Stanford biologists are using rare poison frogs that nurse their young as a way to help answer a fundamental question: Is there more than one way to build a maternal brain?
Some programs work better than others when it comes to involving citizens in preserving the environment. After reviewing those that worked, Stanford researchers propose a blueprint for how others can educate people to maximize their impact.
Even at a young age, children know that deciding what to teach is as important as knowing how to teach. This ability to instruct each other could explain why humans are so adaptable.
An experiment with a water-saving “smart” faucet shows potential for reducing water use. The catch? Unbeknownst to study participants, the faucet’s smarts came from its human controller.
Birds can perch on a wide variety of surfaces, thick or thin, rough or slick. But can they find stable footing if a branch is covered in Teflon? In the interest of making better robots, Stanford researchers found out.
A survey of adult former smokers, current smokers and people who have never smoked found that people perceived cigarettes marketed as being environmentally friendly as less harmful to health and the environment.
No one tells birds and other animals how to move together without colliding. Can we examine their behavior to help autonomous vehicles navigate highways and skyways?
Neuroscientists know a lot about how our brains learn new things, but not much about how they choose what to focus on while they learn. Now, Stanford researchers have traced that ability to an unexpected place.
Without realizing it, our brains quickly learn to associate certain visual cues – a curve of a car or color of a product – with certain attributes, such as its environmental friendliness.
Satellite data from thousands of high seas fishing vessels over four years illuminate global fishing’s scope and pattern and hold promise for improving ocean management across the planet.
Mentally running through a routine improves performance, but how that works isn’t clear. Now, a new tool – brain-machine interface – suggests the answer lies in how our brains prepare for action.
Most people don’t have answers to the big questions about consciousness or the meaning of life, but they do have a way of thinking about and categorizing mental life. It comes down to three things – body, heart and mind.
Observing ants in the trees of a tropical forest, Professor Deborah Gordon recorded how, without a plan, the ants make and maintain their networks – and how they repair the network when it is ruptured.
Stanford researchers have found that humpback whales flap their foreflippers like penguins or sea lions. This unexpected observation helps explain whale maneuvering and could improve designs inspired by their movement.
New genetic evidence suggesting that early mammals had good night-time vision adds to fossil and behavioral studies indicating that early mammals were nocturnal.
A group of Stanford experts are encouraging more researchers who study social interaction to conduct studies that examine online environments and use big data.
By looking at groups of neurons in the emotional center of the brain, researchers now understand how neural networks in the brain form associations, like those made famous by Ivan Pavlov.
Researchers long believed that the cerebellum did little more than process our senses and control our muscles. New techniques to study the most densely packed neurons in our brains reveal that it may do much more.
Impulsive behavior in teens can go hand in hand with drug use, but the link is weak and doesn’t necessarily predict future behavior. A Stanford psychologist and colleagues think they can do better, using images of the brain.
Parrotlets flying through a field of lasers and microparticles helped test three popular models that predict the lift generated by flying animals. The work could help develop better flying robots.
New research finds that small regions of the brain cycle in and out of sleep, even when awake, reports Tatiana Engel, co-author of the study. The cycles shift toward “awake” when that part of the brain pays attention to a task.
After teaching Jewish-Israeli and Palestinian-Israeli middle school students in Israel that groups of people are capable of change, Stanford researchers saw significant improvements in the teens’ cooperation.
Communication between different areas of our brain increases when we are faced with a difficult task. Understanding these fluctuating patterns could reveal why some people learn new tasks more quickly.
Hopkins Marine Station researchers use a combination of sensors and video to reveal details about the hunting methods of the largest predators that have ever lived.
When Girl Scouts participated in energy-saving education programs, they improved their energy-use behaviors and influenced their families to do so as well.
Pigeons can currently outclass any aerial robot’s flight. Stanford engineering professor David Lentink plans to use a new wind tunnel to learn the magic of bird flight and apply it to building better aerial robots.
