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Research

September 24, 2015

Cooled down and charged up, a giant magnet is ready for its new mission

The fully assembled magnet at Fermilab.

The Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory — or Fermilab — announced that a 680-ton superconducting magnet is secure in its new home and nearly ready for a new era of discovery in particle physics. This achievement follows the delicate, 3,200-mile transport of the magnet’s 17-ton, 50-foot-wide housing ring to the U.S. Department of Energy facility outside Chicago two years ago. The fully assembled magnet will drive high-energy particle experiments as part of an international partnership among 34 institutions, of which the University of Washington is a leading contributor.

UW and Shanghai Jiao Tong University forge international collaboration on smart cities

Photo of memorandum signing

Leaders from the University of Washington and Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU), one of China’s most prestigious public research universities, signed an agreement Wednesday to work together on “smart cities” research, teaching and collaborations in their respective electrical engineering departments.

UW team links two human brains for question-and-answer experiment

Imagine a question-and-answer game played by two people who are not in the same place and not talking to each other. Round after round, one player asks a series of questions and accurately guesses the object the other is thinking about. Sci-fi? Mind-reading superpowers? Not quite. University of Washington researchers recently used a direct brain-to-brain connection to enable pairs of participants to play a question-and-answer game by transmitting signals from one brain to the other over the Internet. The experiment,…

UW scientists are pioneering research on ‘body maps’ in babies’ brains

For more than half a century, scientists have studied how the surface of the body is mapped in parts of the brain associated with touch. That research has focused largely on “body maps” that show how certain parts of the brain correspond point-for-point with the body’s topography. These body maps have been studied extensively in adult humans and other primates, but how they develop in babies, and how they relate to other aspects of infant development, have been little understood….

August 25, 2015

Rare nautilus sighted for the first time in three decades

Nautilus pompilius swimming next to Allonautilus scrobiculatus off of Ndrova Island in Papua New Guinea.

In early August, biologist Peter Ward returned from the South Pacific with news that he encountered an old friend, one he hadn’t seen in over three decades. The University of Washington professor had seen what he considers one of the world’s rarest animals, a remote encounter that may become even more infrequent if illegal fishing practices continue. The creature in question is Allonautilus scrobiculatus, a species of nautilus that Ward and a colleague had previously discovered off of Ndrova Island…

August 24, 2015

To get girls more interested in computer science, make classrooms less ‘geeky’

Women lag behind men in the lucrative computer science and technology industries, and one of the possible contributors to this disparity is that they’re less likely to enroll in introductory computer science courses. A new study of 270 high school students shows that three times as many girls were interested in enrolling in a computer science class if the classroom was redesigned to be less “geeky” and more inviting. The results, by University of Washington researchers, reveal a practical way…

Blacks hit hardest by public-sector job losses during recession, study finds

Exterior photo of large government building in Mississippi

The public sector has long served as an equalizer in American society, a place where minority workers could find stable employment that offered advancement and a reliable path to a middle-class life. But the Great Recession wiped out many of those jobs, as tax revenues declined and anti-government sentiment added to a contraction that continued long after the recession ended in 2008. Those job cuts disproportionately hurt African-American workers and increased racial disparity in the public sector, a new study…

August 20, 2015

Hunger drives unethical acts, but only in the quest for food

Ever been so hungry that you can’t think of anything but finding food? Research from the UW Foster School of Business finds that the single-mindedness that results from hunger makes people more likely to commit unethical acts to satisfy that hunger — but less likely to lie, cheat or steal for reasons that don’t address the immediate physiological need.

Maltreated children’s brains show ‘encouraging’ ability to regulate emotions

Children who have been abused or exposed to other types of trauma typically experience more intense emotions than their peers, a byproduct of living in volatile, dangerous environments. But what if those kids could regulate their emotions? Could that better help them cope with difficult situations? Would it impact how effective therapy might be for them? A University of Washington-led team of researchers sought to address those questions by studying what happens in the brains of maltreated adolescents when they…

UW researchers model tsunami hazards on the Northwest coast

The Pacific Northwest from space.

