The latest news from the UW

Political scientist Christopher Parker: ‘If it were not for big government…” Christopher Parker, University of Washington associate professor of political science, rarely minces words when debating about American politics and government.He has done much research on philosophical differences between the tea party and traditional conservatives, and was co-author, with fellow UW political scientist Matt Barreto, of the 2013 book, “Change They Can’t Believe In: The Tea Party and Reactionary Politics in America.” He also has some new research about conservative…

“I’ve had my leg crushed; been in a full-leg cast for 16 months; put more of my buddies six feet under than I care to think about; been frost bitten and treated for heat exhaustion; and had every one of my fingers and most of my toes broken. [But] when I’m at the top of that mountain of one of those perfect mornings and the sun is just cresting the ridge, nothing else really seems to matter. I guess I…

When Thomas Jarboe and Derek Sutherland took their concept for an economically feasible fusion reactor into the public sphere two weeks ago, they expected some negative loud mouths and naysayers. After all, this is fusion physics, a field that seems so inaccessible to most people that it carries a certain mystique and inspires an almost religious fervor to see it succeed or fail. That’s the playing field that Jarboe, a professor of aeronautics and astronautics, and Sutherland, a graduate student,…

The University of Washington’s Jackson School of International Studies will host a daylong conference titled “Kurdistan and the Changing Middle East” on Thursday, Nov. 6, in the Peterson Room on the fifth floor of Allen Library. Reşat Kasaba, Jackson School director, will give introductory remarks and moderate panels titled “Regional Dynamics” and “State-Society Relations in Northern Iraq.” Arbella Bet-Shlimon, UW assistant professor of history, also will participate in the latter panel. The keynote address, “Kurdistan, the Changing Middle East, and…

The UW won Seattle Business Magazine’s 2014 Community Impact Award for Sustainability in Business Operations this week for demonstrating how businesses can have a beneficial impact on their communities. Seattle Aquarium and Harley Marine Services won silver awards for their sustainable business operations. UW’s award recognizes its overall environmental stewardship, Climate Action Plan, many LEED certified buildings and the connection to the UW Business Diversity Program. “This award reflects the terrific work by the entire UW community over the past…

Brewster Denny, great-grandson of Seattle and University of Washington founders Arthur and Mary Denny, rang the Denny Bell for UW homecoming ceremonies nearly every autumn for 51 years. He died in 2013 at the age of 88, but his family is carrying on the tradition. Denny’s daughter Maria Denny will gather with her mother, Patricia, husband, Jim Kodjababian, and their children, Jacob and Ella, at 4 p.m. Friday, Oct. 24 — at Denny Hall, of course — to ring the…

Seats are still available for three of the four UW Graduate School Public Lectures of 2014, presented in cooperation with the UW Alumni Association. The lectures are all free, but advance registration is required. The series begins with a lecture by Olympia Snowe, a former U.S. senator from Maine, who will speak at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 6, in Room 130 of Kane Hall. Her lecture is titled “Anything is Possible — How to Overcome Obstacles and Make a Difference.”…

UW faculty, other academic personnel and senior graduate students are being invited to apply for the chance to visit the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia during 2015. There is financial support for two UW participants staying for two to four weeks. Each is expected to give lectures, interact with Slovenian students and collaborate with Slovenian faculty members in their field of study. The visits must be completed by the end of 2015 and should take place during the spring or…

The four evenings that comprise the 2014 History Lecture Series have already sold out, but no one needs to miss the lectures themselves. The lectures will be held from 7 to 8:30 p.m. Wednesday evenings from Nov. 5 to Dec. 3, all in Room 130 of Kane Hall. The series topic is “1914: The Great War and the Modern World.” There will be on-site waiting lists each evening and a televised feed will be broadcast in Room 210 of Kane…

With its skeleton revealed in red and cartilage in blue, an image of a scalyhead sculpin fish from biology prof Adam Summers‘ lab is among the winners in this year’s BioArt competition. “Each day, scientific investigators produce thousands of images and videos as part of their research – from collection of image-based data, to the visualization of results,” according to contest sponsor the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology. The federation conducts the BioArt competion to “share the beauty…

Fifth and final lecture: Summer 2014 Expedition Thursday, Nov. 13, 7 p.m. Kane Hall 110 Tickets, $20, available here If you missed the UW Alumni Association’s lecture series last spring, “The Global Ocean & Human Culture: Past, Present & Future,” you can now watch the talks on UWTV. John Delaney, a UW professor of oceanography, presented the four lectures last April and May in the UW’s Kane Hall. The talks now available for streaming are: Human Culture, Science of the…

