A published July 19 in the journal eLife brings new hope for HIV treatments. The research by scientists at the 天美影视传媒, the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization and the University of Cologne indicates that carefully designed cocktails of broadly neutralizing antibodies, or bNAbs, could help treat HIV while minimizing the risk of the virus evolving to 鈥渆scape鈥� treatment.

The study shows that computational approaches to selecting combinations of bNAbs based on viral genetics could help prevent viral escape, making HIV treatment more effective.

鈥淥ur study shows that leveraging genetic data can help us design more effective HIV therapies,鈥� said senior author , a UW assistant professor of physics. 鈥淥ur approach may also be useful for designing therapies against other rapidly evolving agents that cause disease, such as the Hepatitis C virus, drug-resistant bacteria or cancer tumor cells.鈥�

Antibodies are a class of proteins made by the immune system to recognize and fight pathogens. In HIV infections, bNAbs are a specific subset of antibodies that recognize multiple strains of HIV.

Broadly neutralizing antibodies offer a promising new tool to treat or potentially cure infections with rapidly evolving viruses such as HIV. But clinical trials using a single bNAb to treat HIV have shown that some viral strains may survive the treatment and lead to a rebound of viruses in the blood. Combinations of bNAbs may therefore be a more effective approach, but finding the best combinations is a challenge.

鈥淔or our study, we proposed using a computational approach to predict the effectiveness of bNAb combinations based on the HIV genetics,鈥� said lead author Colin LaMont, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization in Germany.

The team used high-throughput DNA sequencing to analyze the genomes of HIV viruses collected over 10 years from 11 untreated patients with HIV. They used these data to predict which viral strains might be able to escape treatment with different bNAbs and whether evolving to dodge bNAbs was associated with a survival cost. Next, using computational methods, they applied the knowledge gained to predict viral rebounds in three real-life trials using bNAbs. Finally, the team used their computational approach to develop a combination of bNAbs that is least likely to allow any virus to escape.

In the process, they discovered reasons why some bNAbs target broader populations of HIV than others. For example, some bNAbs, such as one called 10-1074, perform better against diverse populations of viruses because mutations that allow viruses to escape from 10-1074 also make those viruses less likely to survive. Others bNAbs, including one called PGT121, are more effective against viral populations with lower genetic diversity because mutations that enable escape are rare. Overall, the results suggested that the optimal combination includes three bNAbs: PG9, PGT151 and VRC01.

鈥淲e鈥檝e shown the combination of PG9, PGT151 and VRC01 reduces the chance of viral rebound to less than 1%,鈥� said LaMont. 鈥淚t does this by targeting three different regions of the virus鈥� protective outer wrapping, or envelope.鈥�

鈥淐ombining bNAbs, administered via intravenous infusion every few months, with current antiretroviral therapies that require daily doses could further improve long-term HIV treatment success,鈥� said Nourmohammad.

Antiretroviral therapy reduces the ability of HIV to multiply and create new variants, limiting the genetic diversity of the viral population and lowering the likelihood for emergence of bNAb escape variants. The authors say that future studies are needed to confirm the potential benefits of combining antiretroviral therapy and broadly neutralizing antibodies.

Co-authors on the study are Jakub Otwinowski at the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization and Kanika Vanshylla, Henning Gruell and Florian Klein at the University of Cologne in Germany. The research was funded by the National Science Foundation, the German Research Foundation and the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization.

For more information, contact Nourmohammad at armita@uw.edu.

Adapted from a by eLife.

Some wildlife are stuck in their ways.

Like humans, wild animals often return to the same places to eat, walk on the same paths to travel and use the same places to raise their young.

A team led by researchers at the 天美影视传媒 and the University of Wyoming has reviewed the scientific literature and found that, while this 鈥渃onsistent鈥� behavior may be beneficial when environmental conditions don鈥檛 change very fast, those benefits may not be realized in the ever-changing world dominated by humans. The research was Jan. 11 in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment.

