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Scientists partially restore blind mice's eyesight
A team of researchers in California gathered a few blind mice, not to see how they run, but to find a cure for their glaucoma-like condition. By the end of the experiment, the rodents regained part of their eyesight, making this the first time scientists restored "multiple key aspects of vision in mammals." Glaucoma affects around 70 million people worldwide and currently has no cure. People afflicted with the illness have busted optic nerves -- their retinal ganglion cells' axons had been damaged or severed.
Big data shows racial bias in police behavior
Stanford University just delivered further proof that massive, readily available data sets can solve tricky law enforcement problems. School researchers combing through a mix of 28,119 Oakland Police Department stop reports, officer body camera footage and community surveys have learned that there are "significant" racial biases at play. OPD officers are not only more likely to stop a black person, but far more likely to conduct searches of black people, even though they weren't any more likely to find something incriminating. Officers more frequently handcuffed black people without arresting them, too. And the pattern is the same regardless of the crime rate in a given region.
Researchers develop passive-aggressive robotic roommate
While we've seen new robotic devices that can do everything from driving a car to thwarting underwater terrorists, a team of robotics researchers from Cornell and Stanford just want to make sure you never forget to put away the milk. At the International Conference on Robotics and Automation yesterday, the team presented Watch-Bot, a sort of robo-sentry that keeps an eye on the most mundane tasks in your home or office and politely shames you with a reminder if you forget to do them.
Study says people get turned on by touching a robot's privates
We've known for a long time that some people like touching robotic butts and cannot lie -- sex-bots already exist, after all. But now a group of researchers from Stanford University have produced data that can back that up. Jamy Li, Wendy Ju and Byron Reeves programmed a Nao robot to instruct test subjects to touch it in 13 areas of its body, including "areas of low accessibility" such as its cold, plastic buttocks. Since the participants were fitted with sensors on their fingers, the group was able to collect data on their skin's conductivity. That's a way to measure whether someone finds something "physiologically arousing." In other words, when your skin becomes a better conductor for electricity, you're turned on.
Six tiny robots can pull a two-ton car
Stanford university's uBots have pulled off a feat that makes ants look like slackers. Working in concert, six of the robots managed to tow a 3,900 pound car, despite weighing just a half-ounce each -- much less than other car-towing robots. The secret, according to the team, is biomimicry. The wee bots are designed to imitate gecko lizards with sticky feet that can support a heavy load but still detach easily. In previous experiments, that allowed them to climb up walls and pull heavy weights. This time, the robots are channeling ants by working as a team to pull a heavy load.
6 of the world's wildest self-driving cars
By Cat DiStasio Last week, US officials said that the computer in Google's self-driving car can legally be considered the "driver" -- a decision that could serve as a stepping-stone to making driverless cars legal on American roadways. Companies like Google and Ford are busy testing self-driving car technology, and Tesla's Model S already has some autopilot features to assist drivers. But just how far will automakers take autonomous technology? Read on for six of the world's wildest self-driving vehicles, from a car that moves like a crab to a vehicle with a built-in bed.
How a novel class of microscopes has changed science
The laws of physics are simple. There's a hard 500 nanometer limit on the size of objects that you can see through a conventional, optical microscope because that's the "diffraction limit" of a wavelength of visible light. Anything smaller than 500nm looks fuzzy and out of focus because it is simply too small for the optics to properly focus on. Basically diffraction limits exist because the light that bounces off the object and into your eyeballs is larger than the thing you're looking at. The problem is magnified when there are multiple sub-500 nm items in your field of view because their "fuzziness" overlaps and further obscures the view. But that's where super-resolution fluorescence microscopy comes in.
Near-infrared dye helps doctors spot cancer
Doctors regularly use dyes to highlight blood vessels that would normally be hard to see, but there's now the possibility that they'll use those chemicals to find cancer, too. Stanford researchers have developed a medical dye that emits light at a near-infrared wavelength, which produces sharper images that are visible at deeper skin layers. That, in turn, would let health care workers detect near-the-surface tumors such as breast cancer and melanoma. It leaves the body within a day, so you wouldn't have to worry about any long-term effects.
Stanford scientists get a little closer to a medical tricorder
Being able to identify problems with a person's body without subjecting them to invasive procedures is the fantasy of all Star Trek doctors. There's even a prize offering a fortune to anyone who can effectively recreate the tricorder technology out in the real world. Now, Stanford scientists think that they've developed a system that, in time, could be used to spot cancerous tumors from a foot away.
Stanford turns a DeLorean into a drifting, driverless car
This isn't from some weird movie franchise mashup entitled Back to the Future IV: Stanford Drift. No, Stanford's Revs Center simply decided to experiment on an old DeLorean, giving it the ability to fly drift all on its own. The car, which the team decided to called MARTY (Multiple Actuator Research Test bed for Yaw control) as an homage to B2F, was heavily modified and modernized. DeLoreans are old cars, and they found that it had severe limitations: for instance, it was understeering, so they had to equip it with a power steering motor and rack.
Interactive drone app lets you capture aerial shots like a pro
Quadcoptors have introduced a new visual language in filmmaking. These four-rotor UAVs, when equipped with a high definition camera, fly out and capture shots of sweeping landscapes, football matches and even active volcanoes. But drone cinematography of this kind, for the most part, has been a manual and challenging process. It takes an expert, sometimes two, to fly a drone and steer the camera to capture artistic shots at the same time. A team of computer graphics PhD students at Stanford University recognized this camera control problem. They spent the last two years building an app that allows even a novice to design and execute aerial shots like a pro.
