January 17, 2018
This week in the arts, watch dancers tell a story of resilience in their final performance of an exciting trilogy, become enchanted by the UW Symphony at Benaroya Hall, and see undergraduate students perform challenging works from the piano and strings repertoire.
A small group of fishes — possibly the world’s cleverest carnivorous grazers — feeds on the scales of other fish in the tropics. A team led by biologists at the University of Washington’s Friday Harbor Laboratories is trying to understand these scale-feeding fish and how this odd diet influences their body evolution and behavior.
January 16, 2018
Get interrupted at work much? Making a quick plan for returning to and completing the task you’re leaving will help you focus better on the interrupting work, according to new research from the University of Washington.
Drug treatments can save lives, but sometimes they also carry unintended costs. After all, the same therapeutics that target pathogens and tumors can also harm healthy cells. To reduce this collateral damage, scientists have long sought specificity in drug delivery systems: A package that can encase a therapeutic and will not disgorge its toxic cargo until it reaches the site of treatment — be it a tumor, a diseased organ or a site of infection. In a paper published Jan….
Touch is the first of the five senses to develop, yet scientists know far less about the baby’s brain response to touch than to, say, the sight of mom’s face, or the sound of her voice. Now, through the use of safe, new brain imaging techniques, University of Washington researchers provide one of the first looks inside the infant’s brain to show where the sense of touch is processed — not just when a baby feels a touch to…
January 11, 2018
Can the president single-handedly toss out environmental rules designed to combat global warming? Force states like Washington to help enforce federal immigration laws? Fire Robert Mueller? No, no, and not directly, say Lisa Manheim and Kathryn Watts, professors of law at the University of Washington, in a new book. The answers, of course, are more complicated than a word or two. But every news cycle seems to raise a variation of the same question: Can he do that? Manheim and Watts,…
January 10, 2018
This week in the arts, experience a modern portrayal of a classic Greek Tragedy, see the annual Faculty Dance Concert featuring new collaborations with students and guest artists, hear an internationally renowned classical vocalist showcase her work with UW students, and watch dancers tell a story of resilience in the first performance of an exciting trilogy.
January 9, 2018
University of Washington President Ana Mari Cauce today named Mark Richards provost and executive vice president for academic affairs. The appointment is effective July 1, 2018. Richards, a geophysicist, is a professor of Earth and planetary science at the University of California, Berkeley, where he previously served as dean of mathematical and physical sciences from 2002 to 2014, and simultaneously as executive dean of the College of Letters and Science from 2006 to 2014. “Our University is gaining an outstanding…
The purpose of the hearing is to allow all interested persons an opportunity to present their views, either orally or in writing, on the proposed amendments to WAC 478-276-100, “Governing Access to Public Records, Copying.”
January 8, 2018
The UW Reality Lab is launching with $6 million from Facebook, Google, and Huawei to accelerate innovation in augmented and virtual reality and educate the next generation of researchers and practitioners.
January 5, 2018
The University of Washington is ranked fifth among more than 400 U.S. colleges and universities for social science research funding, according to a new report. The Consortium of Social Science Association’s 2018 College and University Rankings for Federal Social and Behavioral Science R&D was released this week. The UW, with $38.6 million in social science funding in fiscal 2016 (the year on which the report was based), has moved up into the top five. Last year, it was…
January 4, 2018
Jeff Hou, UW professor of landscape architecture, discusses the new book he co-edited with Sabine Knierbein, “City Unsilenced: Urban Resistance and Public Space in the Age of Shrinking Democracy.”
January 3, 2018
UW astronomers Brett Morris and James Davenport assisted in new research on “Tabby’s Star,” named for Louisiana State University astronomer Tabetha Boyajian.
This week in the arts, listen to a duo performance of piano professors, hear the internationally acclaimed Takács String Quartet, promising young pianist Scott Cuellar, immerse yourself in the post-apocalyptic world of Trojan Women: A Love Story, and attend a performance by Grammy and Emmy Award Winning violinist Itzhak Perlman.
When “American Sabor” opened at what was then the Experience Music Project a decade ago, its University of Washington creators saw it as a chance to celebrate the extensive Latino contribution to popular music. It was a product of years of interviews and research, and an often challenging exercise in collaboration and presentation. But that was just the beginning for Marisol Berríos-Miranda and Shannon Dudley, both ethnomusicologists in the UW School of Music, and Michelle Habell-Pallán, a professor in…
An essay by Laurie Marhoefer, UW assistant professor of history, has been named the most memorable of the year 2017 by the editors and readers of The Conversation US.
December 22, 2017
The University of Washington is ranked No. 7 on Kiplinger’s 300 Best College Values for 2018 among public universities, released Dec. 22.
