A new international assessment found that soot, or black carbon, is a major contributor to global warming — second only to carbon dioxide.
Author: Hannah Hickey
The University of Washington and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have formed the Northwest Institute for Advanced Computing, a joint institute based at the UW that will foster collaborative computing research.
Judith Ramey, professor and former chair in the UW’s Department of Human Centered Design and Engineering, is named interim dean of the University of Washington’s College of Engineering.
The U.S. Department of Energy this month awarded $4 million to a team, led by UW chemical engineers, that aims to develop bacteria to turn the methane in natural gas into diesel fuel for transportation.
The ASL-STEM Forum is a crowdsourcing project, similar to Wikipedia or the Urban Dictionary, that creates a new sign language for the latest scientific and technical terms.
Electrically spun cloth with nanometer-sized fibers show promise as a cheap, versatile platform to simultaneously offer contraception and prevent HIV. New funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will further test the system’s versatility and feasibility.
Climatologists have reconciled their measurements of ice loss in Antarctica and Greenland during the past two decades. A second article looks at how to monitor and understand accelerating losses from the planet’s two largest continental ice sheets.
The UW Board of Regents yesterday approved a name change to the William E. Boeing Department of Aeronautics & Astronautics, recognizing the shared history of UW aeronautics and The Boeing Company, and honoring the man who launched them both.
Three undergraduates won $100,000 to form a company that will work with partners in Oaxaca, Mexico, to build machines that can transform waste plastic into composting toilets and pieces for rainwater harvesting systems.
SpaceScout, available on the web or as an iPhone app, lets users enter various criteria to find the perfect study space on campus. The tool was developed by UW-IT, which this week also launched a mobile version of MyUW for students.
The Living Voters Guide, created by the UW and presented with Seattle’s CityClub, just won a regional award and has been updated for the 2012 election. This year the guide has expanded to include a California edition, and the Washington guide will include fact-checking of selected points by Seattle Public Library staff.
Maria Klawe, professor of computer science and president of Harvey Mudd College, will speak Tuesday at the UW about how her institution over three years quadrupled its female representation in undergraduate computer science majors, to 40 percent.
Three public lectures by UW engineering professors will give an overview of molecular engineering and applications in biotech and alternative energy.
Global health researchers are working on cheap systems like a home-based pregnancy test that might work for malaria, diabetes or other diseases. A new chemical technique makes medically interesting molecules stick to regular paper — a possible route to building such paper-based diagnostics from paper you could buy at an office-supply store.
As the U.S. presidential election approaches, many voters become voracious consumers of online political news. A new tool tracks whether all those articles really provide a balanced view of the debate – and, if not, suggests some sites that offer opinions from the other side of the political spectrum.
A tiny digital tag developed at the UW can for the first time see when birds meet in the wild, offering a window into animal social networks. A study in Current Biology used the tags to track the social habits of New Caledonian crows, and found a surprising amount of interaction among the tool-using birds.
The scientists were selected for their inventive ideas to transform their field of research and improve the health of the public.
Feeling wheezy? You could call the doctor. Or soon you could use your smartphone to diagnose your lung health, with a new app that uses the frequencies in the breath to determine how much and how fast you can exhale.
The UW’s new Molecular Engineering and Sciences Building opens this fall with a series of kick-off events focused on this emerging area of research. The associated Institute will focus on research applications in medicine and clean energy.
This summer the UW hosted the first World Lab Summer Institute, which brings together computing and design students from the UW and Beijing’s Tsinghua University. The students spent seven weeks devising ways that technology could be used to address global issues in health, environment and education.
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…
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…
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…
Do you have what it takes to be an ethical hacker? Can you step into the shoes of a professional paid to outsmart supposedly locked-down systems? Now you can at least try, no matter what your background, with a new card game developed by University of Washington computer scientists. “Control-Alt-Hack” gives teenage and young-adult players a taste of what it means to be a computer-security professional defending against an ever-expanding range of digital threats. The game’s creators will present it…
Mechanical engineering students last weekend braved uncharted waters as they paddled to the finish line at the annual Milk Carton Derby at Green Lake, in what they believe is the world’s first boat made using a 3-D printer.
A group of Washington high-school students will arrive at the University of Washington campus this week for the annual DO-IT Scholars Summer Study program. It’s the 20th anniversary of the summer program, which has now helped launch the careers of hundreds of students from Washington and beyond who have a wide range of disabilities. DO-IT Scholars, July 17-27 DO-IT stands for Disabilities, Opportunities, Internetworking and Technology. The students learn about challenging careers in fields including science, technology, engineering and mathematics….
Students in the UW’s new 3-D printing club plan to enter tomorrow Milk Carton Derby at Green Lake with what they believe is the world’s first 3-D printed boat, made from more than 150 recycled, melted and extruded milk cartons.
A senior class in Aeronautics & Astronautics won a national competition with the students’ detailed plan to travel to the moon, establish a mining outpost and jettison the product back to Earth.
In one of the twists of scientific discovery, a UW duo working on fusion energy — harnessing the energy-generating mechanism of the sun — may have found a way to etch the next generation of microchips.
Bioengineers have developed the first structure to grow small human blood vessels, creating a 3-D test bed that offers a better way to study disease, test drugs and perhaps someday grow human tissues for transplant.
A textured surface mimics a lotus leaf to move drops of liquid in particular directions. The low-cost system could be used in portable medical or environmental tests.
Over the next three years, a team of UW students will convert a 2013 Chevy Malibu into a fuel-efficient, low-emissions vehicle that still meets consumer demands for a driver-friendly car. The UW is one of 15 schools participating in the EcoCAR 2 contest, sponsored by General Motors and the U.S. Department of Energy.
The Design Help Desk offers scientists a chance to meet with a student who can help them create more effective figures, tables and graphs. This visual equivalent of a Writing Help Desk is also a study on how to teach data visualization.
David Stahl, a UW professor of civil and environmental engineering, has been elected to the National Academy of Engineering. Also elected are UW affiliate professor Henrique Malvar and UW alumnus Peter Farrell.
The walls of the aorta, the largest blood vessel carrying blood from the heart, exhibits a response to electric fields known to exist in inorganic and synthetic materials. The discovery could have implications for treating human heart disease.
Seven identical robots created and built at the UW will be flown to campuses across the country, where they will provide the first common research platform to develop the future of surgical robotics. The robots will be display Friday at an open house.
Aeronautical engineers are devising ways to boost the efficiency of open-air refrigerated cases, which are increasingly common in supermarkets. Results could lower the energy use of existing cases by up to 15 percent — potentially saving $100 million in electricity costs each year.
Materials scientists at the University of Washington have built a novel transistor that uses protons, creating a key piece for devices that can communicate directly with living things.
On the eve of the certification of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner by the Federal Aviation Administration, Washington Senator Maria Cantwell held a press conference on the UW campus highlighting the work of a federally funded research center that helped realize that goal.
UW engineers and chemists have been awarded Sloan Research Fellowships, prestigious awards for early-career scientists.