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Nobel week in pictures

October 17th, 2012

It begins with a phone call in the wee hours of the morning, and while the media calls eventually come in at a slower pace, the glory of a Nobel Prize lasts for generations.

This year the Scandanavians rang twice for Stanford. First, on Oct. 10, BRIAN KOBILKA, professor and chair of molecular and cellular physiology at the Stanford School of Medicine shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry with ROBERT LEFKOWITZ, professor of biochemistry and of medicine at Duke University. The two men were selected for their work on G-protein-coupled receptors.

Then on Monday, Oct. 15, ALVIN ROTH, a Harvard economist who is transitioning to Stanford, was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his work on market design. He shares the prize with LLOYD SHAPLEY, professor emeritus at UCLA. Roth is a pioneer in the field of game theory and experimental economics and in their application to the design of new economic institutions.

University Photographer LINDA CICERO created slideshows of Kobilka and of Roth.
Videogrpher STEVE FYFFE, put together videos of Kobilka and Roth as well.

Third annual Stanford Food Summit set for Oct. 24

October 11th, 2012

Food Summit 3 takes place Oct. 24.

Stanford researchers and scholars and local food activists are invited to Food Summit 3, a one-day symposium designed to connect Stanford faculty, graduate students and undergraduates who are interested in food-systems research with members of community-based food organizations who are interested in improving the quality of the food we produce, provide and consume. The symposium will take place from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Oct. 24 at the Arrillaga Alumni Center, with a public forum to follow that evening at Memorial Auditorium.

The symposium will present findings from three pilot projects that grew out of the Stanford-community partnerships established at the second Food Summit event in 2011. The projects, in the areas of farm-to-school food, hospital food and food-bank food, are examples of what the organizers hope will become a larger effort to encourage food-systems research at Stanford.

In the SCOPE blog, Erin Digitale rates her own diet.

“Our longer-term goal is to build a food-systems research center on campus,” said CHRISTOPHER GARDNER, associate professor of medicine, who is organizing the summit. The engagement of all seven Stanford schools in a variety of food-related research projects gives Stanford a unique niche in addressing local, national and global food problems, Gardner said. “Of 7 billion people on the planet, a billion are hungry and nearly a billion are overweight or obese,” he said. “There’s enough food to go around, but how do you produce it and how do you distribute it? Those are systems issues in growing a sustainable-food movement that Stanford may be able to help solve.”

The Food Summit’s public forum, set for 7 p.m. on Oct. 24, will feature a keynote presentation by author and speaker JOHN ROBBINS, who walked away from his family’s Baskin-Robbins ice cream fortune to become a social activist, first rising to prominence with the publication of his 1987 book, Diet for a New America. Robbins’ presentation is titled “Food Revolution 2012.” It will be followed by a panel discussion titled “Farm Bill or Food Bill?” with Stanford and Bay Area food activists.

More information and registration for the summit is available on the event website. The daytime symposium is targeted at faculty, researchers and students with an interest in food-systems research and community food activists, and is limited to 400 participants. The evening forum is open to the general public. Both events are free.

Read the Food Summit’s full announcement by ERIN DIGITALE on the Medical School’s news website. And speaking of food, check out Digitale’s post in the SCOPE blog about her efforts to reach her personal best in the nutrition department and beyond.

 

Stanford Libraries to host open house

October 9th, 2012

There’s much more to Stanford Libraries than just books nowadays. So the libraries’ staff is inviting the Stanford community to a Green Library open house from 1 to 4 p.m. today to learn about everything from book-scanning robots to medieval manuscripts to experts who can help researchers organize and preserve massive amounts of data. Coupa Café will provide refreshments for the afternoon.

“People will be surprised, pleasantly surprised, at how much the library has to offer and how many ways we support teaching and research,” said CHRIS BOURG, assistant university librarian for public services. “And, of course, we have lots of books – including plenty of great free books we will be giving away.”

