diseases with procedures that are painless to patients.

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Wordplay

All the World’s a Stage

Playwriting allows children the opportunity to tell their own stories while developing narrative-writing skills 

Rebekah Carlile

Rebekah Carlile is using her playwriting program with patients at Cook Children's Hospital.

Everyone has a story to tell. And while translating that story into narrative and committing it to paper is no small task, it’s a crucial thing for children to learn. A new intervention developed by education master’s student Rebekah Carlile uses playwriting as a curricular vehicle to teach these important skills.

“In writing a play, children are actively trying to make sense of something that is personally important,” she says. “They are motivated to write well so their stories will be understood.”

During Carlile’s 10-week intervention—which is being piloted at Cook Children’s Hospital in Fort Worth—children work in groups and get feedback from their peers, who read each other’s plays out loud. This type of performative feedback, Carlile says, is unique to playwriting and integral to the teachings of UT Arlington’s Southwest Center for Mind, Brain, and Education program.

As she continues refining her playwriting program, Carlile plans to study its usefulness for other student populations and explore its effects on pragmatic language skills.

“Narrative language skills are linked to academic success in a wide range of disciplines, including reading comprehension, writing, and even math,” she says. “If this playwriting intervention can positively impact narrative language skills, it’s possible that other academic areas would improve as well.”

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