UW News blog

A University of Washington tool that monitors the amount of ice in Arctic waters calculated that we remain on track for a gradual disappearance of the Arctic ice cap in summer. “Last year, when the ice had bounced back by some percentage both in extent and in volume, there was a bit of talk about whether that constituted a recovery,” said Axel Schweiger, a sea ice scientist with the UW Applied Physics Laboratory. “I think it’s significant that we’re back…

In a sense, early returns from the 2016 election are already in: Civility is losing to vitriol in a landslide. But two former U.S. senators who each served as Senate majority leaders — Republican Trent Lott of Mississippi and Democrat Tom Daschle of South Dakota — have been promoting a plan to restore civility to governing. On September 24, the two will present some of these ideas to an audience of state legislators, university representatives, business leaders and members of…

The University of Washington Center for Human Rights will hold a daylong conference Oct. 5 at the UW School of Law, underscoring a crucial international theme even with its title: “Access to Information as a Human Right.” The conference springs from the center’s partnerships with communities and organizations struggling for truth and accountability in postwar El Salvador. Panels will include conversations with international experts in human rights, access to information, and international law; and with Salvadoran human rights defenders and…

The share of Washingtonians living in poverty dropped from 14.1 percent to 13.2 percent between 2013 and 2014, according to new U.S. Census Bureau data released Thursday. Washington was one of 12 states with significant declines in their poverty rates during that period. Among the remaining states, the vast majority saw no change in their poverty rates or the number of people in living in poverty. “We are finally seeing a drop in the poverty rate six years after the…

The University of Washington and Oregon State University have won a $4.5 million, five-year grant from the National Science Foundation to advance nanoscale science, engineering and technology research in the Pacific Northwest and support a new network of user sites across the country. The regional partnership was selected as one of 16 sites for a new National Nanotechnology Coordinated Infrastructure (NNCI) program. That network is designed to give researchers from academia, small and large companies and other institutions open access…

If you’ve ever wanted to travel north of the Arctic Circle in early fall, when the expanse of water dotted with ice floes reaches its greatest extent, this is your chance. Follow the ArcticMix website or on Twitter at @_following_seas through Sept. 26 A University of Washington oceanographer is one of three principal investigators on a monthlong research cruise to the Beaufort Gyre. The researchers are posting updates, photos and videos of their study of Arctic Ocean mixing through Sept….

The University of Washington and city of Seattle have joined a new national network of university-city partnerships that will work on “smart city” solutions as part of a new White House Smart Cities Initiative. The MetroLab Network, announced by the White House on Monday, consists of partnerships between research universities with expertise in engineering, robotics and computer science and cities looking to be test beds for 21st century solutions. Seattle Mayor Ed Murray and UW Interim President Ana Mari Cauce…

The University of Washington is the 7th-largest contributor of college graduates to the 2015 Teach For America corps, according to the annual list of top contributors released today by the national nonprofit organization. Graduates who join Teach For America commit to teach for at least two years in under-resourced schools. Among large schools, the University of California–Los Angeles contributed the highest number of alumni to the corps, with 65 graduates beginning as teachers through the program this fall. The University of Washington’s Seattle campus…

The UW’s indoor alert system will be tested Wednesday at 7:30 a.m. in buildings across the Seattle campus. The indoor alerts are part of the campus emergency notification system. The test will last about 15 minutes and could include voice announcements, tones and horns, depending on the building. The purpose of this system-wide test is to make sure each building is receiving the alert broadcast and that alerts are clear and understandable to the people inside. Campus building coordinators will…

University of Washington psychology professor Marsha Linehan has been chosen to receive the 2015 Scientific Research Award from the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI). The award, given annually since 2005, honors excellence in research for mental illnesses. Linehan, who is also an adjunct professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the UW, is the director of the Behavioral Research and Therapy Clinics, a research center that develops and evaluates new prevention measures and treatments for suicidal behaviors and other…

Government finance is a bit like Italian opera, writes Justin Marlowe, professor in the Evans School of Public Policy & Governance: It’s beautiful and elaborate, sure — but it’s also in a foreign language full of “traditions, customs and unspoken rules most casual fans don’t understand.” And though local, county and state government officials don’t need to know Verdi from Wagner, they do need to know about public finance and how to keep the offices they represent solvent and successful….

