stanford

If recent hacking episodes--not to mention the casual attitude toward privacy displayed by some social networks--have made you a little queasy about our hyperdigitized, hypernetworked society, recent news from Stanford Hospital in Palo Alto, Calif., isn't likely to make you feel much better.

The New York Times' Kevin Sack reports that the hospital has confirmed a rather bizarre episode. A spreadsheet listing the names; diagnosis codes; account numbers; admission and discharge dates; and billing charges for 20,000 emergency room patients wound up on a Web site that enables students to pay people for help with their homework--as … Read more

Like the idea of a fully transparent cell phone, e-reader, or other device?

Stanford University graduate student Yuan Yang has come up with a way to make a see-through lithium ion battery, and it could pave the way for completely see-through flexible electronics (some partially transparent gadgets already exist). Developed in conjunction with Yi Cui, a professor of photon science at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, the battery would cost nearly the same as a regular battery if produced on a mass scale, the creators say.

So how does one make a see-through power source? According to Stanford News, "Yang and Cui devised a mesh-like framework for the battery electrodes, with each 'line' in the grid being approximately 35 microns wide. Light passes through the transparent gaps between the gridlines; because the individual lines are so thin, the entire meshwork area appears transparent." … Read more

You spent countless hours locked in lightsaber battles with your buddies while growing up. What happens when there's no one left to play with you because they all have jobs and babies? You make your own Star Wars playmate.

Students at Stanford University programmed a robotic arm dubbed the JediBot. The bright orange arm swings a red foam lightsaber against a human opponent. It gets off surprisingly snappy attacks with some decent robotic muscle behind it.

It's one thing to create an arm that goes on the offensive, but another to build one capable of defense as well. That's where the Microsoft Kinect comes in. The opposing lightsaber is green so that the Kinect sensors can pick up on where it is in space. The JediBot uses that information to plan its defensive maneuvers.

The robotic arm--which can swing its sword about once every two to three seconds--was created for a 3.5-week Experimental Robotics course. The class also produced a robot that grills hamburgers and even adds the ketchup. The only thing that would make the JediBot better is if it battled you to a draw and then offered you a tasty cheeseburger.… Read more

Willow Garage's $400,000 open-source PR2 personal robot is a jack of all trades, dabbling in household chores, bartending, and even playing pool.

Now, according to the IEEE Spectrum Automaton blog, a group of researchers from Stanford's AI Lab is looking at putting it to work as a cashier in the retail store of the future.

The primary goal of the research is finding a way for a robot to sort, grasp, and identify objects with minimal programming. To make this work, a 3D sensor on PR2 takes a picture, and from that single frame, the robot is able to use the raw depth data to pick up an item.

The team coined the phrase "autonomous checkout clerk," which is exactly what follows, as the robot locates the bar code by spinning the object in its hands, reading the numeric code, and then putting the item in a bag. No training or model programming is required, and the research revealed a grasping success rate of 91.6 percent when picking up 100 various items.

Just don't let it handle the eggs. As you can see in the video below, the integrity of the item is in question once it leaves the robot's mechanical hand. … Read more

The clean-energy geeks (definitely a term of endearment) at Stanford University have come up with a way to turn every river in the world into a power plant--no big ugly hydropower dams required.

Put simply, Yi Cui, associate professor of materials science and engineering at Stanford, and his research team want to put a newly developed rechargeable battery at the mouths of rivers; the batteries would take advantage of the difference in salinity between salt water and freshwater to produce electricity and charge themselves.

That's the simple explanation. For the explanation that includes a discussion of the relationship between voltage and the concentration of sodium and chlorine ions, check out the news from Stanford. That said, the basic concept behind the battery itself isn't too complex and is similar to other batteries--basically two electrodes immersed in water--but the Stanford team took advantage of nanotechnology, which is cool because...here, let's just let them explain it:… Read more

In the search for cheap and efficient solar cells, Stanford University researchers are mixing in new ingredients.

Chemical engineering professor Stacey Bent on Sunday presented the results of a paper at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science that showed how a new combination of materials boosted the performance of solar cells made with quantum dots.

The research is in very early stages, but it could provide clues on how to make solar cells with relatively inexpensive materials that have higher efficiency than is currently possible.

Many researchers are trying to use materials with quantum dots … Read more

Scientists from Stanford University and the University of California at Davis have crunched the numbers and come up with a plan for how the world might economically and feasibly make the move to renewable energy in the next 20 to 40 years.

In a two-part paper (Part 1 PDF, Part 2 PDF) published in the journal Energy Policy, Mark Z. Jacobson and Mark A. Delucchi show in great detail the who, what, where, and how of implementing a renewable energy-run world. It includes solutions to economic, material, and transport issues.

Jacobson, an atmospheric scientist and professor of civil and environmental … Read more

Intel Labs will invest $100 million in U.S. university research over the next five years, the chipmaker announced today.

Intel will open Intel Science and Technology Centers (ISTC) across multiple universities, focusing on projects in areas "that align with the company's research agenda including visual computing, mobility, security and embedded solutions," the company said.

The new investment model is expected to result in U.S. researchers receiving up to five times more funding from Intel Labs when compared to the investment model Intel has used to date.

Citing President Obama's State of the Union address … Read more

The first town on Google's list to receive a fiber broadband network is a very familiar one to the company's co-founders.

Stanford is the first area Google has picked to get a high-speed broadband network, it announced today. The network, which could deliver speeds up to 1 gigabit a second, will be built for residents of Stanford's Residential Subdivision, an area adjacent to the California institution where members of the university faculty and staff live. Construction is expected to begin in early 2011, Google said.

Google stressed that this is not, however, the first town to receive … Read more