Submarine cables for the nations first regional cabled ocean observatory, a project led by the University of Washington, made landfall last week on the Oregon coast.
Science
The National Science Foundation today announced an $18.5 million grant to establish an Engineering Research Center for Sensorimotor Neural Engineering based at the UW. The interdisciplinary center will combine neuroscience and robotics to develop new rehabilitation technologies.
Trees absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to grow, so forests have long been proposed as a way to offset climate change. But rather than just letting the forest sit there for a hundred or more years, the amount of carbon dioxide taken out of the atmosphere could be quadrupled in 100 years by harvesting regularly and using the wood in place of fossil-fuel intensive steel and concrete.
A new system to send electricity over short distances has been shown to reliably power a mechanical heart pump. The system could free patients from being tethered to a battery or external power source, lowering their chance of infection and improving their quality of life.
Earlier this week, NASAs Hubble Space Telescope logged its one millionth science observation during a search for water in an exoplanets atmosphere 1,000 light years away, according to a UW faculty member conducts theoretical interpretation of data from the Hubble.
A forest resources professor whos an expert on invasive species and rare plants became director of the University of Washington Botanic Gardens July 1.
With the launch earlier this month of NASAs satellite Aquarius, more than half a dozen University of Washington researchers are involved in projects to calibrate data from space with actual measurements of ocean salinity.
Keiko Torii, professor of biology, is among 15 of the “nations most innovative plant scientists” selected to share $75 million for fundamental plant science research.
The snowpack decline of the last 50 years in the Rocky Mountains is highly unusual in context of the past 800 years, according to findings published June 10 in “Science.”
An Amorphophallus titanum, also known as a corpse flower in its native Sumatra and elsewhere because of its foul odor, has bloomed at the University of Washington botany greenhouse. Visit weekdays from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. while the bloom lasts.
A new system called EnerJ helps computer programmers go green, allowing them to cut a program’s energy consumption by as much as 50 percent.
A more automated approach to bladder exams could be cheaper, more comfortable and more convenient. The system would use the UWs ultrathin laser endoscope, which is like a thin piece of cooked spaghetti, in combination with software that automatically creates a 3-D panorama of the bladder interior.
University of Washington statisticians used a computer model to study the effect of replacing the Alaskan Way Viaduct on commuter travel times. They found that relying on surface streets would likely have less impact on travel times than previously reported, and that effects on commute times are not well known.
The 25-story construction crane used since 1995 to investigate such things as how Pacific Northwest forests absorb carbon dioxide, obtain sufficient water and resist attacks by pests and diseases is being pruned back to just the tower.
The gender gap for physical oceanographers in tenure-track positions has almost doubled since the mid-1990s.
For more than two decades scientists have suspected theres a substantial source of energy for ocean mixing at ocean fronts. Researchers with the Applied Physics Laboratory are the first to devise a way to prove it.
An environment of pure oxygen at three-and-a-half times normal air pressure adds significantly to the effectiveness of a natural compound already shown to kill cancerous cells.
In new research published in “Science,” engineers at UW and UCLA used nanotechnology to control and observe how molecules react. They plan to use their method to develop more efficient solar molecules.
Sea-ice algae – the important first rung of the food web each spring in places like the Arctic Ocean – can engineer ice to its advantage, according to the first published findings about this ability.
With live presentations and 40 exhibit and activity stations, Polar Science Weekend March 3-6 offers opportunities to learn about extreme polar environments from those who work there.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
Engineers are developing computer models to study how changes in water pressure and current speed around tidal turbines affect sediment buildup and fish health.
University of Washington researchers are using tiny sea creatures called foraminifera to help diagnose the health of Puget Sound.
Ultrasound could soon be a way for spotting cancerous cells before a tumor develops, precisely monitoring how a person responds to treatment or delivering genetic therapies.
Journey 300 miles off the Washington-Oregon coast and dive nearly a mile deep into the ocean as scientists and 20 students use underwater robots to explore, map and sample methane ice deposits, an underwater volcano and seafloor hot springs spewing water up to 570 degrees F.
UW seismologists have begun recording a slow-moving and unfelt seismic event under the Olympic Peninsula, and it promises to be the best-documented such event in the eight years since the regularly occurring phenomena were first discovered.
Like a deep-sea bloodhound, Sentry — the newest in an elite group of unmanned submersibles able to operate on their own in demanding and rugged environments — has helped scientists pinpoint optimal locations for two observation sites of a pioneering seafloor laboratory being planned off Washington and Oregon.