Ecologists use the term 鈥渟ite fidelity鈥� to describe the behavior of animals that are stuck in their ways. Site fidelity is the tendency to return to previously visited locations and is common across many species, from fish and birds to mammals and insects. Think salmon returning to their natal streams to spawn, or birds returning year after year to the same nest site 鈥� site fidelity is all around us in nature.

As animals become familiar with a place, site fidelity can help them know where to find good food or hiding spots from predators, and can help them move efficiently to and from these resources. However, the authors uncovered an emerging theme in the scientific literature.

鈥淎nimals that have strong site fidelity are having a tough time adjusting to the novel landscapes that are showing up around them as a result of humans,鈥� said , an assistant professor of zoology and physiology at the University of Wyoming.

Merkle and , an assistant professor of biology at the 天美影视传媒, are co-lead authors on the paper. The authors鈥� broader message suggests that, when confronted by human disturbances or climate change, animals with strong site fidelity may not survive or reproduce as well as animals that have more flexible behaviors. When populations consist of many site-faithful individuals, this can lead to population declines.

In Wyoming, for example, large natural gas fields have been developed in several mule deer winter ranges. Although mule deer can make small shifts in their range to avoid infrastructure, they remain faithful to the same general area rather than abandoning it entirely. Their continued use of those degraded areas following development can have negative consequences. 鈥� led by co-author Hall Sawyer of Western Ecosystems Technology, Inc. in Laramie, Wyoming 鈥� researchers found a 40% decline in the mule deer population following large-scale energy development in their winter range.

Research by Abrahms and co-author , a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, illustrates how this trend is also playing out as a result of climate change. , site fidelity is a winning strategy under normal climate conditions. In typical years, site-faithful seals are better able to find food and put on fat than their more flexible counterparts. But, when abnormal climate conditions like an extreme El Ni帽o cause big changes in the ocean ecosystem, behaviorally flexible seals become the winners, and female seals with strong site fidelity are not able to gain as much valuable fat that they need to reproduce.

鈥淒espite each of us working on very different species from one another, our group came together because we all recognized that there was a clear connection between strong site fidelity and species declines,鈥� said Abrahms, who is also a researcher with the at the 天美影视传媒. 鈥淲e all thought it was important to call attention to this connection for other researchers and wildlife managers. Recognizing the types of species or behaviors that may suffer most from human-induced environmental change can help develop conservation priorities and actions.鈥�

While the authors鈥� synthesis provides a grim sketch of the future for species with strong site fidelity, they also provide an upshot.

鈥淲hile these species appear to be stuck in their ways, many of them also have some unique but subtle ways of dealing with change,鈥� said co-author , an assistant professor of fisheries, wildlife and conservation science at Oregon State University.

Every once in a while, an animal does something new, and it works. While such cases are rare, those 鈥渋nnovators鈥� can be key to persistence in changing landscapes.

鈥淲e just have to be patient and make sure populations don鈥檛 crash before such innovators come along,鈥� said Armstrong.

The authors conclude with a number of suggestions for researchers and practitioners. First, long-term monitoring is key to seeing how individuals and populations respond to change. Second, they suggest that biologists should not expect animals to always use and find the best habitats. This is especially important for restoring new habitat areas, which may not work all that well for species with strong site fidelity because they may not 鈥渇ind鈥� these restored habitats.

Because of this, the authors thirdly suggest that conservation of species with high site fidelity focus on protection and restoration of highly used sites, rather than off-site mitigation.

Additional co-author on the paper is , an associate professor of zoology and physiology at the University of Wyoming and assistant leader with the Wyoming Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Unit.

For more information, contact Abrahms at abrahms@uw.edu and Merkle at jmerkle@uwyo.edu.

Adapted from a by the University of Wyoming.

For 25 years, many forests in the western United States have been managed to protect habitat for endangered and threatened spotted owls. A central tenet of that management has been to promote and retain more than 70 percent of the forest canopy cover. However, dense levels of canopy cover leave forests prone to wildfires and can lead to large tree mortality during droughts.

In , published in the journal Forest Ecology and Management, scientists found that cover in tall trees is the key habitat requirement for spotted owl — not total canopy cover. It indicated that spotted owls largely avoid cover created by stands of shorter trees.