That’s not all they’re giving away. An Apple iPad and a set of Beats Solo HD On-Ear Headphones will be raffled, along with autographed books from the 2012 Saroyan Prize for Writing. In addition to the drawing prizes, other giveaways will include free books from previous Saroyan Prize for Writing winners.

The Stanford Mendicants, Stanford’s oldest a cappella group, will kick off the event at 1 p.m.

Stanford’s radio station, KZSU (98.1 FM), will be broadcasting live outside of Green Library’s east entrance (that is, the one by the red fountain), featuring music from Stanford’s music library and hosting on-air interviews with students and library experts from 1 to 4 p.m. Talisman, which performs a cappella music from around the world, will make a guest appearance, singing live on KZSU at 3:15 p.m.

A curated tour of the Green Library’s current exhibit, “Scripting the Sacred: Medieval Latin Manuscripts,” will begin at 3 p.m. Demonstrations of the page-turning robotic book scanner will begin at 1:15, 2:15 and 3:15 p.m. (limit eight people at a time for the 45- to 50-minute tours). Other tours will show how the libraries preserve and provide access to born-digital media such as computer hard drives, floppy disks and CD-ROMs, and demonstrate how Stanford’s renowned map collections is digitized.

“The bottom line is that libraries, especially the Stanford Libraries, are all about the joy of discovery in all its forms,” said Bourg. “Our open house is a chance for us to show off all the cool stuff we do.”

 

— BY CYNTHIA HAVEN, Stanford Libraries

Multicultural Alumni Hall of Fame inducts four distiguished new members

October 8th, 2012

From left, Michelle Alexander, Juju Chang, Annie Gutierrez and Loren Kieve. Photo by David Gonzales

On Friday morning, a reporter spotted an alumna looking at a map as she walked across campus and stopped to ask the woman if she needed directions. The visitor was looking for El Centro Chicano, and since the reporter was headed in that direction, they walked together. The alum marveled at how much the campus had changed, particularly its diversity. She said that when she arrived on campus in the late ’60s, she was one of only a handful of Chicano students. As they parted, the alumna introduced herself simply as “Annie.”

Fast-forward to Friday evening, the two ran into each other again, this time in Tresidder Union. “Annie,” it turned out, was ANNIE L. GUTIERREZ, JD ’71, a retired judge of the Superior Court of the State of California and a nationally and internationally recognized attorney. She was among four distinguished alumni being inducted into the Multicultural Alumni Hall of Fame.

Each year since 1995, inductees representing the campus’ four ethnic community centers are honored during Reunion Homecoming Weekend.

In addition to Gutierrez, who represented El Centro, the other inductees for this year were JUJU CHANG, ’87; MICHELLE ALEXANDER, JD ’92; and LOREN KIEVE, ’69.

Chang, an Emmy Award-winning correspondent for ABC News, was inducted by the Asian American Activities Center. She also served as moderator for this year’s Roundtable at Stanford.

Alexander, the Black Community Services Center’s inductee, is a law professor at Ohio State University. A civil rights advocate and litigator, Alexander is the author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.

Kieve, a distinguished trial lawyer and legal scholar who has led several state and American Bar associations, has advanced the fields of civil justice reform, civil rights, and evidence rules and policies. Inducted by the Native American Cultural Center, Kieve is a champion of native arts and culture and interdisciplinary undergraduate education.

—ELAINE RAY

 

Blas Cabrera chases dark matter, wins Panofsky physics prize

October 5th, 2012

Blas Cabrera

Abandoned mines might not be the most obvious places to set up cosmological experiments, but that’s where Stanford physicist BLAS CABRERA and BERNARD SADOULET, of the University of California-Berkeley, search for signs of dark matter. Their efforts have advanced dark matter research, and in recognition they have been jointly awarded the 2013 W.K.H. Panofsky Prize in Experimental Particle Physics. The prize is named for SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory founding director WOLFGANG “PIEF” PANOFSKY and awarded by the American Physical Society.

