Most cars and trucks in the United States run on a blend of 90 percent gasoline and 10 percent ethanol, a renewable fuel made primarily from fermented corn. But to produce the 14 billion gallons of ethanol consumed annually by American drivers requires millions of acres of farmland. A recent discovery by Stanford University scientists…
Experimental Technology Can Monitor & Maintain Drug Levels in the Body
As with coffee or alcohol, the way each person processes medication is unique. One person’s perfect dose may be another person’s deadly overdose. With such variability, it can be hard to prescribe exactly the right amount of critical drugs, such as chemotherapy or insulin. Now, a team led by Stanford electrical engineer H. Tom Soh and postdoctoral…
Ultrasound, Microbubbles Flag Malignant Cancer in Humans
Researchers Create New Method for Recording Bird Flight in 3D
The wind rushing between skyscrapers is a substantial hurdle for anyone interested in operating small drones in urban areas. Yet, pigeons seem to have little trouble maneuvering through turbulent city skies. With sights set on unlocking the secrets of birds’ smooth sailing, researchers at Stanford University have developed a new method for recording the shape…
Automating Biology Experiments With Legos
Elementary and secondary school students who later want to become scientists and engineers often get hands-on inspiration by using off-the-shelf kits to build and program robots. But so far it’s been difficult to create robotic projects to foster interest in the “wet” sciences — biology, chemistry and medicine — so called because experiments in these…
Stanford Biologists Identify Ancient Stress Response in Corals
Artificial Synapse for Neural Networks
For all the improvements in computer technology over the years, we still struggle to recreate the low-energy, elegant processing of the human brain. Now, researchers at Stanford University and Sandia National Laboratories have made an advance that could help computers mimic one piece of the brain’s efficient design – an artificial version of the space…
Lab on a Chip Costs Just a Penny to Make
Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have developed a way to produce a cheap and reusable diagnostic “lab on a chip” with the help of an ordinary inkjet printer. At a production cost of as little as 1 cent per chip, the new technology could usher in a medical diagnostics revolution like the…
Nanoscale View of Energy Storage
Smartphones Could Be Game-Changing Tool for Cardiovascular Research
Taking Back Control of an Autonomous Car Affects Human Steering Behavior
There you are, cruising down the freeway, listening to some tunes and enjoying the view as your autonomous car zips and swerves through traffic. Then the fun ends and it becomes time take over the wheel. How smooth is that transition going to be? Twenty-two drivers put that question to a test—on a track, not…
Battery Cars Better Choice for Reducing Emissions Than Fuel Cells
Many communities would be better off investing in electric vehicles that run on batteries instead of hydrogen fuel cells, in part because the hydrogen infrastructure provides few additional energy benefits for the community besides clean transportation. That’s according to a study in the November issue of the journal Energy by scientists at Stanford University and the Technical University of…
Solar Physicist Finds New Way to Study Inner Workings of the Sun
In 2009, applied physicist Peter Sturrock was visiting the National Solar Observatory in Tucson, Arizona, when the deputy director of the observatory told him he should read a controversial article about radioactive decay. Although the subject was outside Sturrock’s field, it inspired a thought so intriguing that the next day he phoned the author of…
Smartphone Microscope Creates Interactive Tool for Microbiology
Researchers Bring Theorized Mechanism of Conduction to Life
Humans have harnessed large portions of the electromagnetic spectrum for diverse technologies, from X-rays to radios, but a chunk of that spectrum has remained largely out of reach. This is known as the terahertz gap, located between radio waves and infrared radiation, two parts of the spectrum we use in everyday technologies including cell phones,…
Research Team Simulates the Inner Strain on the Brain to Better Plan Surgery
A team of researchers led by Stanford engineers has moved a step closer to helping surgeons more safely perform a life-saving procedure for victims of brain trauma. While surgeons have long performed an operation called a decompressive craniectomy – cutting a hole in the skull to give the swelling brain space to expand – the…
Iron Nanoparticles Make Immune Cells Attack Cancer
New Technology Could Help Break Net Neutrality Deadlock
Engineers Stop Soap Bubbles from Swirling
Engineers Develop a Plastic Clothing Material that Cools the Skin
Stanford engineers have developed a low-cost, plastic-based textile that, if woven into clothing, could cool your body far more efficiently than is possible with the natural or synthetic fabrics in clothes we wear today. Describing their work in Science, the researchers suggest that this new family of fabrics could become the basis for garments that keep…