鈥淭his could fundamentally resolve the management problem because it would allow for reducing small tree density, through fire and thinning,鈥� said lead author , a research forest ecologist with UC Davis鈥� John Muir Institute of the Environment and the USDA Pacific Southwest Research Station. 鈥淲e鈥檝e been losing the large trees, particularly in these extreme wildfire and high drought-mortality events. This is a way to protect more large tree habitat, which is what the owls want, in a way that makes the forest more resilient to these increasing stressors that are becoming more intense with climate change.鈥�

Measuring a million acres

The previous tree canopy guidelines were largely drawn from past studies showing that spotted owls were more prevalent in forests with 70 percent or higher tree canopy cover. But those studies could not distinguish whether the presence of tall trees or high canopy cover were more important to the owl.

For this study, scientists at the 天美影视传媒 used the relatively new technology of Light Detection and Ranging imaging, or LiDAR. The tool uses laser pulses shot from an instrument mounted in an airplane to measure a forest鈥檚 canopy in detail. The study鈥檚 authors used it to measure the height and distribution of tree foliage and forest gaps across 1.2 million acres of California鈥檚 Sierra Nevada forests.

鈥淔ield-based studies of forests are expensive and time-consuming, which means that measurements are generally taken over areas a fraction of an acre,鈥� said co-author , a UW assistant research professor in the School of Environmental and Forest Sciences. 鈥淲e believe this is the largest spotted owl study yet in terms of the area of forest examined.鈥�

The authors also used a data set collected by wildlife researchers spanning more than two decades that recorded the positions of 316 owl nests in three national forests and Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks. They found the owls seek out forests with unusually high concentrations of tall trees measuring at least 105 feet tall but preferably taller than 157 feet. These tall trees also tended to be areas with high levels of canopy cover. However, the owls appeared to be indifferent to areas with dense canopy cover from medium-height trees and avoided areas with high cover in short (less than 52 feet tall) trees.

What is important for owls

鈥淭he analysis helps change the perception of what is important for owls — the canopy of tall trees rather than understory trees,鈥� said co-author and spotted owl expert , a professor emeritus with the University of Minnesota. 鈥淭he results do not mean a forest should be devoid of smaller trees because owls actually use some of those smaller trees for roosting. But it suggests a high density of small trees is likely not necessary to support spotted owls.鈥�

The study鈥檚 co-authors represent ecologists, biologists and forest management experts from the USDA Forest Service Pacific Southwest Research Station, 天美影视传媒, Stanford University, University of Wisconsin-Madison, U.S. Forest Service Region 5 Remote Sensing Laboratory, University of Minnesota, Tahoe National Forest and UC Davis.

The data analysis was funded by the USDA Forest Service. Carnegie Airborne Observatory data collection and processing were funded by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation and the U.S. National Park Service.

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This release was adapted from a UC Davis .

For more information, contact:

Van Kane, 天美影视传媒: vkane@uw.edu听辞谤听206-543-1464

Malcolm North, USDA Forest Service and UC Davis: mnorth@ucdavis.edu or 530-902-8135

Kat Kerlin, UC Davis news and media relations: kekerlin@ucdavis.edu or 530-752-7704

Two 天美影视传媒 undergraduates have won a $10,000 for gloves that can translate sign language into text or speech.

The Lemelson-MIT Student Prize is a nationwide search for the most inventive undergraduate and graduate students. This year, UW sophomores and 鈥� who are studying business administration and aeronautics and astronautics engineering, respectively 鈥� won the “Use It” undergraduate category that recognizes technology-based inventions to improve consumer devices.

Their invention, “SignAloud,” is a pair of gloves that can recognize hand gestures that correspond to words and phrases in American Sign Language. Each glove contains sensors that record hand position and movement and send data wirelessly via Bluetooth to a central computer. The computer looks at the gesture data through various sequential statistical regressions, similar to a neural network. If the data match a gesture, then the associated word or phrase is spoken through a speaker.

They honed their prototype in the UW 鈥� a campus space that offers communal tools and equipment and opportunities for students to tinker, create and innovate. For Azodi and Pryor, that meant finding a way to translate American Sign Language into a verbal form instantaneously and in an ergonomic fashion.

