Abha Sharma – The Stanford Daily https://stanforddaily.com Breaking news from the Farm since 1892 Thu, 11 Aug 2011 05:45:24 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.3 https://stanforddaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/cropped-DailyIcon-CardinalRed.png?w=32 Abha Sharma – The Stanford Daily https://stanforddaily.com 32 32 204779320 MatSci lab develops transparent battery https://stanforddaily.com/2011/08/11/matsci-lab-develops-transparent-battery/ https://stanforddaily.com/2011/08/11/matsci-lab-develops-transparent-battery/#respond Thu, 11 Aug 2011 09:04:49 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1049760 A year of work by a materials science and engineering team has recently culminated in the development of a transparent lithium-ion battery, according to a paper recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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A year of work by a materials science and engineering team has recently culminated in the development of a transparent lithium-ion battery, according to a paper recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The finished product is not much more expensive than the widely available traditional lithium-ion battery, as the materials used to manufacture it are not expensive. The transparent battery is also rechargeable–similar to a normal lithium-ion battery–because it uses the same chemistry.

MatSci lab develops transparent battery
The transparent battery could potentially be used in transparent electronics such as laptops and iPhones. (Courtesy of the Stanford News Service)

The battery is comprised of electrodes arranged in a mesh-like grid, with each line in the grid approximately 35 microns wide. This framework seems transparent to the naked human eye, because if something is smaller than 50 microns, it appears transparent.

Yuan Yang, a graduate student in materials science and engineering, did most of the experimental work involved with inventing the battery and contributed to the initial design of the concept.

“It is like a miniaturized screen window; when the line is thin enough, people’s eyes cannot distinguish it from the background, so it is transparent,” Yang said.

The electrodes themselves are made up of metal oxides, and the substrate is a transparent polymer called polydimethylsiloxane, more commonly referred to as “PDMS.”

“The transparency could vary by changing width of lines in the grid,” Yang said. “For example, it’s easy to vary the transparency from 40 percent to 90 percent.”

The amount of energy that the battery stores can also be altered. The transparent battery currently holds less energy than a traditional battery, but increasing its thickness changes that.

“The energy stored in a battery with 70 percent transparency is 30 percent of a traditional battery,” he said. “However, there are several ways to increase it–first, by increasing the thickness of the battery, which will not decrease the transparency at the same time. Second, with the development of new high-energy materials for batteries, the energy stored could be close to state-of-the-art batteries.”

Transparent batteries also serve a practical purpose: they allow examination of inner electronic workings for further research.

Yi Cui, associate professor of materials science and engineering, is the leading scientist on the team. Cui thinks that a transparent battery is the first step toward many other transparent objects, such as transparent cell phones, laptops and watches. He personally would like to see a transparent iPhone.

“It is exciting to lead my whole research group and come up innovative ideas in addressing different needs to society,” Cui said.

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Cantor installs ‘Sequence’ sculpture https://stanforddaily.com/2011/07/28/cantor-installs-sequence-sculpture/ https://stanforddaily.com/2011/07/28/cantor-installs-sequence-sculpture/#comments Thu, 28 Jul 2011 10:04:45 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1049593 The Cantor Arts Center recently received on loan from the Fisher Art Foundation a 235-ton sheet metal sculpture entitled “Sequence”; the piece, by American minimalist sculptor Richard Serra, was installed last week.

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The Cantor Arts Center recently received on loan from the Fisher Art Foundation a 235-ton sheet metal sculpture entitled “Sequence”; the piece, by American minimalist sculptor Richard Serra, was installed last week.

“Sequence” is 67 feet long, 42 feet wide and 13 feet deep. Cantor had previous displayed another of Serra’s sculptures entitled “Call Me Ishmael,” which had also been loaned by the Fisher Foundation.

Cantor installs 'Sequence' sculpture
Workers install Richard Serra's 235-ton "Sequence" at the Cantor Arts Center. (ROSARIO LEBRIJA/The Stanford Daily)

Considered of one Serra most distinguished works, “Sequence” was made out of solid steel in 2006. Before coming to Stanford, it had previously been showcased at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and at the New York Museum of Modern Art. However, this is the first time that visitors will be able to view the sculpture outdoors.