December 21, 2017
Now serving its sixth cohort of students, the Washington State Opportunity Scholarship has helped more than 8,400 students attend the state’s universities and colleges. The UW has the largest number of scholarship recipients — 1,679 across all three campuses — and has seen more than 1,300 scholars graduate.
For African-American students, data, alongside societal attitudes and stereotypes, often present a negative picture: a wide academic achievement gap separating them from their white peers. Higher rates of discipline and absenteeism. Discrimination by other students, teachers and the larger community. And just last summer, a study indicated that black girls, from an early age, are perceived as more aggressive and sexual – less innocent – than white girls. But what if, a University of Washington education professor reasoned,…
December 20, 2017
In all corners of the University of Washington, staff, faculty and students are working hard to improve the lives of people around the world. This year undoubtedly embodied that passion and drive to serve the public good.
December 19, 2017
Here’s a quick look at some gift-worthy books and music created by UW talents in the last year or so — and a reminder of some perennial favorites.
December 18, 2017
A new partnership between the UW and Paul G. Allen Philanthropies will use a network of robots to observe conditions beneath a floating Antarctic ice shelf.
Recognizing that many large dams are here to stay, a University of Washington team is investigating an emerging solution to help achieve freshwater conservation goals by re-envisioning the ways in which water is released by dams.
December 14, 2017
Researchers from the University of Washington, Chapman University and University of Guelph have published new research showing how hagfishes survive an initial attack from predators before they release large volumes of slime to defend themselves.
December 13, 2017
A new NSF-funded project will use findings in the Mekong River basin as an example of how three critical issues — feeding people, generating energy and maintaining functioning ecosystems — can be addressed thoughtfully and progressively in the developing world.
The University of Washington celebrated two major fundraising and construction milestones on Wednesday for the Bill & Melinda Gates Center for Computer Science & Engineering, which will allow the UW to double its annual computer science and engineering degree production.
December 11, 2017
New faculty member Shuyi Chen answers some questions about hurricane science, hurricane forecasting and the 2017 storm season.
Bloomberg News columnist Noah Smith has listed a paper by UW economist Fabio Ghironi as among “must-read” papers and books on economics in the year 2017.
December 7, 2017
UW is among the first schools to announce public commitments through the American Talent Initiative. The UW aims to graduate an additional 125 low- to low-middle-income students per cohort by 2025.
The Anthropocene epoch — the proposed name for this time of significant human effect on the planet and its systems — represents a new context in which to study literature. A new book of essays co-edited by Jesse Oak Taylor, UW associate professor of English, argues that literary studies, in turn, also can help us better understand the Anthropocene.
The University of Washington, Arizona State University and other collaborators have proposed a method in the Dec. 8 issue of Science that allows hydroelectric dam operators to generate power in ways that protect — and possibly improve — food supplies and businesses throughout the Mekong river basin in Southeast Asia.
December 6, 2017
Alongside the political polarization that has permeated seemingly every issue in American life, there is a similar dichotomy in religion.On one side are those who suggest religion is dying, that’s it’s irrelevant, a force for ill and oppression, explains University of Washington sociology professor Steve Pfaff. On the other are those who say religion is under attack, that the quest for freedom and diversity has sullied the culture and undermined the integrity of faith. And into this debate Pfaff decided…
December 5, 2017
Scientists at the University of Washington show for the first time that the complex distribution of molecules within a membrane of a living yeast cell arises through demixing.
The University of Washington has launched a new institute aimed at accelerating research at the nanoscale: the Institute for Nano-Engineered Systems, or NanoES. The institute will pursue impactful advancements in a variety of disciplines — including energy, materials science, computation and medicine. Yet these advancements will be at a technological scale a thousand times smaller than the width of a human hair.
An interdisciplinary team is using a covert sound-based approach, worthy of an avian CSI, to study the link between crows’ calls and their behavior.
UW engineers have developed the first 3-D printed plastic objects that can connect to other devices via WiFi without using any electronics, including a laundry bottle that can detect when soap is running low and automatically order more.
December 3, 2017
Kim Nasmyth, a professor of biochemistry at the University of Oxford and former postdoctoral researcher at the University of Washington, is one of five recipients of the 2018 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences. Nasmyth and other prize recipients were honored by the Breakthrough Prize Foundation at a ceremony December 3 at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California.
December 1, 2017
Three University of Washington astrobiologists will discuss their research and introduce the new 3-D IMAX movie “The Search for Life in Space” at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 6, in the PACCAR Theater of the Pacific Science Center.
November 30, 2017
Ana Gómez-Bravo created a class about Spanish food and culture a few years ago as a way to teach the language, but found no appropriate textbook for the material — so she wrote one herself. Her book “Comida y cultura en el mundo hispánico” — “Food and Culture in the Hispanic World” — was published in October by Equinox Publishing.
A cosmic photobomb found as a background object in images of the nearby Andromeda galaxy has revealed what could be the most tightly coupled pair of supermassive black holes ever seen.