Stanford University

About: Stanford University is a education organization based out in Stanford, California, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Transplantation. The organization has 125751 authors who have published 320347 publications receiving 21892059 citations. The organization is also known as: Leland Stanford Junior University & University of Stanford.

Climate Trends and Global Crop Production Since 1980

Abstract: Efforts to anticipate how climate change will affect future food availability can benefit from understanding the impacts of changes to date. We found that in the cropping regions and growing seasons of most countries, with the important exception of the United States, temperature trends from 1980 to 2008 exceeded one standard deviation of historic year-to-year variability. Models that link yields of the four largest commodity crops to weather indicate that global maize and wheat production declined by 3.8 and 5.5%, respectively, relative to a counterfactual without climate trends. For soybeans and rice, winners and losers largely balanced out. Climate trends were large enough in some countries to offset a significant portion of the increases in average yields that arose from technology, carbon dioxide fertilization, and other factors.

On the Problem of Hidden Variables in Quantum Mechanics

Abstract: The demonstrations of von Neumann and others, that quantum mechanics does not permit a hidden variable interpretation, are reconsidered. It is shown that their essential axioms are unreasonable. It is urged that in further examination of this problem an interesting axiom would be that mutually distant systems are independent of one another.

Using social and behavioural science to support COVID-19 pandemic response.

Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic represents a massive global health crisis. Because the crisis requires large-scale behaviour change and places significant psychological burdens on individuals, insights from the social and behavioural sciences can be used to help align human behaviour with the recommendations of epidemiologists and public health experts. Here we discuss evidence from a selection of research topics relevant to pandemics, including work on navigating threats, social and cultural influences on behaviour, science communication, moral decision-making, leadership, and stress and coping. In each section, we note the nature and quality of prior research, including uncertainty and unsettled issues. We identify several insights for effective response to the COVID-19 pandemic and highlight important gaps researchers should move quickly to fill in the coming weeks and months.

Extensional versus intuitive reasoning: The conjunction fallacy in probability judgment.

Abstract: Perhaps the simplest and the most basic qualitative law of probability is the conjunction rule: The probability of a conjunction, P (A&B) cannot exceed the probabilities of its constituents, P (A) and P (B), because the extension (or the possibility set) of the conjunction is included in the extension of its constituents. Judgments under uncertainty, however, are often mediated by intuitive heuristics that are not bound by the conjunction rule. A conjunction can be more representative than one of its constituents, and instances of a specific category can be easier to imagine or to retrieve than instances of a more inclusive category. The representativeness and availability heuristics therefore can make a conjunction appear more probable than one of its constituents. This phenomenon is demonstrated in a variety of contexts including estimation of word frequency, personality judgment, medical prognosis, decision under risk, suspicion of criminal acts, and political forecasting. Systematic violations of the conjunction rule are observed in judgments of lay people and of experts in both between-subjects and within-subjects comparisons. Alternative interpretations of the conjunction fallacy are discussed and attempts to combat it are explored.

PEGylated Nanographene Oxide for Delivery of Water-Insoluble Cancer Drugs

Abstract: It is known that many potent, often aromatic drugs are water insoluble, which has hampered their use for disease treatment. In this work, we functionalized nanographene oxide (NGO), a novel graphitic material, with branched polyethylene glycol (PEG) to obtain a biocompatible NGO−PEG conjugate stable in various biological solutions, and used them for attaching hydrophobic aromatic molecules including a camptothecin (CPT) analogue, SN38, noncovalently via π−π stacking. The resulting NGO−PEG−SN38 complex exhibited excellent water solubility while maintaining its high cancer cell killing potency similar to that of the free SN38 molecules in organic solvents. The efficacy of NGO−PEG−SN38 was far higher than that of irinotecan (CPT-11), a FDA-approved water soluble SN38 prodrug used for the treatment of colon cancer. Our results showed that graphene is a novel class of material promising for biological applications including future in vivo cancer treatment with various aromatic, low-solubility drugs.