The University of Washington is listed at No. 5 on the Reuters Top 100: The World’s Most Innovative Universities, released Thursday. Now in its fourth year, the list ranks the educational institutions doing the most to advance science, invent new technologies and help drive the global economy.
The University of Washington’s Urban Freight Lab at the Supply Chain Transportation and Logistics Center has been looking for solutions to Seattle’s traffic congestion: Parcel lockers that aren’t owned by a specific company could alleviate the strain. Now the researchers have identified five viable locker locations at three different Seattle Link light rail stations for a future pilot test.
Thanks to the generosity of more than 380,000 donors, the University of Washington met its fundraising campaign goal two years ahead of schedule, and will now seek broad support to enhance the experiences of undergraduate and graduate students, as well as a range of identified college and school priorities.
Kristie Ebi, a UW professor of global health, was a lead author on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s “Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 C” that compares the effects of 1.5 versus 2 degrees Celsius of global warming.
When Rainier Beach High School was proposed to close in 2008, community members rallied around a new vision for the school, which has since nearly doubled its enrollment and introduced a more rigorous curriculum.
Researchers at the University of Washington have developed a new machine-learning system, called Prescience, which uses input from patient charts and standard operating room sensors to predict the likelihood that a patient will develop hypoxemia — a condition when blood oxygen levels dip slightly below normal. Prescience also provides real-world explanations behind its predictions.
This week in the arts, attend the 2018 Chamber Dance Concert, see the works by ten second year MFA students, attend Cello faculty artist-in-residence Sæunn Thorsteinsdóttir’s recital, and more. Chamber Dance Company October 11 to 14 | Katharyn Alvord Gerlich Theater For its 28th season, the Chamber Dance Company received a National Endowment for the Arts: Art Works grant to present choreography by Harald Kreutzberg (1902-1968). The 2018 concert, Unspoken, addresses matters that are expressed most poignantly with movement––these voiceless works speak fully and…
Engineers at the University of Washington have developed 3D printed devices that can track and store their use — without using batteries or electronics. Instead, this system uses a method called backscatter, through which a device can share information by reflecting signals that have been transmitted to it with an antenna.
A new study led by the University of Washington found that while dead whales are valuable sources of fat and protein for some polar bears, this resource will likely not be enough to sustain most bear populations in the future when the Arctic becomes ice-free in summers.
Pablo García Borboroglu, president of the Global Penguin Society and a UW affiliate associate professor of biology, has won the Whitley Gold Award and the National Geographic/Buffett Award for Leadership in Conservation, as well as accolades from the Argentine National Congress, for his research and advocacy for penguin conservation.
A new analysis that uses high-resolution data for 24 ocean regions in Africa, Europe, North and South America and Australasia shows that 14 percent of the overall seafloor shallower than 1,000 meters (3,280 feet) is trawled. The paper shows that the footprint of bottom-trawl fishing on continental shelves and slopes across the world’s oceans often has been substantially overestimated.
A new book by University of Washington history professor George Behlmer seeks to improve understanding of the British colonial era by “reconsidering the conduct of islanders and the English-speaking strangers who encountered them.”
Harold Tobin, who joins the UW this fall as a faculty member in Earth and space sciences and director of the regional seismic sensing network, discusses earthquake early warning, seismic risks and the Pacific Northwest’s “big one.”
Kristina Olson, University of Washington associate professor of psychology, has been named one of the 2018 MacArthur Fellows. The Fellowship from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation comes with a $625,000 stipend, commonly known as the “genius grant,” for recipients to use as they see fit.
This week in the arts, see a performance by an all-female Indian Classical dance ensemble, go to an exhibition opening at 4Culture Gallery, attend a lecture with a renowned graphic designer, and more! Nrityagram Dance Ensemble October 4 to 6, 8 pm | Katharyn Alvord Gerlich Theater The all-female Indian Classical dance ensemble’s daily life of intensive training and meditation brings to the stage compelling performances that are at once sensual and lyrical. “The only proper response to dancers this…
On a small island in Indonesia, University of Washington researchers found evidence of nutmeg as residue on ceramic potsherds and is estimated to be 3,500 years old — about 2,000 years older than the previously known use of the spice.
Washington state climatologist Nick Bond explains what our upcoming El Niño winter means for the Pacific Northwest.
Former Interior Secretary Sally Jewell brings a lifetime of experience in business, nonprofits, government and the outdoors to the University of Washington, where one of her tasks is to help shape the future of EarthLab, a new university-wide institute that seeks to connect scholars with community partners to solve our most difficult environmental problems.
This fall, the University of Washington’s annual engineering lecture series will feature three College of Engineering faculty whose research is accelerating positive impact here and around the world.
When levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere rise, most plants do something unusual: They thicken their leaves. Now two University of Washington scientists have shown that this reaction by plants will actually worsen climate change by making the global “carbon sink” contributed by plants was less productive.
