The University of Washington’s International Center of Excellence for Malaria Research in South Asia — along with partners at the Center for Infectious Disease Research (CIDR) and Goa Medical College (GMC) of India — have discovered that specific types of parasite proteins, when combined with high parasite biomass, strongly predict severe malaria disease in adults. The discovery, published May 16 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is a significant advancement in understanding the causes of severe malaria. Quantitative characterization of disease presentations and biotechnology capabilities at the ICEMR lab at Goa Medical College combined with specialized assays for molecular host-parasite interactions and machine learning tools at the CIDR helped unlock the mysteries of what leads to the development of severe malaria disease.
Category: Regions
Parent category for regions.
Learn locally, speak globally: welcoming students to a world of language study
UW students can choose from 45 different languages. Videos created by Asian Languages & Literature introduce students to the study of Bengali, Indonesian, Hindi and Urdu, and offer tips on career opportunities and scholarships available to students of these languages.
Sir? Caballero? Faculty member knighted by Spain
Anthony Geist, professor and former chair of the University of Washington’s Department of Spanish and Portuguese Studies, has been awarded one of Spain’s highest civil honors.
Myanmar goes mobile, with UW’s help
A reformist government speeded Myanmar’s transition to democracy three years ago, dramatically increasing access to information. In 2011, just four percent of the population had mobile phones. Now the figure is closer to eighty percent, with many people owning smartphones. But navigating the flood of online information can be problematic for new users with no experience assessing the trustworthiness of sites and sources. An initiative launched by UW faculty aims to change that.
The initiative, Information Strategies for Societies in Transition (ISST), is designed to build digital literacy, information literacy, and data literacy across Myanmar. Professors Mary Callahan and Sara Curran in the Jackson School of International Studies, Chris Coward, director of the Technology & Social Change Group in the Information School, and Michael Crandall, a principal research scientist in the Information School, lead the project in collaboration with USAID, Microsoft, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Boosting global health partnerships for Chinese universities
Supported by the Global Innovation Fund, a landmark symposium hosted by the UW last week brought together leaders and faculty from five Chinese universities, across the UW campus and the Seattle community. “Collaborating with Chinese colleagues is a tremendously high priority, both personally for faculty and institutionally here at UW,” said Judy Wasserheit, chair of the Department of Global Health and symposium co-chair.
Belgian Ambassador to the U.S. speaks on campus
The United States and Belgium have worked together across the globe to promote security, human rights, and bilateral trade. They share a mutual interest in creating safe communities in the United States, Belgium, and elsewhere by cooperating on counterterrorism and countering violent extremism. The two nations also have longstanding economic and commercial ties with more than 13 million jobs on both sides of the Atlantic already supported by US-EU trade.
The UW community is invited a talk with the Belgian Ambassador to the United States, Johan Verbeke, April 18th in the Smith Room, Allen Library at 3:00pm.
Scientists crack the code of butterflies’ international journey
Each fall, monarch butterflies across Canada and the United States turn their orange, black and white-mottled wings toward the Rio Grande and migrate over 2,000 miles to the relative warmth of central Mexico.
This journey, repeated instinctively by generations of monarchs, continues even as monarch numbers haveplummeted due to loss of their sole larval food source — milkweed. But amid this sad news, a research team believes they have cracked the secretof the internal, genetically encoded compass that the monarchs use to determine the direction — southwest — they should fly each fall.
Exploring the history of Jewish refugees in Shanghai
From 1933 to 1941, Shanghai became a modern-day “Noah’s Ark” accepting over 18,000 Jewish refugees fleeing the Holocaust in Europe. Most were from Germany and Austria, but the refugees also included students of the famed Mir Yeshiva, the only yeshiva in occupied Europe to survive the Holocaust. In the “Designated Area for Stateless Refugees” in Ti Lan Qiao historic area of Shanghai, Jewish refugees lived harmoniously with local Chinese, overcoming numerous difficulties together. By the time the Second World War ended in 1945, most of the Jewish refugees had survived.
The Jewish Refugees in Shanghai Exhibition (1933-1941) brings together for the first time photos, personal stories, and artifacts from Shanghai Jewish Refugee Museum. The exhibition will run at Hillel at UW from April 5 through April 30, 2016. It is free and open to the public Monday to Friday, 9:00 AM – 4:00 PM. School field trips are available with advanced notice.
Study: Most tweets following fall Paris attacks defended Islam, Muslims
Researchers at the UW Information School and the Qatar Computing Research Institute analyzed 8.36 million tweets beginning seven hours after the November 13, 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris and continuing for 50 hours. Searching for words and hashtags relevant to the event, the team identified about 900,000 tweets relating to Islam and Muslims. They found that while anti-Islam and anti-Muslim sentiments arose on Twitter, most tweets in the huge stream following the Paris attacks actually condemned the negative hashtags and expressed support for Islam.
In the Galapagos, UW researchers partner to map historic climate patterns
Together with colleagues from Australian National University, University of Washington oceanographers used clues from the Galapagos Islands — a dot in the middle of the Pacific Ocean — to trace El Niño patterns and seasonal tropical rains over the past 2,000 years. Evidence shows shifts that last for centuries, suggesting these tropical climate patterns have varied more radically and for longer durations than previously believed. The study is published the week of March 14 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.