Stanford Radio

Stanford education Professor Ramon Martinez spoke about how families--in particular English language learners--can incorporate learning into their daily home activities.

Originally aired on SiriusXM on August 29, 2020.

The Future of Everything with Russ Altman:

E123 | Manu Prakash: How to beat a pandemic on a budget

A prolific inventor of low-cost, high-impact healthcare devices recently set his sights on COVID-19.

Manu Prakash was in France when COVID-19 took hold throughout the world. There, the Stanford bioengineer, famous for “frugal science” like his $1 field microscope made of paper, witnessed the challenges a relatively well-resourced nation experienced holding back the disease. His head was soon filled with visions of the nightmare awaiting developing nations, given that a COVID-19 test in developing countries can cost as much as $400.

In a flurry, Prakash jotted down an engineering manifesto of sorts for a worldwide revolution in open-source, inexpensive healthcare solutions. As he saw it, here were three areas of greatest need — diagnostics, protective equipment and critical care.

From his lab at Stanford, Prakash, his students and partners in academia, industry and government around the world led a frenzy of invention that yielded an array of transformative products in just months. There was the electricity-free COVID-19 test based on a simple children’s flashlight. There was Pneumask, a full-face, reusable N95 protective equipment for caregivers inspired by the mask Prakash uses in one of his favorite pastimes, snorkeling. And then there was the “N95 factory in a box” Prakash and his lab developed using cotton candy machines to spin N95-quality filtration materials from waste plastics. Finally, to tackle one of the most technical challenges of all, he built a global consortium with manufacturing partners in India, Kenya and Nepal to design an open-source full-feature ICU ventilator, known as Pufferfish (Prakash has a penchant for naming products after marine life) — bringing a low-cost critical care solution to the world.

In August, Prakash discussed these innovations with Russ Altman, a fellow bioengineering professor and the host of Stanford Engineering’s The Future of Everything podcast. Listen here.

Professor Tom Dee, Stanford Graduate School of Education on the summer slide and keeping learning happening when out of school.

Originally aired on SiriusXM on August 22, 2020.

Dr. Yvonne 'Bonnie' Maldonado, Professor of Pediatrics and Infectious Diseases, Stanford on what parents and guardians should know before sending their kids back to school during the COVID pandemic.

Originally aired on SiriusXM on August 15, 2020.

In the heat of war, the legality of the U.S. bombing of Japanese cities Hiroshima and Nagsaki in August, 1945 wasn’t questioned. But the devastation of those nuclear bombs, with hundreds of thousands of mostly civilians dead, spurred the international community to look for ways to prevent it from ever happening again. But today, 75 years later, the nuclear threat is more real than ever. In this episode, international law expert Allen Weiner joins Pam and Joe to discuss the law of war and the threat of nuclear weapons after Hiroshima.

Originally aired on SiriusXM on August 15, 2020.

With Covid-19 still spreading in the U.S., and November fast approaching, more Americans are looking to mail-in voting. How can the presidential election be held safely? Voting law expert Nate Persily and law student Chelsey Davidson join Pam and Joe to discuss challenges for voting this year and possible solutions.

Originally aired on SiriusXM on August 15, 2020.

Full title: Dr. George Rutherford, Director of The Prevention & Public Health Group at UCSF, with the Latest on COVID-19.

Doctors at UCSF are studying all aspects of COVID-19 from attempts to contain it, testing, contact tracing and how to reopen schools.

Originally aired on SiriusXM on August 15, 2020.

The coronavirus pandemic is forcing us to make difficult choices about school, work, personal health, and mental well-being. How do we make good decisions? Political scientist Rob Reich, who teaches courses on ethics, walks us through a framework.

Originally aired on SiriusXM on August 15, 2020.

The Future of Everything with Russ Altman

Byron Reeves: What our screens tell us about us

A professor of communication recorded long stretches of screen time in the lives of his test subjects and turned to artificial intelligence to paint a remarkable portrait of modern life.

With the emergence of touchscreen smartphones, tablets and watches, so much of our lives is spent on our devices that in many ways we are what appears on screen. This “mediatization,” as Byron Reeves, a professor of communication at Stanford University, puts it, sparked a remarkable and unprecedented study of the way we live today.

In a series of field studies, Reeves has recorded screen time of his subjects one frame every five seconds for days on end — with promises of absolute privacy, of course. He then uses artificial intelligence to decipher it all — words and images are recorded and analyzed. The portraits that emerge play out like cinema, revealing never-before-imagined insights into how people live in the screen-time world.

Reeves says the pervading sense that everyone is multitasking and that attention spans are narrowing is not just a hunch, but demonstrable in the data. Our screens are often filled with radically different content side-by-side and each bit gets consumed in rapid-fire bursts of focus, often no more than 10 to 20 seconds each.

Join us for a fascinating look at our screen-time culture on the latest episode of Stanford Engineering’s The Future of Everything podcast. Listen here.

The Future of Everything with Russ Altman:

Newsha Ajami: How engineers restored hope for our water supplies

There was a time when all great cities were built near water. Whether for agriculture, aesthetics, energy or just plain drinking, water was a life-affirming, life-sustaining resource. But with the advent of advanced engineering in the form of dams, pumps and pipes, cities like Los Angeles thrived in places with very little fresh water. Now, global climate change is leaving many of those cities in danger of running dry.

But there is hope on the horizon, says Newsha Ajami, senior research engineer at the Woods Institute for the Environment and director of urban water policy with Stanford University’s Water in the West program. Just as engineering made it possible to store and pump fresh water great distances, the field is developing new ways to use less water, to store more of this prized resource, to repurpose used “gray water” for non-potable uses like agriculture, and to inform inventive policy approaches to conserve fresh water.

It won’t be easy, she says. California alone has over 7,000 independent water agencies that must be wrangled into a cohesive team to make it real, but recent progress has people believing once again that our parched cities can be saved. It’s all here on this episode of Stanford Engineering’s The Future of Everything podcast. Listen here.