Research
January 2, 2014
El Niño tied to melting of Antarctica’s Pine Island Glacier
A new study in Science, co-authored by the British Antarctic Survey and UW authors, shows that melting of the floating Pine Island ice shelf is tied to global atmospheric patterns associated with El Niño.
December 31, 2013
Genetically identical bacteria can behave in radically different ways
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.
December 30, 2013
Recap of 2013: Top 10 most-viewed stories on UW Today
For us writers in the UW News office, the year’s end gives us some time to think about the big research news stories of the year. Those that drove up page views, flooded our servers (thank you UW web team for keeping us afloat!), and generated interesting reader responses in the comments section. We…
December 26, 2013
Psychiatry’s Jeremy J. Clark receives Presidential Early Career Award
Clark was recognized for his work in the neurobiology of motivated behavior. His award will support investigations of how alcohol exposure during the teen years might lead to chronic alcoholism in adults.
December 23, 2013
UW Medicine Memory and Brain Wellness Center opens at Harborview
The new center at Harborview will link clinical evaluation and care of patients with research programs in Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, latent degenerative disease detection and treatment, and care delivery.
December 19, 2013
Sinuous skeletons, glowing blue and crimson, leap from lab to art world
Fish “stripped” to their skeletons and stained for UW research are now part of an art exhibit at the Seattle Aquarium.
TB bacteria mask their identity to intrude into deeper regions of lungs
Cell surface lipids hide molecular patterns that infection-killing cells might recognize as dangerous.
December 18, 2013
Home dialysis gains momentum through UW research
Of the 400,000 kidney disease patients on dialysis in the United States only 6 percent to 7 percent are treated with home dialysis, largely because the choice is not often given to them as an option.
Single bacterial super-clone behind world epidemic of drug-resistant E. coli
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.
December 17, 2013
Hack the planet? Geoengineering research, ethics, governance explored
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.
December 16, 2013
5 effective parenting programs to reduce problem behaviors in children
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.
December 12, 2013
New state-funded Clean Energy Institute will focus on solar, battery technologies
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.
Scientists discover double meaning in genetic code
Finding a second code hiding in the genome casts new light on how changes to DNA impact health and disease.
December 10, 2013
What climate change means for federally protected marine species
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.
December 9, 2013
Communities across U.S. reduce teen smoking, drinking, violence and crime
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.
December 3, 2013
Signalers vs. strong silent types: Sparrows exude personalities during fights
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.
New book ‘Going Viral’ explores nature, impact of Internet virality
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.
Project to gauge effects of Affordable Care Act in Washington state
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.
‘Spooky action’ builds a wormhole between ‘entangled’ particles
New research indicates that a phenomenon called “quantum entanglement” could be intrinsically linked with the creation of wormholes.
November 26, 2013
MyHeartMapSeattle scavenger hunters report over 2,000 defibrillators
A city-wide contest to locate as many of Seattle’s automatic external defibrillators, or AEDs, netted far more than expected. The challenge arose from the need to map and monitor these devices, which can save the lives of people suffering an out-of-hospital sudden cardiac arrest.
November 25, 2013
Study: Greenhouse gas might have warmed early Mars enough to allow liquid water
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.
November 24, 2013
How living cells solved a needle in a haystack problem to generate electrical signals
Filtered from a vast sodium sea, more than 1 million calcium ions per second gush through our cells’ pores to generate charges
November 21, 2013
Studies to probe confluence of human, animal and environmental health in Africa
Grand Challenges Exploration Grants from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will allow two UW-led teams to study the health determinants people share with other living creatures.
November 20, 2013
Study shines light on what makes digital activism effective
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.
November 18, 2013
Documents that Changed the World: the Zapruder film, Nov. 22, 1963
He only came to get the iconic footage through a series of coincidences and later regretted what he had done. It was the last film Abraham Zapruder would ever shoot.
Post-shutdown, UW Arctic research flights resume
UW researchers this month are on missions to fly above the Arctic Ocean to measure glacier melt, polar storms and Arctic sea ice.
November 14, 2013
FDA-approved immune-modulating drug unexpectedly benefits mice with fatal mitochondrial defect
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.
A decline in creativity? It depends on how you look
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.
November 13, 2013
Snow melts faster under trees than in open areas in mild climates
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.
November 12, 2013
Grant will support interdisciplinary, data-intensive research at UW
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.
November 7, 2013
Cost-effective method accurately orders DNA sequencing along entire chromosomes
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.
November 6, 2013
Floods didn’t provide nitrogen ‘fix’ for earliest crops in frigid north
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.
News Digest: TEDx talk on brainy crows, Town Hall ‘rocks’ tonight
Brainy crows subject of TEDx talk Saturday || Town Hall talk “Stories from My Pet Rocks” tonight
Washington home sales surged, affordability declined in third quarter
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.
Brain may play key role in blood sugar metabolism and diabetes development
Future diabetes treatment approaches might target regulatory systems in both the brain and the pancreas to achieve better blood glucose control, or even put the disease into remission.
A shot in the dark: Detector at UW on the hunt for dark matter
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.
November 4, 2013
More wildfires, earlier snowmelt, coastal threats top Northwest climate risks
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.
UW Bothell prof, students present crowd-funded study of coal train emissions
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.
November 1, 2013
Documents that Changed the World: The Rosetta Stone
The latest installment of Information School Professor Joe Janes’ podcast series takes a look at the 2,200-year-old Rosetta Stone.
October 30, 2013
A first step in learning by imitation, baby brains respond to another’s actions
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.
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