A Stanford exhibition marking the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese republic is being honored by the Association of College Research Libraries (ACRL).
The award recognizes outstanding printed exhibition catalogs and guides and electronic exhibitions produced by North America and Caribbean institutions.
Certificates will be presented to the winners and the recipient of an honorable mention in June.
The exhibition closed in February 2012, but its catalog, images and text are still available to view online.
Library archives are not just about books, of course, especially in Silicon Valley.
“In our world, software has become a vital medium of communication, entertainment and education,” said University Librarian MICHAEL KELLER.
In that spirit, Stanford University Libraries is partnering with several federal agencies to preserve one of the world’s largest pristine collections of software, the 15,000 software titles in the Stephen M. Cabrinety Collection in the History of Microcomputing held by the Libraries.
The Cabrinety Collection includes titles from virtually all of the major microcomputer platforms, including home computer and video game consoles. The collection was assembled by STEPHEN M. CABRINETY, who began collecting software as a teenager and maintained an intensive interest in computer history throughout his life. Cabrinety was director of development of Superior Software Inc. and founder of the Computer History Institute for the Preservation of Software. He died in 1995, and Stanford acquired the entire collection as a gift from the Cabrinety family in 1998.
The work of capturing disk images – exact copies of the data on the original software media – will proceed as a cross-country collaboration between the Stanford University Libraries and NIST. At Stanford, Special Collections staff will catalog and prepare the materials for shipment to the NSRL forensics lab in Gaithersburg, Md. The software disk images, associated digital photography of box covers, manuals and inserts will then be sent to Stanford for long-term preservation in the Stanford Digital Repository.
MARKUS COVERT, an assistant professor of bioengineering at Stanford, has been awarded a $1.5 million Distinguished Investigator exploratory grant from the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation. Covert was one of five recipients of this year’s award, which, according to the foundation, “aims to unlock fundamental questions in biology.”
Covert’s research involves building complex computer models of living organisms. Last year, he announced completion of the world’s first whole-cell computer model of a simple bacterium. The three-year Allen grant will support Covert’s ongoing work to develop models of cells of increasing complexity, including human cells.
“Recently, our lab built a computer model that takes every single gene into account for a single cell, but we still have a long way to go before this technology is ready to apply to complex organisms,” said Covert, who works in the Department of Bioengineering, a joint effort of the School of Engineering and the School of Medicine. “The Allen Foundation’s generous award will enable us to solve some of the most critical challenges posed by more complicated cells.”
Read the full announcement on the Stanford Engineering website or watch this video, in which Covert talks about his work.
The SCOPE Blog reports that headaches are the most common form of pain. The condition affects an estimated 60 million Americans and accounts for $30 billion in lost worker productivity. Migraines, which cause pulsating or throbbing pain in the head lasting 4 to 72 hours, affect roughly 12 percent of Americans and more commonly occur in women than men.
“While common treatments range from popping over-the-counter pain pills to lying in a dark room with an ice pack strapped to your head, ROBERT COWAN, director of the Stanford Headache Clinic, will tell you that managing headache disorders goes beyond finding the right remedy and involves determining a proper diagnosis and developing a comprehensive treatment plan,” writes LIA STEAKLEY.
“And he should know: Cowan has suffered migraines his whole life. He understands that the condition can ‘become a footnote, or it can ruin your life.’”
SCOPE asked Cowan to respond to your questions about headache disorders, recent improvements in managing them and the use of a multifaceted approach to treating symptoms.
Questions can be submitted to Cowan by either sending a tweet that includes the hashtag #AskSUMed or posting your question in the comments section of the blog post.
They will collect questions until Friday, March 8, at 5 p.m. Pacific Time.
For more details and ground rules, read the full blog post here.
