Blog topic: Science

It's likely not news to you that Stanford researchers are undertaking all manner of cutting-edge and groundbreaking work. Applied Physics graduate student Aaron Sharpe is one such researcher who has become intrigued by a single-atom-thick layer of carbon called graphene that he says has, "continuously shaken up the field of condensed matter physics." Graphene sheets, as well as stacks of these sheets, show "unique and tunable electronic properties." We see why Aaron couldn't resist! We talked to Aaron about the research he and his colleagues have been undertaking with graphene and that has recently been published in Science.

Outreach by Stanford science librarians led Aaron to the Stanford Digital Repository (SDR), which he used to make the data and code for this publication publicly-available. "We chose the SDR because it was an easy process to make our data publicly available and permanent and to obtain a digital object identifier (DOI) to reference it in our publication." We completely agree with Aaron's comment that "with any publication, it is important that the data be publicly available."

When you think about rocks, you might not think about energy, but Christopher Zahasky does. Chris has been looking at vesicular basaltic volcanic rocks, like the one shown below, and the way fluid flows through them (see the graphical abstract for his recent article above). "These volcanic rocks are an important source of geothermal energy and provide a potential location for large-scale subsurface carbon dioxide storage for greenhouse gas emissions mitigation," Chris told us. "Understanding fluid flow is important for more effectively using these types of geologic systems for sustainable energy resource development."

Are you interested in new University Archives collections? Have you ever wondered what goes into making a collection available for research use? If you answered “yes” to either of these questions this post is for you!