The pair’s decades-long Cryogenic Dark Matter Search has brought them to several underground sites in the hunt for direct evidence of theorized weakly interacting massive particles, or WIMPs (the deep shafts largely shield detectors from cosmic rays and other unwanted particle “noise”). If proven to exist, WIMPs could help define and explain dark matter, which is thought to make up about 25 percent of the energy density in the universe and is responsible for the formation of structure in the universe. This, in turn, could improve our understanding of the evolution of the universe and our interpretation of astronomical observations.

Cabrera, a Stanford physics professor who has a term appointment within the SLAC Particle Physics and Astrophysics faculty, said the prize, which includes a $10,000 award and a certificate citing the recipients’ scientific contributions, is gratifying, and it’s “wonderful to share it” with Sadoulet, a Berkeley physics professor and director of the UC Institute for Nuclear/Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology. “We have been leaders of the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search work for many years,” he said. “It’s also nice to have the tie with Panofsky, whom I knew and deeply admired for many years.”

Read the full announcement at the SLAC News Center.

— BY GLENN ROBERTS, JR., SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

 

Two Stanford-led research teams receive Collaborative Innovation Awards

September 21st, 2012

Axel Brunger

Two teams of scientists led by Stanford professors have received Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Collaborative Innovation Awards to carry out potentially transformative research over the next four years.

One of the teams is led by AXEL BRUNGER, a professor of molecular and cellular physiology and of neurology and neurological sciences. His team received a $6 million award to develop new methods of sample delivery, data collection and analysis to study structures of nanometer- or micron-scaled crystals of biological molecules using the Linac Coherent Light Source at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.

Brunger’s collaborators include WILLIAM WEIS, a professor of structural biology and of molecular and cellular physiology and of photon science at Stanford, as well as scientists at UC-Berkeley, UCLA and the California Institute of Technology.

Liqun Luo

Also receiving a $6 million award is a group led by LIQUN LUO, a professor of biology. Luo’s team plans to develop a suite of tools for mapping neuronal connections in the complete mouse brain. They will then use those tools to study the organization of neural circuits and how they are affected by specific neurotransmitters, to ultimately better understand how sensory perception works.

Luo collaborates on this project with KARL DEISSEROTH, a professor of bioengineering and of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford, as well as an HHMI Early Career Scientist winner. Collaborators also include scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Sciences and Hebrew University.

 

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Stanford and Columbia’s Teachers College receive $2.5 million to motivate students to pursue science

September 17th, 2012

Carol Dweck

The STEM fields – science, technology, engineering and math – have an enrollment problem. Sixty percent of students who enter college with the goal of majoring in a STEM subject end up graduating in a non-STEM field, and many students – particularly those from minority and low-income backgrounds – never even consider science an option.

Stanford University psychology Professor CAROL DWECK and XIAODONG LIN, associate professor of education at Teachers College, Columbia University, will soon be researching ways to change this mindset. Through a five-year, $2.5 million project funded by the National Science Foundation’s Large Empirical Research and Evaluation on Education in Science and Engineering (REESE) Program, the researchers will test the impact of classroom-based motivational instruction programs on students’ performance in STEM courses.

“Many students believe that only geniuses can do STEM work and that geniuses do not need to work very hard,” said Lin. “The flip side of these attitudes is often the view that if you are not intelligent, no amount of effort will help.”

To drive home that struggling in science class isn’t cause for despair, the researchers will examine two curricula: a neurocognitive approach that teaches students that their minds and brains can literally change and grow through hard work; and a social-historical approach that acquaints students with the stories of famous scientists who had to struggle to achieve their breakthroughs.

The study will be conducted at 13 schools in the New York City area – most of them low-performing or based in low-income communities – in grades 4 and 9. Some 1,400 students will participate over the five years.

Lin, the project’s principal investigator, is an expert on technology’s influence on student cognition, and primarily studies how different types of social cultural knowledge influence students’ motivation to learn STEM subjects and to solve complex problems.

