A study of waste bins at the University of Washington’s Seattle campus revealed that 88 percent of the contents in trash bins could have been recycled or composted. Most – 72 percent – of what didn’t belong in trash bins turned out to be compostable items, such as food, carry-out containers and paper coffee cups.
Microorganisms – 99 percent more kinds than had been reported in findings published just four months ago – are hitching rides in the upper troposphere from Asia.
The U.S. Department of Energy this month awarded $4 million to a team, led by UW chemical engineers, that aims to develop bacteria to turn the methane in natural gas into diesel fuel for transportation.
Discoveries reported today help explain how the stealthy agent of Black Death avoids tripping a self-destruct mechanism inside germ-destroying cells.
Researchers in United States and Latin America re-examine standard of care for severe head injury.
Joe Janes of the UW Information School visits the arcane world of parliamentary procedure in the latest entry to his Documents that Changed the World podcast series.
Oceanographer Ginger Armbrust has received a multi-million dollar award to spend as she wishes on her research into ocean microbes and their role in regulating ocean environments and our atmosphere.
A British philosopher once suggested the possibility that our universe might be a computer simulation run by our descendants. A team of physicists at UW has devised a potential test to see if the idea has merit.
The ASL-STEM Forum is a crowdsourcing project, similar to Wikipedia or the Urban Dictionary, that creates a new sign language for the latest scientific and technical terms.
Moths are able to enjoy a pollinator’s buffet of flowers because of two distinct “channels” in their brains, scientists have discovered.
Astronomers are inviting the public to search Hubble Space Telescope images of the Andromeda galaxy to help identify star clusters and increase understanding of how galaxies evolve. The new Andromeda Project, set to study thousands of high-resolution Hubble images, is a collaboration among scientists at the University of Washington, the University of Utah and several other partners. “It’s an amazing opportunity to discover something new,” said Julianne Dalcanton, UW astronomy professor. “Anyone can look at these beautiful Hubble images and…
Researchers have discovered what may be the earliest dinosaur, a creature the size of a Labrador retriever, but with a five foot-long tail, that walked the Earth about 10 million years before more familiar dinosaurs.
UW political scientist John Wilkerson and coauthor explore the challenges of the “fiscal cliff” in their book, “Congress and the Politics of Problem Solving.”
The Kamchatka Peninsula and Kuril Islands, long shrouded in secrecy by the Soviet government, are a seismic and volcanic hotbed with a potential to trigger tsunamis that pose a risk to the rest of the Pacific Basin.
Electrically spun cloth with nanometer-sized fibers show promise as a cheap, versatile platform to simultaneously offer contraception and prevent HIV. New funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will further test the system’s versatility and feasibility.
These principles could allow scientists to custom-make, rather than re-purpose, protein molecules for vaccines, drugs, and industrial and environmental uses.
Eleven University of Washington researchers are among 702 new fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Climatologists have reconciled their measurements of ice loss in Antarctica and Greenland during the past two decades. A second article looks at how to monitor and understand accelerating losses from the planet’s two largest continental ice sheets.
The spectrum of human genetic diversity today is vastly different than what it was only 200 to 400 generations ago.
Food webs needed by young salmon in the Columbia River basin are likely compromised in places, something that should be considered when prioritizing expensive restoration activities.
UW receives International Green Award bronze || UW launches website to help foster research collaboration
Charter schools may be doing better at enrolling students with special needs than many believe, according to a new report by UW’s Center on Reinventing Public Education.
Studying the molecular basis of progressive muscle weakness may lead to therapies to prevent or reduce symptoms.
UW astronomers find that planets orbiting white and brown dwarfs are unlikely to be good candidates for sustaining life.
Joe Janes goes back to the fifteenth century and the work of Johannes Gutenberg for this installment in his series of podcasts, Documents that Changed the World.
In Bangladesh as elsewhere, women are empowered by working outside the home. But new research from the University of Washington shows such work can also increase the threat of domestic violence for some Bangladeshi wives. The study brings to light how the South Asian nation is seeing a change in relations within the household, with both positive and negative consequences for women. The findings come from a research paper by Rachel Heath, UW assistant professor of economics, released by the…
UW researchers find the flash flood was set off by a string of unusual weather events similar to those that caused catastrophic U.S. floods in the 1970s.
The approach could lead to cell therapy treatments for some of the blood-forming disorders that accompany the common genetic condition.
George Lovell, UW associate professor of political science, is the author of “This Is Not Civil Rights: Discovering Rights Talk in 1939 America,” published in October by University of Chicago Press. He answered a few questions about his book for UW Today. What is the basic concept behind “This is Not Civil Rights”? The book examines more than 1,000 citizen complaint letters regarding rights from the late years of the Great Depression along with replies written by federal government officials….
The latest Document that Changed the World: The 18 ½-minute gap in President Richard Nixon’s White House tapes.
An autism intervention program that emphasizes social interactions improves cognitive skills and brain responses to faces, the first demonstration that an intensive behavioral intervention can change brain function in toddlers with autism.
Jack Turner, UW assistant professor of political science, is the author of “Awakening to Race: Individualism and Social Consciousness in America,” published this month by University of Chicago Press. He answered a few questions about his book for UW Today. What’s the central concept behind “Awakening to Race”? The book addresses the challenge of racial justice by asking, “What does it mean to be a self-aware human being? What does it mean to be awake to reality?” In part, it…
The University of Washington marked the start of the data-gathering phase of the UW Smart Grid Project with an event featuring Washington’s two US Senators.
The Stanford University faculty member will talk about a group of cell membrane receptors that are crucial for emotion, behavior, memory, vision, motion and many other activities. About 40 percent of medications act via these receptors.
Representatives of the Encyclopedia of Earth and the Encyclopedia of Life will be on the University of Washington campus Wednesday, Oct. 24, for the public launch of an encyclopedia unique to Puget Sound.
The Living Voters Guide, created by the UW and presented with Seattle’s CityClub, just won a regional award and has been updated for the 2012 election. This year the guide has expanded to include a California edition, and the Washington guide will include fact-checking of selected points by Seattle Public Library staff.
Researchers investigating the long-term consequences of child abuse have identified some protective factors that can improve the health of victims during their adulthood.
Rankings released by National Taiwan University places the UW fourth among the world’s universities and first among American public universities in scientific research.
Can a quilt be a document? Certainly, says Joe Janes in his podcast about the AIDS Memorial Quilt — the latest in his series called Documents that Changed the World.
New hardware lets engineers maintain the plasma used in fusion reactors in an energy-efficient, stable manner, making the system potentially attractive for use in fusion power plants.