“Many of the sign language translation devices already out there are not practical for everyday use. Some use video input, while others have sensors that cover the user’s entire arm or body,” said Pryor, an undergraduate researcher in the in the Department of Aeronautics & Astronautics and software lead for the Husky Robotics Team.

“Our gloves are lightweight, compact and worn on the hands, but ergonomic enough to use as an everyday accessory, similar to hearing aids or contact lenses,” said Pryor.

The duo met in the dorms during their freshman year and discovered they both had a passion for invention and problem solving. Azodi has technical experience as a systems intern at NASA, a technology lead for UW Information Technology and a campus representative for Apple. His long history of volunteer work 鈥� which includes organizing dozens of blood drives and working with Seattle Union Gospel Mission, Northwest Harvest and Ethiopia Reads 鈥� gave motivation to build a device that would have real-world impact.

“Our purpose for developing these gloves was to provide an easy-to-use bridge between native speakers of American Sign Language and the rest of the world,” Azodi said. “The idea initially came out of our shared interest in invention and problem solving. But coupling it with our belief that communication is a fundamental human right, we set out to make it more accessible to a larger audience.”

http://youtu.be/4uY-MyoRq4c

The team received support and mentoring from Mike Clarke, who manages the CoMotion MakerSpace and met the students after one asked for help with some soldering equipment that turned out to be broken.

“We disassembled it and fixed it together while talking about their sign language translation project. I recognized from working and talking with Thomas and Navid that they were standouts and that the invention they made was really impressive,” Clarke said.

Pryor and Azodi’s first target audience is the deaf and hard-of-hearing community and those interested in learning and working with American Sign Language. But the gloves could also be commercialized for use in other fields, including medical technology to monitor stroke patients during rehabilitation, gesture control and enhanced dexterity in virtual reality.

Their “Use It” Student Prize is one of seven awarded by the Lemelson-MIT Program this year. Each winning team of undergraduates will receive $10,000, and each graduate student winner will receive $15,000. The winners of this year’s competition were selected from a diverse and highly competitive applicant pool of students from 77 colleges and universities across the country.

“This year’s Lemelson-MIT Student Prize winners have outstanding portfolios of inventive work,” said Lemelson-MIT Program faculty director Michael Cima. “Their passion for solving problems through invention is matched by their commitment to mentoring the next generation of inventors.” Students interested in applying for the 2017 Lemelson-MIT Student Prize can complete this .

The report provides the first citywide assessment of the changing and complex public school landscape in the U.S., enabling city leaders to assess the overall health of all of their cities鈥� schools, regardless of whether they are district- or charter-run, and to benchmark them against schools in other cities.

In “,” researchers at the 天美影视传媒鈥檚 (CRPE) went beyond test scores, using publicly available data to develop nine indicators related to school improvement and academic opportunity.

These cities reflect rapidly changing student demographics and the complexity of today鈥檚 urban public education landscape, where multiple agencies oversee public schools and enrollments are spread across a variety of school types.

Key national findings:

• Performance in most cities is flat, with limited proficiency gains and large shares of schools stuck in the bottom 5 percent of schools in their state.
• Students from low-income households and students of color face staggering academic inequities, with limited access to high-performing schools and college preparatory experiences.
• Across the 50 cities, white students were four times more likely than black students to enroll in a top-scoring elementary or middle school.
• Black students were twice as likely to receive out-of-school suspensions as white students.
• Less than 15 percent of all high school students took the ACT/SAT in 30 of the 50 cities.
• Less than 10 percent of all high school students took advanced math classes each year in 32 of the 50 cities.

Though it paints a bleak picture, the report also highlights cities that have made significant progress.

鈥淚 hope this will serve as a catalyst for city leaders to take a look at where they might be falling short and identify other cities they might learn from,鈥� said CRPE Senior Research Analyst , the report鈥檚 lead author.

