When Rachel Aronson travels this month to Alaska, she and a local research assistant will interview people who are in danger of being displaced by climate change. She will also send about 100 postcards to her funders. Aronson is among a growing number of University of Washington students, faculty and staff who are using online campaigns to pay for their research. Crowdsourcing uses the Internet to broadcast a question and pool the answers; crowd funding uses the Internet to post…
Washington state’s housing market continued to improve during the second quarter of 2012 despite a slight drop in existing home sales, according to the Runstad Center for Real Estate Studies at the University of Washington. Existing home sales during the second quarter of 2012 increased 10.4 percent compared with a year ago, however the seasonally adjusted annual rate dropped 2.6 percent from the first quarter. “The market is clearly stronger than a year ago, but it eased off a bit…
UW medical researchers are launching a study to help determine which of the two most common blood product combinations provide the best outcomes for trauma patients who require massive blood transfusions. Dr. Eileen Bulger, UW professor of surgery and chief of trauma at Harborview Medical Center, is the principal investigator for the clinical study. The study will be conducted at 12 Level I trauma centers across the United States, including UW Medicine’s Harborview Medical Center. Bulger and her team will…
Researchers have made a major advance in efforts to regenerate damaged hearts. They discovered that transplanted heart muscle cells, grown from stem cells, electrically couple and beat in sync with the heart’s own mucle. The grafts also reduced the incidence of arrhythmias (irregular heart rhythms) in a guinea pig model of myocardial infarction (commonly known as a heart attack). This finding from University of Washington-led research is reported in the Aug. 5 issue of Nature. The paper’s senior author, Dr….
Despite the increasing awareness of the problem of obesity in the United States, most Americans don’t know whether they are gaining or losing weight, according to new research from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, also known at IHME, at the University of Washington. Obesity increased in the U.S. between 2008 and 2009, but in response to the questions about year-to-year changes in weight that were included in the most widespread public health survey in the country, on average,…
The phrase occurred to Joe Janes out of the blue one day and immediately appealed to him. From there, ideas began to flow quickly. Janes, associate professor in the University of Washington Information School, had been a fan of the British Broadcasting Corp. radio series “A History of the World in 100 Objects” and thought those shows effectively blended history and storytelling. Documents that Changed the World a podcast series by Joe Janes UW Information School An introduction “President Obama’s…
HIV care centers are an important and highly accessed point of care for HIV-infected children and their families in sub-Saharan Africa, but opportunities to address other health issues are being missed. Proven interventions, including routine deworming among children, could be effectively integrated into HIV care according to a new paper by University of Washington researchers published in the journal PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases. The article, “Integration of Deworming into HIV Care and Treatment: A Neglected Opportunity,” estimates that millions of…
The Washington State Academy of Sciences has named 35 new members, 25 of them from the University of Washington.
When a University of Washington researcher listened to the audio picked up by a recording device that spent a year in the icy waters off the east coast of Greenland, she was stunned at what she heard: whales singing a remarkable variety of songs nearly constantly for five wintertime months. Listen to the bowheads repeat their other-worldly song as they cross the Fram Strait. Bowhead whale song 1 Bowhead whale song 2 Kate Stafford, an oceanographer with UW’s Applied Physics…
Seattle researchers will be part of the new federal initiative to engineer 3-dimensional chips containing living cells and tissues that imitate the structure and function of human organs. These tissue chips will be used for drug safety testing. Tissue chips merge techniques from the computer industry with those from bioengineering by combining miniature models of living organ tissues onto a transparent microchip. Ranging in size from a coin to a house key, the chips are lined with living cells and…
A chemical that temporarily restores some vision to blind mice has been discovered. Its discoverers are working on an improved compound that may someday allow people with degenerative blindness to see again. Read the paper in Neuron News release on earlier study A team of UW Medicine researchers, in collaboration with scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Munich, conducted the study. Their findings appear in the July 26th issue of the journal Neuron. The approach could eventually help those with…
Jay Z. Parrish, University of Washington assistant professor of biology, has been named a recipient of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers.
