Linda Xia – The Stanford Daily https://stanforddaily.com Breaking news from the Farm since 1892 Sun, 10 Aug 2014 10:55:14 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.3 https://stanforddaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/cropped-DailyIcon-CardinalRed.png?w=32 Linda Xia – The Stanford Daily https://stanforddaily.com 32 32 204779320 Victor Lin’s experimental classical-jazz concert a success at the Stanford Jazz Festival https://stanforddaily.com/2014/07/31/victor-lins-experimental-classical-jazz-concert-a-success-at-the-stanford-jazz-festival/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/07/31/victor-lins-experimental-classical-jazz-concert-a-success-at-the-stanford-jazz-festival/#respond Thu, 31 Jul 2014 07:48:03 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1087242 “You guys are my test audience,” said Victor Lin, Stanford Jazz Workshop faculty advisor and star of the night, within the first several minutes of his July 24 “Jazz Meets Classical” concert at Dinkelspiel Auditorium. He wore a half-apologetic smile.

Casually dressed down in a two-piece suit, Lin explained the night’s experiment, which was to determine if he could find a synergistic middle ground between jazz and classical music. “Previous crossovers have yielded awkward hybrids,” Lin said. “Tonight, the verdict of Lin’s attempt — successful or not — rests in the audience’s hands. But please clap anyway,” he urged with a cheeky grin.

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Victor Lin’s experimental classical-jazz concert a success at the Stanford Jazz Festival
(LINDA XIA/Stanford Daily)

“You guys are my test audience,” said Victor Lin, Stanford Jazz Workshop faculty advisor and star of the night, within the first several minutes of his July 24 “Jazz Meets Classical” concert at Dinkelspiel Auditorium. He wore a half-apologetic smile. Casually dressed down in a two-piece suit, Lin explained the night’s experiment, which was to determine if he could find a synergistic middle ground between jazz and classical music. Previous crossovers had yielded awkward hybrids. Now, the verdict of his attempt –successful or not – rested in the audience’s hands. With a cheeky grin, he urged the audience to clap anyway.  Lin divided the concert into bite-sized chunks, and his well-timed humor provided a seamless narrative backdrop for each act, which each featured a classical piece turned jazz. To kick off the concert, Lin gave a jazzy rendition of Chopin’s Prelude Op. 28, No. 1, accompanied by several colleagues onstage. Bassist Josh Thurston-Milgrom fingered a bumblebee thrum underneath Lin’s bouncy chords, while Miles Labat clacked a quick, steady heartbeat on the drums. Lin also paid his respects to great classical pieces like Bach’s “Air on the G String” and Antonio Vivaldi’s “Summer” from “The Four Seasons.” Lin and his accompanists peppered in their own lilts, swinging a verse a little extra and twisting around to dance the remaining notes in a style that was distinctly jazz. But they never strayed too far from the classical framework — they consistently intertwined with each other and looped back to the familiar Bach melody. Perhaps the most memorable act of the night was Lin’s four-man piano venture — which he described as “months of poor planning [and] no execution” — with Mozart’s rapid-fire “Rondo Alla Turca.” Peter Stoltzman, Yuma Sung and a young Cuban pianist joined Lin on two pianos — two people on each instrument — and the rondo began. None of them held back. It was all fingertip punches fueled by the rawest creativity until one pianist abruptly darted to the other piano and squeezed in between the other two players. The audience exploded in laughter. Several more spontaneous switches ensued, but the music somehow pranced on. Following a brief intermission, Lin returned with an eclectic duet-duel with Grammy-winning violinist Mads Tolling. Together, they spun a rich tapestry of improvisation, borrowing from the original “Super Mario Bros” theme song and the trademark “Imperial March” from “Star Wars.” This playful modern tune suddenly swerved into the dark drawls of the classic Hungarian dances, or “Czardas.” Flitting between tempos from sluggish to scorching, Lin and Tolling interjected their own stylistic flairs, masterfully responding to each other’s creations, as they played off similar chord progressions. Lin’s classical jazz was not a one-way, recited delivery to the crowd. He communicated with his fellow musicians onstage: They played with daring eyes, tapping feet and moving shoulders. The air was charged with spontaneity and creativity mixed in the same batter, and you couldn’t help but catch the contagious energy. Without depreciating the quality of the two musical forms, Lin proved that the distinguishing characteristics of jazz — improvisation and swing beat — are not limited to their genre. As the night drew to a close with a buttery saxophone crooning in the background, Lin mentioned his “experiment” once more. “If you guys liked what you heard,” he hesitantly began — but he didn’t need to finish.The crowd was responsive and roaring, giving Lin a well-deserved stamp of approval.

