In one of the twists of scientific discovery, a UW duo working on fusion energy — harnessing the energy-generating mechanism of the sun — may have found a way to etch the next generation of microchips.
Technology
It’s been a decade since a swarm of relatively mild earthquakes shook up parts of Spokane. Now, armed with the right tools, scientists want to find out what was at fault.
University of Washington engineers and scientists are one step closer to deploying sophisticated equipment that will collect important information about ocean properties like currents and temperature and send the information via the Internet in real time to scientists around the world.
An unappreciated aspect of chemical reactions on the surface of metal oxides could be key in developing more efficient energy systems, including more productive solar cells or hydrogen fuel cells efficient enough for automobiles.
A new UW club has qualified to participate in an international underwater robot competition and has designed its robot to be used by UW oceanographers in the field.
Bioengineers have developed the first structure to grow small human blood vessels, creating a 3-D test bed that offers a better way to study disease, test drugs and perhaps someday grow human tissues for transplant.
Beth Kolko’s experimental course takes its cue from the hacker community, helping students of any major get a taste of what it means to build software and hardware.
A textured surface mimics a lotus leaf to move drops of liquid in particular directions. The low-cost system could be used in portable medical or environmental tests.
Last year, they were underdogs. This year, they’re a dynasty. A team of eight students from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering reclaimed the top stop at last weekend’s National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition.
The cells that line the pipes leading to the heart pull more tightly together in areas of fast-flowing blood. The cells’ mechanical response to their environment could aid understanding of heart disease.
A History Channel documentary on the Titanic airing Sunday includes materials testing in the UW’s Structural Research Laboratory. UW faculty and staff participated in the testing.
A magnetized ion plasma system devised by a UW researcher to propel spacecraft at ultra-high speeds could be adapted to clean up dead satellites and other debris crowded in Earth orbit.
The fourth Environmental Innovation Challenge was the biggest yet. The winning team proposes to replace concrete lane dividers with ones made from recycled rubber tires. Other student teams presented their prototypes for emergency shelters, rooftop gardens, nonstick cookware and other green businesses.
Students want better wireless and electrical connections on campus, while faculty would like more consistent and more flexible configurations of classroom technology, a new survey shows.
Greenroads, a rating system developed at the University of Washington to promote sustainable roadway construction, awarded its first official certification to a Bellingham project that incorporates porcelain from recycled toilets.
On the one-year anniversary of Japan’s great Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, UW scientists said the devastating event has some important lessons for the Pacific Northwest – most notably, that a similar event will happen here, and this region is much less prepared than Japan.
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.
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.
A business incubator unveiled today is one element in a larger commercialization initiative announced by UW President Michael Young that will double the number of startups produced by the university – from an average of 10 a year to 20 – during the next three years.
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 U.S. Department of Transportation has awarded a grant of $3.5 million to a multi-university, regional transportation center led by the University of Washington. The newly established Pacific Northwest Transportation Consortium, or PacTrans, will focus on safe and sustainable transportation systems.
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 new plasma pencil promises to give nutrition status in minutes that used to take 24 hours, and could improve health in developing world.
Bionic eye steps closer to reality.
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.
Faculty and staff can now take advantage of new software licensing agreements that provide even more products for use on UW-owned computers at no additional cost.
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.
On the eve of the certification of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner by the Federal Aviation Administration, Washington Senator Maria Cantwell held a press conference on the UW campus highlighting the work of a federally funded research center that helped realize that goal.
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.
Eight students lurched, tumbled and floated through an unforgettable final lab project last month. Participants in NASAs Microgravity University in Houston spent the last week of their undergraduate careers carrying out an experiment they designed for testing in a reduced-gravity environment.
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.
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.
A new study of female engineering students perceived challenges finds significant differences between black, Hispanic, Native American, Asian-American and white women. The findings could help institutions better attract and retain particular underrepresented student populations.
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.
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.
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.
A nine-month study of how University of Washington graduate students did or did not use the large-format Amazon Kindle DX in their course reading provides information on the potential future for e-readers in academia.
This weekend in San Antonio, eight students from the UW’s Department of Computer Science and Engineering won the trophy in the National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition.