New research from the UW examines how three wellness Instagram influencers profited from anti-vaccine misinformation.
News releases
Cherry trees on the University of Washington’s Seattle campus are waking up and getting ready to say hello. For the 29 iconic Yoshino cherry trees in the UW Quad, peak bloom will likely begin after March 20.
Natural history museums have entered a new stage of discovery and accessibility — one where scientists around the globe and curious folks at home can access valuable museum specimens to study, learn or just be amazed. This new era follows the completion of openVertebrate, or oVert, a five-year collaborative project among 18 institutions to create 3D reconstructions of vertebrate specimens and make them freely available online. The team behind this endeavor, which includes scientists at the University of Washington and its Burke Museum of Natural History & Culture, published a summary of the project March 6 in the journal BioScience, offering a glimpse of how the data can be used to ask new questions and spur the development of innovative technology.
Alzheimer’s disease and Type 2 diabetes are part of a family of amyloid diseases that are characterized by having proteins that cluster together. UW researchers have demonstrated more similarities between the two diseases.
Sonia Fereidooni, who earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Washington, was selected for the prestigious Gates Cambridge Scholarship. Fereidooni, 22, will receive a full-cost scholarship to pursue doctoral work in Digital Humanities at the University of Cambridge, England. The highly competitive scholarship brings recognition of accomplishments and future promise. This year, 26 students from 20 institutions across the United States were selected. Fereidooni was born in Eastern Canada and raised in rural Washington. While an undergraduate at the…
New research documents the fastest-known large-scale breakage along an Antarctic ice shelf. In 2012, a 6.5-mile crack formed in about 5 and a half minutes, showing that ice shelves can effectively shatter, though the speed of breakage is reduced by seawater rushing in. These results can help improve ice-sheet models and projections for future sea level rise.
An analysis of seven safety projects across Seattle found they had no negative impact on the annual revenues of nearby businesses for three years after construction began.
The University of Washington is extending the confirmation date for newly admitted freshman undergraduate students from May 1 to June 1 for the 2024-25 academic year. June 1 is now the date when admitted students must confirm their acceptance and place a deposit to hold their spot in the fall 2024 entering class.
Three University of Washington faculty members have been awarded early-career fellowships from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The new Sloan Fellows, announced Feb. 20, are Simon S. Du and Adriana Schulz, both assistant professors in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering, and Alexandra Velian, an assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry in the College of Arts & Sciences.
In an experiment akin to stop-motion photography, an international team co-led by University of Washington scientists has isolated the energetic movement of an electron in a sample of liquid water — while “freezing” the motion of the much larger atom it orbits.
While visiting Seattle five years ago for a wedding, Chad Westra toured the University of Washington. He made his way to the third floor of Gowen Hall and discovered the Tateuchi East Asian Library with its sculpted, curved ceiling and bright, big windows. The library was “enchanting.”
Mike Teodorescu, a University of Washington assistant professor in the Information School, proposes that private enterprise standards for fairer machine learning systems would inform governmental regulation.
Scientists at the University of Washington have discovered that nighttime air pollution — coming primarily from car exhaust and power plant emissions — is responsible for a major drop in nighttime pollinator activity. Nitrate radicals (NO3) in the air degrade the scent chemicals released by a common wildflower, drastically reducing the scent-based cues that its chief pollinators rely on to locate the flower. The findings, published Feb. 9 in Science, are the first to show how nighttime pollution creates a chain of chemical reactions that degrades scent cues, leaving flowers undetectable by smell. The researchers also determined that pollution likely has worldwide impacts on pollination.
Robots in warehouses and even around our houses struggle to identify and pick up objects if they are too close together, or if a space is cluttered. This is because robots lack what psychologists call “object unity,” or our ability to identify things even when we can’t see all of them. Researchers at the University of Washington have developed a way to teach robots this skill.
University of Washington researchers introduced the Thermal Earring, a wireless wearable that continuously monitors a user’s earlobe temperature. Potential applications include tracking signs of ovulation, stress, eating and exercise. The smart earring prototype is about the size and weight of a small paperclip and has a 28-day battery life.
New research led by the UW demonstrates a new class of hydrogels that can form not just outside cells, but also inside of them. These hydrogels exhibited similar mechanical properties both inside and outside of cells, providing researchers with a new tool to group proteins together inside of cells.
The University of Washington community is mourning the passing of Nancy Bell Evans – a supporter of education, health care, and arts and culture, and someone who brought energy, grace, and passion to public and nonprofit service.
Field observations from an unusual lake show that in environments known as “soda lakes” phosphate can concentrate at the very high levels needed for the basic molecules of life to emerge. A shallow, salty lake in western Canada gives new support to Charles Darwin’s idea that life could have emerged in a “warm little pond.”