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Stanford researchers design implantable devices as potential alternative to drug therapies https://stanforddaily.com/2014/07/20/stanford-researchers-design-implantable-devices-as-potential-alternative-to-drug-therapies/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/07/20/stanford-researchers-design-implantable-devices-as-potential-alternative-to-drug-therapies/#respond Sun, 20 Jul 2014 19:00:17 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1086899 Stanford researchers have developed small, implantable electronic devices that could offer an alternative to drugs using bioelectronics. The pacemaker-like devices stimulate the nervous system and treat illnesses through a therapy known as neurostimulation.

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Poon's tiny wireless chip can treat chronic pain using neurostimulation. (Courtesy of Austin Yee)
Poon’s tiny wireless chip can treat chronic pain using a therapy known as neurostimulation.
(Courtesy of Austin Yee)

Stanford researchers have developed small, implantable electronic devices that could offer an alternative to drugs using bioelectronics. The pacemaker-like devices stimulate the nervous system and treat illnesses through a therapy known as neurostimulation.

According to Ada Poon, assistant professor of electrical engineering, many diseases result from faulty electrical signals that are unable to pass through organs correctly.

Poon and her research group have devised a method to wirelessly transfer power into deep tissues and therefore enable the use of small electronics within the body. These neurostimulation chips fall into the larger category of “electroceuticals,” which use electronic stimulation to target affected areas without having the harmful side effects of drugs.

“The thing with electroceuticals is to do away with this idea of global modulation [which affects healthy biological tissues] and look directly where the diseases are at,” said John Ho, a fourth-year graduate student working in Poon’s lab.

Although much of the group’s research in the area of electroceuticals remains unpublished, Ho explained that the lab’s main contribution to the field has been wireless powering.

Using light from LEDs, the chips stimulate neurons in the brain and regulate sensory signals that indicate pain. Ho explained that they hope the neurostimulation chips will eventually be able to treat chronic pain and other diseases.

“Drug approaches have been tried for pretty much every disease. They sometimes still don’t work,” Ho said. “Any other alternative approach out there might be interesting.”

When Poon first began working on implantable wireless electronics, she read through existing literature and noted that most of the studies had been conducted half a century ago. In addition, she noticed a common error in the use of the fundamental equations describing the behavior of electromagnetic waves.

“In those analyses, it was kind of interesting to find out that they all missed one term in the math equations,” Poon said.

Poon also discovered that many of the researchers had made certain assumptions when creating their wirelessly powered implants. These assumptions forced the devices to operate in a strictly near-field region — they limited the depth at which the waves could transfer power within the body.

Poon, however, removed these assumptions and began with a basic set of equations detailing how electromagnetic waves spread.

“We realized that if we want to power wireless devices inside the body, we had to operate in the mid-field [region], which would allow us to have better efficiency,” Poon said.

Poon and her associates took advantage of the fact that wave properties change as they pass through different materials. By combining the safety of near-field waves and the penetrating power of far-field waves, they safely transmitted waves through biological tissues. This method, called “mid-field wireless transfer,” could power tiny implants within the body.

