How would you bring up scientific funding if you bumped into your senator while he’s buying cheese and cured meats at the local market? How about getting a stranger interested in safer alternatives to lead-based welding solder? Communicating science to lawmakers and laypersons is important, but scientists too often get tongue-tied talking with everyday folks.
At first glance the beautifully bound 1797 Luigi Cherubini opera Médée looks like an impeccably preserved relic of opera’s golden age. However, flip to the final pages of the aria “Du trouble affreux qui me dévore” (“The terrible disorder that consumes me”) and you see the problem: Thick smudges of carbon completely black out the closing lines.
Picked up by KQED, the San Jose Mercury News, Discover Magazine, Wired.co.uk, LiveScience, Phys.org, NBC News, Yahoo News, The Daily Mail, the Mumbai Mirror, and others.
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Lasers are an unseen backbone of modern society. They’re integral to technologies ranging from high-speed Internet services to Blu-ray players. The physics powering lasers, however, has remained relatively unchanged through 50 years of use. Now, an international research team led by Stanford’s Yoshihisa Yamamoto, a professor of electrical engineering and of applied physics, has demonstrated a revolutionary electrically driven polariton laser that could significantly improve the efficiency of lasers.
Featured in Game Changers: Energy on the Move.
Most of us don’t ponder our pulses outside of the gym. But doctors use the human pulse as a diagnostic tool to monitor heart health. Zhenan Bao, a professor of chemical engineering at Stanford, has developed a heart monitor thinner than a dollar bill and no wider than a postage stamp. The flexible skin-like monitor, worn under an adhesive bandage on the wrist, is sensitive enough to help doctors detect stiff arteries and cardiovascular problems.
Picked up by the San Francisco Chronicle, The Daily Mail, The Future of Things, and others.
A basic fuel sell system starts with plain water (which, for those of you a bit rusty on your high school chemistry, is two hydrogen atoms bonded with an oxygen atom). Using an electrical current, such as from a solar panel, the water molecules can be broken up into oxygen gas and hydrogen gas. These two gasses are stored separately until power is needed—the larger the reserve tanks holding the gasses, the more power available later. Upping the pressure in the tanks compresses the gas down into a smaller volume, meaning more power potential in less space.
The swirling waters of a rocky shore motivate sea urchin larvae to grow up and settle down.
Twenty years after the release of Jurassic Park, the dream of bringing back the dinosaurs remains science fiction. But scientists predict that within 15 years they will be able to revive some more recently extinct species, such as the dodo or the passenger pigeon, raising the question of whether or not they should – just because they can.
Off the coast of New England, a telecommunications company digs trenches for new cable lines. Four years ago, the path of the dig would be a cost-efficient straight line through a vulnerable seafloor ecosystem. Now, thanks to new state policies in Massachusetts, the company is paying more for rerouted cables — but worrying less about lengthy approvals and backlash from environmentalists.
While deadly military drones grab headlines, a very different type of drone glides above the vineyards of Davis. Precisely aligning itself along a row of grapes, the robotic helicopter releases its 16-liter pesticide payload on the crops below.