For more than 2 million years, the native forests on the Pacific islands of Guam and Rota were home to several thousand crows, members of a species found nowhere else on Earth. But over the last 60 years, the Mariana crow — called the Aga in the Chamorro language — has completely disappeared from the island of Guam and rapidly declined on neighboring Rota. Today there are only about 175 Aga left in the wild. To ensure the survival…
People who have submitted photos to the #MemoriesInDNA project have selected images of family members, favorite places and tasty food that will be preserved for years in the form of synthetic DNA. Now this collection will be headed to the final frontier: space.
The University of Washington has been ranked No. 28 on the Times Higher Education world rankings for 2019, released Wednesday.
A substantial gift from Lynn and Howard Behar will expand the University of Washington School of Social Work’s support for the next generation of oncology social work scholars by providing funds to launch a new Center for Integrative Oncology and Palliative Care Social Work.
The Center will take a social justice approach to oncology and palliative care services, with a commitment to addressing documented health disparities in cancer and end-of-life care based on race and ethnicity, disability, gender and sexual identity, geographic location, income or education.
This week in the arts, celebrate Dawg Daze with the Meany Center and ArtsUW, visit the Henry Art Gallery to see Muse, and more. LAST WEEK | Muse: Mickalene Thomas Photographs tête-à-tête Last day is September 30 | Henry Art Gallery “As the exhibition title suggests, MUSE is a visual love letter to the people who inspire her—both the women who appear as her subjects and the multigenerational roster of other artists who constitute her artistic community.” — Emily Pothast,…
A UW study found that mindfulness lessons, offered to parents at two early childhood centers, helped adults learn how to manage their emotions and behaviors while supporting their child’s development.
David Shields, UW professor of English, discusses his latest book, “Nobody Hates Trump More than Trump: An Intervention.”
For angiosperms — or flowering plants — one of the most important decisions facing them each year is when to flower. It is no trivial undertaking. To flower, they must cease vegetative growth and commit to making those energetically expensive reproductive structures that will bring about the next generation. Knowledge of this process at the cellular level is critical for understanding how plants allocate resources and produce the components we care most about — including the grains, tubers, leaves, nuts…
The University of Washington in Seattle is welcoming its largest-ever incoming class — about 7,050 freshmen —in ceremonies this Sunday. The university’s 35th annual New Student Convocation, which begins at 10:30 a.m. Sunday, Sept. 23, in the Alaska Airlines Arena at Hec Edmundson Pavilion.
A University of Washington study finds that 18-month-old toddlers conduct a form of cost-benefit analysis, making choices based on how much effort they want to expend, or on whether they like the people involved.
The international trade in elephant ivory has been illegal since 1989, yet African elephant numbers continue to decline. In 2016, the International Union for Conservation of Nature cited ivory poaching as a primary reason for a staggering loss of about 111,000 elephants between 2005 and 2015 — leaving their total numbers at an estimated 415,000. For media Download soundbites, b-roll and images In a paper published Sept. 19 in the journal Science Advances, an international team led by scientists at…
The National Science Foundation will support a state-of-the-art marine facility that continues delivering data and new insight to the ocean science community, policymakers and the public worldwide.
Nurses and nurse-scientists interested in advanced multi-disciplinary training for population and global health practice can now apply for a new University of Washington degree program.
Margaret O’Mara, UW professor of history, explores the impact of a December 1968 computer presentation that came to be called “the mother of all demos” in an essay and podcast from the news website The Conversation.
Patrick Dobel, professor emeritus of the UW Evans School of Public Policy & Governance, discusses his new book, “Public Leadership Ethics: A Management Approach.”
Rapid deoxygenation in the Gulf of St. Lawrence is caused by shifts in two of the ocean’s most powerful currents: the Gulf Stream and the Labrador Current. A detailed model shows that large-scale climate change is causing oxygen to drop in the deeper parts of this biologically rich waterway.
The assistant state climatologist, Karin Bumbaco, looks back on an unusually hot and dry summer — the third-hottest summer that Washington state has experienced since 1895.
The share of Washingtonians living below the federal poverty threshold declined slightly from 11.3 percent to 11 percent between 2016 and 2017, according to new Census data released Thursday. While this change was not statistically significant, the 2017 poverty rate remains below the post-recession high of 14.1 percent in 2013. Washington was one of 28 states and the District of Columbia where poverty rates remained statistically unchanged from the prior year. During that period, poverty rates declined in 20 states…
When Tony Greenwald and his colleagues developed the online Implicit Association Test two decades ago, it enjoyed quick success in the pre-laptop, pre-smartphone, nascent Internet world, with some 45,000 participants in the first month. The test, which requires classifying words and images rapidly according to their meanings, captures unconscious biases toward — depending on the test version — race, gender, age and dozens of other traits and preferences. Since its debut in 1998, the test has been taken online more…
The National Science Foundation announced on Sept. 11 that it is awarding grants totaling $8.5 million to 19 collaborative projects at 23 universities for the study of complex and entrenched problems in data science. Three of these projects will be based at the University of Washington and led by researchers in the College of Engineering and the College of Arts & Sciences.