If you use high speed Wi-Fi and 4G or LTE on your smartphone, you’ve got Arogyaswami Paulraj to thank. His wireless communications technology – MIMO, or multiple input, multiple output – is the core driver that increases performance in the latest wireless systems. Paulraj will talk about developing this technology and what may be coming next at this year’s annual Dean Lytle Electrical Engineering Endowed Lecture Series. Paulraj, an emeritus professor at Stanford University, will speak twice for the UW…

Human sprawl is usually a threat to wildlife, but some birds buck the trend. Can we help biodiversity take wing in our suburbs? So ponders University of Washington’s John Marzluff in a piece he penned for Aeon, the digital magazine of ideas and culture that posts an original essay every weekday. During a decade of bird counts and research, the UW prof of environmental and forest sciences found an unsurpassed variety of birds in suburbia. Even nearby forest reserves were…

A memorial to celebrate the life of Fred Nick, the longtime director of the Center for Social Science Computation and Research, will be 4-6 p.m. Monday, Oct. 20, in the Walker-Ames Room of Kane Hall. Nick died unexpectedly in early September, just a year after retiring from the UW. He is remembered for his stewardship of the Social Science research center for 38 years, serving faculty, staff and students as a mentor and colleague. In the center’s Autumn 2014 newsletter,…

UW Libraries is opening a new study center in its East Asia Library called the Taiwan Resource Center for Chinese Studies. It’s the result of new collaboration between UW Libraries and the National Central Library, in Taiwan. The center will bring valuable Chinese and Taiwanese scholarly publications, and host a new annual lecture series about Taiwan as well. At an Oct. 2 ceremony where a memorandum of understanding was signed, Lizabeth (Betsy) Wilson, UW vice provost and dean of UW…

The workload and time crunch were comparable to pulling two all-nighters, but you wouldn’t guess that from the energy in the room. Fifteen students, all wearing matching grey t-shirts, buzzed around the Center for Sensorimotor Neural Engineering Monday morning (Oct. 13), clearly excited to show off their designs. They had just finished a 36-hour weekend hackathon, a first for the National Science Foundation-funded center headquartered at the University of Washington. Their mission was to work as teams of three to…

The new Pronto Cycle Share system launched Monday around the U-District, downtown, South Lake Union and Capitol Hill. Pronto is Seattle’s cycle-sharing system featuring 500 bikes at 50 stations, with bikes available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Check out the station map to see all the Seattle locations. Campus stations are at the IMA, the Engineering Library, Meany Hall, Condon Hall, McCarty Hall, the Burke Museum and the Medical Center. Each station has a touchscreen kiosk, station map, helmets, and…

Michael Honey, professor of interdisciplinary arts and sciences at UW Tacoma, has written books about Martin Luther King — now he is blogging about King as well. His writings can be found on the Beacon Broadside, a blog written by authors with Beacon Press, an independent publisher of serious nonfiction founded in 1854. Honey said Beacon asked him to blog about how he got involved with King and the role of the Unitarian Church in civil rights work in the…

A group of University of Washington engineering students are winners of the 2014 Ford College Community Challenge, a competition that awards $25,000 per team to student-led groups at 10 universities to fund projects that help build sustainable communities. The UW team’s project is StopInfo, which integrates with the OneBusAway app and provides specific information on location, safety features and stop closures for each bus stop in King County. OneBusAway was developed at the UW and uses real-time data to track when…

Measuring universities on their scientific research productivity, impact and excellence, National Taiwan University named the University of Washington fifth best in the world, and the top public institution in the United States, in its 2014 Performance Ranking of Scientific Papers for World Universities released Thursday. The NTU Ranking is based on the production and impact of universities’ scientific papers, intended to objectively measure their contributions in the advancement of scientific innovation. “This is yet another international ranking that places the…

It’s impossible not to make this awkward, but here’s our best shot: Welcome to the new UW Today blog. For years, UW Today in various incarnations has provided the news of the University of Washington – from groundbreaking scientific research and awe-inspiring student projects, to ranking updates, awards and roundups of arts events that can be found on campus. So, why start a blog now? To put it simply: Because there’s just too much good stuff happening at the UW…