A huge Arctic cyclone in August was not responsible for the historic minimum seen soon after in Arctic sea-ice extent.
Science
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.
Daniela Witten named one of Forbes’ rising stars
The Seahawks win four times as many home games as they lose when the weather is inclement, compared to less than two to one when it’s not.
Taking into consideration size, an ancient relative of piranhas weighing about 20 pounds delivered a bite with more force than prehistoric whale-eating sharks or – even – Tyrannosaurus rex.
The UW is expanding its Training Xchange initiative to help researchers transmit innovations in healthcare and other fields to professionals locally and beyond the Northwest.
Traumatic head injury is the leading cause of acquired epilepsy in young adults, and at present there is no treatment to prevent or cure it.
Chronic low levels of pesticides are detrimental to children’s health: evidence suggests they may induce neurodevelopmental and behavioral problems, birth defects, asthma and cancer.
Microorganisms – 99 percent more kinds than had been reported in findings published just four months ago – are hitching rides in the upper troposphere from Asia.
The U.S. Department of Energy this month awarded $4 million to a team, led by UW chemical engineers, that aims to develop bacteria to turn the methane in natural gas into diesel fuel for transportation.
Discoveries reported today help explain how the stealthy agent of Black Death avoids tripping a self-destruct mechanism inside germ-destroying cells.
Oceanographer Ginger Armbrust has received a multi-million dollar award to spend as she wishes on her research into ocean microbes and their role in regulating ocean environments and our atmosphere.
A British philosopher once suggested the possibility that our universe might be a computer simulation run by our descendants. A team of physicists at UW has devised a potential test to see if the idea has merit.
The ASL-STEM Forum is a crowdsourcing project, similar to Wikipedia or the Urban Dictionary, that creates a new sign language for the latest scientific and technical terms.
Research suggests rising atmospheric acidity is probably why levels of the isotope nitrogen-15 in Greenland ice samples dropped around the time of the Industrial Revolution.
Moths are able to enjoy a pollinator’s buffet of flowers because of two distinct “channels” in their brains, scientists have discovered.
Astronomers are inviting the public to search Hubble Space Telescope images of the Andromeda galaxy to help identify star clusters and increase understanding of how galaxies evolve. The new Andromeda Project, set to study thousands of high-resolution Hubble images, is a collaboration among scientists at the University of Washington, the University of Utah and several other partners. “It’s an amazing opportunity to discover something new,” said Julianne Dalcanton, UW astronomy professor. “Anyone can look at these beautiful Hubble images and…
Researchers have discovered what may be the earliest dinosaur, a creature the size of a Labrador retriever, but with a five foot-long tail, that walked the Earth about 10 million years before more familiar dinosaurs.
The Kamchatka Peninsula and Kuril Islands, long shrouded in secrecy by the Soviet government, are a seismic and volcanic hotbed with a potential to trigger tsunamis that pose a risk to the rest of the Pacific Basin.
Electrically spun cloth with nanometer-sized fibers show promise as a cheap, versatile platform to simultaneously offer contraception and prevent HIV. New funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will further test the system’s versatility and feasibility.
These principles could allow scientists to custom-make, rather than re-purpose, protein molecules for vaccines, drugs, and industrial and environmental uses.
Climatologists have reconciled their measurements of ice loss in Antarctica and Greenland during the past two decades. A second article looks at how to monitor and understand accelerating losses from the planet’s two largest continental ice sheets.
The spectrum of human genetic diversity today is vastly different than what it was only 200 to 400 generations ago.
Food webs needed by young salmon in the Columbia River basin are likely compromised in places, something that should be considered when prioritizing expensive restoration activities.
Studying the molecular basis of progressive muscle weakness may lead to therapies to prevent or reduce symptoms.
UW astronomers find that planets orbiting white and brown dwarfs are unlikely to be good candidates for sustaining life.
UW researchers find the flash flood was set off by a string of unusual weather events similar to those that caused catastrophic U.S. floods in the 1970s.
The approach could lead to cell therapy treatments for some of the blood-forming disorders that accompany the common genetic condition.
The Stanford University faculty member will talk about a group of cell membrane receptors that are crucial for emotion, behavior, memory, vision, motion and many other activities. About 40 percent of medications act via these receptors.