The latest news from the UW

The University of Washington’s eScience Institute and GitHub, a code-sharing and publishing service, are hosting a town hall discussion on campus 6-9 p.m. Monday, Feb. 2, to talk about the role of software in academic research today. Six panelists will give short presentations, followed by a discussion moderated by Arfon Smith with GitHub. Dan Halperin, director of research in scalable data analytics at UW’s eScience Institute, and Marina Meila, a UW associate professor of statistics, will join other speakers from…

All faculty are invited to a town hall discussion of the proposed new faculty salary policy at 2:45 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 4, in the Walker Ames Room (225) in Kane Hall. The first half of the program will be devoted to a panel discussion and debate of the major arguments for and against the policy that have emerged so far. The five faculty panelists and the moderator come from diverse units:  Arts & Sciences, Medicine, Business, Public Health, UW Bothell,…

Kristy Leissle, a lecturer in the UW Bothell School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences, will appear in an episode of the PBS television series “Nature” tonight, Jan. 28. The episode, titled “Penguin Post Office,” is about a unique British post office located in the heart of the Antarctic Peninsula at Port Lockroy, about 700 miles south of Argentina and Chile. The spot is Antarctica’s most popular tourist destination, with cruise ship passengers from around the world coming ashore to see…

The University of Washington Center for Philosophy for Children will host the 2015 Washington State High School Ethics Bowl on campus Saturday, January 31. The event is modeled after the Intercollegiate Ethics Bowl and involves teams of high school students competing to analyze wide-ranging ethical dilemmas. Twenty-three high school bowls will take place around the country during this school year. Winners of the regional events will advance to the National High School Ethics Bowl, to be held in April at…

The online Legislative Explorer, the big-data policy project by John Wilkerson and Nicholas Stramp of the UW political science department, has been named an award of excellence winner in interactive design by Communication Arts, an international trade journal of visual communications. Their website, www.legex.org, which tracks all Congressional legislation in the last 40 years, also was named among the 18 best infographics of 2014 by the business magazine Fast Company. That magazine featured the site among “stellar examples of the…

The UW seismologists couldn’t have asked for a better football game to monitor fan-generated stadium shaking. And indeed, the Seahawks’ improbable comeback victory in Sunday’s NFC Championship Game showed the biggest vibrations ever recorded at CenturyLink Field. See also: “How the ‘Beast Quake’ is helping scientists track real earthquakes” (Jan. 7) “Packers versus Seahawks game analysis” by UW’s Steve Malone (Jan. 19) “Seismologists analyze last week’s game, prepare for more stadium shaking” (Jan. 15) The Pacific Northwest Seismic Network‘s analysis…

A record 36,528 freshman applications – an increase of 5,000, or 16 percent, over last year – were submitted to the University of Washington for the 2015 academic year, according to figures released by the UW’s admissions office.  Increases occurred among all categories: 12 percent from Washington residents, 19 percent from other parts of the U.S., and 18 percent from international applicants. Approximately two-thirds of available slots in the freshman class are reserved for state residents. “This surge of applications…

The University of Washington Dance Program begins its 50th anniversary with the 2015 Dance Faculty Concert which, advance notes say, “includes everything from flying bodies to soup cans that playfully and architecturally define space.” The concert will feature choreography by UW dance faculty members Rachael Lincoln and Wilson Mendieta, with guests Holley Farmer, an alumna and Broadway veteran, and well-known local choreographer Mary Sheldon (Molly) Scott. The show will feature live and recorded music by Stuart Dempster and Paul Moore…

UW seismologists (and everyone else in the region) got their wish: The Seahawks won last Saturday, and will play another hometown game in front of a cheering crowd that can rock the stadium. The Pacific Northwest Seismic Network’s post-game seismic analysis of the Jan. 10 game shows 197,000 page requests, almost twice as many as during last year’s NFC finals when the group first outfitted CenturyLink stadium with seismic equipment. (Read more here.) The first test of the new, faster…

