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This week in the arts, attend a master class taught by Seattle Symphony artist, see Tony Kushner’s epic tale of AIDS in the 1980s, explore music throughout the past four centuries, hear 13-year-old violinist perform in UW Keyboard Program’s quarterly series, and listen to a special blend of Flamenco music with a guest artist.

  Halting the spread of disease involves a combination of health care and societal practices — from access to doctors and vaccines to clean water and adequate resources. Many of those solutions rely on electricity and transport fuels, whether for refrigeration, diagnosis and treatment, or distribution. But with two of the major energy sources the world relies on now — coal and oil in the form of diesel fuel — global health stands little chance of major improvement, says a…

  The National Science Foundation today named Kristina Olson, University of Washington associate professor of psychology, winner of this year’s Alan T. Waterman Award. The Waterman Award is the U.S. government’s highest honor for an early career scientist or engineer, recognizing an outstanding scientist under the age of 40 or within 10 years of receiving a Ph.D. As part of the honor, Olson receives a five-year, $1 million research grant. Olson, who runs the Social Cognitive Development Lab at the…

This week, the Axion Dark Matter Experiment (ADMX) announced that it has achieved the necessary sensitivity to “hear” the telltale signs of dark matter axions. This technological breakthrough is the result of more than 30 years of research and development, with the latest piece of the puzzle coming in the form of a quantum-enabled device that allows ADMX to listen for axions more closely than any experiment ever built.

A University of Washington professor is among the 173 scholars, artists and scientists from the U.S. and Canada recognized this year by the Guggenheim Foundation. Christian Lee Novetzke, associate director, Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies, and director, Center for Global Studies, was among the winners chosen from more than 3,000 applicants.

In the arts, see the School of Drama’s Mainstage performance of Angels in America, “a story about locating hope in the midst of chaos,” attend a guest artist recital titled “Colors and Characters,” hear School of Music faculty perform in Ballard, see the Henry’s new exhibition that explores the entangled relationships between the land, Native cultures, and colonial, capitalist economic and political systems, and celebrate art at the Henry’s annual gala and dance party!

A national program to boost the employment prospects of young adults with autism is piloting its approach at the UW this year. At 10 locations on campus over the course of the year, interns with the program have built databases, organized libraries and maintained facilities.

During a recent survey of supermassive stars, an international team of astronomers discovered a star that is in quite a hurry. As they report in a new paper, the team tracked one yellow supergiant star cruising along at about 300,000 miles per hour, a velocity that would get you from the Earth to the Moon in about 48 minutes.

In the arts, see legendary opera star Kathleen Battle take the Meany stage, hear UW’s own faculty perform Beethoven and other iconic works, experience a breathtaking contemporary ballet where “unparalleled versatility and virtuosity” are on full display, and attend a UW Symphony performance.

As the 50th anniversary approaches of the murder of civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, UW historian Michael Honey reminds us in a new book that economic justice and labor rights were always part of King’s progressive message.

In a study published March 26 in Physical Review Letters, collaborators of the MAJORANA DEMONSTRATOR have shown they can shield a sensitive, scalable 44-kilogram germanium detector array from background radioactivity. This accomplishment is critical to developing a much larger future experiment to study the nature of neutrinos.

With a new $700,000 grant awarded from the NOAA Ocean Acidification Program, scientists from the University of Washington’s Applied Physics Laboratory, Washington Sea Grant and the Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean have teamed with federal and tribal partners to study the social and ecological vulnerabilities of Olympic Coast ocean acidification.

Researchers at the University of Washington and the Allen Institute for Brain Science have developed a new method to classify and track the multitude of cells in a tissue sample. In a paper published March 15 in the journal Science, the team reports that this new approach — known as SPLiT-seq — reliably tracks gene activity in a tissue down to the level of single cells.

In the arts, hear renowned piano performances, attend a piano master class, listen to a three time Grammy winner sing, and help sculpt a city that works for everyone.