Nighttime heat waves — events where the nighttime low is unusually hot for at least three days in a row — are becoming more common in western Washington and Oregon.


Nighttime heat waves — events where the nighttime low is unusually hot for at least three days in a row — are becoming more common in western Washington and Oregon.

A few safety measures can help those with young children at home reduce the chance of window falls.

In a bit of cosmic irony, planets orbiting cooler stars may be more likely to remain ice-free than planets around hotter stars. This is due to the interaction of a star’s light with ice and snow on the planet’s surface.

U.S. News publishes Best Hospitals to guide patients who need a high level of care because they face a difficult surgery, a challenging condition, or added risk because of other health problems or age.

University of Washington engineers found in a recent study that the user’s experience could be key to creating an authentication system that doesn’t rely on passwords.
Researchers hope to build a predictive model of the human microbiome to study what affects this massive biological system and to design ways to manipulate the microbiome to achieve desired clinical outcomes.

Swarms of small earthquakes before a volcanic eruption can come in such rapid succession that they create a signal called harmonic tremor. A new eruption analysis from Alaska’s Redoubt Volcano shows the harmonic tremor glided to higher frequencies, then stopped abruptly just before six eruptions in 2009.

Millions of people in low-income countries still depend on public computer and Internet access venues despite the global proliferation of mobile phones and home computers.

Funded by the NIH at $15 million over five years, the lab will be a national resource to evaluate candidate vaccines from studies around the country.

The basics of how a muscle generates power remain the same: Filaments of myosin tugging on filaments of actin shorten, or contract, the muscle – but the power doesn’t just come from what’s happening straight up and down the length of the muscle, as has been assumed for 50 years. The rest of the force should be credited to the lattice work of filaments as it expands outward in bulging muscle – whether in a body builder’s buff biceps or the calves of a sinewy marathon runner.

Low vitamin D levels are linked to higher risk of heart disease in whites and Chinese, but not in blacks or Hispanics. The findings underscore the importance of designing medical research that includes a diverse ethnic and racial makeup of participants.

Every middle and high school has a policy against drinking alcohol on campus, but not all students follow the rules. New research suggests students are less likely to drink if they believe their school will strictly enforce its policy.

A model of great ape history during the past 15 million years has been fashioned through the study of genetic variation in a large panel of humans, chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans.

Dog owners everywhere feel a pang of anxiety as the Fourth of July approaches. Will their pooch simply hide under the bed when fireworks go off or run for the hills? If you’re the owner of a dog with noise phobias, what can you do?

The University of Washington Formula Motorsports team took first place at the Formula Society of Automotive Engineers competition held June 19-22 in Lincoln, Neb.

Gov. Jay Inslee announced that he has appointed Kiana M. Scott, a graduate student in communication, as the student representative on the University of Washington Board of Regents, effective July 2.

The media often portray computer scientists as nerdy males with poor social skills. But a UW psychologist found women will want to study computer science if they don’t buy into the stereotypes.
Brewster C. Denny, the founder of what is now the Daniel J. Evans School of Public Affairs at the University of Washington, one of the first independent public schools of public administration in the country, died Saturday (June 22) at the age of 88.

The University of Washington has received nearly $10 million from the U.S. Department of Defense to continue a project aimed at building a small, paper-based device that could test for infectious diseases on-demand in areas where diagnostic capabilities are limited.

A UW astronomer is part of an international team that found six or seven planets orbiting a nearby star where only two or three were thought to exist.

Leading experts on water issues in the Western U.S. have come together to establish what is known about the future of Colorado River water, and to understand the wide range of estimates for future flows.

Seeds gobbled by birds and dispersed across the landscape tend to fare better than those that fall near parent plants. Now it turns out it might not just be the trip through the air that’s important, but also the inches-long trip through the bird.

The University of Washington has been ranked seventh in the world for the number of journal articles published in 2012 in Nature or one of Nature’s main monthly research journals, some of the most widely cited journals in science.

In the first broad-scale study of its kind, UW led research finds half a dozen regions that could provide some of the Western Hemisphere’s more heavily used thoroughfares for mammals, birds and amphibians seeking cooler environments in a warming world.

For less than $100, University of Washington researchers have designed a computer-interfaced drawing pad that helps scientists see inside the brains of children with learning disabilities while they read and write.

A new United Nations analysis, using statistical methods developed at the University of Washington, shows the world population could reach nearly 11 billion by the end of the century, about 800 million more people than the previous projection issued in 2011.

About 5,000 graduates, a record number, are expected to attend the University of Washington commencement ceremonies at CenturyLink Field in Seattle on June 15.

University of Washington researchers have demonstrated that when humans use brain-computer interfaces, the brain behaves much like it does when completing simple motor skills such as kicking a ball or waving. Learning to control a robotic arm or a prosthetic limb could become second nature for people who are paralyzed.

Air pollution in the Northern Hemisphere in the mid-20th century cooled the upper half of the planet and pushed rain bands south, contributing to the prolonged and worsening drought in Africa’s Sahel region. Clean air legislation in the 1980s reversed the trend and the drought lessened.

Older adults are assessing their neighborhoods to make them more amenable to a favorite physical activity: walking.

The UW will become the global capital of bicycling when scores of scholars, policymakers, analysts and activists come to campus for the Bicycle Urbanism Symposium, June 19-22.

University of Washington researchers have shown it’s possible to leverage Wi-Fi signals around us to detect specific movements without needing sensors on the human body or cameras.
The University of Washington was one of two universities that received national recognition for “best practices that have broad impact within the higher education community.”
A long-time student-led effort to pass a diversity course requirement for all University of Washington undergraduates has come to fruition.

Two processes that turn woody biomass into transportation fuels have the potential to exceed current Environmental Protection Agency requirements for renewable fuels.

In most cultures, a woman’s small feet are seen as a sign of youth and fertility, but that’s not true of all cultures, including the Karo Batak on the island of Sumatra.

The pattern of brain responses to words in 2-year-old children with autism spectrum disorder predicted the youngsters’ linguistic, cognitive and adaptive skills at ages 4 and 6, according to a new study by UW’s Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences.

Just a week after the Interstate 5 Skagit River Bridge collapse north of Seattle, the University of Washington will host a national steel bridge competition for undergraduate civil engineering students. Forty-nine finalist teams will converge on campus for the 2013 National Student Steel Bridge Competition.

The UW and the VA Puget Sound will be among the sites for the national RISE study. The researchers want to see if treating patients to preserve insulin secretion keeps diabetes from forming or slows its progression.

Evidence points to importance of recognizing and treating depression in people with diabetes to reduce medical complications.