Communicating Science and the Environment, a course in the Program on Writing and Rhetoric (PWR), seeks to educate future environmental communicators while providing material for California GOV. JERRY BROWN’s effort to engage the public on climate change and other environmental issues. Students in the winter quarter sophomore course recently wrapped up a video project in which they interviewed prominent scientists around the country – all of them fellows with the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment’s Leopold Leadership Program – about urgent environmental issues. The videos will soon be posted on the California Governor’s Office of Planning and Research website.
“We are struggling with how do we talk about climate change,” KEN ALEX, a senior policy adviser to the governor, said during a recent class session. “Unless your generation and the rest of us get our act together, we’re in big trouble.”
In the syllabus, instructor and PWR Lecturer CAROLYN ROSS asks, “How can ‘translators of science’ most effectively communicate complicated science to the public?” The students’ answers, in the form of 2-minute videos, ranged from stunning imagery and bracing dialogue to humorous hand-drawn animations and specially composed music.
“We have no choice but to deal with it,” former Woods Social Science Research Fellow SUSI MOSER says of climate change in one video. Moser likens the situation to the Titanic – too much momentum in the wrong direction. “We’ll at least scrape the iceberg in a really bad way.” Still, Moser and the other scientists interviewed repeatedly point the way to solutions from composting to price-competitive, desirable low-emissions products.
For students JANHAVI VARTAK and BEN ROSELLINI, the videos are messages of hope in an often doom-and-gloom media landscape. “It helped me with my feeling of helplessness,” Vartak said. “We’re actually doing something with this,” Rosellini added. “Solutions don’t have to be these huge drastic things that no one wants to do,” fellow classmate FRANCES BALL said. Alex concurred, telling the students, “Yes, there is hope, and I’m glad you’re thinking in that way.”
After a recent class, Alex said he could envision the students’ videos featured on a YouTube channel or on TED-Ed, an online educational effort run by TED. “Everyone we’ve talked to has thought about it, or thinks it’s a great idea.”
—ROB JORDAN, Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment
USUA AMANAM is one of only a dozen or so undergraduates majoring in Energy Resources Engineering, a department in the School of Earth Sciences that examines energy production and conservation.
The Stanford senior whose interception with two minutes left in the 2013 Rose Bowl Game sealed Stanford’s 20-14 victory over Wisconsin earned hardware as the Defensive Player of the game. But he not only knows how to read a quarterback’s eyes, he knows how to infer the makeup of the subsurface by drilling an exploration well.
Amanam, whose first name is pronounced OOS wah, has a passion for football, and he dreams of playing in the NFL. “I’d love to make millions of dollars running around with a football in my hands,” he laughed.
But he’s been one of the smallest players on every one of his teams since the fourth grade, and at 5’10′ and 176 pounds, he’s a realist.
“There’s a low probability that an NFL career is going to happen for most college football players,” he said. “That’s the reason I chose Stanford. If the football route doesn’t work out, I’ll have a Stanford degree to fall back on.”
Amanam’s sheepskin from ERE will leave him well positioned for a job in the oil and gas industry, which doesn’t typically draw much interest from undergraduates, particularly ones with their eyes on a career in professional football. How is it that it calls to Amanam?
“My family is originally from Nigeria,” explained Amanam, who said his interest in oil was piqued by a 2007 article in National Geographic called “Curse of the Black Gold.”
“Oil was found in Nigeria in the late 1950s and the 1960s,” Amanam said, “and it was a way for a developing country like Nigeria to become truly relevant in the world today. The National Geographic writer basically detailed what Nigeria has gone through in terms of the oil industry and how it has caused more trouble and more strife than the good it was supposed to. Reading that article and understanding how much a properly working petroleum industry could really jump-start a country economically and socially is what attracted me to ERE.”
RICHARD NEVLE, director of undergraduate programs for the School of Earth Sciences, has known Amanam since both were at Bellarmine Prep in San Jose – Nevle as a science teacher and Amanam as an honors student.
“Usua was a rock star as a high school football player, a superstar,” Nevle said. “He has legs that are steel springs and he’s a very gifted sprinter.”
