Stanford researchers have designed a new photon diode – a device that allows light to only flow in one direction – which, unlike other light-based diodes, is small enough for consumer electronics. They’ve also created the necessary nanostructures – the custom smaller-than-microscopic components – and are installing the light source that they hope will bring their theorized system to life.
New research co-authored by Stefan J. Reichelstein, GSB Professor, finds that a partial solution to the cost of renewable systems may lie with hybrid energy systems that use surplus renewable electricity to make pure hydrogen. Hybrid energy plants take surplus electricity from solar or wind farms and feed it into a power-to-gas process that relies on electrolysis to split water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen. The authors looked at equipment costs, hydrogen prices and hour-by-hour wholesale electricity prices and wind generation data for a full year in Germany and California.
The camera system developed by Gordon Wetzstein's lab captures more light from a greater variety of surfaces, can see wider and farther away and is fast enough to monitor out-of-sight movement for the first time. This system builds upon previous around-the-corner cameras this team developed. Along with improvements to speed and resolution, they’ll also work at making their system address challenging visual conditions such as fog, rain, sandstorms and snow.
Automotive News interviews CARS Exec Director Stephen Zoepf about what students need to know to contribute to future transportation systems: "Students are being drawn into this space ... we felt is that students were graduating Stanford with the technical knowledge that they need to contribute in that space, but they didn't necessarily have that sense of responsibility."
AB5, passed by the California state assembly puts hard limits on what type of worker qualifies as a contractor. If passed, the bill would have far reaching effects for gig economy workers, businesses and the state. Stephen Zoepf notes that "There's lots of experimentation early on in any new business and many of those experiments fail." The California Senate is expected to vote on the bill later this summer.
Former CARS Fellow Changliu Liu led a hands-on workshop in early June on NeuralVerification.jl. We are in the process of developing an online course with the workshop content and have the introduction for an early sneak peek available here. Additional content will be available soon including lectures and work-group videos. Link.
Three Stanford professors spoke on a panel moderated by the dean of Stanford Graduate School of Business on how innovation is measured, the role of markets and what types of firms are likely to innovate. Other topics examined were how productivity affects wages, skills, and social inequality, and what kind of policies ensure a brisk pace of innovation.
Stanford Graduate School of Business, will make its proprietary entrepreneurship-centered content and teaching accessible as part of its commitment to global reach and meaningful impact. An interactive membership based toolkit for emerging and established entrepreneurs, Stanford Embark draws on more than two decades of teaching and research on entrepreneurship.
The U.S. EPA replaced the Obama-era Clean Power Plan (CPP) with the newly released Affordable Clean Energy (ACE) rule on June 19. ACE aims to reduce power plant carbon emissions without setting limits and instead calls for efficiency improvements at generating stations and directs states to take the initiative on power plant emissions. Stanford experts on law, energy policy and economics discuss the new rule and potential impacts.
A multi-institute team of researchers created a new technique for probing the chemistry of battery samples and creating images in near-atomic detail to understand how electrode damage reduces a battery's charging capacity. Using X-ray facilities at the European Synchrotron Radiation facility (ESRF) and SLAC's Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource (SSRL), researchers scanned as many electrode particles as possible in a single round and produced X-ray images for analysis.
