Whether a person will place a risky bet comes down to a newly discovered tract of neurons spanning two brain regions. The findings could help understand and treat gambling or addiction disorders.
The basic process of force-generation in muscle has been known for decades, but until now no one has ever seen it work at a microscopic level in a living human. The new microscope could provide unique insights into treating muscular degenerative diseases.
A musicologist and a literary scholar find a unique window into the evolution of capitalism and changing attitudes toward work in 50 years of James Bond movie theme songs.
In a world transformed by climate change and human activity, Stanford scientists say that conserving biodiversity and protecting species will require an interdisciplinary combination of ecological and social research methods.
A unique grant program provides mentorship for students doing solutions-oriented environmental fieldwork around the world and vital research assistance for faculty.
Scientists have discovered that getting stem cells to mimic normal adult heart cells – a critical step for eventually using them to test drugs – requires tension and a specific shape.
Stanford scientists produced a common cancer drug – previously only available from an endangered plant – in a common laboratory plant. This work could lead to a more stable supply of the drug and allow scientists to manipulate that drug to make it even safer and more effective.
Among African American youth, moving from a poor neighborhood to one with less poverty results in a lower use of African American Vernacular English, new Stanford research shows.
A blue glowing device the size of a peppercorn can activate neurons of the brain, spinal cord or limbs in mice and is powered wirelessly using the mouse's own body to transfer energy. Developed by a Stanford Bio-X team, the device is the first to deliver optogenetic nerve stimulation in a fully implantable format.
The Stanford scholars who founded the groundbreaking online encyclopedia say that the project owes its success to the unique way it organizes its community of contributors, editors and users.
Years of work have yielded a technique that continuously corrects brain readings to give people with spinal cord injuries a more precise way to tap out commands by using a thought-controlled cursor.
Stanford scientist's investigations show that drinking water sources may be threatened by thousands of shallow oil and gas wells mined with the controversial process of hydraulic fracturing.
New Stanford research shows that the river prawn, a natural predator of parasite-carrying snails, proves effective at curbing the spread of schistosomiasis in West Africa.
Poet Natasha Trethewey and fiction writer Phil Klaywill read selections from their works and join Stanford political scientist Scott Sagan in conversation on June 30 at Bing Concert Hall.
Crystalline semiconductors like silicon can catch photons and convert their energy into electron flows. New research shows a little stretching could give one of silicon's lesser-known cousins its own place in the sun.
Scientists show that deforestation can have vastly different impacts. For example, clearing intact forest can damage biodiversity and carbon storage up to four times more than clearing forest edges.
A team of Bio-X scientists applied microscopy know-how to a long-standing theory in neuroscience: if brain connections called synapses store memories, those synapses should last as long as the memories themselves. It turns out they do, as Mark Schnitzer was able to show.
Computers will one day match our own mental agility; learning, navigating and performing complex interactions all on scant power. But getting to that point will require neuroscientists and engineers to reverse engineer our least understood organ – the brain.
Stanford University's Natural Gas Initiative will research many questions related to the responsible development of natural gas as a fuel supply in the United States and around the world.
