Stanford scientists will lead a national cooperative effort, the LIGO Scientific Collaboration Center for Coatings Research, to improve detection of gravitational waves at the twin LIGO facilities. LIGO, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory, has a problem of scale: galaxy-shaking events like the recent collision of two neutron stars happened so far away that the echoes took 130 million years to travel to our planet. A coll...

Stanford researchers have for the first time tied several brain circuits to alertness. The findings enhance scientists' understanding of the forces driving alertness, a brain state that's essential to survival, by showing that diverse cell types throughout the brain together produce this state. Problems tied to alertness deficits range from sleep deprivation to depression to brain-trauma-induced somnolence, while conditions such as anxi...

Of the approximately two dozen medical CT scanners scattered throughout Stanford’s main campus and medical centres, two can be found nestled in basement labs of the Green Earth Sciences Buildings. The scanner duo is being put to some decidedly off-label uses in research led by Anthony Kovscek, a professor of energy resources engineering at Stanford’s School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences (Stanford Earth).

In a recent paper in Nature Materials, Associate Professor of Materials Science and Engineering Sarah Heilshorn described a solution to the dual challenges of growing and preserving neural stem cells in a state where they are still able to mature into many different cell types. The first challenge is that growing stem cells in quantity requires space. Like traditional farming, it is a two-dimensional affair. If you want more wheat, corn or s...

Some of the most promising new treatments for blood cancers, drugs called proteasome inhibitors, have a problem: For reasons that researchers are still working to fully understand, cancer cells can build up a resistance to them. Now, researchers report in ACS Central Science how an investigation into a rare disease known as NGLY1 deficiency has revealed a way to outmaneuver one possible resistance mechanism.

Thousands of miles of buried optical fibres crisscross California’s San Francisco Bay Area delivering high-speed internet and HD video to homes and businesses. Biondo Biondi, a professor of geophysics at Stanford’s School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences, dreams of turning that dense network into an inexpensive “billion sensors” observatory for continuously monitoring and studying earthquakes.

Since the 19th century at least, humans have wondered what could be accomplished by linking our brains – smart and flexible but prone to disease and disarray – directly to technology in all its cold, hard precision. Writers of the time dreamed up intelligence enhanced by implanted clockwork and a starship controlled by a transplanted brain. While these remain inconceivably far-fetched, the melding of brains and machines for treat...

Cancer researchers have long hailed p53, a tumour-suppressor protein, for its ability to keep unruly cells from forming tumours. But for such a highly studied protein, p53 has hidden its tactics well. Now, researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have tapped into what makes p53 tick, delineating a clear pathway that shows how the protein mediates anti-tumor activity in pancreatic cancer.

Neuroscience research has made incredible strides toward revealing the inner workings of our brains thanks in part to technological advances, but barriers in sharing and accessing that data stymie progress in the field. Stanford psychologists are addressing those barriers through a new way of organising brain-imaging data that simplifies data analysis and helps researchers collaborate more effectively – they call it BIDS (Brain Imaging...

It looks like a regular roof, but the top of the Packard Electrical Engineering Building at Stanford University has been the setting of many milestones in the development of a cooling technology that could someday be part of our everyday lives. Since 2013, Shanhui Fan, professor of electrical engineering, and his students and research associates have employed this roof as a testbed for a high-tech mirror-like optical surface that could be the fut...

  Researchers from the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University have for the first time shown that neural networks – a form of artificial intelligence – can accurately analyse the complex distortions in spacetime known as gravitational lenses 10 million times faster than traditional methods.

The next generation of feature-filled and energy-efficient electronics will require computer chips just a few atoms thick. For all its positive attributes, trusty silicon can’t take us to these ultrathin extremes. Now, electrical engineers at Stanford have identified two semiconductors – hafnium diselenide and zirconium diselenide – that share or even exceed some of silicon’s desirable traits, starting with the fact t...

Stanford University engineers have developed dynamic windows that can switch from transparent to opaque or back again in under a minute, a significant improvement over dimming windows currently being installed to reduce cooling costs in some buildings. Stanford engineers have built a smart window that quickly changes from clear to dark and back again depending on the light.

In our hunt for Earth-like planets and extraterrestrial life, we’ve found thousands of exoplanets orbiting stars other than our sun. The caveat is that most of these planets have been detected using indirect methods. Similar to how a person can’t look at anything too close to the sun, current telescopes can’t observe potential Earth-like planets because they are too close to the stars they orbit, which are about 10 billion times...

Computer-generated skeletons are competing in a virtual race, running, hopping and jumping as far as they can before collapsing in an electronic heap. Meanwhile, in the real world, their coaches – teams of machine learning and artificial intelligence enthusiasts – are competing to see who can best train their skeletons to mimic those complex human movements. The event’s creator has a serious end goal: making life better for kids...

The federal government reports that 40 states expect water shortages by 2024 and water worries already plague some cities across the United States. Underground aquifers that were over-tapped for years now cry out to be replenished. The problem is that the two main strategies for increasing water supplies – collecting stormwater runoff and recycling treated wastewater – are usually separate processes that can create costly and underuse...

Imagine rescuers searching for people in the rubble of a collapsed building. Instead of digging through the debris by hand or having dogs sniff for signs of life, they bring out a small, air-tight cylinder. They place the device at the entrance of the debris and flip a switch. From one end of the cylinder, a tendril extends into the mass of stones and dirt, like a fast-climbing vine. A camera at the tip of the tendril gives rescuers a view of the...

A new camera that builds on technology first described by Stanford researchers more than 20 years ago could generate the kind of information-rich images that robots need to navigate the world. This camera, which generates a four dimensional image, can also capture nearly 140 degrees of information. “We want to consider what would be the right camera for a robot that drives or delivers packages by air".

Having undergone two aneurysm surgeries, Sandi Rodoni thought she understood everything about the procedure. But when it came time for her third surgery, the Watsonville, California, resident was treated to a virtual reality trip inside her own brain. Stanford Medicine is using a new software system that combines imaging from MRIs, CT scans and angiograms to create a 3D model that physicians and patients can see and manipulate — just l...

Stanford researchers have for the first time captured the freezing of water, molecule-by-molecule, into a strange, dense form called ice VII (“ice seven”), found naturally in otherworldly environments, such as when icy planetary bodies collide. In addition to helping scientists better understand those remote worlds, the findings – published in Physical Review Letters – could reveal how water and other substa...