Science & Technology

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Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence —

Stanford researchers build $400 self-navigating smart cane

Incorporating sensing and way-finding approaches from robotics and self-driving vehicles, the cane could reshape life for people with blindness or sight impairment.

Growing climate solutions

A bill under debate in Congress would pave the way to verifying and paying for farms’ carbon savings. Stanford scientists explore this and other opportunities for growing climate change solutions on U.S. farms.

Pollution’s impact on child health

Air pollution is known to harm children’s respiratory health, but its specific impacts on infection rates have remained unclear. A new analysis provides evidence of a link between the two in low-income settings, and indicates one industry may play an outsized role in the problem.

Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute —

Serotonin stabilizes social memories

Neuroscientists have discovered how the brain forms memories of new acquaintances, and that targeted drugs can strengthen or dampen these memories in mice.

Extinction changes rules of body size evolution

A sweeping analysis of marine fossils from most of the past half-billion years shows the usual rules of body size evolution change during mass extinctions and their recoveries. The discovery is an early step toward predicting how evolution will play out on the other side of the current extinction crisis.

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