Thomas Seligman, director of the Cantor Arts Center, expressed positive feelings on Stanford’s opportunity to showcase this work.

“What Richard Serra does–he creates space that has never been created before,” Seligman said. “He creates sculptures that are made from very obvious material, its about two-inch thick steel. So you can see exactly what it is, but when you get into this space you feel strange sometimes, he creates vertigo, he creates these canyon-like spaces, and what wonderful here is the shadow patterns because it’s the first time that it’s been seen outdoors.”

The decision to place the sculpture at Stanford comes from the Fishers’ close ties to the University.

“Stanford was chosen because the Fishers have close connections to the University, Doris Fisher is an alumna,”said Laura Satersmoen executive director of Fisher. “We talked to the Director, Tom Seligman, about the possibility, and he jumped on it. It’s one of Richard Serra’s great sculptures.”

Cantor installs 'Sequence' sculpture
The sculpture will remain at Stanford until 2016, when it will be transferred to the SF MOMA. (ROSARIO LEBRIJA/The Stanford Daily)

A vast majority of the costs of installing, maintaining and displaying the sculpture are being payed for by the Fisher Foundation. Officials declined to disclose exact financial numbers, but hinted that bringing the sculpture to Cantor has been quite expensive. Regardless, Seligman cited the ancillary benefit of exposing an audience that would have otherwise been unable to enjoy the sculptures’ beauty and architectural design

“You can think of the engineers here [at Stanford] and you could think of people who are involved in design and architecture, it’s not just for people who are interested in the arts,” he said. “How it’s made; there’s apparently two places in the world who can do this kind of steel work.”

“Sequence” will also be instrumental in teaching art at the University and in the community, according to Patience Young, curator for education at the Cantor.

She highlighted “the beauty of having something of this magnitude by somebody who is well documented, who has a career accomplishment, of controversy–a work by Richard Serra was the subject of a major lawsuit concerning art, I think in the 1980’s–and somebody who has gone through the ringer with issues of authorship and of intention is right for studying and discussion.”

Serra himself cited the piece as a vessel for instigating different emotions in different people, as it doesn’t have a one concrete meaning.

In an interview with The New Yorker, Serra said that his sculptures evoke a variety of feelings.

“Whatever the work is evoking in people, I don’t dictate that, so I don’t know how to account for it,” he said of the piece.

The Cantor also has one of Serra’s drawings in their collection. It will be displaying “Sequence” until 2016 when it will be moved to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, in line with that museum’s estimated completion date for its expansion.

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Evaluating evidence: Undergraduates choose research for summer vacation https://stanforddaily.com/2011/07/28/evaluating-evidence-undergraduates-choose-research-for-summer-vacation/ https://stanforddaily.com/2011/07/28/evaluating-evidence-undergraduates-choose-research-for-summer-vacation/#respond Thu, 28 Jul 2011 10:02:52 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1049653 Though summer vacation may evoke fond memories of tanning at the beach, playing volleyball in the lawn or getting up at 11 a.m., others are hard at work developing a thesis or a summer philanthropy project. Every summer, many Stanford students choose the latter vacation plan, electing to spend their free months working on various types of research, with different motivations.

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Evaluating evidence: Undergraduates choose research for summer vacation
ERIC KOFMAN/The Stanford Daily

Though summer vacation may evoke fond memories of tanning at the beach, playing volleyball in the lawn or getting up at 11 a.m., others are hard at work developing a thesis or a summer philanthropy project. Every summer, many Stanford students choose the latter vacation plan, electing to spend their free months working on various types of research, with different motivations.

Some students link up with professors or graduate students with whom they have had classes in the past, others are working on projects within their departments or have been inspired by personal experiences. Ayna Agarwal ’14 became more interested in philanthropy and social impact after taking political science professor Rob Reich’s class, “Ethics of Philanthropy, Civil Society and Non-Profits.”