A soils and ecosystem scientist who studies natural resources sustainability has been named the director of the University of Washington’s School of Environmental and Forest Sciences. Thomas H. DeLuca is currently professor of natural resources and geography at Bangor University, Wales, where he holds the chair in environmental sciences sponsored jointly by the university and the U.K.’s National Environmental Research Council. “We couldn’t be happier that Tom will join us to lead the School of Environmental and Forest Sciences. Tom…
In evaluating whether to allow Truvada® to be prescribed for HIV prevention the FDA reviewed evidence from two studies. The largest was conducted by the UWs International Clinical Research Center.
The UW International Clinical Research Center played a key role in examining Truvada’s effectiveness for HIV prevention. The center’s director Connie Celum talks about the impact of the findings in a Q & A.
UW researchers found that the decline in milk production due to climate change will vary across the U.S., since there are significant differences in humidity and how much the temperature swings between night and day across the country.
ITHS helps scientists accelerate the translation of their discoveries into applications for improving the health of the public. The latest award is for $65 million.
As scientists around the world celebrated the detection of what appears to be the long-sought Higgs boson, University of Washington physicists took satisfaction in knowing they played a significant part in it.
Researchers have long believed that the longer days and calmer seas of spring set off an annual bloom of plants in the North Atlantic, but UW scientists discovered that warm eddies fuel the growth three weeks before the sun does.
Four incoming faculty members promise to make the University of Washington a leading institution in machine learning and the science of “big data.”
Science and art intersect in an exhibit at the Kirkland Arts Center through July 6.
In one of the twists of scientific discovery, a UW duo working on fusion energy — harnessing the energy-generating mechanism of the sun — may have found a way to etch the next generation of microchips.
It’s been a decade since a swarm of relatively mild earthquakes shook up parts of Spokane. Now, armed with the right tools, scientists want to find out what was at fault.
Research shows that, contrary to popular belief, theres a positive association between higher neighborhood density and the value of single-family residential properties.
A research team led by the University of Washington and Harvard University has discovered a bigger version of Earth locked in an orbital tug-of-war with a much larger, Neptune-sized planet as they orbit very close to each other around the same star.
New research from an international team that includes a UW professor emeritus confirms that the Arctic has gone through intensely warm periods, warmer than scientists thought was possible, during the last 2.8 million years.
Tuberculosis can be a serious threat to monkeys and apes. A test to spot infection might help protect the world’s primate populations.
Two UW geographers are piecing together how policies relating to alcohol and public health shaped how gays and lesbians in Seattle carried out their lives during the pre-AIDS era, before 1983.
Need to do some serious multitasking? Some training in meditation beforehand could make the work smoother and less stressful, new research from the UW Information School shows.
Axial Seamount, an undersea volcano, gave warning signals hours before its eruption, scientists say in three papers published this week in the journal Nature Geoscience.
Study suggests life-extending benefits of longer telomeres if recent male ancestors reproduced at older ages.
An unappreciated aspect of chemical reactions on the surface of metal oxides could be key in developing more efficient energy systems, including more productive solar cells or hydrogen fuel cells efficient enough for automobiles.
Not having enough Chinook salmon to eat stresses out southern resident killer whales more than having boatloads of whale watchers nearby, according to hormone levels of whales summering in the Salish Sea. In lean times, however, the stress normally associated with boats becomes more pronounced, further underscoring the importance of having enough prey.
A maternal blood sample and a paternal saliva specimen contained enough information to map the fetus DNA.
In a study published this week in Nature Climate Change, University of Washington and European scientists project that in the next 50 years global climate change will disrupt power generation in the U.S. and Europe. Warmer water and lower flows are predicted to interrupt the supply of cooling water.
Analyzing medical records from thousands of patients, statisticians have devised a statistical model for predicting what other medical problems a patient might encounter.
Construction plans for tiny molecules to stop flu viruses from infecting cells may help in fighting other pathogens.
New research shows some of the steepest mountain slopes in the world got that way because of the interplay between terrain uplift associated with plate tectonics and powerful streams cutting into hillsides, leading to large landslides.
Mathematician Gunther Uhlmann and colleagues have devised an amplifier to boost light, sound or other waves while hiding them inside an invisible container. The findings are published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Bioengineers have developed the first structure to grow small human blood vessels, creating a 3-D test bed that offers a better way to study disease, test drugs and perhaps someday grow human tissues for transplant.