By the time undergraduate students reach Penn State, many have already experienced the educational “a-ha moment” that will determine the course of their college experience. These early experiences are crucial, which is why Professor of Chemistry Scott Showalter recently traveled to Telluride,Colorado to lead a day camp for students interested in STEM fields.

Cell particles move more quickly through a crowded cellular environment when the crowding molecules are non-uniformly distributed. New research also shows that particle transport in crowded cells can actually be faster than movement in a non-crowded environment as long as the particles are moving from densely crowded areas to less crowded areas. A paper describing the research, by a team of Penn State scientists, appears online in the journal ACS Nano.