When a bacterial cell divides into two daughter cells there can be an uneven distribution of cellular organelles. The resulting cells can behave differently from each other, giving them an evolutionary advantage.
News releases
Virulent, drug-resistant forms of E. coli that recently have spread around the world emerged from a single strain of the bacteria, not many different strains, as has been widely supposed.
A special interdisciplinary issue of the journal Climatic Change includes the most detailed description yet of the proposed Oxford Principles to govern geoengineering research, and surveys the technical hurdles, ethics and regulatory issues related to deliberately manipulating the planet’s climate.
UW researchers evaluated about 20 parenting programs and found five that are especially effective at helping parents and children at all risk levels avoid adolescent behavior problems that affect not only individuals, but entire communities.
A new University of Washington institute to develop efficient, cost-effective solar power and better energy storage systems launched Dec. 12 with an event attended by UW President Michael K. Young, Gov. Jay Inslee and researchers, industry experts and policy leaders in renewable energy.
Finding a second code hiding in the genome casts new light on how changes to DNA impact health and disease.
The University of Washington has been ranked 13th best value among public colleges and universities for 2014 by Kiplinger’s Personal Finance.
As the Endangered Species Act nears its 40th birthday at the end of December, conservation biologists are coming to terms with a danger not foreseen in the 1970s: global climate change.
Fewer high school students across the U.S. started drinking alcohol, smoking cigarettes, committing crimes and engaging in violence before graduation when their towns used a prevention system developed by UW’s Social Development Research Group.
An atmospheric peculiarity the Earth shares with Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune is likely common to billions of planets, University of Washington astronomers have found, and knowing that may help in the search for potentially habitable worlds.
Like humans, some song sparrows are more effusive than others, at least when it comes to defending their territories. New UW findings show that consistent individual differences exist not only for how aggressive individual song sparrows are but also for how much they use their signals to communicate their aggressive intentions.
Will we of the early 21th century be remembered for Internet memes like Grumpy Cat? “Going Viral,” a new book by Karine Nahon and Jeff Hemsley of the UW Information School explores the nature of virality and impacts of virality.
The overall purpose of the project, called UW-SHARE, is to obtain a benchmark, pre-ACA picture of health-care use, health, health-related attitudes, and access to health insurance.
New research indicates that a phenomenon called “quantum entanglement” could be intrinsically linked with the creation of wormholes.
The mystery of how the surface of Mars, long dead and dry, could have flowed with water billions of years ago may have been solved by research that included a University of Washington astronomer.
Filtered from a vast sodium sea, more than 1 million calcium ions per second gush through our cells’ pores to generate charges
Digital activism is usually nonviolent and tends to work best when social media tools are combined with street-level organization, according to new research from the University of Washington.
UW researchers this month are on missions to fly above the Arctic Ocean to measure glacier melt, polar storms and Arctic sea ice.
Rapamycin, an anti-rejection drug for organ transplant patients, has now been shown to increases survival in and delayed symptoms of Leigh’s syndrome. The drug appears to cause a metabolic switch that bypasses the mitochondrial deficiency.
Recent research suggests that young Americans might be less creative now than in decades past, even while their intelligence — as measured by IQ tests — continues to rise. But new research from the UW Information School and Harvard University hints that the dynamics of creativity may not break down as simply as that.
University of Washington researchers have found that tree cover actually causes snow to melt more quickly in warm, Mediterranean-type climates. Alternatively, open, clear gaps in the forests tend to keep snow on the ground longer into the spring and summer. Their findings were published this fall in Water Resources Research.
The UW, along with the University of California, Berkeley, and New York University, are partners in a new five-year, $37.8 million grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation that aims to accelerate the growth of data-intensive discovery across many fields.
The method may help overcome a major obstacle that has delayed progress in designing rapid, low-cost — but still accurate — ways to assemble genomes from scratch. It also may validate certain types of chromosomal abnormalities in cancer.
Floods didn’t make floodplains fertile during the dawn of human agriculture in the Earth’s far north. Turns out early human inhabitants can mainly thank cyanobacteria. It raises the question of whether modern farmers might reduce fertilizer use by taking advantage of cyanobacteria that occur, not just in the floodplains studied, but in soils around the world.
Washington state’s housing market continued to strengthen in the July-September quarter, registering the fifth consecutive quarterly improvement in home sales activity, according to the UW’s Runstad Center for Real Estate Studies.
Physicists are using a detector at the UW to search for a particle called an axion, which would be the first physical evidence of the universe’s dark matter.
A new comprehensive report co-authored by the UW’s Climate Impacts Group looks at what climate change will mean for Washington, Oregon and Idaho.
Atmospheric scientist Dan Jaffe tonight will present the first results of a crowd-funded study of train emissions, conducted with four undergraduates from the Seattle and Bothell campuses and funded by public donations.
A University of Washington surgical research robot appears in the sci-fi movie “Ender’s Game” starring Harrison Ford. Two UW students operated the robot during the filming of the movie, which opens Nov. 1 in theaters across the country.
Independent film producer Louis Stanislaw will present “Living on the Edge” at 10 a.m., Saturday, Nov. 9, in the Harborview Medical Center Research & Training Building. The showing will be followed by a panel discussion of individuals living with epilepsy and UW Medicine professionals who treat seizure disorders.
Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery for adults, but for babies it’s their foremost tool for learning. Now researchers from the University of Washington and Temple University have found the first evidence revealing a key aspect of the brain processing that occurs in babies to allow this learning by observation.
This year, in an annual trek to the Nevada desert, UW students deliberately launched rockets from altitude directly into a dry lakebed. These were early tests of a concept that eventually could be used to collect and return samples from an erupting volcano, a melting nuclear reactor or even an asteroid in space.
University of Washington President Michael K. Young and Provost Ana Mari Cauce have announced that they are appointing interim dean John E. Schaufelberger to be the next dean of the UW College of Built Environments.
Scientists found a way to use coastal redwood trees as a window into historic climate, using oxygen and carbon atoms in the wood to detect fog and rainfall in previous seasons.
The University of Washington is planning a number of events that will be held during the week preceding Veterans Day.
Researchers at the University of Washington have studied and named a trend lots of people can identify with: the desire to resist constant connectivity and step back from the online world.
Blood disease specialist Dr. Janis Abkowitz and drug safety expert Dr, Bruce Psaty today were named new members of the prestigious Institute of Medicine, an honorary and national advisory group.
A new study in Nature Geoscience explains a major feature of global precipitation, and shows how a current originating from the poles influences tropical rainfall in Africa and southern India.
The University of Washington has received an 18-month grant of $110,299 from the state Attorney General’s Office to provide training and education for health professionals and the general public on the subject of chronic pain management and cannabis use.
A team of University of Washington computer scientists has created a software program that watches a user’s movements and gives spoken feedback using a Microsoft Kinect on what to change to accurately complete a yoga pose.