A new University of Washington study finds that cell phone use at playgrounds is a significant source of parental guilt, and that caregivers absorbed in their phones were much less attentive to children’s requests.
Engineering
University of Washington researchers easily hacked a next generation teleoperated surgical robot — one used only for research purposes — to test how easily a malicious attack could hijack remotely-controlled operations in the future and to make those systems more secure.
The Trace app turns a digital sketch that you draw on your smartphone screen — heart, maple leaf, raindrop — into a walking route that you can send to a friend. The recipient of the “gift” receives step-by-step walking directions that eventually reveal the hidden shape on a map.
A new UW study demonstrates that perovskite materials — superefficient crystal structures that have recently taken the scientific community by storm — contain previously undiscovered flaws that can be engineered to improve solar cells and other devices even further.
University of Washington and Georgia Institute of Technology researchers studied how mobile-based food journals integrate into everyday life. A new study suggests how future designs might make it easier and more effective.
Researchers from the University of Washington have teamed up with medical device manufacturer Medtronic to use the Activa® PC+S Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) system with people who have essential tremor.
A University of Washington study assesses how accurately gender representations in online image search results for 45 different occupations — from CEO to telemarketer to engineer — match reality. Exposure to skewed image results shifted people’s perceptions about how many women actually hold those jobs.
University of Washington scientists have built a new nanometer-sized laser using a semiconductor that’s only three atoms thick. It could help open the door to next-generation computing that uses light, rather than electrons, to transfer information.
A UW geologist and geotechnical engineer look back at what the past year has meant, personally and professionally, as they helped recovery efforts from the nation’s deadliest landslide in our own backyard.
Gyroscopes measure rotation in everyday technologies, from unmanned aerial vehicles to cell phone screen stabilizers. Though many animals can move with more precision and accuracy than our best-engineered aircraft and technologies, gyroscopes are rarely found in nature. Scientists know of just one group of insects, the group including flies, that has something that behaves like a gyroscope — sensors called halteres, clublike structures that evolved from wings. Halteres provide information about the rotation of the body during flight, which helps…
A new center at the University of Washington funded by the U.S. Air Force will focus on how elements in nature can help solve challenging engineering and technological problems related to building small, remotely operated aircraft.
University of Washington researchers have developed a new injectable polymer that strengthens blood clots, called PolySTAT. Administered in a simple shot, the polymer finds any unseen injuries and has the potential to keep trauma patients from bleeding to death before reaching medical care.
The University of Washington has 42 graduate schools and specialty programs among the nation’s top 10 in each area, according to U.S. News & World Report’s Graduate School Rankings released Tuesday. The UW again ranked as the No. 1 primary care medical school, while the rural medicine and family medicine specialties continue to lead the nation. Seven other health and medicine schools and programs rank in the top five. “Top graduate programs around the country are incredibly competitive with one…
A session Feb. 15 at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting will explore how big data scientists can find careers at universities and within academic settings.
A research team has found that one group of bilingual speakers used emoticons more often when typing in their second language in casual, online communication than they did when typing in their native tongue.
A UW chemistry lab teamed up with UW engineers studying 3-D printing to create 3-D printed objects with new capabilities.
A robot developed at the University of Washington will deploy instruments to gather information in unprecedented detail about how marine life interacts with underwater equipment used to harvest wave and tidal energy.
The Boeing Advanced Research Center, located in the Department of Mechanical Engineering on the UW campus, will let students and faculty members work collaboratively with Boeing engineers on aircraft and spacecraft assembly and manufacturing. Four initial projects are underway at the UW, led by Boeing-employed affiliate instructors and UW engineering professors.
Many of the worst West Coast winter floods involve heavy rains and melting snow, and UW hydrology experts are using the physics of these events to better predict the risks.
A new class at the University of Washington is using comics to explain what, exactly, the field of human-centered design is all about.
From starting his own company – and recruiting 11 friends to join him – and running a successful nonprofit to doing research in the lab and taking a full course load, engineering undergraduate student David Coven is an expert schedule juggler.
University of Washington electrical engineers have developed a way to automatically track people across moving and still cameras by using an algorithm that trains the networked cameras to learn one another’s differences.
University of Washington researchers have successfully replicated a direct brain-to-brain connection between pairs of people as part of a scientific study following the team’s initial demonstration a year ago.
You can’t predict the future, but you can prepare for it — that’s the thinking behind architect (and architecture graduate student and UW staff member) Brian Rich and his principles of “future proofing” existing and historical buildings.
A state-of-the-art imaging machine is coming to the University of Washington for use by researchers in a variety of disciplines.
The UW has an $8 million, four-year contract to develop technologies that can harness waves, tides and currents to power naval facilities worldwide.
The University of Washington’s College of Engineering 2014 fall lecture series will feature faculty researchers in engineering and medicine who are improving cardiac medical care with new technologies.
University of Washington engineers have designed a concept for a fusion reactor that, when scaled up to the size of a large electrical power plant, would rival costs for a new coal-fired plant with similar electrical output.
Jeffrey Heer, a University of Washington associate professor of computer science and engineering, has received an award from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation to develop new theories, tools and techniques for data visualization that help scientists see and understand big data.
The UW is one of 16 schools invited to participate in the U.S. Department of Energy and General Motors Co. EcoCAR 3 competition that spans four years with stand-alone contests each spring. Their challenge in this next competition is to convert a Chevrolet Camaro into a hybrid-electric car.
The University of Washington and Georgia Institute of Technology have developed a new search algorithm that improves a robot’s ability to find and navigate to tagged objects.
University of Washington engineers have developed a new form of low-power wireless sensing technology that lets users “train” their smartphones to recognize and respond to specific hand gestures near the phone.
University of Washington researchers have taken inspiration from a centuries-old clock design and created a power harvester that uses natural fluctuations in temperature and pressure as its power source.
University of Washington engineers and physicians have developed a smartphone application that checks for jaundice in newborns and can deliver results to parents and pediatricians within minutes.
Scientists have developed what they believe is the thinnest-possible semiconductor, a new class of nanoscale materials made in sheets only three atoms thick.
The popular Summer Undergraduate Research Poster Session allows UW students — and some just arriving — to show off their research.
Shyam Gollakota, a University of Washington assistant professor of computer science and engineering, has been named one of this year’s “Innovators Under 35” by global media company MIT Technology Review.
A UW study found that StopInfo, a new hub for bus stop information in the OneBusAway app, is helpful for blind riders and can promote spontaneous and unfamiliar travel. A UW research team launched the program recently in collaboration with King County Metro.
University of Washington engineers have designed a new communication system that uses radio frequency signals as a power source and reuses existing Wi-Fi infrastructure to provide Internet connectivity to battery-free devices.
University of Washington bioengineers have discovered a potentially faster way to deliver a topical drug that protects women from contracting HIV. Their method spins the drug into silk-like fibers that quickly dissolve when in contact with moisture, releasing higher doses of the drug than possible with other materials.