From chasing toxic clouds to developing rocket fuels for Mars, Brian Cantwell shares stories of his time working on space exploration technologies – starting with an internship with the Apollo program.
More than a century of work reached its conclusion May 20, with all base units of measurement now tied to defined constants rather than physical objects locked away in vaults.
Theoretical physicist Shamit Kachru and three of his graduate students talk about the social fabric behind their research, the cycle of confusion and discovery, and the sense of awe – or the cool factor – that drives them.
Scientists are training machine learning algorithms to help shed light on earthquake hazards, volcanic eruptions, groundwater flow and longstanding mysteries about what goes on beneath the Earth’s surface.
Scientists at Stanford have solved a 50-year-old mystery that could open up new areas of research into muscle disorders. The study revealed a human enzyme that modifies muscle proteins to help them grow.
Stanford researchers built a computer model to simulate how DNA is packaged in the nucleus, allowing them to do computational experiments that would be impractical at the lab bench.
A new discovery reveals how cells decide what to do with misshapen proteins – whether to salvage or destroy them – and could guide research into neurodegenerative diseases and other cellular processes.
Hubbard was right next to mission control for the landing of InSight on Mars. Here’s what he thinks about NASA’s latest deep-space triumph and the special satellites that accompanied it.
Stanford researchers retooled an electron microscope to work with visible light and gas flow, making it possible to watch a photochemical reaction as it swept across a nanoparticle the size of a cold virus.
Watching the movement of every cell in an adult animal all at once, the Prakash lab discovered ultra-fast cellular contractions. This research suggests a new role for cellular contractions in tissue cohesion, which could be the basis of a new material.
Although they’ve been studied for hundreds of years, it wasn’t until a Stanford bioengineering lab tried to model how Euglena reacts to light that anyone noticed the organism swimming in precise polygons.
Discoveries of complex molecules and a liquid water lake, a birthday for one rover and concern for another have brought Mars a lot of attention this summer. Here’s what the first Mars program director, Scott Hubbard, has to say about all the recent excitement.
Researchers in medicine, engineering and business are developing a way of diagnosing deadly bacterial blood infections that’s more efficient than current techniques. They aim to speed up treatment while avoiding antibiotic resistance.
In a first step toward generating an artificial intelligence program that can find new laws of nature, a Stanford team created a program that reproduced a complex human discovery – the periodic table.
Over the last half-century, students in the ME310 course have produced hundreds of prototypes for cameras, makeup, cars and much more. Combined with international teams, they design and develop new products while learning from reality.
By placing the most magnetic element of the periodic table into a quantum version of a popular desktop toy, Stanford scientists explore the emergence of quantum chaos and thermal equilibrium.
By combining computer simulations with laboratory experiments, an international research team revealed something new about a molecular pathway that enables roughly half of all medications to achieve their desired effects – but is also responsible for many side effects.
Tadashi Tokieda is known for developing and sharing tricks and toys that question our assumptions about math and physics – a passion that’s grown from his pursuit of fresh knowledge and love of magic.
The discovery that water microdroplets can replace potentially toxic agents in the creation of gold nanoparticles and nanowires could help usher in a new era of “green chemistry.”
Cancer research that once involved years of painstaking work can now happen in months with a novel technique for systematically studying cancer-related genes. The results reveal how combinations of mutations influence tumor growth.
W. E. Moerner and his lab members peer inside mammalian cells, producing intricately detailed, 3-D images of the tiny structures within and tracking molecules’ subtle movements.
Rather than having students learn and memorize established knowledge, professors Steven Block and Tim Stearns created a course to teach students how to think like scientists and pursue new answers.
Software developed by Stanford astrophysicist Giacomo Vianello models and combines otherwise incompatible astronomical observations. It contributed to recent research into the origin of antimatter near Earth.
A serendipitous discovery lets researchers spy on this self-assembly process for the first time with SLAC’s X-ray synchrotron. What they learn will help them fine-tune precision materials for electronics, catalysis and more.
Silicon Valley entrepreneur Jeffrey Rothschild and his wife, Marieke, have provided funding for a new venture at Stanford Medicine to test cancer cell therapies.
Modern biology labs often use robotic assemblies to drop precise amounts of fluids into experimental containers. Now students and teachers can create inexpensive automated systems to do this in clubs or classrooms.
