Research

March 2, 2011

Disks around young distant stars likely forming into planets

A UW astronomer is part of an international team that for the first time has captured detailed images that indicate how planets might have formed from the disks of material around two young stars more than 400 light years from Earth.

March 1, 2011

Intensive counseling on adhering to HIV treatment improves patient outcomes

Intensive counseling on the importance of adhering to HIV treatment significantly reduces poor compliance and treatment failure in sub-Saharan Africa, according to an article in PLoS Medicine March 1 by UW researcher Michael Chung and colleagues.

Results of study suggest new vaccine strategies to debilitate viruses by tapping into their response to selective pressure.

February 23, 2011

Trial shows drug to correct abnormal protein improves lung function in cystic fibrosis patients

A drug to correct the function of the abnormal protein in some forms of cystic fibrosis has been shown to improve lung function in clinical trials. Dr. Bonnie Ramsey, UW professor of pediatrics and a physician at Seattle Childrens, was one of the lead investigators on the trial.

UW engineers and architects are collaborating on smart windows that can change transparency depending on conditions and actually harvest energy from the suns rays.

Dr. Erwin Neher of the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Germany will present the 21st annual Einar Hille Memorial Lecture in Neurosciences March 1. He is know for work on how prior activities shape the efficacy of chemical transmissions between brain cells.

February 21, 2011

Foggy, volcanic Kuril Islands illuminate limits of where humans can live (with slideshow)

Ben Fitzhugh, a UW anthropologist, is leading an international team of anthropologists, archaeologists, geologists and earth and atmospheric scientists in studying the history of human settlement on the Kuril Islands.

February 16, 2011

New report examines promises, pitfalls of charter school autonomy

Charter schools are free of many school district mandates and can operate in innovative ways. But budget woes, huge administrative demands and expectations of what a school “should look like” tend to pull the schools back to traditional practice, a new report states.

A decade after the Nisqually earthquake shook Western Washington, scientific ideas about the region’s seismic danger have evolved and the ability to study and prepare for it has improved immensely.

February 15, 2011

If greenhouse gas emissions stopped now, Earth still would likely get warmer

As debate continues about potential policies to curb greenhouse gas emissions, new UW research shows the world is already committed to a warmer climate because of emissions that have occurred up to now.

February 14, 2011

Carbon Leadership Forum will devise standards to limit carbon footprints in building products

University of Washington researchers, along with design and construction professionals, will devise standards that will help limit carbon footprints of building products and systems.

February 9, 2011

Working more than 20 hours a week in high school can harm grades, UW researcher finds

A UW researcher shows that working during the school year can impede high school performance and cause behavior problems, such as drug use and delinquency.

It’s been 12 years since Stardust, the brainchild of a UW astronomer, was launched and seven years since it encountered a comet called Wild 2 out beyond Mars. Next Monday the probe will make history again when it meets its second comet, Tempel 1.

February 8, 2011

Follow the field work: researcher blogging about fishing tech and turtles

On her plane trip to Ecuador Wednesday, UWs Kiki Jenkins will write her first entry for the “New York Times” blog “Scientist at work: Notes from the Field.”

February 7, 2011

Implantable computers to restore brain function lost to injury or disease is Keck Foundation grant goal

The UW has made significant progress in neural engineering — the study of communication and control between biological and machine systems. The Keck project is the next step in advancing the technology of miniature devices developed at the UW to record from and stimulate the brain, spinal cord and muscles.

February 2, 2011

Two-mile Antarctic ice core could shed light on climate change

UW scientists are part of a project that has succeeded in extracting a core more than 2 miles in depth from Antarctic ice.

February 1, 2011

Invader abundance not always explosive

When invasive plants gain a foothold in new territory they become about as abundant as on their home turf, a new finding that challenges a widely held assumption.

The University of Washington has launched a new program, co-funded by Intel Corp., to make it easier and cheaper to build silicon photonic circuits. Sending information using light, instead of electrons, will allow for faster, lower-power and more versatile microchips.

January 26, 2011

UW sociologists seek Tacoma high school Class of 2000 for survey

Based on surveys from Tacoma high school graduates, the UW-Beyond High School Project is revealing what factors help high school students transition into happy, healthy and productive adult lives.

January 25, 2011

Higher costs of more nutritious diets contribute to socio-economic disparities in health

People with lower incomes and less education typically have less healthful eating habits than people with higher incomes and more education. A UW study concludes that socio-economic disparities in diet quality are directly affected by diet costs.

Last summers disastrous and deadly Pakistan floods were caused by a rogue weather system that wandered hundreds of miles farther west than is normal for such systems, new UW research shows.

January 20, 2011

Gulf grows between research practice and participant preferences in genetic studies

Realigning with participants’ interests is important for the future of research. UW and Group Health bioethicists suggest ways for scientists and study volunteers to build trusting relationships in a policy forum appearing Jan. 21 in the journal Science.

January 19, 2011

Jewish identity is subject of new book of essays edited by UW profs

In the new book, Boundaries of Jewish Identity, Susan Glenn and Naomi Sokoloff brought together a group of scholars in the fields of law, anthropology, history, sociology and literature to consider the question of who is a Jew and who gets to decide.

Report: Charter school management organizations need efficiency, technology to thrive in lean times

Charter school management organizations must help schools operate more efficiently and innovate with new technologies to adapt to leaner times, according to a new report from the UWs Center on Reinventing Public Education.

January 12, 2011

Iceberg snaps, produces strange song

Want to hear one of the biggest icebergs of the last decade crack up? UW researchers compressed a five-hour event in Antarctica into a two-minute audio file that you can listen to.

January 5, 2011

Co-management holds promise of sustainable fisheries worldwide

Encouraging new evidence suggests that the bulk of the worlds fisheries – including small-scale, often non-industrialized fisheries on which millions of people depend for food – could be sustained using community-based co-management.

January 3, 2011

Engineering students hack Kinect for surgical robotics research

Students in the Biorobotics Laboratory hacked the Kinect, a motion-based controller for Microsoft’s Xbox 360 gaming system, for research on telerobotic surgery.

UW researchers report that elementary school students who participated in a three-month anti-bullying program in Seattle schools showed a 72 percent decrease in malicious gossip.

December 20, 2010

Students water-testing tool wins $40,000, launches nonprofit

UW engineering students won an international contest for designing a way to monitor water disinfection by solar rays. The students will share a $40,000 prize from the Rockefeller Foundation and are now working with nonprofits to turn their concept into a reality.

Researchers from the University of Washington say the Mariana crow, a forest crow living on Rota Island in the western Pacific Ocean, will go extinct in 75 years.

Michael Honey, a history professor at UW Tacoma, collected, edited and wrote introductions for 16 of Kings speeches on economic justice.

December 15, 2010

Polar bears still on thin ice, but cutting greenhouse gases now can avert extinction

New research indicates that if humans reduce greenhouse gas emissions significantly in the next decade or two, enough Arctic ice is likely to remain intact during late summer and early autumn for polar bears to survive.

December 13, 2010

Assessing the environmental effects of tidal turbines

UW scientists are helping to prepare for a tidal energy project in Puget Sound. Researchers say this pilot project will have the most comprehensive environmental monitoring of any tidal energy installation to date.

Engineers are developing computer models to study how changes in water pressure and current speed around tidal turbines affect sediment buildup and fish health.

Summertime fog, a common feature along the West Coast, has declined since 1950 while coastal temperatures have increased slightly, new research shows.