The researchers’ first major project was to make a smaller, more efficient pacemaker. Old pacemakers were clunky and limited in placement due to the batteries required to power them.

In the past half year, however, Poon’s lab has shifted to applications of mid-field wireless transfer beyond pacemakers.

“Now we’ve moved on to do neurostimulation in electroceuticals, trying to alter how waves propagate to treat diseases,” Poon said.

The neurostimulation microchips are similar to Poon’s pacemaker chip, with the exception of using LED light sources instead of electrodes.

To develop the chips, Poon’s lab has worked in close collaboration with other labs on campus, such as professor of bioengineering Scott Delp’s neuromuscular biomechanics lab.

While experiments with mice, rabbits and other animal test subjects have yielded positive results, Poon hopes to begin clinical trials with the device in the near future.

 

Contact Linda Xia at lindatxia ‘at’ gmail ‘dot’ com.

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Professor emeritus of education and anthropology died at age 94 https://stanforddaily.com/2014/07/19/professor-emeritus-of-education-and-anthropology-died-at-age-94/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/07/19/professor-emeritus-of-education-and-anthropology-died-at-age-94/#respond Sat, 19 Jul 2014 08:41:04 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1086894 On July 1, George Spindler, Stanford professor emeritus of education and anthropology, died at the age of 94.

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On July 1, George Spindler, Stanford professor emeritus of education and anthropology, died at the age of 94.

Widely accepted as one of the founding fathers of the anthropology of education, Spindler focused his research on how school systems facilitate cultural transmission and aimed to help improve the quality of education through his work.

For over 50 years, Spindler and his wife Louise, who passed away in 1997, taught a Stanford introductory anthropology course together and collaborated on research publications. Spindler also taught classes in education and sociology.

According to professor of education Ray McDermott Ph.D. ’77, Spindler instructed an estimated 40,000 students as a professor and reached millions more through his introductory texts in anthropology.

“The heart of his work was talking to people and writing down what he thought they were all about,” McDermott said to the Stanford News Service. “He wanted to understand them the way they understood them.”

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New bioengineering and chemical engineering center named after Ram and Vijay Shriram https://stanforddaily.com/2014/07/13/new-bioengineering-and-chemical-engineering-center-named-after-ram-and-vijay-shriram/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/07/13/new-bioengineering-and-chemical-engineering-center-named-after-ram-and-vijay-shriram/#respond Sun, 13 Jul 2014 11:13:39 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1086790 The final addition to Stanford’s Science and Engineering Quad, a bioengineering and chemical engineering building, will be named after University trustee Kavitark “Ram” Shriram and his wife, Vidjealatchoumy “Vijay” Shriram.

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The final addition to Stanford’s Science and Engineering Quad, a bioengineering and chemical engineering building, will be named after University trustee Kavitark “Ram” Shriram and his wife, Vidjealatchoumy “Vijay” Shriram.

The Shrirams have donated a total of $61 million to the university, with $57 million supporting the construction of the new Shriram Center for Bioengineering & Chemical Engineering.  Their gifts also include endowments to the departmental chair in the Department of Bioengineering.

Both Ram Shriram and his wife Vijay Shriram, parents of two Stanford graduates, are active members in the University community. The founder and managing director of venture capital firm Sherpalo Ventures LLC, Ram Shriram has been on Stanford’s Board of Trustees since 2009. Vijay Shriram serves on both the board of directors for Stanford’s East Palo Alto Academy and also the advisory council at the Graduate School of Education. The Shrirams are also members of Stanford’s Parents Advisory Board.

With over 208,000 square feet, the Shriram Center will be the largest of the four buildings in the Science and Engineering Quad. It will house both the Department of Bioengineering and the Department of Chemical Engineering and will encourage collaboration between the two fields.

“The Shriram Center will provide critically needed space and laboratory equipment for these disciplines to pursue the big challenges of this century,” said Jim Plummer, dean of the School of Engineering, in a Stanford Report article.

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