Season Speculation | Athletes are starting to arrive on campus for fall training, and the onset of football season is sparking chatter in the blogosphere: How will Stanford fare in its season-opener against Sac State? And is the Cardinal becoming the Bay Area’s new Golden Bears?

Burning With the Fire of a Thousand Suns | … or, more realistically, harnessing the power of one. But Stanford researchers have set some lofty ambitions for solar energy’s future, announcing research that could harness both light and heat energy from our favorite star.

The Shultz Legacy | PBS just aired a three-part documentary on former Secretary of State and Hoover Fellow George Shultz, titled “Turmoil to Triumph: The Shultz Years.” The film praises Shultz as a statesman and scholar, chronicling his years in academia and in private business as well as in the Nixon and Reagan administrations.

Meat-Eating Mice | … are responsible for the spread of plague in prairie dog populations, Stanford researchers say. Once a prairie dog population is wiped out from a plague, the mice are responsible for carrying over the disease to the new population once it settles. Of the mice, says Woods Institute fellow James Holland Jones, “When they eat the carcass of a prairie dog that’s died of plague, the fleas climb aboard the mice. The mice then schlep the fleas around to different territories, connecting family groups that otherwise wouldn’t be in contact.”

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