Recent press and social media coverage have reminded residents of the Pacific Northwest that they live in a seismically active region. Stretching offshore from northern California to British Columbia, the Cascadia subduction zone could slip at any time, causing a powerful earthquake and triggering a tsunami that would impact communities along the coast. Scientists from multiple disciplines at the University of Washington and other institutions are learning more about this hazard. Dozens of UW scientists are part of the M9…

‘Scarface,’ an ancient cousin to mammals, unearthed in Africa

Photograph of the skull of Ichibengops munyamadziensis.

A team of scientists has identified a new species of “pre-mammal” based on fossils unearthed in Zambia’s Luangwa Basin in 2009. The ancient, Dachshund-sized creature lived some 255 million years ago, in a time just before the largest mass extinction in Earth’s history. Its discoverers include Christian Sidor, professor of biology at the University of Washington and curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture. Sidor and his colleagues, who announced their finding in July…

August 11, 2015

Behaviors linked to adult crime differ in abused girls and boys, study finds

Black and white photo of boy sitting alone outside a brick building.

The signs that an abused child might later commit crimes might not be obvious — that boisterous playground behavior from a third-grade boy, for example, or the 10-year-old girl who seems a little anxious or withdrawn. But new research from the University of Washington suggests that troubling behaviors exhibited by abused children can be predictors of later criminal activity, and that those indicators differ between boys and girls. The study, published Aug. 11 in the Journal of Interpersonal Violence, found…

August 6, 2015

Abusive men put female partners at greater sexual risk, study finds

Black and white photo of woman sitting alone on stairs

Abusive and controlling men are more likely to put their female partners at sexual risk, and the level of that risk escalates along with the abusive behavior, a UW study found. Published in the Journal of Sex Research in July, the study looked at patterns of risky sexual behavior among heterosexual men aged 18 to 25, including some who self-reported using abusive and/or controlling behaviors in their relationships and others who didn’t. The research found that men who were physically…

August 3, 2015

Crystals form through a variety of paths, with implications for biological, materials and environmental research

Artist's rendition of calcium carbonate crystals.

Crystals play an important role in the formation of substances from skeletons and shells to soils and semiconductor materials. But many aspects of their formation are shrouded in mystery. Scientists have long worked to understand how crystals grow into complex shapes. Now, an international group of researchers has shown how nature uses a variety of pathways to grow crystals beyond the classical, one-piece-at-a-time route. “Because crystallization is a ubiquitous phenomenon across a wide range of scientific disciplines, a shift in…

UW to invest $37 million in nanofabrication lab critical to researchers, start-ups

Photo of UW students learning microfabrication techniques in the Washington Nanofabrication Facility.

The UW is investing up to $37 million in the Washington Nanofabrication Facility, which makes things for researchers and outside companies that aren’t practical, economical or possible to fabricate at commercial foundries: inconceivably tiny devices, chips made from unconventional materials that industrial factories won’t touch and devices that probe the boundaries of our universe.

What would the world look like to someone with a bionic eye?

Various sight recovery therapies are being developed by companies around the world, offering new hope for people who are blind. But little is known about what the world will look like to patients who undergo those procedures. A new University of Washington study seeks to answer that question and offers visual simulations of what someone with restored vision might see. The study concludes that while important advancements have been made in the field, the vision provided by sight recovery technologies…

July 23, 2015

UW astronomer, students report irregularities in ‘rare, exotic’ binary system

The galaxy NGC 300

UW astronomers were recently reminded that the diplomatic axiom to “trust, but verify” also applies to scientific inquiry when they analyzed fresh data from a distant galaxy. As they reported in July in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, a puzzling stellar phenomenon may not be what other astronomers had reported. They studied a binary star system called NGC 300 X-1, nestled within a far-flung galaxy in the constellation Sculptor. Starting in 2007, scientists reported that this system…

July 22, 2015

Distinguished faculty to be inducted into Washington State Academy of Sciences

Detail from the Turing exhibit at a science museum

In recognition of their outstanding records of scientific achievement, 12 University of Washington professors will be inducted this fall into the Washington State Academy of Sciences. The professors will be honored for their “willingness to work on behalf of the academy” to bring top-quality scientific methods to research issues pertaining to Washington state. The induction ceremony will be held Sept. 17 at the organization’s eighth-annual meeting at the Seattle Museum of Flight. One UW professor joins as a member by virtue of his…