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.
Science
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
In a bit of cosmic irony, planets orbiting cooler stars may be more likely to remain ice-free than planets around hotter stars. This is due to the interaction of a star’s light with ice and snow on the planet’s surface.
Researchers hope to build a predictive model of the human microbiome to study what affects this massive biological system and to design ways to manipulate the microbiome to achieve desired clinical outcomes.
Swarms of small earthquakes before a volcanic eruption can come in such rapid succession that they create a signal called harmonic tremor. A new eruption analysis from Alaska’s Redoubt Volcano shows the harmonic tremor glided to higher frequencies, then stopped abruptly just before six eruptions in 2009.
Julia Parrish was one of 12 “champions of change” invited to share their ideas on public engagement in science and science literacy June 25 at the White House.
Funded by the NIH at $15 million over five years, the lab will be a national resource to evaluate candidate vaccines from studies around the country.
The basics of how a muscle generates power remain the same: Filaments of myosin tugging on filaments of actin shorten, or contract, the muscle – but the power doesn’t just come from what’s happening straight up and down the length of the muscle, as has been assumed for 50 years. The rest of the force should be credited to the lattice work of filaments as it expands outward in bulging muscle – whether in a body builder’s buff biceps or the calves of a sinewy marathon runner.
Low vitamin D levels are linked to higher risk of heart disease in whites and Chinese, but not in blacks or Hispanics. The findings underscore the importance of designing medical research that includes a diverse ethnic and racial makeup of participants.
Dozens of atmospheric scientists, including three University of Washington faculty members, are taking part in what’s being described as one of the largest atmospheric field campaigns in decades.
A model of great ape history during the past 15 million years has been fashioned through the study of genetic variation in a large panel of humans, chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans.
A UW research vessel leaves July 2 for six weeks at sea, during which oceanographers will install miles of cable for a new type of deep-sea observatory.
The University of Washington has received nearly $10 million from the U.S. Department of Defense to continue a project aimed at building a small, paper-based device that could test for infectious diseases on-demand in areas where diagnostic capabilities are limited.
A UW astronomer is part of an international team that found six or seven planets orbiting a nearby star where only two or three were thought to exist.
Leading experts on water issues in the Western U.S. have come together to establish what is known about the future of Colorado River water, and to understand the wide range of estimates for future flows.
Seeds gobbled by birds and dispersed across the landscape tend to fare better than those that fall near parent plants. Now it turns out it might not just be the trip through the air that’s important, but also the inches-long trip through the bird.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s unanimous decision June 13 to bar the patenting of naturally occurring genes opens up important clinical testing options for a variety of diseases.
In the first broad-scale study of its kind, UW led research finds half a dozen regions that could provide some of the Western Hemisphere’s more heavily used thoroughfares for mammals, birds and amphibians seeking cooler environments in a warming world.
A new United Nations analysis, using statistical methods developed at the University of Washington, shows the world population could reach nearly 11 billion by the end of the century, about 800 million more people than the previous projection issued in 2011.
Researchers at the University of Washington have created a material they say would make LEDs cheaper and greener to manufacture, driving down costs to consumers.
University of Washington researchers have demonstrated that when humans use brain-computer interfaces, the brain behaves much like it does when completing simple motor skills such as kicking a ball or waving. Learning to control a robotic arm or a prosthetic limb could become second nature for people who are paralyzed.
In “Spring Comes to the Cascades,” students don’t just read about the forests – they hike and snowshoe through them.
Air pollution in the Northern Hemisphere in the mid-20th century cooled the upper half of the planet and pushed rain bands south, contributing to the prolonged and worsening drought in Africa’s Sahel region. Clean air legislation in the 1980s reversed the trend and the drought lessened.
New research demonstrates that life as we know it might never have come to exist on Earth if meteorites didn’t deliver a key element billions of years ago.
Two processes that turn woody biomass into transportation fuels have the potential to exceed current Environmental Protection Agency requirements for renewable fuels.
UW part of second Seattle Science Festival || Alison Wylie honored by Society for Women in Philosophy || Sustainability studied in Charles Wolfe’s ‘Urbanism Without Effort’