The MacArthur Foundation recently funded one of the first multi-year efforts to analyze and evaluate youth behavior online.  The study, conducted as part of the Digital Youth Project, was exhaustive and included hundreds of structured interviews, over 5000 hours of observation, and analysis and review of over 10,000 MySpace and Facebook pages.[2]

In 2008 the National Science Foundation launched a new program to use CubeSats-- small, breadbox-sized satellites-- in space weather and atmospheric research.

Since 2004, Evergreen State College ecologist Nalini Nadkarni has used prisoners at Cedar Creek Corrections Center as assistants in a project "to identify the best ways to cultivate slow-growing mosses."

Harvard biology professor Peter Girguis and his team have created a low-cost power generator for families in Tanzania.