Submarine cables for the nations first regional cabled ocean observatory, a project led by the University of Washington, made landfall last week on the Oregon coast.


Submarine cables for the nations first regional cabled ocean observatory, a project led by the University of Washington, made landfall last week on the Oregon coast.

Microbiologists have uncovered a sneaky trick by the bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa to oust rivals. It deploys a toxin delivery machine to breach cell walls of competitors without hurting itself. Its means of attack helps it survive in the outside environment and may even help it cause infection.
A new study of female engineering students perceived challenges finds significant differences between black, Hispanic, Native American, Asian-American and white women. The findings could help institutions better attract and retain particular underrepresented student populations.

A one-dose method for delivering gene therapy into an arterial wall in rabbits effectively protects the artery from developing atherosclerosis despite ongoing high blood cholesterol. In the future, researchers hope to test whether this gene-delivery method works in heart bypass grafts.

The National Science Foundation today announced an $18.5 million grant to establish an Engineering Research Center for Sensorimotor Neural Engineering based at the UW. The interdisciplinary center will combine neuroscience and robotics to develop new rehabilitation technologies.

Work in Africa conducted by the UW’s Clinical Research Center is bringing new hope that taking a daily AIDS drug might keep an uninfected person from getting the AIDS virus.
University researchers like those at the UW are often required to attend trainings, but they may not always be aware of it. Thats why the Required Training site was constructed in consultation with UW researchers and training providers to identify those courses directly applicable to the conduct of research.

Trees absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to grow, so forests have long been proposed as a way to offset climate change. But rather than just letting the forest sit there for a hundred or more years, the amount of carbon dioxide taken out of the atmosphere could be quadrupled in 100 years by harvesting regularly and using the wood in place of fossil-fuel intensive steel and concrete.

Sodium channels are pores in the membranes of excitable cells – such as brain nerve cells or beating heart cells – that emit electrical signals. Researchers have obtained a high-resolution crystal structure showing all the atoms of this complex protein molecule and how they relate in three-dimensions.

A new system to send electricity over short distances has been shown to reliably power a mechanical heart pump. The system could free patients from being tethered to a battery or external power source, lowering their chance of infection and improving their quality of life.

Earlier this week, NASAs Hubble Space Telescope logged its one millionth science observation during a search for water in an exoplanets atmosphere 1,000 light years away, according to a UW faculty member conducts theoretical interpretation of data from the Hubble.

A study by University of Washington psychologists shows some people continue to drink heavily because of perceived positive effects, suggesting a new direction for programs targeting binge drinking.
Outcomes of bypass surgery to repair blocked arteries in the legs tend to be better in the roughly one-in-five people who have inherited a specific genetic variation from both parents, according to a study presented at the Vascular Annual Meeting in Chicago on June 18.

Evidence shows that urban school districts can help close the achievement gap by drawing upon the experiences of high-performing charter schools, according to a new white paper from the UWs Center on Reinventing Public Education.
A new survey shows that Seattle residents who know or recognize a police officer in their neighborhood and have participated in a block watch or similar program are more likely to regard police positively. And its especially true about people of color.

Brief, voluntary conversations with a health educator led to up to a 20 percent decrease in marijuana use for teenagers who frequently used the drug.

Bruce Hevly and John Findlay teamed up on this history of the Central Washington facility built by the federal government during World War II to manufacture plutonium for nuclear weapons.

New research suggests that, in the Athabasca Oil Sands in northern Alberta, human activity related to oil production and the timber industry could be more important than wolves in the decline of the caribou population.

Better glucose, lipid and blood pressure control in the diabetic population over the past 20 years has not reduced the prevalence of diabetic kidney disease in the United States.

A recent report shows that building information modeling is challenging and changing the construction industry, including the ways mechanical contractors organize teams and technology.

With the launch earlier this month of NASAs satellite Aquarius, more than half a dozen University of Washington researchers are involved in projects to calibrate data from space with actual measurements of ocean salinity.

New research shows that in some structured communities, organisms increase their chances of survival if they evolve some level of restraint that allows competitors to survive as well, a sort of “survival of the weakest.”
New research lends support to recent studies that suggest abrupt climate change is the result of alterations in ocean circulation uniquely associated with ice ages, not from atmospheric carbon dioxide.
An international physics collaboration that includes the University of Washington has observed a previously unseen type of neutrino “oscillation,” or transformation, that could help explain the lack of antimatter in the universe.

Keiko Torii, professor of biology, is among 15 of the “nations most innovative plant scientists” selected to share $75 million for fundamental plant science research.

The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation’s most current county-level analysis of life expectancy in America finds large disparities nationwide. Women fare worse than men, and people in Appalachia, the Deep South, and Northern Texas live the shortest lives.

The law firm Perkins Coie has presented its $20,000 “Award for Discovery” to Deok-Ho Kim, UW assistant professor of bioengineering and a regenerative medicine researcher. Kim works on pre-conditioning stem cells to try to create longer-surviving patches for heart muscle repair.

The snowpack decline of the last 50 years in the Rocky Mountains is highly unusual in context of the past 800 years, according to findings published June 10 in “Science.”

A century after the discovery of superfluids, scientists using a powerful supercomputer have devised a theoretical framework that explains the real-time behavior of superfluids.

An Amorphophallus titanum, also known as a corpse flower in its native Sumatra and elsewhere because of its foul odor, has bloomed at the University of Washington botany greenhouse. Visit weekdays from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. while the bloom lasts.

Students overall performed better – and educationally disadvantaged students generally made even greater strides than everyone else – in an introductory biology course at the University of Washington where recent budget woes doubled class sizes for the course, cut lab times and reduced the number of graduate teaching assistants.
Dr. Warren Ladiges, professor of comparative medicine, has become the chief editor of a new scientific journal, “Pathobiology of Aging & Age-related Diseases.” The journal will publish research on aging in mammalian models.

A new system called EnerJ helps computer programmers go green, allowing them to cut a program’s energy consumption by as much as 50 percent.
UW scientists find that in an unfelt, weeks-long seismic phenomenon called episodic tremor and slip, the tremor can suddenly reverse direction and travel back through areas of the fault that it had ruptured in preceding days.

A fossil of a creature that died about 247 million years ago, originally thought to be a distant relative of both birds and crocodiles, actually came from the crocodile family tree after it had already split from the bird family tree, a UW researcher has found.

In a new book, a University of Washington psychologist argues that to flourish, humans need exposure to the natural world.

UW genome scientists have identified several sporadic mutations in children with autism spectrum disorder. By analyzing the protein-coding portions of the genome in 20 individuals with the disorder and in their parents, the researchers found 21 newly occurring mutations.

A more automated approach to bladder exams could be cheaper, more comfortable and more convenient. The system would use the UWs ultrathin laser endoscope, which is like a thin piece of cooked spaghetti, in combination with software that automatically creates a 3-D panorama of the bladder interior.

Scientists have demonstrated the use of computational methods to design new antiviral proteins not found in nature, but capable of targeting specific surfaces of flu virus molecules. The researchers created a protein that disabled the part of the 1918 pandemic flu virus involved in invading respiratory tract cells.

UW sociologists are studying naval records of mutinies as a way to see how modern-day ill-treatment toward subordinates can lead to violence.