As a subarctic, seasonally ice-filled ocean that produces about 40 percent of the nation’s annual fish catch, the Bering Sea is of particular interest to researchers as the climate changes and forces wildlife and fishing practices to adapt. The UW is a partner in a new effort to understand how changes to the Bering Sea’s biophysical environment — such as temperature, salinity, currents, nutrients and plankton — may impact fish stocks and fishing practices as the climate warms. Scientists from…

The University of Washington is among the 2015 Campus Pride Top 25 LGBTQ-Friendly Colleges & Universities list released Monday. For seven years, the list has highlighted the most LGBTQ-inclusive colleges and universities around the country. But this is the first year Campus Pride has released a Top 25 list based on new higher LGBTQ benchmarks in its Campus Pride Index. The list is based on responses to the index, a national benchmarking tool which assesses LGBTQ-friendly policies, programs and practices. The…

Though the number of mixed-race couples in the United States has nearly quadrupled since 1980, relatively little research has been done about where those couples live — and specifically, the level of poverty within their neighborhoods. That dearth of data prompted Ryan Gabriel, a doctoral student in sociology at the University of Washington, to look at where mixed-race couples live as an indicator of their standing in the broader culture. Gabriel analyzed data on a representative sample of mixed-race couples…

A public celebration of the life of writer Ann Rule will be held at 5 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 23, in Room 130 of Kane Hall on the University of Washington campus. The gathering, under the title “Ann Rule, Our Tribute to a Life Well Lived,” will feature friends and colleagues remembering the writer’s life and work. Among these will be CBS News reporter Peter Van Sant, KOMO TV reporter Elisa Jaffe, journalist Anne Jaeger and Ben Benson, homicide detective with…

Protecting African-Americans from state-sanctioned violence remains “an unmet challenge for civil rights groups committed to racial equality,” writes Megan Ming Francis, UW assistant professor of political science, in a much-read post at HistPhil, a blog launched in June to cover the history of philanthropy. Why is preventing racial violence not a higher priority? In part because of money, Francis writes. Journalists and scholars cite discriminatory policies and racist policing among contributing factors, Francis notes in her Aug. 17 post, “Do…

A new study finds that acceptance of a policy is an important process through which people’s beliefs and economic ideologies influence their support for putting a price on carbon emissions, but general acceptance doesn’t always lead to support. A University of Washington researcher led a study looking at views towards a carbon pricing policy before and after the 2013 federal election in Australia, which was the first nation to repeal an existing carbon pricing policy. Despite heated debate on the…

When University of Washington oceanographers visited the deep-ocean Axial Volcano in late July, parts of the seafloor were still warm. The team knew to expect changes in the mile-deep volcano 300 miles off the Oregon coast. This spring, seafloor seismometers connected to shore by a new Internet cable showed that Axial Volcano, a 3,600-foot-tall underwater volcano, started shaking April 24 and shook continuously for several days. The recent visit, part of a larger cruise, was scientists’ first chance to see…

This year’s pathetic snow season wasn’t just a problem for skiers. Now that it’s summer, salmon are struggling because there’s not enough snowmelt to feed streams, and water managers are worried by lack of snowpack or summer rains to feed water supplies until the fall. When Gov. Jay Inslee first declared a drought in April, the Department of Ecology funded the office of the Washington State Climatologist at the University of Washington to produce weekly updates on the current conditions….

Oh no — you’ve lost your smartphone. Anxiety spikes as you check pockets and bags. But wait — there it is and your worries vanish. All is well, and you feel yourself again, whole again. What’s up with that? Michelle Carter, an assistant professor in the University of Washington Information School, has studied and given a name to this feeling of reliance on — even seeming to become one with — the information technologies of our lives. She calls it…

At a University of Washington workshop this week, a hundred graduate students from around the country will explore a question that everyone is asking these days: What can data science do for me? To land an invite to the Data Science 2015 workshop on Aug 5 – 7, they were asked to identify a single challenge, big idea or solution that data science — the process of extracting knowledge and making discoveries from vast amounts of data — could advance…

When UW design professor Karen Cheng collaborated with students to create an infographic from publicly available City of Seattle data and published it in a local design magazine, the result was so good they were invited to present their work to the Seattle Police Department. Cheng, professor in the School of Art + Art History + Design, worked with design graduate student Catherine Lim and seniors Melissa Leith and Karlie Grasle to create two infographics, one on how public money…

The University of Washington has again been named to Princeton Review’s Green Rating Honor Roll, receiving the highest possible score for the 2014-15 school year. This is the fifth year in a row the UW has achieved this distinction and the seventh year overall since the program began eight years ago. The UW was among 24 colleges and universities to receive the top rating, out of 804 institutions reviewed for their sustainability-related practices, policies and academic offerings. “The University of…

Almost 30 years ago, two University of Washington researchers developed a program that aimed to reduce problem behaviors among young people by implementing preventive measures at the community level. That program, Communities That Care, is now being used in states across the nation and has been shown to reduce risk factors that lead to problems such as substance abuse and juvenile crime. But whether it was primarily the reduction of risk factors — or also the strengthening of protective ones…

