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Stanford Science Digest

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New Chemistry Enables Using Existing Technology To Print Stretchable, Bendable Circuits On Artificial Skin

Chemical engineer Zhenan Bao and her team of researchers at Stanford have spent nearly two decades trying to develop skin-like integrated circuits that can be stretched, folded, bent and twisted – working all the while – and then snap back without fail, every time. Such circuits presage a day of wearable and implantable products, but one hurdle has always stood in the way. Namely, “How does one produce a completely new technology in quantities great enough to make commercialization possible?” Bao said. Bao and team think they have a solution. In a new study, the group describes how they have printed stretchable-yet-durable…
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Stanford Researchers Use AI To Empower Environmental Regulators

Like superheroes capable of seeing through obstacles, environmental regulators may soon wield the power of all-seeing eyes that can identify violators anywhere at any time, according to a new Stanford University-led study. The paper, published the week of April 19 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), demonstrates how artificial intelligence combined with satellite imagery can provide a low-cost, scalable method for locating and monitoring otherwise hard-to-regulate industries. “Brick kilns have proliferated across Bangladesh to supply the growing economy with construction materials, which makes it really hard for regulators to keep up with new kilns that are constructed,”…
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Stanford Researchers develop Lab-on-a-chip That Turns Blood Test Snapshots Into Continuous Movies

For even the most routine of medical checkups, a blood test is often the first order of business. But, for all its diagnostic power, this common test provides only a snapshot of the blood during a single moment in time.   “A blood test is great, but it can’t tell you, for example, whether insulin or glucose levels are increasing or decreasing in a patient,” said Tom Soh, a professor of electrical engineering and of radiology at Stanford. “Knowing the direction of change is important.” Now, Soh, in collaboration with Eric Appel, an assistant professor of materials science and engineering,…
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Stanford Materials Scientists Borrow Solar Panel Tech To Create New Ultrahigh-res OLED Display

Repurposed solar panel research could be the foundation for a new ultrahigh-resolution microdisplay. The OLED display would feature brighter images with purer colors and more than 10,000 pixels per inch. By expanding on existing designs for electrodes of ultra-thin solar panels, Stanford researchers and collaborators in Korea have developed a new architecture for OLED – organic light-emitting diode – displays that could enable televisions, smartphones and virtual or augmented reality devices with resolutions of up to 10,000 pixels per inch (PPI). (For comparison, the resolutions of new smartphones are around 400 to 500 PPI.) Such high-pixel-density displays will be able…
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Stanford Crowdsourcing Site Collects County-level Policy Data To Inform Decisions About Easing Social-distancing

Americans nationwide now have a chance to help government officials decide when to ease social-distancing policies by completing a survey on a new website that compiles information about if and when their counties implemented local shelter-in-place measures to slow the spread of COVID-19. The website, SocialDistancing.Stanford.edu, is part of a research collaboration that aims to provide accurate, county-level data to epidemiologists who will advise federal agencies – and, ultimately, state and local officials – when to start letting different communities resume daily activities again. Since it went live on April 6, more than a thousand volunteers have found the site through…
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