In the Star Trek universe, tricorders are used for applications ranging from disease diagnosis to analyzing the atmosphere on an alien planet. Now a team of scientists might have created a tricorder for our own universe. The device would use electromagnetic waves to detect explosives in the ground, and it might even help diagnose cancer. The researchers from Stanford University published a study about the device in Applied Physics Letters.
Researchers from the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, the Max Planck Institute for Informatics, and Stanford University have developed a new method for "real-time facial reenactment." This means that you can have one person making faces or mouthing words, and those expressions and movements are simultaneously displayed on live video of the face of someone else.
Think about how jellyfish or squid move. You're imagining a graceful display of jet propulsion, right? It's not uncommon for underwater species to take advantage of their environment to propel themselves through it. In a study released in Nature Communications today, researchers from the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Oregon University, and Stanford University detail how colonies of tiny hydrozoans use jet propulsion in concert with each other.
At first glance, it might seem like an odd grouping: ants, space, and high school students. But Stanford University biologist Deborah M. Gordon is hoping that the combination will produce results that will help save lives.
Almost all of the electronic devices that we carry around with us all day now rely on one key, but increasingly antiquated, technology: the lithium-ion battery. A mainstay of rechargeable power for the last couple decades, this battery technology has gotten only minor refinements. But a substantial improvement in stored power may be in the offing, thanks to researchers at Stanford University, who have developed a new battery technology based on aluminum.
NASA is working on a prototype drone that will be able to survey Mars from a modest altitude. But what if instead of shipping a drone to Mars, we could just ship small vials of cells, and use them to grow a biodegradable drone on the Red Planet? A team of students from Stanford University, Spelman College, and Brown University created such a drone last summer, which they then entered into the 2014 International Genetically Engineered Machine competition.
Fifty years ago, in December 1964, Popular Science featured a machine that would probe the deepest secrets of matter. Just west of Stanford University, the U.S. Department of Energy was building a two mile long underground linear particle accelerator, designed to look for the tiniest pieces that make up a proton. The Feds spent $114 million--the modern-day equivalent of $873 million--building the atom-smasher.
