Scope is an award-winning medical blog produced by a team of writers at Stanford University School of Medicine.
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We all know that feeling – we’re awake but somehow unable to pay attention. Or we are paying attention but still miss what it is we were waiting for. It turns out that feeling isn’t just a matter of being spacey. It turns out that tiny little bits of our brains are constantly cycling in …Read More
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One of the great things about writing for a living is that when I experience something in my own life, I can use that as an opportunity to reach out to experts on the subject. Last week after the election I was like many people, having a hard time sorting through my feelings. So, I …Read More
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I’ve been a fan of Tom Stoppard’s plays since I had to read his great play “Arcadia” for a class years ago. In it, Stoppard wove in questions of certainty and uncertainty amidst math, physics, gardening and romance. I recently jumped at the chance to attend Stoppard’s latest play, which tackles issues of neuroscience and …Read More
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About a month ago I wrote about a new collaboration between three Bay Area universities called the Biohub. It was the first science investment by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and is intended to leverage the combined strengths of Stanford, the University of California, San Francisco, and the University of California, Berkeley. I recently spoke with …Read More
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Those of us with kids are sensitized to notice things others might not. The location of bathrooms, cool toys, or — in the case of a recent paper that appeared in my inbox — the intersection of 3D printing, microorganisms, video games and a type of programming for kids. (I have a middle school boy, …Read More
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Stanford is one of three Bay Area universities to participate in a new collaboration announced today by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. That’s the initiative created by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan, MD, after the birth of their daughter in 2015. When it launched, the Initiative focused on education, but today they unveiled a …Read More
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The typing in this video is driven directly by brain signals in a monkey (yes, monkeys typing Shakespeare!). It’s one of a series of studies testing technology that could allow people with movement disabilities to communicate. Engineer Krishna Shenoy, PhD, and graduate student (and then postdoctoral fellow) Paul Nuyujukian, MD, PhD, had tested previous iterations …Read More
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I recently went to meet Alice Ting, PhD, in her new Clark Center lab, not long after her arrival from MIT. Ting came to Stanford with appointments in genetics, biology and, by courtesy, chemistry, and a lab bustling with students working on projects relating to technologies for studying living cells in exacting molecular detail. Ting …Read More
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Here’s a conundrum: Medical technology saves lives every day, but it has also been one of the key drivers of health-care cost increases. How do you get the advances without the costs? The leaders of the Stanford Byers Center for Biodesign have been training new medical-device innovators for 15 years now, with great success. But on …Read More
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Cancer immunotherapies have been big news in the past few years, particularly after former President Jimmy Carter’s melanoma was successfully treated with one such immune-stimulating therapy. What I hadn’t known before working on a recent story is that all immunotherapies currently available activate the immune system in the same way (they aim for a pair …Read More