University of Washington development partner Greystar submitted permit numbers paperwork this week for a multiphase plan to invest in some of the University’s existing housing in the neighborhoods east of the main Seattle campus to increase housing options, affordability for its students, faculty, and families, and improve student housing quality.
President Ana Mari Cauce and Provost Tricia Serio announced an organizational and leadership restructuring in the areas of finance, planning and budgeting aimed at improving the effectiveness and efficiency of these areas’ service to the University community. The changes, which take effect Tuesday, Jan. 16, come after an external review determined a unified organization will better serve faculty and academic personnel, as well as staff and students.
When Cynthia “Cindy” Dougherty has a difficult or frustrating day, she jogs around the University of Washington.
Researchers led by Jiun-Haw Chu, a University of Washington associate professor of physics, and Philip Ryan, a physicist at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory, have found a superconducting material that is uniquely sensitive to outside stimuli, enabling the superconducting properties to be enhanced or suppressed at will. This discovery could enable new opportunities for switchable, energy-efficient superconducting circuits.
UW researchers found that people who live within 2 miles of an Amazon last-mile delivery station are exposed to more delivery-related air pollution despite ordering fewer packages.
Around Anchorage, communications among the critically endangered population of Cook Inlet beluga whales may be masked by ship noise in their core critical habitat, accordingly to the first repertoire of their calls.
The University of Washington has again prevailed on all claims brought by Alexandria Real Estate (ARE) following the UW’s selection of another developer for a new building that will house important clean-energy and medical innovation research, along with other tenants. This time, the clear and concise ruling came from the Washington State Court of Appeals, Division II, confirming Thurston County Superior Judge Carol Murphy’s dismissal of ARE’s three claims — bringing apparent closure to ARE’s nearly three-year effort to delay progress on the project.
With several university athletic programs around the country — including the University of Washington — announcing moves to new conferences that will likely increase travel for student-athletes, a group of sleep and circadian scientists and physicians have published a white paper describing the significance of repeated, chronic jet lag on student-athlete health and performance — both in academics and in sports, and suggesting strategies to reduce the consequences of travel across time zones.
University of Washington researchers found that when prompted to make pictures of “a person,” the AI image generator over-represented light-skinned men, failed to equitably represent Indigenous peoples and sexualized images of certain women of color.
Following a national search, Dr. Timothy H. Dellit has been appointed to lead UW Medicine and the University of Washington School of Medicine, UW President Ana Mari Cauce and Provost Tricia Serio announced today.
Currently, more than half of all cervical cancers diagnosed in the United States are in people who are overdue for screening or have never been screened. In a new study, researchers report that mailing HPV test kits significantly increased cervical cancer screening rates.
A new study from the UW found that unfiltered air from rush-hour traffic significantly increased passengers’ blood pressure, both while in the car and up to 24 hours later.
A project in the UW College of Built Environments, led by researcher Judy Bowes, is examining how building architecture contributes to bird collisions, and the ways bird-safe glass and other designs can help address the problem.
A team led by researchers at the University of Washington developed 11 actions a robotic arm can make to pick up nearly any food attainable by fork. This allows the system to learn to pick up new foods during one meal.
A team at the University of Washington has created an interactive dashboard called WhaleVis, which lets users map data on global whale catches and whaling routes from 1880 to 1986. Scientists can compare this historical data and its trends with current information to better understand whale populations over time.
Ahead of the Dec. 25 release of “The Boys in the Boat,” the University of Washington — joined by The Seattle Times, Microsoft and additional community partners — is launching a six-week “Pull Together” campaign to support young people and celebrate the civic spirit of our city and region.
A team led by researchers at the University of Washington has developed deep-learning algorithms that let users pick which sounds filter through their headphones in real time. Either through voice commands or a smartphone app, headphone wearers can select which sounds they want to include from 20 classes, such as sirens, baby cries, speech, vacuum cleaners and bird chirps.
Seven researchers at the University of Washington conducted a three-month autoethnographic study — drawing on their own experiences as people with and without disabilities — to test AI tools’ utility for accessibility. Though researchers found cases in which the tools were helpful, they also found significant problems.
Late last academic year, concerns were reported about a faculty hiring process in the University of Washington’s Department of Psychology. A review was requested by Dianne Harris, Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences, after she learned of these potential issues. The review was completed in September and indicates that race was inappropriately considered and used in a way that is inconsistent with University policy in the hiring process for an assistant professor position in the department.
A team led by researchers at the University of Washington has created A11yBoard for Google Slides, a browser extension and phone or tablet app that allows blind users to navigate through complex slide layouts, objects, images and text.
The University of Washington’s newest freshman class is one of the most diverse in the school’s 162-year history, and UW Bothell and UW Tacoma are welcoming their largest incoming classes.
The University of Washington’s animal facilities on the Seattle campus underwent a routine, unannounced inspection by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) between Sept. 12 and 14. The inspection identified four non-compliant items, all of which had previously been self-reported by the UW and rectified before the inspection took place.