<h4>Mealworms thrive on Styrofoam diet</h4> The common mealworm may be able to eat a way out of the global plastic problem. Stanford engineers, in collaboration with researchers in China, have found that mealworms, the larval form of the darkling beetle, can live on a diet of plastic waste, specifically Styrofoam and other forms of polystyrene. It turns out that the gut of a mealworm contains microorganisms that biodegrade plastic, a surprising finding published in two companion studies co-authored by Wei-Min Wu, a senior research engineer in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford. Testing the mealworm’s “iron gut” on different types of plastic is the next step in research that offers tremendous potential to develop solutions for managing plastic waste. Other avenues of inquiry include identifying a marine version of the mealworm that could eat through plastic accumulating in the ocean. Craig Criddle, a professor of civil and environmental engineering and a senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, is collaborating with Wu and an international team of researchers to learn more about the mealworm’s digestive capabilities. Criddle’s plastics research was originally funded in 2004 by the Stanford Woods Institute’s Environmental Venture Projects. The program supports Stanford’s long-standing commitment to advance innovative environmental research and find solutions to global sustainability problems. Read <a href="http://news.stanford.edu/news/2015/september/worms-digest-plastics-092915.html">more</a> about the “mighty mealworm” and its potential to impact the plastic pollution problem.
<h4></h4> At Stanford’s <a href="https://cesta.stanford.edu/">Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis</a> (CESTA), postdoctoral scholar Nicholas Bauch uses visualization technology to glean new insights from 1905 photographs of the Grand Canyon. His finished work, the interactive website “Enchanting the Desert,” will be the first of its kind to be published by Stanford University Press. In other CESTA projects, the digital mapping platform “Geography of the Post” creates a visual record of the American West through the post offices that sprung up as settlement progressed. In “Mapping the Republic of Letters,” scholars are building a digital map of European and American correspondence networks from the time of Erasmus to the era of Benjamin Franklin. In each project, digital tools, many developed through CESTA, enable scholars to literally see what they were not able to see before. Visualizing data using digital platforms reveals relationships and patterns not previously apparent and helps scholars raise new questions about source materials. [caption id="attachment_93" align="alignright" width="1024"]<img class="size-large wp-image-93" src="http://125.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/CESTA_post-office-1024x560.png" alt="Stanford’s Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis (CESTA) is an interdisciplinary hub for the digital humanities." width="1024" height="560" /> Stanford’s Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis (CESTA) is an interdisciplinary hub for the digital humanities.[/caption] It also allows scholars to get a better sense of the shape and structure of an intellectual network, a main objective of “Mapping the Republic of Letters,” said French Professor Dan Edelstein in a video introducing the research. The process of digitization and of visualization brings “complexity and life” to a world lost to history, added history Professor Caroline Winterer, director of the Stanford Humanities Center. Stanford’s synthesis of technology and the humanities creates a unique environment for the digital humanities to thrive. CS+X joint undergraduate majors link computer science with any of 14 humanities disciplines, and students can hone skills in geospatial and textual analysis through a digital humanities minor. CESTA functions as an interdisciplinary hub for this rapidly growing field of study and now offers a graduate certificate in digital humanities. Learn more about “Geography of the Post,” “Enchanting the Desert” and “Mapping the Republic of Letters” on the Stanford Humanities Center’s <a href="http://shc.stanford.edu/digital-humanities">Digital Humanities website</a>, where you can watch videos about seven CESTA projects.
<h4>McMurtry dedication celebrates unique space for making and studying art</h4> A new era for the Department of Art & Art History began with the fall 2015 opening of the McMurtry Building, the department’s 100,000-square-foot new home. Designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro, the distinctive space brings together facilities that support both the making and the studying of art. Every aspect of the building’s innovative design aims to create synergy between the two disciplines. Drawing and painting studios, a printmaking lab and film editing suites are located throughout the building in proximity to classrooms and the Ute & Bill Bowes Art & Architecture Library. Oshman Hall, with its retractable seats, can be transformed into a performance space or an art gallery, and its garage-style glass door can be opened to the Cantor Arts Center lawn. There are spaces to gather and to collaborate on each level. The light-filled, open-air ground floor includes an art gallery, a café and a sculpture that doubles as an informal studying and meeting place. Atrium stairways lead to the second-level terrace and the third-floor rooftop garden, which is divided into smaller seating areas for outdoor meetings. [caption id="attachment_90" align="alignleft" width="1024"]<img class="size-large wp-image-90" src="http://125.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/McMurtry_oculus_story-page-1024x560.png" alt="The McMurtry’s oculus opens to a light-filled central gathering space." width="1024" height="560" /> The McMurtry’s oculus opens to a light-filled central gathering space.[/caption] The McMurtry’s dedication ceremonies on Oct. 6 celebrated the building as a dynamic center for the visual arts and an important resource for integrating the arts into university life. In formal remarks, President John Hennessy shared the guiding vision for the McMurtry Building and the Stanford arts district as a whole: “We wanted every student – whatever their majors, whatever their interests – to know and experience the arts as central to their daily lives.” Learn <a href="http://news.stanford.edu/features/2015/mcmurtry/">more</a> about the McMurtry in a feature that includes a series of photos showcasing the building’s architecture and a video highlighting its extraordinary potential to take the arts at Stanford to the next level.
