Over the next three years, a team of UW students will convert a 2013 Chevy Malibu into a fuel-efficient, low-emissions vehicle that still meets consumer demands for a driver-friendly car. The UW is one of 15 schools participating in the EcoCAR 2 contest, sponsored by General Motors and the U.S. Department of Energy.
Learn about polar bears and penguins. Center a two-foot tusk on your forehead and imagine youre a narwhal exploring your icy-ocean home. For these activities and more, grab the kids and head for Polar Science Weekend, March 1 to 4, sponsored by the UW’s Applied Physics Laboratory and Pacific Science Center.
The plight of the tiger – none of the worlds 350 protected areas in the tigers range is large enough to support a viable population – is the subject of the UWs “Sustaining our World” lecture March 1. Eric Dinerstein, the World Wildlife Funds chief scientist and a UW alum, will speak on “All Together Now: Linking Ecosystem Services, Endangered Species Conservation and Local Livelihoods” at 6 p.m., in Kane 220.
Last weeks American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Vancouver, BC, included 11 speakers from the University of Washington on topics including marine protected areas, the myth of black progress, womens reproductive health and how undergraduates learn best.
Schoolchildren came in droves for the popular Family Science Days Feb. 18-18 during the American Association for Advancement of Science meeting in Vancouver, BC. UW faculty and students were there offering hands-on demonstrations at the National Science Foundations booth .
The Design Help Desk offers scientists a chance to meet with a student who can help them create more effective figures, tables and graphs. This visual equivalent of a Writing Help Desk is also a study on how to teach data visualization.
Climate warming caused by greenhouse gases is very likely to increase summer temperature variability around the world by the end of this century, new UW research shows. The findings have major implications for food production.
David Stahl, a UW professor of civil and environmental engineering, has been elected to the National Academy of Engineering. Also elected are UW affiliate professor Henrique Malvar and UW alumnus Peter Farrell.
University of Washington scientists have advanced a method that allowed them to single out a marine microorganism and map its genome even though the organism made up less than 10 percent of a water sample teeming with many millions of individuals from dozens of identifiable groups of microbes.
The walls of the aorta, the largest blood vessel carrying blood from the heart, exhibits a response to electric fields known to exist in inorganic and synthetic materials. The discovery could have implications for treating human heart disease.
The economic pain of a flattening oil supply will trump the environment as a reason to curb the use of fossil fuels, say two scientists, one from the University of Washington and one from the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, in the Jan. 26 issue of the journal Nature.
New UW research demonstrates that one suggested method of geoengineering the atmosphere to deal with climate change probably would have limited success.
A panel discussion Monday on “Broader Impacts: What do Funders Really Want?” is the first of six presentations on sharing University of Washington research with the general public.
Seven identical robots created and built at the UW will be flown to campuses across the country, where they will provide the first common research platform to develop the future of surgical robotics. The robots will be display Friday at an open house.
A UW-led team has peered deep into the neighboring Andromeda galaxy to find unusual ultra-blue stars.
A powerful combination of data from NASA satellites and traditional sampling has led to the discovery of a new pathway of freshwater in the Arctic Ocean. Jamie Morison, Applied Physics Laboratory, is lead author of paper in this weeks Nature.
Hot chilies growing wild in dry environments produce substantially fewer seeds than non-pungent plants, but they are better protected against a seed-attacking fungus that is more prevalent in moist regions.
New research shows that the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere work to transform elemental mercury into oxidized mercury, which can easily be deposited into aquatic ecosystems and ultimately enter the food chain.
Nitrogen derived from human activities has polluted lakes throughout the Northern Hemisphere for more than a century and the fingerprint of these changes is evident even in remote lakes thousands of miles from the nearest city, industrial area or farm.
A new plasma pencil promises to give nutrition status in minutes that used to take 24 hours, and could improve health in developing world.
New research shows accelerated melting of two fast-moving glaciers that drain Antarctic ice into the Amundsen Sea Embayment is likely in part the result of an increase in sea-surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific Ocean.
A grant to the University of Washington from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation could pave the way for a system to provide a warning seconds to minutes in advance of a major offshore earthquake in the Northwest.
Bionic eye steps closer to reality.
Nano discovery could lead to lower-power memory in the future
A UW-based alert system using real-time data on lightning flashes around the world is helping to keep tabs on erupting volcanoes.
Pacific Northwest trees grown and harvested sustainably can both remove existing carbon dioxide from the air and help keep the gas from entering the atmosphere in the first place. Thats provided wood is used primarily for such things as building materials, instead of cement and steel, and secondarily that wood wastes are used for biofuels.
Follow the serious science – and the development of novel “Will it crush?” segments inspired by the YouTube hit “Will it blend?” – as University of Washington Wavechasers work in the South Pacific near Samoa.
Ignoring the potential beneficial roles of non-native species is no longer a valid option, says UWs Julian Olden. His public talk Oct. 25, “Invasive Species: Exonerating Crimes to Envision a New Global Future,” is the annual deans lecture from the College of the Environment.
A new image of a gas-and-dust disk around a sun-like star is the first that scientists, including a UW astronomer, have seen that displays structures that could hint at the presence of still-unseen planets around the star.
The first scientists to witness exploding rock and molten lava from a deep sea volcano, seen during a 2009 expedition, also collected boninite, a rare lava that accompanies the formation of Earths subduction zones. Current subduction zones are continually evolving but most formed 5 million to 200 million years ago.
Aeronautical engineers are devising ways to boost the efficiency of open-air refrigerated cases, which are increasingly common in supermarkets. Results could lower the energy use of existing cases by up to 15 percent — potentially saving $100 million in electricity costs each year.
Naturalists, kayakers and other volunteers – including University of Washington students, faculty and staff – are needed to look for as many birds, plants, insects, mammals and fungi as possible during the 24-hour Bioblitz 2011 at the Washington Park Arboretum.
The University of Washington and Washington State University are leads for two separate grants of $40 million each that will use Pacific Northwest woody biomass to expand whats been a Midwest-centric biofuels industry into Washington, Oregon, Idaho, western Montana and northern California.
Materials scientists at the University of Washington have built a novel transistor that uses protons, creating a key piece for devices that can communicate directly with living things.
The phrase “no guts, no glory” doesnt just apply to athletes who are striving to excel. Salmon and other fish predators take the adage literally.
Students already knowledgeable about the science behind ocean acidification and warming will learn more about the challenges those ocean changes pose for tribes, shellfish growers and other sectors of society – as well as helping seek solutions ¬– under a just-announced National Science Foundation grant of $3 million.
The researcher who used chemical sleuthing to uncover whats in scented products now has turned her attention to the air wafting from household laundry vents. Air from laundry machines using the top-selling scented liquid detergent and dryer sheet contains hazardous chemicals, including two that are classified as carcinogens.
On the 20-year anniversary of the World Wide Web, computer scientist Oren Etzioni has written a two-page commentary in the journal Nature that calls on the international academic and business communities to take a bolder approach when designing how people find information online.
Computer scientists have created a way to take images from the web or personal photos collections and in seconds create an animation of a persons face. The tool can make a face appear to age over time, or gradually change the expression from a smile to a frown.
John Cahn, a UW affiliate professor in the departments of physics and materials science & engineering, has won an international Kyoto Prize, sometimes described as Japan’s equivalent to the Nobel Prize. Cahn is recognized for his work describing and predicting the behavior of mixtures of materials.