Stanford’s head football coach, David Shaw, was the team’s offensive coordinator when the Cardinal recruited Amanam.
“We get lots of mail and email about high school players, but we got a lot about Usua in particular,” Shaw said. “That he was bright and engaging as a student and that he was a dynamic football player as well. Everyone said he was the kind of kid who should go to Stanford.”
ROLAND HORNE, professor of energy resources engineering, says that after a sharp drop in oil prices in the mid-1980s and the massive Exxon Valdez oil spill in Prince William Sound in 1989, undergraduate interest in petroleum engineering evaporated. Over one 10-year stretch, Stanford did not award a single bachelor’s degree in petroleum engineering.
In 2006, the School of Earth Sciences changed the name of its Department of Petroleum Engineering to Energy Resources Engineering, reflecting its expansion into research and embracing additional forms of energy, such as geothermal and renewables; a changing energy landscape; and society’s changing energy needs and environmental concerns.
“It sounds cliché,” Amanam said, “but what really interested me about ERE is I’ve always wanted to do something that carried a lot of weight and meant something, to do something that could change the world. My sophomore year, I took a class called Energy 101 from my current adviser, energy resources engineering Professor TONY KOVSCEK. It sparked my interest in understanding how the oil and gas industry affects everything we do in our life, socially, economically and culturally. It’s the linchpin to the world we live in today.”
Amanam’s passion for his academic calling is not lost on others. “I go to a lot of events to which I bring students as emissaries,” Nevle said. “Usua is very effective at communicating what the ERE major has to offer students in a personal and compelling way. He has a charisma about him, a stage presence. When he speaks, people want to listen.”
You can hear Amanam in his own words in a video produced in a partnership between the School of Earth Sciences and Athletics.
Read BRUCE ANDERSON‘s full profile of Amanam on the School of Earth Sciences website.
Graduate School of Education Professor Linda Darling-Hammond tied for first place among the top 'Edu-Scholars.'
Stanford led the pack in an annual list of the scholars who have the greatest influence on the public debate on schools and schooling, according to a Jan. 9 posting on a blog on the Education Week website.
Out of a total of 168 featured on the annual ranking, there were 17 academics who were listed as being from Stanford. That tied for first with Harvard, which also had 17.
Known as the Edu-Scholar Public Presence Rankings, the list is compiled by FREDERICK HESS, the American Enterprise Institute’s director of education policy studies and an Education Week blogger. The list highlights scholars “who work to move ideas from the pages of academic journals into the national conversation,” according to a release announcing the 2013 rankings.
Hess uses seven metrics to calculate the extent that university-based academics contributed to public debates about schools and schooling. “The rankings reflect both a scholar’s body of academic work—encompassing books, articles and the degree to which these are cited—and their 2012 footprint on the public discourse as reflected by appearances in education news outlets, blogs, new media and the general press,” the release says.
Michael Kirst, of the Graduate School of Education, and Eric Hanushek, of the Hoover Institution, also made the list. Hanushek ranked third among 168 scholars.
ERIC HANUSHEK, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a professor by courtesy at the GSE, ranked third. Hess also lists five other scholars from Stanford: ROB REICH and TERRY MOE, political science; CAROLINE HOXBY, economics; MARGARET “MACKE” RAYMOND, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution; and ANTHONY S. BRYK, who had been on the GSE faculty before leaving to become president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.
—JONATHAN RABINOVITZ, director of communications for the Graduate School of Education
Past data suggest that four out of five people who adopt New Year’s resolutions will eventually break them, and that a third will throw in the towel before the end of January. The good news is that, contrary to popular belief, willpower is not a trait that you’re either born with or without.
As Stanford health psychologist KELLY MCGONIGAL explained in her book The Science of Willpower, self-control is a complex mind-body response that can be compromised by stress, sleep deprivation and nutrition, and it can be strengthened through certain practices. In her book, McGonigal discusses why willpower is not an unlimited resource, how the brain can be trained for greater self-discipline, and how we use past good behavior to justify indulgences. She also provides other insights on self-control from psychology, economics, neuroscience and medicine.