Computer Science is the most popular major for women at Stanford
Stanford reportedly has 214 female students enrolled in its Computer Science major -- that's 30 percent of the major's total enrollment -- making it the most popular major with women at the university for the first time. Women constitute 49 percent of the school's total student body and Computer Science accounts for 20 percent of the university's total enrollment. Computer Science did just barely eke out the previous title-holder, human biology, for the top spot by a mere six students.
Swans help create smoother camera drone videos
The next time you see a graceful, dramatic video shot by a camera drone, you may have a swan to thank for the absence of any jittery footage. Stanford University researchers are developing camera suspension technology inspired by whooping swans, whose heads remain remarkably still even when they're making aggressive in-flight maneuvers. Thanks to a blend of high-speed video and computer modeling, the scientists discovered that the swan's neck acts much like a vehicle's suspension, passively countering the effects of flapping wings or headwinds. It'll likely take a while before the nature-inspired design reaches something you can buy, but you may well see a day where drones are producing sharp, stable video even when they're traveling at high speeds or facing strong gusts. [Image credit: AP Photo/Sergei Grits]
Cardiovascular health app is the UK's first ResearchKit project
One of the first health apps built with Apple's ResearchKit platform is now available to download outside the US. MyHeart Counts, which was first announced at Apple's "Spring Forward" event in March, has been opened up to iPhone users in the UK and Hong Kong for the first time. Once you've opted in, you'll be asked every few months to take part in a weeklong test, which includes seven days of activity monitoring, a 6-minute walk and a submission of personal risk-factor information. Stanford University will offer a review of your heart's health in return, as well as some advice for improving general wellness, but the idea here is to make it as easy as possible to become a volunteer. ResearchKit was, after all, invented to help scientists and medical professionals conduct large-scale studies. There are over one billion iOS devices in the world, so if even a fraction of those take some time to use the app, that's a trove of new information that will benefit medical research.
PotBotics: better cannabis recommendations through science
Medical cannabis, recreational cannabis; it's getting hard to tell the two apart -- even in states where only the former is allowed. Just look at your local dispensary. If it's anything like my local weed shop, your cannabis choices are governed more by the brand name and relative THC content than they are the other active cannabinoids -- you know, the ones with the actual medical benefits. This is great for your average stoner recuperating from a backiatomy, but for patients who really do need these complementary cannabinoid effects, guessing whether Blue Dream or Vallejo Sour Diesel will best help alleviate the effects of their chemo simply won't do. That's why the Bay Area startup PotBotics is working to put some real science -- from a curation of existing scholarly articles and independent studies -- behind cannabis recommendations.
Scientists discover how to make safer lithium batteries
Lithium-based batteries' tendency to overheat and catch fire has been keeping back the development of promising new technologies. In particular, it's been affecting R&D of lithium-sulfur and lithium-air batteries, both of which are much lighter than current options and can store 10 times more energy. Thankfully, a group of Stanford researchers has discovered a way to make them a lot safer. See, batteries based on the metal usually short out or randomly burst into flames due to dendrites or finger-like growths of lithium. These dendrites start forming once the electrode starts to break down, elongating more and more as time goes by, until they pierce the barrier separating the anode from the cathode (as pictured above.)
How cheap VR helped a Stanford professor bring his dream to Tribeca
Last year, the Tribeca Film Festival began highlighting new mediums being used in storytelling, and that trend has translated over to 2015. Virtual reality is, naturally, a big part of this movement, as filmmakers start creating more content for consumer-grade devices like the Oculus Rift, Samsung Gear VR and Google Cardboard. This is why the current edition of the event is hosting Stanford's Virtual Human Virtual Interaction Lab, a venture started in 2003 by Jeremy Bailenson, who's a professor at the university and has been working on digital human representation since 1999. It features a set of VR experiences that attendees can check out, all with the same goal of transporting you into another reality.
Stanford's aluminum battery fully charges in just one minute
Lithium-ion batteries have been a boon for the modern world -- they've replaced the heavier, single-use alkaline type in everything from wristwatches to jumbo jets. Unfortunately, these rechargeable cells are already struggling to keep up with our ever-increasing energy needs. But a new type of aluminum-ion battery developed at Stanford University is not only less explode-y than lithium, but also can be built at a fraction of the price and recharges completely in just over a minute. Best of all, "Our new battery won't catch fire, even if you drill through it," Stanford chemistry professor Dai Hongjie boasted in a recent release.
Light-bending silicon strips are the key to super-fast computers
No, that's not a barcode you're looking at -- instead, it's the likely future of computing. Stanford University researchers have developed an optical link that uses silicon strips to bend light at right angles, which future processors will likely need to transmit data at super-fast speeds. The key, as you might have gathered, is the series of gaps. When light hits the device, the combination of those gaps and silicon sends different wavelengths left and right. You're not limited to specific light bands or directions, either; you can use an algorithm to design the link you need within a matter of minutes.
Computers can now describe images using language you'd understand
Software can now easily spot objects in images, but it can't always describe those objects well; "short man with horse" not only sounds awkward, it doesn't reveal what's really going on. That's where a computer vision breakthrough from Google and Stanford University might come into play. Their system combines two neural networks, one for image recognition and another for natural language processing, to describe a whole scene using phrases. The program needs to be trained with captioned images, but it produces much more intelligible output than you'd get by picking out individual items. Instead of simply noting that there's a motorcycle and a person in a photo, the software can tell that this person is riding a motorcycle down a dirt road. The software is also roughly twice as accurate at labeling previously unseen objects when compared to earlier algorithms, since it's better at recognizing patterns.