Every conversation on campus in the late fall of 1989 began with, “Where were you when … ?” There was no need to finish the question. The 6.9 magnitude Loma Prieta earthquake that hit the greater Bay Area at 5:04 p.m. on Oct. 17 stunned the Stanford community and shaped the memories and experiences of thousands of students, faculty and staff. [caption id="attachment_85" align="alignright" width="1024"]<img class="wp-image-85 size-large" src="http://125.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Loma-Prieta_toppled-bookshelves-1024x560.png" alt="More than 750,000 books were tossed from campus library shelves in the Loma Prieta earthquake." width="1024" height="560" /> More than 750,000 books were tossed from campus library shelves in the Loma Prieta earthquake.[/caption] The university responded quickly – sheltering students that first night in Burnham Pavilion and resettling those displaced from structurally unsafe residences. Memorial Church and the Stanford Art Museum – now the Cantor Arts Center – sustained major damage. At the time, both were closed “indefinitely.” More than 750,000 books littered the floors of libraries across campus, and the west wing of Green Library, built in 1919, faced potential long-term closure. Loma Prieta precipitated a period in Stanford history marked by investment of nearly $160 million to restore more than 200 campus buildings. It also galvanized the academic community. A quarter-century later, Stanford engineers and scientists are working at the cutting edge of seismology research in areas as diverse as understanding the forces that trigger earthquakes and designing buildings to withstand those forces. [caption id="attachment_86" align="alignleft" width="600"]<img class="size-full wp-image-86" src="http://125.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Loma-Prieta_shakehouse-larger.png" alt="Twenty-five years after the Loma Prieta earthquake, Stanford engineers have developed a building design that can resist forces three times those of a 6.9 magnitude quake." width="600" height="450" /> Twenty-five years after the Loma Prieta earthquake, Stanford engineers have developed a building design that can resist forces three times those of a 6.9 magnitude quake.[/caption] For Loma Prieta’s 25th anniversary, <em>Stanford Report</em> created a multimedia feature on the earthquake’s legacy. From arresting images of campus damage to earthquake research at Stanford today, the feature tells the story and shows the long-term impact of a significant event in the university’s history. <a href="http://news.stanford.edu/features/2014/loma-prieta/">Learn more</a> about the day that changed Stanford.
https://youtu.be/GvJFC93idKU <h4>Imagining the universe at the intersection of art and science</h4> <em>The series </em>Imagining the Universe<em> “sparked a wide-ranging conversation about art, science, how we seek to understand our cosmos, and what that tells us about being human.”</em> <em>—Matthew Tiews, associate dean for the advancement of the arts</em> In 2015, the Stanford Symphony Orchestra brought art and science together in an extraordinary performance of Gustav Holst’s <em>The Planets</em>, a piece divided into seven movements corresponding to individual planets. As the symphony played, NASA images of the solar system appeared above center stage at Bing Concert Hall. The production was part of a yearlong university collaboration on the topic <em>Imagining the Universe: Cosmology in Art and Science</em>. Watch the video for the unfolding of a uniquely Stanford moment, when a vision of the universe, never before imagined, took shape.
https://youtu.be/fTKUipdCbQk <h4><span class="tx">In a beloved Stanford tradition, Sarah Young, this year’s Tree, designed and made her own </span><span class="tx">tree costume. </span></h4> <span class="tx">The familiar four-beat whistle is prelude to one of the most joyous scenes at Stanford athletic events: </span><span class="tx">the dancing Tree. Sarah Young won the right to dance her way through the Cardinal sports schedule and to create her own costume, an annual tradition dating back to 1987</span><span class="tx">. </span><span class="tx">For her Tree, Young chose a weeping willow design: “There has never been a willow before, so I wanted </span><span class="tx">to represent the new generation of Trees, both as people and as costumes.”</span>
