Interdisciplinary

News articles classified as Interdisciplinary

June 11, 2015

Scholar at Stanford debunks long-held beliefs about economic growth in ancient Greece

Using a pioneering digitization project that maps out details of life in the ancient world, classics Professor Josiah Ober links the democratic politics and surprisingly robust economy of classical Greek society.

June 8, 2015

Stanford engineers develop state-by-state plan to convert U.S. to clean, renewable energy

Mark Z. Jacobson and colleagues show that it's technically possible for each state to replace fossil fuel energy with entirely clean, renewable energy.

June 5, 2015

Stanford chemist explains excitement of chemistry to students, the public

Carolyn Bertozzi sees chemicals as having personalities and those personalities determine how they behave. She's bringing this vision to her teaching, hoping to help chemistry and biology students as well as the general public understand what's exciting in chemistry.

May 29, 2015

New ‘designer carbon’ from Stanford boosts battery performance

The new material significantly improves the performance of batteries and supercapacitors.

May 25, 2015

Fly-catching robot developed by Stanford scientists speeds biomedical research

A team of Stanford Bio-X scientists has created a robot that expands the scope of biomedical research that can be carried out with a common laboratory organism – fruit flies. The tool both speeds existing research and opens new fields of study.

May 19, 2015

Stanford professor developing water usage model that could help California

Stanford economist Frank Wolak is creating a customer-level water demand model that can be used to design tiered water rate schedules for California.

May 15, 2015

Stanford music scholar redefines the jazz and cabaret culture of 1920s Harlem

Musicologist Nate Sloan's investigation of Harlem Renaissance jazz portrays a diverse, multisensory experience where music, place and race influenced each other in profound and lasting ways.

May 11, 2015

Stanford researchers create a promising solution for urban toilets

Portable dry toilet and waste service system prove effective in Haiti's urban slums and can help solve the problem of "flying toilets."

May 11, 2015

Stanford literary scholar: White whales and the ‘Melville Effect’

With a resurgence of Melville-themed art across the multimedia landscape, Stanford Humanities Center Fellow Joseph Boone says the legendary writer has become a 21st-century muse for artists – including Boone himself.

May 5, 2015

Stanford researcher imagines a world without large, plant-eating animals

Stanford biologist Rodolfo Dirzo and a team of ecologists forecast enormous ecological, social and economic costs from the loss of large herbivores, but offer some solutions.

April 23, 2015

Stanford historian uncovers the dark roots of humanitarianism

Through a study of the history of the French colonial Congo-Océan Railway, Stanford historian JP Daughton has discovered how modern humanitarianism arose from the brutality of European colonialism.

April 6, 2015

Aluminum battery from Stanford offers safe alternative to conventional batteries

The new aluminum-ion battery could replace many of the lithium-ion and alkaline batteries in wide use today.

April 2, 2015

Stanford experts say record-low snowpack is bad news for California

The snowpack in California's mountains is at the lowest level ever recorded. The long-term effects of the drought could be devastating.

March 18, 2015

Stanford neuroscientists find noisy neurons are key to learning

A computer model of brain function helps explain a 20-year-old finding that the way a single noisy neuron fires in the brain can predict an animal's decisions. It turns out neurons without noise can't learn.

March 3, 2015

Stanford fellow delves into archival materials that shed new light on the early days of Islam

Humanities Center fellow and historian of Islam Fred Donner builds on his theories about the diverse religious origins of Islam through an intensive study and translation of previously neglected or unknown documents from the seventh century.

March 2, 2015

Stanford scientists: Warming temperatures implicated in California droughts

In California, warm, dry years are more likely to lead to severe drought than dry, cool years, and the probability of warm and dry conditions coinciding is likely to climb.

February 20, 2015

European grain yield stagnation related to climate change, says Stanford scholar

After changes in government policy and farm practices, European grain yields leveled off. Stanford's Frances C. Moore says climate trends account for 10 percent of that stagnation.

February 19, 2015

Stanford scientists discover a protein’s novel role in several types of cancers

ChEM-H scientists are helping to develop a cancer therapy based on a new finding of a protein that inadvertently promotes cancer growth. Blocking this protein could help block the growth of many types of tumors.

January 29, 2015

Stanford launches major effort to expedite vaccine discovery with $50 million grant

Researchers will seek to understand how the immune system can be harnessed to develop vaccines for the world's most deadly infectious diseases.

January 26, 2015

Stanford bioengineers develop tool for reprogramming genetic code

By selectively manipulating how DNA issues biological commands, Stanford bioengineers have developed a tool that could prove useful in future gene therapies.

January 6, 2015

New Stanford course brings Silicon Valley to the humanities classroom

Students from computer science and the humanities join forces to create literary websites and mobile apps, combining their strengths to launch literature into the 21st century.

August 21, 2014

Stanford’s Symbolic Systems bridges gap between humanity, technology

In an interdisciplinary study of "the science of the mind," students examine the human-computer relationship, and how to design technology that works well with users.

April 10, 2013

Hydrogel process developed at Stanford creates transparent brain

The CLARITY process enables researchers to view the brain, and potentially other organs, in an entirely new way. Bioengineer and psychiatrist Karl Deisseroth led the multidisciplinary team that developed the technique. 

August 29, 2012

Stanford researchers’ cooling glove ‘better than steroids’

The temperature-regulation research of two Stanford biologists has led to a device that rapidly cools body temperature, greatly improves exercise recovery, and could help explain why muscles get tired.

December 13, 2011

Study of comic books helps Stanford scholars identify cultural trends

Stanford's Graphic Narrative Project takes an interdisciplinary approach to studying this dynamic art form.

March 3, 2011

Study offers plan to combat growing HIV epidemic in Ukraine

A study by researchers at Stanford University and the Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System
shows that the most effective way to halt the spread of HIV in Ukraine is a combined program of drug substitution and anti-retroviral therapy for those already infected.

January 3, 2011

Humanities scholars shed new light on past, present, future of environmental change

The complex issues surrounding global climate change and vastly unequal living standards in Western and developing nations are best understood using a multidisciplinary approach that includes history, philosophy and literary scholarship, Stanford researchers say.

November 9, 2010

Learning to play well in the interdisciplinary sandbox

Universities have worked hard to encourage more interdisciplinary endeavors. Yet getting scholars from different academic traditions to work together remains a challenge. Myra Strober, professor of education, emeritus, explores these barriers in her new book, "Interdisciplinary Conversations."

November 4, 2010

Food Summit encourages researchers to collaborate across disciplines

More than 350 members of the campus community attended the inaugural Stanford Food Summit Nov. 3 for a day of cross-disciplinary intellectual ferment about food-related problems.

October 27, 2010

Obesity and hunger: India’s dual health burden

Stanford researcher Jeremy Goldhaber-Fiebert has teamed up with colleagues from across campus and worldwide to better understand India's dual health burden of undernutrition and obesity.