For distance runners, leaner isn’t faster

The idea that a leaner body makes for a faster stride is common among distance runners. But it's inaccurate and sets a dangerous ideal, according to Megan Roche, MD, PhD, an ultrarunner and researcher at Stanford Medicine. Runners who are excessively lean are prone to injuries, infectious diseases, mental health…

Shifting the deficit mindset

Peter Belmi, who earned his PhD at Stanford Graduate School of Business in 2015, was the first in his family to attend college. Today he’s a professor at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business. Yet when some of his graduating students who were also “first-gens” asked if they…

Talk it out

When Abby Rubin Davisson, MA ’08, MBA ’08, and her then-boyfriend, Ross Davisson, ’01, MBA ’08, were deciding whether to move in together, they wrote a 20-page research paper about it, covering everything from how they would manage finances and divide household tasks to where they would spend holidays. At…

A long-term focus on growing cities in Africa

When Stanford University researchers, including Professors Pascaline Dupas and Marcel Fafchamps, set out to test a new way of assessing relative poverty, applying a peer-ranking methodology they devised to data from a large metropolis in Côte d’Ivoire and rural Indonesia, their method worked—in some ways better than other poverty measures.…

It’s not ‘just cannabis’

Stanford Medicine expert discusses the risks of cannabis addiction and how it impacts health, especially in young people. As a longtime psychiatric clinician specializing in substance use disorders and addiction, Stanford Medicine's Smita Das, MD, PhD, has had a front-row seat to the aftershocks of America's cultural about-face on cannabis.…

How to help forests fight climate change

Forests across the United States are major contributors to the fight against climate change, annually removing damaging excess carbon from the atmosphere equivalent to approximately 13 percent of overall U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. According to a new report published today by Stanford Law School’s (SLS) Law and Policy Lab and…

AI can coach you to lose weight. But a human touch still helps

Given artificial intelligence’s ability to mimic humans’ problem-solving ability, it’s not surprising that many people are turning to AI-powered wellness coaches to help them plan exercise routines, track their nutrition, and set goals for losing weight. However, in one important aspect, these apps may not be able to match their…

What drives dating app users

Satisfaction with online dating app depends on what you’re looking for A new study shows that some Tinder users access the the app to cope with negative emotions, but they may not find what they’re looking for. Author Nina BaiPublished on July 6, 2023July 6, 2023 With an estimated 75…

The future of seeing

Neuroscientist Kalanit Grill-Spector studies the physiology of human vision and says that the ways computers and people see are in some ways similar, but in other ways quite different. In fact, she says, rapid advances in computational modeling, such as deep neural networks, applied to brain data and new imaging…

How can we train large language models Faster and Cheaper?

ChatGPT and other applications that rely on large language models (LLMs) are gaining widespread use and drawing abundant media attention. But a handful of large well-funded tech companies dominate the LLM space because pretraining these models is extremely expensive, with cost estimates starting at $10 million and potentially reaching tens…

Experts explain the Wagner rebellion

Understanding Prigozhin’s Mutiny and What Is — and Isn’t — Happening in Russia Scholars at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies offer insight on what Yevgeny Prigozhin’s mutiny may signal about Russia, Putin’s power, and the war in Ukraine. Melissa Morgan   Crew onboard a 'Terminator' tank support fighting…

Handling the gold rush-mentality in AI and mental health care

Depression is the leading cause of disability worldwide. Anxiety disorder will affect almost one-third of U.S. adults during their lifetime. Problems of mental health are burdensome and ubiquitous. And while it’s true that AI holds tremendous potential for improving the science and practice of psychotherapy, it remains a definitively high-stakes…

Do you ever wonder WHERE in the brain is your sense of self?

If skulls were transparent, you still wouldn't see much going on in someone else's brain. But Josef Parvizi (Stanford) has ways of peeking into people's heads and finding out what makes us tick. His experiments have pinpointed specific brain regions crucial to capabilities ranging from perceiving faces to recognizing numerals. Ever wonder…