The eyes of the world are on France in the wake of the deadly shootings at the office of satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo. The Jan. 7 act of terrorism has sparked questions about radical Islam, European unity and conflicts in the Middle East. The University of Washington’s Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies will hold a roundtable discussion on these issues and more, 7 to 9 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 21, in Room 101 of Thomson Hall. The event —…

Two UW faculty members — Ryan Calo, assistant professor of law, and Daniel Weld, professor of computer science and engineering — have joined hundreds of other researchers in an open letter calling for research to make artificial intelligence more robust and beneficial to humankind. Others signing the letter include physicist Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk of Space X. The letter was published by the Future of Life Institute, a volunteer organization seeking to lessen existential risks facing society and currently…

How long are the tentacles of the largest jellyfish and how big are the ocean’s famed whales? It turns out it’s difficult to get exact measurements of many of the world’s largest marine megafauna, for the reasons one might expect: many of these animals are few in number, tricky to find and logistically hard to measure or weigh. We know surprisingly little about the maximum sizes these species can reach, though popular culture might say otherwise. Now, a team of…

The Washington state Legislature will pause to honor Daniel J. Evans on Jan. 14, marking 50 years, plus a day, since he was sworn in for the first of three terms as Washington state governor, on Jan. 13, 1965. Evans also will address the Senate. Evans began his office-holding career as a member of the Washington state House of Representatives from 1956 to 1965. He served as governor until 1977, then became president of The Evergreen State College. When Sen….

Half a century ago, UW graduate Bill Holm published what would become a seminal work on the distinctive art of the people who first inhabited the Pacific Northwest. “Northwest Coast Indian Art” was the result of Holm’s 15-year analysis of hundreds of artworks while studying at UW under Erna Gunther, former director of the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture. The book introduced new terminology that soon became part of the accepted vocabulary to describe works that conveyed Indian…

A survey of pollution and other impurities in North American snow required researchers to find sites with undisturbed snow far from any city or major road – in other words, a recipe for getting stranded by the side of a cold, lonely road. During the campaign that went from late January to late March 2013, the group traveled some 9,600 miles. They sampled snow in 13 American states and three Canadian provinces, and got stuck only twice. Before leaving Seattle…

Three University of Washington engineers were selected by Forbes magazine as part of its top 30 people in the world under age 30 in energy. This year’s list largely focuses on people who have produced inventions and founded companies with the goal of saving or conserving energy, instead of creating it. Shyam Gollakota, an assistant professor in computer science and engineering, was selected for his work in powering devices without using batteries. He develops sensors that get power by absorbing small…

When deciding where to live, single people should choose cities with affordable housing, interesting job opportunities, vibrant neighborhoods and abundant sports activities. That was the advice of Pepper Schwartz, a UW sociology professor who was among experts consulted for personal finance website WalletHub’s recent ranking of 2014’s Best & Worst Cities for Singles. The site ranked the 150 most populated U.S. cities on 25 metrics including the percentage of singles, costs for restaurant meals and movies, rental housing costs and…

Cancel all screenings of that insulting movie you made, then burn all the prints, and formally apologize — and don’t do it again. Demands from North Korea, perhaps, about Sony Pictures’ controversial James Franco-Seth Rogen film “The Interview”? No, that’s off by about 85 years. It was the Chinese Nationalist government’s reaction to a film called “Welcome Danger” featuring the famously bespectacled silent screen star Harold Lloyd, released in 1929. The scene is from “Silent Cinema and the Politics of…

High-tech companies are seeking to capitalize on the power of handwriting, but there are other reasons to value the practice, says UW educational psychology professor Virginia Berninger. “Writing is the way we learn what we’re thinking,” said Berninger, who studies the effect of handwriting on the human brain. “The handwriting, the sequencing of the strokes, engages the thinking part of the mind.” Berninger was recently interviewed for a CBS This Morning story about how tech companies are reviving the art…