As the military designs field robots to be more human or animal-like, it’s important to study whether soldiers could become emotionally attached to the mechanical tools and less willing to send them into harm’s way.
Research
Data released by the U.S. Census Bureau today show that, for the second year in a row, the poverty rate for the U.S. remained stable at 15 percent in 2012. Although the median annual income did not fall in 2012, it remains 8.3 percent below median income in 2007.
Scientists at the University of Washington have developed a strategy to slow tumor growth and prolong survival in mice with cancer by targeting and destroying a type of cell that dampens the body’s immune response to cancer.
The residents of the Georgetown and South Park neighborhoods in Seattle’s Duwamish Valley now know how much diesel exhaust they are exposed to. A report on findings from an air pollution study comparing these neighborhoods to Beacon Hill and Queen Anne was published today, Sept. 13.
The vaccine is the first to significantly reduce the frequency of viral shedding — the surfacing of herpes virus on the genitals — and appears to activate T cell immune responses to the virus.
University of Washington engineers have received a $900,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to design a better cookstove, which researchers say will use half as much fuel and cut emissions by 90 percent.
A combination of interferon-alpha 2b and ribavirin, drugs routinely given for hepatitis C, may be an effective treatment for the coronovirus that causes this new disease.
In children with this form of leukemia, damage to chromosome 9 removes part of a normal copy of the gene in question, and leaves the mutated copy unopposed.
In our state, texting on a hand-held device diverts drivers’ attention more than any other distraction.
Oceanographers for the first time recorded an enormous wave breaking miles below the surface in a key bottleneck for global ocean circulation.
Computer-designed proteins that can recognize and interact with small biological molecules are now a reality. Scientists have succeeded in creating a protein molecule that can be programmed to unite with three different steroids.
Researchers examining virus transmission from monkeys to humans in Bangladesh found some people are infected with multiple strains of simian foamy virus.
UW researchers and federal scientists have developed the first long-term seasonal forecast of conditions for the Northwest ocean ecosystem.
Scenes from the summer 2013 at the UW Tel Dor Archeological Excavation and Field School.
University of Washington researchers have performed what they believe is the first noninvasive human-to-human brain interface, with one researcher able to send a brain signal via the Internet to control the hand motions of a fellow researcher.
A team led by University of Washington engineers has created a patch with tiny, biodegradable needles that can penetrate the skin and precisely deliver a tuberculosis test. The researchers published their results online Aug. 26 in the journal Advanced Healthcare Materials.
UW scientists have made the first-ever accurate determination of a solid-state triple point, the temperature and pressure at which three different solid phases can coexist stably.
Undergraduates who participated in a variety of research programs over the summer will share their work
Research shows reservoirs of silica-rich magma, which causes the most explosive volcanic eruptions, can persist in Earth’s upper crust for hundreds of thousands of years without erupting.
Earth scientists are laying plans for a two-year study designed to develop a better understanding of how Mount St. Helens gets its supply of volcanic magma.
New ice core research shows that the warming that ended the last ice age in Antarctica began at least 2,000 years earlier than previously thought.
University of Washington engineers have created a new wireless communication system that allows devices to interact with each other without relying on batteries or wires for power.
Some epilepsy patients who have both seizures and speech abnormalities share something else in common — mutations on the same gene.
Washington’s governor and state legislators in the last session created a hub at the University of Washington to coordinate research and monitoring of ocean acidification and its effects on local sea life such as oysters, clams and fish.
Washington state’s housing market continued to advance in the April-June quarter, with four consecutive monthly improvements in home sales activity.
UW researchers have discovered a high-performance polymer that could make inexpensive, organic solar cells competitive with silicon-based cells.
Henrietta Lacks was the subject of bestselling book on the HeLa immortal cell line, the most used of its kind in labs around the world. The UW scientists are the first to publish under new policy, established through agreement with Lacks’ family.
The latest installment in the popular podcast series by Joe Janes of the UW Information School is about the famous physicist being persuaded to warn FDR of a growing atomic threat from Germany.
Researchers have long suspected some kind of link between childhood abuse and smoking. But in an interesting twist, UW researchers found a connection not between whether or not an abused child will ever begin smoking, but to how much they smoke once they do start.
Between ages three and 10, children with autism spectrum disorder exhibit distinct brain chemical changes that differ from children with developmental delays and children with typical development.
A trace substance in caramelized sugar, when purified and given in appropriate doses, improves muscle regeneration in insect and animal models of Duchenne muscular dystrophy.
A UW atmospheric scientist is co-author of a review paper, published this week in the journal Science, looking at the ecological consequences of sea ice decline.
Biologist Robert Paine has been awarded this year’s International Cosmos Prize that carries a cash award of about $408,000 and has previously gone to well-known conservationists such as David Attenborough and the leaders behind the Census of Marine Life project.
Widespread media reports of a lake at the North Pole don’t hold water — but scientists who deployed the monitoring buoys are watching closely as Arctic sea ice approaches its yearly minimum.
It might be easier than previously thought for a planet to overheat into the uninhabitable “runaway greenhouse” stage, according to new research.
It might not have been just happenstance that caused components of RNA and the earliest “cell” membranes to be in the right place at the right time to spark life.
Researchers have developed a new method that can look at a specific segment of DNA and pinpoint a single mutation, which could help diagnose and treat diseases such as cancer and tuberculosis.
University of Washington engineers have developed a device that tracks how much a person’s limb swells and shrinks when inside a prosthetic socket. The data could help doctors and patients predict how and when their limbs will swell, which could be used to build smarter sockets.
For the first time, scientists have direct geochemical evidence that the 150-mile long Tsangpo Gorge, possibly the world’s deepest, was the conduit by which megafloods from glacial lakes, perhaps half the volume of Lake Erie, drained catastrophically through the Himalayas when their ice dams failed during the last 2 million years.
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.