January 27, 2014
News digest: Shrunken heads, ethics bowl, Honor: Odegaard renovation
Samoan cruise: Blog, shrunken heads, video
Oceanographers from the University of Washington’s Applied Physics Laboratory are in Samoa for six weeks, the third and final trip studying skyscraper-sized waves that break in a narrow channel in the South Pacific Ocean. Matthew Alford, a researcher at the lab and UW associate professor of oceanography, is leading UW and University of Hawaii researchers aboard the UW’s research vessel Thomas G. Thompson. Other principal investigators are James Girton from the UW and Glenn Carter from the University of Hawaii.
Follow the group’s blog throughout the 40-day cruise as they share scientific and related activities. Before leaving shore last week the researchers blogged about an outreach event in which they helped Samoan children decorate foam busts that they will send 3 miles below the ocean’s surface and bring back as shrunken heads.
Meanwhile a video of the team’s last trip to Samoa, in summer 2012, was chosen as one of 10 finalists for the Oceans 180 Video Prize, awarded for communicating recently published research in the ocean sciences. Tens of thousands of middle school students from around the world will watch the videos and pick winners to be announced in late February.
UW to host first Washington State High School Ethics Bowl
The UW Center for Philosophy for Children will host the first Washington State High School Ethics Bowl, Feb. 1, on campus.
Modeled after the Intercollegiate Ethics Bowl, students will use case studies to analyze a series of wide-ranging ethical dilemmas.
Twenty teams from schools in the Seattle area will compete, with the winning school advancing – with all expenses paid – to the National High School Ethics Bowl at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in April. The UW event is one of 20 regional bowls in the nation.
Odegaard Library renovation architects honored
The American Institute of Architects has named Seattle-based Miller-Hull Partnership the recipient of one of its 2014 Institute Awards for Interior Architecture for the renovation of Odegaard Undergraduate Library. The $17 million renovation was the first in the building’s 41-year history.
“The designers took a dark, Brutalist building and enlivened it,” award jury members said on the association’s website. “Through careful programming, the architects found additional square footage within the existing structure and eliminated the need to add on to the building.”
