Research

Researchers from Stanford Graduate School of Business found that you're likely to earn a bigger paycheck if you're young and male. Data from 292,514 drivers in the Chicago area was analyzed on 6 metrics: wait time, distance to pickup passengers, trip distance, speed, surge bonus and incentive payments. Older drivers spend more time in suburbs and are more likely to work on weekdays during daylight hours while women drive more slowly, in less crowded areas, work fewer hours, spend more time away from the app and have less experience using the app than male drivers do.

Researchers from Stanford University and Technical University of Denmark have shown how electricity and catalyst cerium oxide can convert CO 2 into energy-rich carbon monoxide better than conventional methods. The team envisions using renewable power to make the CO and for subsequent conversions, which would result in carbon-neutral products. An advantage of sustainable liquid fuels over electrification of transportation is using existing gas and diesel infrastructure.

Representing hundreds of studies with advances in energy science, technology, business and policy, approximately 300 Stanford faculty and staff across all seven schools engaged in energy research featured in this Year in Review. Hundreds of students and postdoctoral scholars also contributed to Stanford's work in energy.

In this Future of Everything discussion, John Markoff, New York Times science and technology writer and fellow at the Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence at Stanford, talks about Silicon Valley's role in the world and the biggest problem for society: dealing with rapidly aging populations around the world and who will fill the jobs that remain.

Stanford engineers have developed wearable stretchable stickers that pick up physiological signals emanating from the skin. The sensors stick like band-aids and beam wireless readings to a receiver clipped onto clothing. Initially the stickers will be used in medical settings to monitor patients with sleep disorders or heart conditions with the ultimate goal to create an array of stick-on wireless sensors that work in conjunction with smart clothing.

Stacking a few layers of atomically thin materials like sheets of paper on heat-generating components has been found to provide the same insulation as a sheet of glass 100 times thicker. Stanford researchers used a layer of graphene and three other sheet-like material - each three atoms thick - to create a four-layered insulator just 10 atoms thick. Thinner heat shields will enable engineers to make electronic devices more compact than we have today.

A new discipline proposed by Stanford researchers would address big-picture questions that account for a large portion of energy use like the global car fleet, or cover geographical regions like supply chains, or that cover decades like energy investments. Many of the macro-energy research and education is being done in different departments and published in disparate journals.

Researchers from Stanford and SLAC have invented a coating that in laboratory tests significantly extended the life of lithium metal rechargeable batteries. Applied to the anode and combined with other commercially available components, researchers created a fully operational battery. Lithium metal batteries can hold at least a third more power per pound as lithium-ion batteries and are significantly lighter which could benefit electric vehicles and affect EV range and cost.

Stanford's Office of Technology Licensing works with industry and inventors to transfer technologies developed at Stanford. Among the recent released technologies is a Nanofiber Transparent Electode developed by Prof. Yi Cui's lab. With a diameter of 30-100 nm and a length up to ~1 cm, the electrodes made from this network can be either isotropical or anisotropical and can be applied to a rigid or flexible substrate.

Stanford physicists, while trying to replicate another team's findings, discovered a novel form of magnetism generated when two honeycomb-shaped lattices of carbon are carefully stacked and rotated to a special angle. “I thought the discovery of superconductivity in this system was amazing. It was more than anyone had a right to expect,” Prof. Goldhaber-Gordon said. The researchers propose that the magnetism, called orbital ferromagnetism, could be used in applications such as quantum computing.