Stanford Radio

Denise and Dan speak with Professor Maria Araceli Ruiz-Primo about grading, testing, and other assessments during the novel coronavirus pandemic when schools are closed and many schools have moved teaching online.

Originally aired on SiriusXM on April 25, 2020.

The Future of Everything with Russ Altman:

"Seema Yasmin: How to conquer a pandemic with communication"

A specialist in reporting on epidemics — and a medical doctor to boot — explains why bad information is an enemy of public health.

Seema Yasmin is a rarity in public health: a medical doctor who is also a journalist. As such, she’s seen a lot, from Ebola in West Africa to SARS and MERS, and now COVID-19, the most serious pandemic in a century.

Yasmin is currently director of research and education at the Stanford Center for Health Communication. From her years in the Epidemic Intelligence Service at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — a group widely described as “the disease detectives” — and as a reporter for The Dallas Morning News, Yasmin says that the greatest impediment to halting an outbreak is the rapid spread of bad information, and even abject disinformation, which when abetted by social media can spread faster than the disease itself. To halt the pandemic, she says medical science and public health experts — and the journalists who cover them — must become better storytellers to get ahead of bad information and to “pre-bunk” false claims that lead to bad decision-making.

The Future of Everything with Russ Altman:

"Victor Carrion: How to beat stress in a pandemic"

An expert on trauma unmasks the sometimes hidden hallmarks of stress and discusses techniques to recognize and lessen its effects at every age.

Child psychiatrist Victor Carrion has dedicated his career to studying and helping people deal with trauma, especially kids. He says that it is understandable that everyone in the family is dealing with some degree of stress due to COVID-19, and that’s okay. The key is to recognize and acknowledge the stress and deal with it head on.

In this episode of Stanford Engineering's The Future of Everything with host, bioengineer Russ Altman, Carrion explains that stress manifests differently at different ages. What works for parent may not for child. He also discusses strategies for minimizing the risk of future post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Carrion counsels trying creative outlets like art and mindfulness techniques like yoga to find what works best to beat stress in these very stressful times. Listen here.

Preserving the safety of medical workers while identifying and treating the sick in a global pandemic.

Originally aired on SiriusXM on April 18, 2020.

The Future of Everything with Russ Altman:

"William Chueh: How to build a better battery"

The renewable energy future is riding on the advent of better energy storage options that challenge the very definition of the word “battery.

Stanford materials engineer William Chueh got interested in battery design as way to battle climate change. He looked across the energy landscape and understood that a future filled with renewable solar and wind energy will require more and better batteries to even out the troughs when the sun is not shining or the wind is not blowing.

Chueh says battery design has come a long way in the last 10 years. But sating the energy needs of a future filled with countless smartphones, laptops, electric cars and wearable devices will drive a profound transition in the battery industry. Today’s $50 billion battery market will blossom to a trillion dollars in the next 15 years, he predicts.

Chueh says the grid of the future will be a network of diverse smaller-scale energy-storage options that guarantees a steady supply of electricity with no single point of failure — a model that takes its inspiration from the way the internet delivers information without fail. The result will be a more efficient and resilient grid for all, Chueh says.

E108 | John Etchemendy: How can we get the most from artificial intelligence? by Stanford Radio

The Future of Everything with Russ Altman:

"Russ Altman: Artificial intelligence takes on COVID-19"

Days after COVID-19 broke out in the United States, Russ Altman and colleagues at Stanford's Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI) scrambled to organize a full-day online conference to replace the in-person meeting they were planning for spring 2020. Their topic: using AI to defeat the deadly new virus behind COVID-19 and, in particular, analyze how countries were responding; developing new ways of tracking and anticipating its spread; reshape the search for treatments and a vaccine; and, last but not least, to battling “infodemics” — the tendency for information overload to hinder scientific progress.

With thousands from around the world tuning in for the live event and 60,000-plus views of the recordings since, the conference illustrated in real terms how an entire field pivoted in a matter of weeks to address the pandemic in new and promising ways. In this episode of Stanford Engineering's The Future of Everything, guest host Howard Wolf turns the tables on Altman — a medical doctor, an expert in bioinformatics and the HAI associate director who helped lead the conference — and digs deep on AI’s response to COVID-19.

The Future of Everything with Russ Altman:

"Nigam Shah: A researcher turns to data to fight the COVID-19 virus"

An expert in bioinformatics describes how better information and modeling can help caregivers stay a step ahead of the new virus.

Recorded through Zoom in March 2020

The Future of Everything with Russ Altman

"Elizabeth Sattely: Plants are the ultimate chemists"

They make a remarkable array of chemicals to survive the world around them. One engineer is using that knowledge to help people live better.

When things aren’t going well for humans and other ambulatory creatures, they simply move on to a new location, a new life. For plants, it’s different, says chemical engineer Elizabeth Sattely, who studies the evolutionary adaptations plants make to survive.

Unable to migrate, plants must make do with the hand that’s dealt them. And sometimes that hand is not very good. The soils where they are rooted can lack nutrients or play host to pathogens. The air can be polluted or too arid.

This fact of life, however, has given rise to a remarkable breadth of evolutionary adaptations plants use to make the best of their surroundings. They produce powerful small molecules that help them get more nutrients from the soil or air. And, they partner with microbes that help them live.

Sattely hopes to better understand and, possibly, employ these adaptations for human benefit by making crops more robust to environmental challenges and by learning how the small molecules plants create impact human health. She says we might even turn plants into biofactories that produce medicines and other valuable chemicals.

Join host Russ Altman and Sattely for a deeper look at the remarkable world of plant biochemistry. You can listen to The Future of Everything on Sirius XM Insight Channel 121, iTunes, Google Play, SoundCloud, Spotify, Stitcher or via Stanford Engineering Magazine.

The Future of Everything with Russ Altman

"Stephen Quake: What can the DNA in your blood reveal about your health?"

In our 100th episode, we meet the scientist who answered this question and revolutionized everything from detecting Down syndrome to cancer.

In The Future of Everything’s 100th episode, bioengineer, physicist and inventor Stephen Quake recounts a personal experience. When Quake’s wife was pregnant with their first child, doctors performed a common but risky procedure known as an amniocentesis. Using a long needle, they pierced his wife’s uterus through her abdomen to grab a few cells from the amniotic fluid surrounding the fetus to test for genetic diseases and abnormalities.

The child was fine, but to Quake and his wife the test felt like an invasion. So Quake, a renowned bioengineer and physicist at Stanford, decided to do something about it. He invented a blood test to replace amniocentesis.

It turns out that a small percentage of the DNA floating around in every mother’s bloodstream comes from the fetus. And that cell-free DNA, as it’s known, can be tested for the same diseases and abnormalities that amniocentesis can reveal, all without risk to the mother or child. Today, 4 million expectant mothers each year get Quake’s blood test, and use of amniocentesis is quickly fading as a diagnostic tool.

Little did Quake understand at the time that his lab would set off a revolution of sorts, leading to a remarkable array of similar blood tests that can detect everything from cancer to hidden infections to tissue rejection in transplant patients to premature birth – all weeks or months earlier and less invasively than existing techniques can.

Join host Russ Altman and Stephen Quake for The Future of Everything radio show’s 100th episode. You can listen to The Future of Everything on Sirius XM Insight Channel 121, iTunes, Google Play, SoundCloud, Spotify, Stitcher or via Stanford Engineering Magazine.