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The latest news from the UW

Year: 2012

August 20, 2012

Molecular and protein markers predict liver transplant failure in hepatitis C patients

Surgeons performing a liver transplant at UW Medical Center

Researchers have discovered molecular and protein signatures that predict rapid onset of liver damage in hepatitis C patients following a liver transplant. The markers appeared soon after transplant and well before clinical evidence of liver damage. Such early detection of susceptibility to hepatitis C virus-induced liver injury could lead to more personalized monitoring and treatment options after a transplant. Also, because the markers stem from an underlying pathology occurring at a very basic level, they might reveal why hepatitis C…

News Digest: UW ranked 16th in the world, society elects 3 from UW as senators, Ratner among plenary speakers

Shanghai Jiao Tong University logo

UW again ranked 16th in the world The UW again ranked 16th among universities around the world in a recent study by the Center for World-Class Universities of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China. The study ranked universities on quality of education, quality of faculty, research output and per capita performance. The UW ranked 14th among U.S. universities. It was fourth among American public universities behind University of California, Berkeley, UCLA and University of California, San Diego. All but three of…

Documents that Changed the World: The Nineteenth Amendment

19th Amendment

For the second podcast in his “Documents that Changed the World” series, Joe Janes explores aspects of a document Americans may not know as well as they think: The United States Constitution. Documents that Changed the World A podcast series by Joe Janes UW Information School An introduction “President Obama’s Birth Certificate” “The Nineteenth Amendment” These podcasts are also available on iTunes. Transcripts and podcasts also available at the Information School website. More specifically, the Nineteenth Amendment, which was ratified…

August 10, 2012

Student-built rocket with experimental motor blasts to 1st-place finish

Sounding Rocket team

A team of University of Washington students designed a unique rocket motor and launched it 5 miles up to claim first prize this summer in the Intercollegiate Rocket Engineering Competition. The UW students built a new type of motor powered by a combination of solid paraffin and liquid nitrous oxide. So-called hybrid propulsion systems are a nontoxic, safer alternative to space agency rockets that use hazardous liquid propellants such as hydrazine, nitrogen tetroxide and fuming nitric acid. Safe but powerful…

August 9, 2012

Arts Roundup: Seattle Print Arts at the Jacob Lawrence Gallery

An integrated dance class at the UW.

  Most arts at the UW are having a little midsummer quiet time and regrouping for the fall, but there are still some interesting things to see on campus if you know where to look. Work by members of the Seattle Print Arts collective will fill the Jacob Lawrence Gallery, exhibits continue at the Henry Art Gallery and Burke Museum, and the Dance Department’s summer Integrated Dance program holds an open community session. Seattle Print Arts exhibit, Aug. 9-17. An…

Crowd funding on campus: UW scientists raise money for research online

Video of Lauren Kuehne's campaign

When Rachel Aronson travels this month to Alaska, she and a local research assistant will interview people who are in danger of being displaced by climate change. She will also send about 100 postcards to her funders. Aronson is among a growing number of University of Washington students, faculty and staff who are using online campaigns to pay for their research. Crowdsourcing uses the Internet to broadcast a question and pool the answers; crowd funding uses the Internet to post…

Housing market improving despite second-quarter dip in home sales

A home with a for-sale sign in front. Story says: Washington state's housing market remained strong in the second quarter of 2016.

Washington state’s housing market continued to improve during the second quarter of 2012 despite a slight drop in existing home sales, according to the Runstad Center for Real Estate Studies at the University of Washington. Existing home sales during the second quarter of 2012 increased 10.4 percent compared with a year ago, however the seasonally adjusted annual rate dropped 2.6 percent from the first quarter. “The market is clearly stronger than a year ago, but it eased off a bit…

August 7, 2012

Study to identify best blood transfusion practices for trauma patients

UW medical researchers are launching a study to help determine which of the two most common blood product combinations provide the best outcomes for trauma patients who require massive blood transfusions. Dr. Eileen Bulger, UW professor of surgery and chief of trauma at Harborview Medical Center, is the principal investigator for the clinical study. The study will be conducted at 12 Level I trauma centers across the United States, including UW Medicine’s Harborview Medical Center. Bulger and her team will…

South African Olympic runner’s struggle shines a spotlight on country’s ongoing sexual violence

Caster Semenya at the 2009 World Championships in Athletics.

South African track athlete Caster Semenya carried her country’s flag in the opening ceremony at the London Olympics. The 21-year-old former 800-meter world champion, for years the subject of speculation around her gender, was chosen over male athletes including a swimmer, a long jumper and a double-amputee runner. The choice was of interest to a University of Washington researcher familiar with the controversies the athlete has faced as well as the ongoing sexual violence endured by women in South Africa….

Gov. Gregoire selects Christopher Jordan as UW student regent

Chris Jordan

Christopher M. Jordan, a first-year law student at the University of Washington, has been selected by Gov. Chris Gregoire as the UW student regent for the coming academic year. Jordan earned a master’s degree in public administration from the UW’s Evans School of Public Affairs in 2012. He also received a bachelor’s degree in political science in 2010. Jordan has worked as an outreach coordinator for the Economic Opportunity Institute and as a legislative intern in the office of Sen….

News Digest: Society inaugurates Raymond B. Huey Award, Honor: Marsha Linehan

Drumheller Fountain and Gerberding Hall on the UW campus.

