Bacteria speed up their evolution by positioning specific genes along the route of expected traffic jams in DNA encoding. Collisions can result in mutations.
Science
A volunteer project enlists citizen scientists to transcribe climate observations buried in historic logbooks of U.S. ships that spent time in the Arctic.
Scientists come closer to boosting heart muscle by powering its contractile machinery.
Holmes was honored for his groundbreaking work on sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV/AIDS, chlamydia, genital herpes, gonorrhea and human papilloma virus.
The stomach and intestines of certain Dolly Varden trout double to quadruple in size during month-long, salmon-egg-eating binges in Alaska each August. It’s the first time researchers have documented such fish gut flexibility in the wild.
New research offers a more comprehensive way to analyze a cell’s unique behavior, revealing patterns that could indicate why a cell will or won’t become cancerous.
University of Washington students have been testing low-cost materials capable of harvesting water from fog.
Successful sustainability initiatives need to be grounded in long-standing relationships among scientists, local communities and decision-makers, UW’s Lisa Graumlich told a session on sustainability science at AAAS.
One of the most persistent biases in global climate models is due to poor simulation of cloud cover thousands of miles to the south.
Occupying the seven-story facility will be labs for kidney research, vision sciences, immunology, rheumatology, and infectious disease investigations.
Any day now, the world’s largest dam-removal project will release a century’s worth of sediment . For geologists, it’s a unique opportunity to study natural and engineered river systems.
A University of Washington research team has captured color photographs of what could be a previously undocumented species of chambered nautilus, a cephalopod mollusk often classified as a “living fossil,” in the waters off American Samoa in the South Pacific. “This is certainly a new taxon, but we are not sure if it is a new species, subspecies or variety,” said UW paleontologist Peter Ward, who led the expedition to Samoa and Fiji. “The Samoan nautiluses are large for the…
A public symposium on the Global Burden of Diseases study will be held on campus Monday, March 11.
New work in Argentina where scientists had previously thought Earth’s first grasslands emerged 38 million years ago, shows the area at the time covered with tropical forests rich with palms, bamboos and gingers. Grit and volcanic ash in those forests could have caused the evolution of teeth in horse-like animals that scientists mistakenly thought were adaptations in response to emerging grasslands.
Regional cloud changes may be as important for climate change as the overall amount of cloud cover.
People are exposed to these endocrine-disrupting chemicals even if they eat an organic diet and do not store, prepare or cook in plastic containers.
Evidence suggests it will someday be possible to slow down aging and delay the onset of diseases common in the elderly.
Do changes in the amount of fish caught necessarily reflect the number of fish in the sea? “No,” say UW researchers in a “Counterpoint” commentary in Nature.
Species facing widespread and rapid environmental changes can sometimes evolve quickly enough to dodge the extinction bullet. UW scientists consider the genetic underpinnings of such evolutionary rescue.
The fibrous threads helping mussels stay anchored are more prone to snap when ocean temperatures climb higher than normal.
The review generated public debate on publishing legitimate biological science findings that could pose a threat to public health or national security,
UW’s Field Research and Consultation Group in Environmental and Occupational Health assess ventilation systems and airborne lead levels in firing ranges, and offer advice on lowering exposure.
The eighth annual Allen L. Edwards Psychology Lecture Series will spotlight “The Science of Psychology in the Real World,” exploring psychological aspects of the natural world, adolescence and the law.
New satellite observations confirm a University of Washington analysis that for the past three years found accelerated declines in the volume of Arctic sea ice.
UW researchers have discovered a hierarchical warning scheme in which territorial song sparrows use increasingly threatening signals to ward off trespassing rivals.
A new report by a UW researcher showed about a 50 percent increase in speech comprehension in background noise when children with hearing impairments followed a three-week auditory training regimen.
Atmospheric scientists are using pressure readings from some new smartphones and tablet computers to improve short-term thunderstorm forecasts. A weather station in every pocket would offer an unprecedented wealth of data.
A huge Arctic cyclone in August was not responsible for the historic minimum seen soon after in Arctic sea-ice extent.
A UW researcher has determined the precise configuration of substances derived from hops that give beer its distinctive flavor, a finding that could lead to important new pharmaceuticals.
The University of Washington astronomy department is readying a traveling planetarium to take to schools for outreach — and collaboration — in Seattle and beyond. It may look like a carnival bouncy house or an inflatable igloo, but the portable planetarium is in fact an innovative tool for teaching and spreading interest in astronomy. The circular fabric dome, made by GoDome, is about 10 feet tall and 20 feet across — big enough to hold a classroom of young astronomers…
A paper in Science describes an organic crystal that shows promise as a cheap, flexible, nontoxic material for the working parts of memory chips, sensors and energy-harvesting devices.
A UW scientist’s work aided a Greenland ice study that could indicate where Earth is headed with climate change.
Researchers at UW’s Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences have found that the anatomy of certain brain areas – the hippocampus and cerebellum – can predict children’s language abilities at 1 year of age.
Researchers found little correlation between loss of consciousness and duration of concussion symptoms.
A new international assessment found that soot, or black carbon, is a major contributor to global warming — second only to carbon dioxide.
Salmon runs are notoriously variable: strong one year, and weak the next. New research shows that the same may be true from one century to the next.
Fisheries managers should sharpen their ability to spot environmental conditions that hamper or help fish stocks, and not assume that abundance translates to sustainable harvest.
Misguided killer T cells may be the missing link in sustained tissue damage in the brains and spines of people with multiple sclerosis, research in immunologist Joan Goverman’s lab suggests.
Exomoons, or moons orbiting planets outside the solar system, might be as good candidates for life as exoplanets, research shows.
Babies only hours old are able to differentiate between sounds from their native language and a foreign language, scientists have discovered. The study indicates that babies begin absorbing language while still in the womb, earlier than previously thought.