To help you stick to your New Year’s resolutions and break bad habits, we’ve asked McGonigal to respond to your questions about the latest research on willpower and about ways to increase your self-discipline. Questions can be submitted to McGonigal by sending a tweet that includes the hashtag #AskSUMed or posting your question in the comments section of the SCOPE blog post. Questions will be collected until Friday, Jan. 11, at 5 p.m. Pacific Time.
Read LIA STEAKLEY‘s full post on the Medical School’s SCOPE blog.
The American Historical Association (AHA) presented two of its top awards on Friday, Jan. 4, to researchers affiliated with the Stanford School of Education for their efforts to promote a high school history curriculum that draws on original source material rather than relying on textbooks.
Sam Wineburg and Avishag Reisman
“This is a great honor,” said School of Education Professor SAM WINEBURG, who directs the Stanford History Education Group, where this new approach to teaching history was developed. “What makes it particularly noteworthy is that the AHA gives two awards annually that touch on teaching, and we won both.”
Wineburg and his colleagues DAISY MARTIN and CHAUNCEY MONTE-SANO were awarded the James Harvey Robinson Award for the best teaching innovation, digitally or in print, for their book Reading Like a Historian: Teaching Literacy in Middle and High School History Classrooms. Martin and Monte-Sano, who both earned their doctoral degrees from the School of Education, co-founded the Stanford History Education Group with Wineburg.
Chauncey Monte-Sano
Daisy Martin
Martin is now a senior researcher at the Stanford Center for Assessment, Learning and Equity. Monte-Sano is an associate professor of history and social studies education at the University of Michigan.
The book shows teachers how to use original source material, such as primary documents, charts, graphic organizers, visual images and political cartoons, to encourage students to ask questions and draw conclusions about historical events. The book is aligned with California’s new Common Core standards, which emphasize analysis and critical thinking.
The AHA also presented the William Gilbert Award for the best article on teaching history to AVISHAG “ABBY” REISMAN, who played a leading role in developing the Reading Like a Historian curriculum while completing her doctorate at the School of Education. Titled “The Document-Based Lesson,” the article presents the findings of Reisman’s study of the effects of the curriculum at five schools in the San Francisco Unified School District, where it was introduced in 2008. She found that students gained significantly in historical thinking, factual knowledge and reading comprehension.
Reisman currently is a visiting assistant professor at Teachers College, Columbia University.
We all know that STEPFAN TAYLOR is one of the top running backs in college football and one of Stanford’s all-time leading rushers. In fact, this year, he became the first Cardinal back to gain at least 1,000 yards in three consecutive seasons.
Ben Levin and Stepfan Taylor
But he is also a very nice man.
When kindergartener BEN LEVIN, son of JON LEVIN, chair and professor of economics, was putting together the guest list for his 6th birthday party, he decided to invite Taylor.
His dad explained in an email to football coach DAVID SHAW, “We have been going to all the football games this year. Last week, when we were watching the first UCLA game, Ben announced that he wanted to invite Stepfan Taylor to his birthday party. Naturally we told him that probably Stepfan Taylor would be too busy to come to a kindergarten birthday party, but that Ben could email an invitation.”
Taylor not only answered Ben’s email, he also came to the party.
Levin says that Taylor “spent an hour with Ben and a dozen of his friends eating cake and throwing around a football in the backyard. It was probably the greatest 6-year-old birthday party ever. Very cool and I was so impressed with Stepfan’s generosity.”
The next opportunity to root for Taylor comes New Year’s Day, when the senior and science, technology and society major leads the Cardinal in the Rose Bowl game against Wisconsin.
A Stanford exhibition marking the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese republic is being honored by the Association of College Research Libraries (ACRL).