Two University of Washington scientists have been elected as new fellows of the American Geophysical Union. The Earth sciences group recognizes only one in 1,000 members each year for major scientific work and sustained impact. The UW honorees are among 60 new 2015 fellows from U.S. and international institutions. They will both be honored in December at the union’s annual meeting in San Francisco. Christopher Bretherton, a UW professor jointly appointed in the departments of Atmospheric Sciences and Applied Mathematics,…

It’s been a strange summer for Puget Sound and the Pacific Ocean that feeds it. Water temperatures are warmer than usual, shellfish harvesting has been closed because of a long-lived toxic algae bloom, and oxygen levels in some areas continue to drop, meaning fish kills could be a reality this fall. Local scientists from multiple agencies and organizations have been tracking these unusual trends for the past several months. They now say it’s time for the general public to understand…

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced last week it is committing $88,000 in event-response funding for our state to monitor and analyze an unusually large and long-lived bloom of toxic algae that has been affecting shellfish in the region. UW-based Northwest Association of Networked Ocean Observing Systems, or NANOOS, was awarded $75,000 of the grant money to monitor and analyze the bloom in Washington state waters. “This is a response to an event, and we’ve got a good network…

BlackPast.org, an extensive online reference center for African-American history and African ancestry created by UW history professor Quintard Taylor, has been honored by the National Education Association. The website has won the 2015 Carter G. Woodson Award, given annually by the education association and the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, which Woodson founded. Woodson (1875-1950) was a journalist, historian and author. In 1926 he announced celebration of “Negro History Week,” considered a precursor to the nationwide…

Recreational boaters and commercial fishing boats in Western Washington can get free oil-spill reporting and cleanup kits this summer as part of a new campaign to prevent spills in Puget Sound. Washington Sea Grant, based at the UW, along with U.S. Coast Guard Sector Puget Sound, the Washington Department of Ecology and the state’s Clean Marina Program have partnered to give out more than 1,000 free kits this summer. Each kit contains oil-absorbent pads, a 15-inch bilge sock, gloves, a…

Of the five recipients of 2015 Seattle Mayor’s Arts Awards, two — Robin K. Wright and Akio Takamori — are faculty members in the UW School of Art + Art History + Design. Seattle Mayor Ed Murray’s office announced the awards on Tuesday, July 21. The awards, notes say, “recognize the contributions of artists, creative industries and cultural organizations who contribute to Seattle’s reputation as a hub of creativity and innovation.” Wright, professor of art history, is the recipient of…

“Piers Plowman” is not only a 14th century alliterative narrative, it is also the reason a hundred scholars are coming to the UW this week. The Piers Plowman International Conference will be held July 23-25 in Alder Hall and the Simpson Center for the Humanities. “The poem is a work contemporary with Chaucer in the second half of the 14th century which offers a series of dream visions that instruct the wandering dreamer with regard to a range of contested…

In many areas of the world, women and girls walk an average of six kilometers to collect water for their families that often isn’t even safe to drink. Five Washington-based organizations — University of Washington, Washington Global Health Alliance (WGHA), PATH, Washington State University’s Paul G. Allen School for Global Animal Health and World Vision — are partnering to improve the health and livelihoods of thousands of women and girls and their families in rural Tanzania through the “Water, Wealth…

The study of animals meets up with postcolonial studies in The Postcolonial Animal, a cross-disciplinary research project hosted by the UW’s Simpson Center for the Humanities. The work, notes from the center state, “considers relations between human and nonhuman lives and with indigenous ways of knowing” and “follows a conviction that violence toward any life is violence toward all, and the flourishing of any life is tied to the flourishing of all.” “Thinking about nonhuman life seriously — or indigenous…

Two University of Washington faculty members have been appointed to the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Justice Programs Science Advisory Board. Sociology professor Robert Crutchfield was named chair of the board’s justice system transparency and accountability subcommittee, and Alexes Harris, an associate professor of sociology, was named a new board member. The 25-member board, which advises the Office of Justice Programs on research, statistics and grant programs, is made up of leading scholars and experts in sociology, criminology, statistics,…

When big volcanoes like Mount St. Helens or Mount Pinatubo really blow their tops, the skies darken and temperatures drop. But since such massive eruptions – luckily for us – are fairly uncommon, scientists have few examples to help them piece together the details of how much it cools, and how far and long the chill extends. A University of Washington glaciologist is the second author of a study published July 8 in Nature that shows that 15 of the…

The University of Washington Botanic Gardens is one of the best university gardens in the nation, according to a new ranking by Best Colleges Online. The UW tied for first place along with three other universities for the top honor. UW Botanic Gardens, which includes the gardens and programs at the Washington Park Arboretum and the Center for Urban Horticulture, has a collection of more than 11,000 plants, trees and shrubs. Best Colleges Online cited this large collection and, in…