October 5, 2016
It’s a busy week for the arts: The Silk Road Ensemble and Mark Morris Dance Group collaborate on a new work at Meany Center; School of Music artist-in-residence Greg Sinibaldi gives the first faculty recital of the school year, and the Burke Museum hosts its annual “Birds at the Burke” day. The Henry Art Gallery presents artwork by American artist Senga Nengudi and the Jacob Lawrence Gallery showcases work by second-year MFA students. Mark Morris Dance Group with the Silk…
A new proposed draft Campus Master Plan for 2018 sees the University of Washington’s Seattle campus growing up rather than out — building a little higher, filling in with more density, not expanding its borders, helping to ease transportation flow and creating big new green spaces. 2018 draft Campus Master Plan — opportunities for public comment: Online open house: Oct. 12, noon to 1 p.m. Sign up online. Open house: October 18, noon to 2 p.m. Cascade Room, Haggett Hall…
Unlike in the movies, and in some theories of climate change, the recent slowdown of Atlantic Ocean circulation is not connected with the melting of the Arctic sea ice. Instead, it seems to be connected to shifts around the southern tip of Africa.
Prof. Devin Naar of the Jackson School’s Stroum Center for Jewish Studies discusses the book “A Hug from Afar: One Family’s Dramatic Journey Through Three Continents to Escape the Holocaust,” by Claire Barkey Flash, for which Naar wrote the foreword.
A new UW disaster investigation center funded by a $4 million National Science Foundation grant will collect and analyze critical data that’s often lost in the immediate aftermath of hurricanes and earthquakes but that can help create more resilient communities.
October 4, 2016
The Livable City Year program will formally celebrate the start of its first year at 10 a.m. Oct. 6 at wǝɫǝbʔaltxʷ – Intellectual House on the UW’s campus in a kickoff event open to all. Professors leading Livable City Year courses this fall will talk about their projects, followed by time for Q&A.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced Tuesday that David James Thouless, professor emeritus at the University of Washington, will share the 2016 Nobel Prize in physics with two of his colleagues. Thouless splits the prize with Professor F. Duncan M. Haldane of Princeton University and Professor J. Michael Kosterlitz of Brown University “for theoretical discoveries of topological phase transitions and topological phases of matter,” according to the prize announcement from the Academy. Half the prize goes to Thouless while Haldane and Kosterlitz divide the remaining half. Thouless is the UW’s seventh Nobel laureate, and second in physics after Hans Dehmelt in 1989.
The UW’s Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project has an important new component — the LGBTQ Activism in Seattle History Project. There will be a public launch at 7 p.m. Monday, Oct. 10, in Room 340 of the HUB.
Accelerating growth in effectively delivering new oral and transdermal drug delivery techniques will be the focus of the University of Washington Department of Bioengineering’s 2016 Allan S. Hoffman Lecture on Oct. 10.
October 3, 2016
In a paper published Sept. 22 in Scientific Reports, engineers at the University of Washington unveiled peptides that could help bridge the gap where artificial meets biological — harnessing biological rules to exchange information between the biochemistry of our bodies and the chemistry of our devices.
As the fourth-fastest growing city in the United States, Seattle faces important questions in its quest to remain a resilient and sustainable community. Can we build to withstand natural disasters, reduce environmental toxins as consumption rises, meet urban transportation challenges so food, supplies and consumer products can get where they need to go? Over the next month, College of Engineering’s annual fall lecture series will feature faculty focusing on these questions and developing technologies to build more resilient urban communities….
September 30, 2016
UW Libraries is inviting the public to Suzzallo Library at lunchtime on Oct. 7 to listen to — or participate in — the annual reading of the United States Constitution.
University of Washington scientists have put world’s longest-running measure of atmospheric carbon dioxide to music. The result is a 90-second rendition of human-induced climate change: The video project was done by Judy Twedt, a UW doctoral student in atmospheric sciences, and Dargan Frierson, a UW associate professor of atmospheric sciences and amateur musician. Their techno soundtrack maps musical notes to the Keeling Curve, a 58-year record of carbon dioxide measured high in the atmosphere at the Mauna Loa Observatory in…
September 29, 2016
UW oceanographers are working on a system that will act like a ‘weather forecast’ for Pacific Northwest harmful algal blooms.
A study led by researchers at the University of Washington and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration connects the unprecedented West Coast toxic algal bloom of 2015 to the unusually warm ocean conditions — nicknamed “the blob” — in winter and spring of that year.
September 28, 2016
The University of Washington landed at No. 5 on The Reuters 100: The World’s Most Innovative Universities. Now in its second year, the list ranks the educational institutions doing the most to advance science, invent new technologies and help drive the global economy.
September 27, 2016
Like post-secondary schools across the country, the University of Washington has struggled to attract and retain a talented, diverse faculty. But efforts that have been quietly underway for a few years are starting to pay off, attracting top-level candidates to the UW even over schools that are able to offer bigger salaries and more perks. That work involves not simply convincing excellent candidates to come to the UW, but creating a supportive and inclusive environment that prompts them to stay,…
Researchers at the University of Washington have developed a novel toolkit based on modified yeast cells to tease out how plant genes and proteins respond to auxin, the most ubiquitous plant hormone. Their system, described in a paper published Sept. 19 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, allowed them to decode auxin’s basic effects on the diverse family of genes that plants utilize to detect and interpret auxin-driven messages.