Society names student award in honor of Ray Huey The Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology’s Division of Ecology and Evolution has just announced a new prize for the best student presentation at its annual meeting, named in honor of Ray Huey, University of Washington professor of biology. “Ray has been an integral part of SICB for 40 years, and without fail he presents cutting-edge science and gives great talks,” according to information from the society about the new Raymond…

August 5, 2012

Muscle cell grafts keep broken hearts from breaking rhythm

Researchers have made a major advance in efforts to regenerate damaged hearts. They discovered that transplanted heart muscle cells, grown from stem cells, electrically couple and beat in sync with the heart’s own mucle. The grafts also reduced the incidence of arrhythmias (irregular heart rhythms) in a guinea pig model of myocardial infarction (commonly known as a heart attack). This finding from University of Washington-led research is reported in the Aug. 5 issue of Nature. The paper’s senior author, Dr….

August 3, 2012

Americans gaining more weight than they say

Despite the increasing awareness of the problem of obesity in the United States, most Americans don’t know whether they are gaining or losing weight, according to new research from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, also known at IHME, at the University of Washington. Obesity increased in the U.S. between 2008 and 2009, but in response to the questions about year-to-year changes in weight that were included in the most widespread public health survey in the country, on average,…

Summer programs aim to encourage and prepare minorities to attend college

Some high school students, especially underrepresented minorities and those from low-income, first-generation and migrant worker backgrounds, lack access to resources for college preparation. Here is a round-up of programs taking place this summer on the UW Seattle campus that help inspire high school students to pursue higher education and prepare them for college life. ‘Upward Bound’: Six-week academy for Seattle high school students The desire to attend college isn’t necessarily a reality for all high school students, especially those from…

August 2, 2012

‘Documents that Changed the World’: A podcast series from Joe Janes

The phrase occurred to Joe Janes out of the blue one day and immediately appealed to him. From there, ideas began to flow quickly. Janes, associate professor in the University of Washington Information School, had been a fan of the British Broadcasting Corp. radio series “A History of the World in 100 Objects” and thought those shows effectively blended history and storytelling. Documents that Changed the World a podcast series by Joe Janes UW Information School An introduction “President Obama’s…

Bears, scavengers count on all-you-can-eat salmon buffet lasting for months

Salmon conservation shouldn’t narrowly focus on managing flows in streams and rivers or on preserving only places that currently have strong salmon runs. Instead, watersheds need a good mix of steep, cold-running streams and slower, meandering streams of warmer water to keep options open for salmon adapted to reproduce better in one setting than the other, new research shows. Preserving that sort of varied landscape serves not just salmon, it provides an all-summer buffet that brown bears, gulls and other…

Arts Roundup: Student art, ongoing exhibits — and natural science trivia

Burke Museum trivia night - players guessing

Should you want a break from the Olympics, UW arts are here for you. There are student art exhibits, a student-organized show of print arts and popular ongoing exhibits at the Burke Museum and Henry Art Gallery. The Burke also is restarting its monthly trivia contest at the College Inn Pub — a sort of local Olympics of natural science knowledge, if you will, with beer. Burke Trivia Night, 8 p.m. Aug. 2. Natural science, teamwork and beer make a…

August 1, 2012

UW researchers urge integrating deworming into HIV care in Africa

HIV care centers are an important and highly accessed point of care for HIV-infected children and their families in sub-Saharan Africa, but opportunities to address other health issues are being missed. Proven interventions, including routine deworming among children, could be effectively integrated into HIV care according to a new paper by University of Washington researchers published in the journal PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases. The article, “Integration of Deworming into HIV Care and Treatment: A Neglected Opportunity,” estimates that millions of…

July 31, 2012

Athletes, accountants and more: UW hosts visitors all summer

Athletes, accountants, leaders, teachers, gamers, programmers and more — all manner of groups use the University of Washington campus facilities during the summer, all hosted by Housing and Food Services. And new this summer, Teach for America trainees, athletes with disabilities and a new precollege recruitment program from the Office of Minority Affiars will join the long list of summer conferences. From just hours after the end of spring quarter until just before classes start in the fall, the UW…

Rockets, roller coasters and more for young scholars – with slideshow

Pedestrians along the UW’s Rainier Vista may have noticed an unusual warning last Friday. “Danger Rocket Launching Area,” the sign read. Below that someone had drawn a cartoon stick figure receiving a “doink” to the head from a descending bottle rocket. The sign was part of a demonstration by students in grades five through 10 enrolled in summer sessions for advanced learners, organized by the UW Robinson Center for Young Scholars. This year’s 507 participants came from around Puget Sound….

Critically endangered whales sing like birds; new recordings hint at rebound — with audio

When a University of Washington researcher listened to the audio picked up by a recording device that spent a year in the icy waters off the east coast of Greenland, she was stunned at what she heard: whales singing a remarkable variety of songs nearly constantly for five wintertime months. Listen to the bowheads repeat their other-worldly song as they cross the Fram Strait. Bowhead whale song 1 Bowhead whale song 2 Kate Stafford, an oceanographer with UW’s Applied Physics…

July 27, 2012

Lost and Found Films: ‘Play Fair, 1950’

Film Icon

Welcome back to 1950 for an installment of Lost and Found Films, old footage promoting a play festival that aims for a Norman Rockwell feel, with maybe a little Twain thrown in. Lost and Found Films is an occasional UW Today series where readers help identify historic bits of film unearthed from the UW Audio Visual Materials Library provided by film archivist Hannah Palin. They range from shadowy black and white snippets to thoughtfully produced color home-movie style productions like…

Seattle researchers to engineer kidney tissue chip for predicting drug safety

Seattle researchers will be part of the new federal initiative to engineer 3-dimensional chips containing living cells and tissues that imitate the structure and function of human organs.  These tissue chips will be used for drug safety testing. Tissue chips merge techniques from the computer industry with those from bioengineering by combining miniature models of living organ tissues onto a transparent microchip. Ranging in size from a coin to a house key, the chips are lined with living cells and…