Co-principal investigator Dweck’s work spans developmental and social psychology, and examines the mindsets students use to guide their learning. The author of Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, Dweck recently was elected to the National Academy of Sciences.

— By Max McClure

 

 

 

 

Gretchen Daily wins Swedish environmental prize

September 14th, 2012

Gretchen Daily

Biology Professor GRETCHEN DAILY recently won the prestigious Volvo Environment Prize for 2012. The prize includes a cash award of 1.5 million Swedish kronor (about $209,000).

The prize, awarded by the Volvo Environment Prize Foundation, an independent foundation in Sweden, recognized Daily’s “pioneering research on quantifying the production and value of ecosystem services; on harmonizing biodiversity conservation and agriculture; and on policies for integrating conservation and human development in major societal decisions.”

Daily, the Bing Professor in Environmental Science, is a founding director of the Natural Capital Project and a senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. An ecologist by training, Daily’s work spans scientific research, teaching, public education and working with leaders to advance practical approaches to environmental challenges.

She will receive the prize in Stockholm on Nov. 20.

Previous Stanford winners of the award include fellow biology faculty HAROLD MOONEY (2010) and PAUL EHRLICH (1993).

Newly aquired book includes original Manet etching

August 29th, 2012

There’s a new cat at the Art and Architecture Library in the Cummings Art Building—and it’s well over 100 years old.

The 1869 cat is featured in an original etching by the famous French artist ÉDOUARD MANET (1832-1883). The feline is hidden away between the pages of a newly acquired book, the deluxe edition of an 1870 art classic called Les Chats, by JULES-FRANÇOIS-FÉLIX HUSSON, who used the pen name “Champfleury.” The etching is an aquatint that uses a powdered rosin to create a muted gray-blue background. Manet made the plate by hand, etching fine lines with a needle.

“Le Chat et Les Fleurs” is described as one of Manet’s most subtle combinations of the complex and simple. According to the late art historian Jean C. Harris, the etching shows the traces of Japanese influence, with its flatness of spatial arrangement and the “rather freely drawn and widely spaced strokes to describe the flowers,” which “help to animate the surface and to relieve the monotony of the uniform aquatinting.”

The etching had been sold separately as a stand-alone work prior to this edition. The new acquisition recalls a time when it was much more common for books to include original artwork, including engravings, etchings, lithographs and even paintings. Too often nowadays, they are razored out and sold separately, but this etching is presented as the author and artist intended. Les Chats is one of well over 1,000 such books at the Art and Architecture Library, which now has about 150,000 books on site.

Cat-lover and assistant art librarian ANNA FISHAUT discovered the book while shopping online at a favorite London rare books store and had to have it, “because it is one of the great artists’ books and because I have a penchant for cats.”

It’s not the only new cat in town—from the same British dealer, the library acquired a 1918 limited-edition book of original woodcuts from the Omega Workshops, affiliated with LEONARD and VIRGINIA WOOLF’s Hogarth Press. It includes woodcuts from ROGER FRY, VANESSA BELL, DUNCAN GRANT—and a cat by French artist SIMON BUSSY.

—CYNTHIA HAVEN, Stanford University Libraries

 

 

Powerhouse in the pool: Roy Perkins to compete in Paralympics 2012

August 22nd, 2012

Roy Perkins competed in the 2008 Paralympic Games in Beijing. He’s preparing to compete in London next week. (Photo by China Photos/Getty Images)

It’s difficult to believe that ROY PERKINS, ’13, was once terrified of putting his face in the water and didn’t learn to swim until he was 12. Now he’s preparing to compete in the 50-, 100- and 200-meter freestyle events, 50-meter backstroke and 50-meter butterfly at the 2012 Paralympics, which begin next week. Born without hands or feet, Perkins comes to the Games a powerhouse: In Beijing he won his category’s gold in the 50-meter butterfly as well as bronze in the 100-meter freestyle.

Stanford magazine caught up the Earth systems major before he headed to London.

Read SAM SCOTT‘s interview on the Stanford magazine website.