A team of researchers led by the University of Washington believes creating a network of community-based science is possible with new support from the National Science Foundation.
A new study by University of Washington scientists finds that in many cases, misreporting caught fish doesn’t always translate to overfishing. The study was published online this month in the journal Fish and Fisheries.
UW engineers have devised a way to send secure passwords through the human body, instead of over the air where they’re vulnerable to hacking.
September 26, 2016
Finding a long-buried outhouse might not sound exciting to most people, but to Sara Gonzalez and her crew, it was a holy grail of sorts. An assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Washington, Gonzalez led an archaeological field school this summer on a tribal reservation in northwestern Oregon. Gonzalez and a team of students and students spent six weeks working at an abandoned encampment where tribal members once lived and a former schoolhouse property about two miles away….
September 23, 2016
Charles Johnson, UW professor emeritus of English, wrote a statement to accompany an item to be displayed in the new National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. What he wrote also was featured in a special issue of Smithsonian Magazine.
The University of Washington landed at No. 25 on the Times Higher Education world rankings for 2017, released this week. The UW is fourth on the list among U.S. public universities, behind UC Berkeley, UCLA, and Michigan.
University of Washington social work professor Paula Nurius is the inaugural recipient of a new national award for helping advance doctoral education in her field. Nurius will receive the 2016 Educational Leadership in Doctoral Education award from the Group for the Advancement of Doctoral Education in Social Work (GADE) at a meeting in November. The award recognizes current or former faculty members who “display a strong commitment to doctoral education and a demonstrated record of advancing doctoral education at the…
University of Washington biologist Dee Boersma and her colleagues combed through 28 years’ worth of data on Magellanic penguins to search for signs that natural selection — one of the main drivers of evolution — may be acting on certain penguin traits. As they report in a paper published Sept. 21 in The Auk: Ornithological Advances, selection is indeed at work on the penguins at the Punta Tombo breeding site in Argentina.
UW scientists worked with artists for an exhibit at the Museum of Northwest Art focusing on climate change impacts on coastal communities.
September 22, 2016
Amid a decline in funding for scientific research, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute is partnering with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Simons Foundation to launch a new Faculty Scholars program. Announced Sept. 22 by HHMI, the inaugural crop of early-career scientists includes 5 faculty members from the University of Washington.
September 21, 2016
The University of Washington moved up to No. 2 in the world for clinical medicine and pharmacy in the 2016 Academic Ranking of World Universities by Broad Subject Fields.
University of Washington researchers are part of a national team that will study the baby teeth of children who have siblings with autism to determine if prenatal exposure to chemicals increases their risk of developing the disorder. The study will involve testing children’s teeth for levels of environmental chemicals that they might have been exposed to in the womb, a critical time for neurodevelopment. Additionally, for a smaller number of children whose genetic data has been collected, the researchers hope…
Boeing announced Wednesday it is awarding $6 million in grants to more than 50 nonprofit organizations and education institutions across Washington, including $500,000 to the University of Washington.
September 20, 2016
“Denial,” a new movie about an American historian’s lengthy court battle with a British Holocaust denier, has a UW connection — Deborah Lipstadt, the film’s protagonist, taught at the UW early in her career.
September 19, 2016
Researchers at the University of Washington are among the winners of a startup challenge to shorten the transition time from lab bench to patient. The team, including members of professor Suzie Pun’s research group in the UW Department of Bioengineering, was selected based on its proposal and business plan to develop a targeted drug delivery system for breast cancer.
A team of conservationists at the University of Washington is among the Grand Prize Winners of the Wildlife Crime Tech Challenge for a proposal to identify poaching hotspots for pangolins, one of the most trafficked group of mammals in the world.
Plants can better tolerate drought and other stressors with the help of natural microbes, University of Washington research has found. Specifically, plants that are given a dose of microbes stay green longer and are able to withstand drought conditions by growing more leaves and roots and using less water.
September 15, 2016
The share of Washingtonians living in poverty dropped from 13.2 percent to 12.2 percent between 2014 and 2015, according to new data released Thursday. Washington was one of 23 states with statistically significant declines in their poverty rates during that period. The remaining 27 states and the District of Columbia saw no change in their poverty rates. “It is good news that the poverty rate has dropped for a second year in a row in Washington state. However, the share…
Researchers are now able to capture the cells of animals, sequence their DNA and identify which species were present at a point in time. A new University of Washington study is the first to use these genetic markers to understand the impact urbanization has on the environment — specifically, whether animal diversity flourishes or suffers.
September 14, 2016
A new exhibit in the UW’s Allen Library explores South Asia through art, artifacts, manuscripts, music and more. “Envisaging South Asia: Art, Images, and Scholarship” will be on view through Oct. 31.
All across the world, millions of people will be practicing their earthquake-preparedness on Oct. 20. The event — called the Great ShakeOut — will commence at 10:20 a.m. for those participating at the University of Washington and across the state. It is an opportunity for people to practice what they should do in the event of an earthquake: Drop, cover and hold on.
The Bernard Osher Foundation has announced a $1 million gift to the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of Washington (OLLI-UW). The Institute offers a diverse array of non-credit courses and activities for people 50 and older, giving these adults access to continuing education at the UW. The Osher Foundation’s gift takes the form of a $950,000 endowment and $50,000 bridge grant to support the ongoing work of OLLI-UW. It’s the second $1 million award the Foundation has given…