“I learned that approximately $300 billion are contributed to nonprofits every year, yet too often the measure of that impact is not quantifiable and remains unclear,” she wrote in an email to The Daily.

She searched different Stanford departments for a project that matched this curiosity and was led to economics professor Woody Powell, with whom she is currently working on a summer project concerning evaluation and metrics in the nonprofit sector. For 20 hours a week, over 10 weeks of the summer, she is documenting different sources and types of nonprofit evaluation and using that information to explain its effect on the United States and abroad.

“I am exploring over 250 websites to collect data which will eventually be sorted into a larger networking scheme to understand relationships between these different measurement factors,“ Agarwal said.

“I want to become a better researcher within the social sciences and continue pursuing this project until its completion,” she added.

Other students choose projects that place them in Stanford’s innumerable labs. Calvin Fernandez ‘13 is working on a combined project with Billington and Frank Labs called the Bioinsulation Foam Project. He is working with a foam that contains PHBV (poly-3-hydroxy butyrate-co-valerate), which is a type of bio-plastic that currently isn’t foaming properly.

His job is to create a process in which silk can be turned into powder so that this powder can be combined with the foam–the idea being that the powder will help the PHBV foam better by producing larger bubbles. Devoting about 40 hours a week to the project, Fernandez says the main reason he chose to work on it was that it sparked his interest.

“I might pursue something similar later for a thesis, but this summer is simply because I was interested in the project,” he said.

Despite his efforts, he recognizes that the daunting task that he faces may go unfinished.

“By the end of the summer, it would be nice to have the answer to the problem, but I know that’s not going to happen so I’ll just settle with some intriguing results that I can write an interesting paper about,” he said.

Still other students use summer as a time to work on their honors theses, like Anna Robertson ’12, a double major in psychology and English. Robertson first became interested in psychology after taking Introduction to Psychology her freshman year, and she spent the summer after that doing psychology research though a psychology summer internship program. This fall, she will be working in a lab and is spending a large chunk of her summer planning her thesis research project.

“I began to dedicate much more time to planning my thesis during the spring and, after spending a little over a month working on my thesis on campus this summer, I think I will be in good standing to begin running subjects in the fall,” she explained. “Because psychology theses typically involve human subjects, which in turn requires an extensive review by the Institutional Review Board (IRB), my time this summer has been devoted to preparing my thesis.”

“This involves writing the computer program I will use, selecting relevant measures, outlining protocols and doing literature searches,” she added.

For other students like Natalie Cox ’12, this summer involves simultaneously balancing theses and independent research projects. Cox is working with Michael Klausner, a professor of business at Stanford Law School. She spends 20 hours a week working with him and an additional 20 doing independent research for her thesis. Potentially interested in pursuing a joint degree in economics and law, she is able to explore both fields while furthering her capstone project.

“I wanted to get firsthand experience in research and get some work done on my thesis,” she explained. “I do a lot of work with securities class action data with professor Michael Klausner at the Stanford Law School. [My] tasks include cleaning, sorting though it and figuring out how to best turn raw information from law dockets or complaints into uniform data that is actually usable in an empirical study. For instance, I might go through a set of cases and map the different stages at which they settle.”

But among those aiming for publication or in pursuit of a cure for cancer, some students doing research over the vacation simply wanted some work experience. Moses Gonzales ’13 is working 10 hours a week as a lab assistant through the Office of Accessible Education. Gonzales has been researching uranium contamination in ground water since May of this year and plans to continue to do so until the end of next year.

“My ultimate goal for this position is essentially to gain as much hands-on experience as possible,” he said. “While I definitely hope to help the lab make some cool discoveries, my focus is not on the research but on the skills I am gaining.”

He does, however, plan to stick with the job for the “foreseeable future” and potentially through the remainder of his Stanford career.

“I plan to continue working in this lab at least through the end of next year,” he said. “And then depending on my plans when the year ends, I may continue working in the lab through next summer and my senior year as well.”

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