For example:

• How have New Orleans and other cities managed to improve or replace so many of their lowest-performing schools?
• What is happening in cities like Memphis and Chicago 鈥� where black students participate in advanced courses and the SAT at high rates?
• Why do some cities, like Newark and Columbus, have high numbers of schools that 鈥渂eat the odds鈥� by performing better than schools with similar demographics?
• What accounts for the favorable discipline outcomes in cities like Baton Rouge, the only city in the report where black students are not suspended at higher rates than white students? Or Los Angeles, where overall suspension rates are low and Hispanic students are less likely to be suspended than white students?

鈥淭his report suggests that inequity in public education, though widespread, isn鈥檛 inevitable,鈥� said CRPE Director . 鈥淲hat should make us angry is that there is evidence that things can be better.鈥�

The analysis suggests that no single model for providing or governing schools 鈥� district operation, chartering or vouchers 鈥� has been a sure solution to address the needs of urban students. However, given the enormity of the challenges represented in this study, no city should close off any possible source of good schools or promising solutions.

Lake is calling for civic and school system leaders across the country to learn from one another and to aggressively hunt for evidence-based new solutions that enable them to do more of what works and respond quickly and meaningfully to shifting demographics and other challenges.

鈥淎merica is at a profound moment of social struggle,鈥� she said. 鈥淪chool improvement can鈥檛 wait for us to solve poverty or racial injustice. But we can create great school options now for young people that can help to mitigate these other social challenges.

“Education is a crucial lever for mayors and civic leaders to provide hope and opportunity for our most vulnerable youth. We can鈥檛 improve our cities without improving our schools.鈥�

The report features interactive charts enabling users to sort each indicator by student sub-groups and outcomes. Measuring Up: Educational Improvement and Opportunity in 50 Cities and interactive data are available at .

A complementary way robots can “sense” what is around them is through the use of small radio-frequency identification, or RFID, tags tuned to ultra-high frequencies. Inexpensive, self-adhesive tags can be stuck on objects, allowing an RFID-equipped robot to search a room for the correct tag’s signal. Once the tag is detected, the robot knows the object isn’t far away.

“But RFID doesn’t tell the robot where it is,” said , a professor at Georgia Institute of Technology. “To actually find the object and get close to it, the robot has to be more clever.”

The 天美影视传媒’s , an associate professor of electrical engineering and of computer science and engineering, teamed with Kemp and former Georgia Tech student to develop a new search algorithm that improves a robot’s ability to find and navigate to tagged objects. The team has implemented its system on a type of robot called a , allowing it to travel through a home and correctly locate different types of tagged household objects, including a medication bottle, TV remote, phone and hair brush.

The this month at the in Chicago.

The researchers equipped a PR2 robot with articulated, directionally sensitive antennas and a new algorithm that allows the robot to successfully find and navigate to an object. These antennas tend to receive stronger signals from a tag when they are closer to it and pointed more directly at it.

By moving the antennas around on its shoulders and driving around the room, the robot can figure out the direction it should move to get a stronger signal from a tag and thus become closer to a tagged object.

In essence, the robot plays the classic childhood game of “Hotter/Colder,” with the tag telling the robot when it’s getting closer to the target object.

“While we have demonstrated this technology with a few common household objects, the RFID tags can uniquely identify billions of different objects with essentially zero false positives. This is important because many objects look alike, yet must be uniquely identified,” Reynolds said.

In contrast to other approaches, the robot doesn’t explicitly estimate the 3-D location of the target object, which significantly reduces the complexity of the algorithm.

“Instead, the robot can use its mobility and our special behaviors to get close to a tag and orient toward it,” said Deyle, who conducted the study in Kemp’s lab while earning his doctoral degree.

Deyle, who currently works at Google Inc., says the research has implications for future home robots and is particularly compelling for applications like helping people take medicine.

“This could allow a robot to search for, grasp and deliver the right medication to the right person at the right time,” Deyle said. “RFID provides precise identification, so the risk of delivering the wrong medication is dramatically reduced. Creating a system that allows robots to accurately locate the correct tag is an important first step.”

This research was funded by the National Science Foundation and the Willow Garage PR2 Beta Program.

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For more information, contact Reynolds at matt.reynolds@ee.washington.edu.

This story was adapted聽from a Georgia Institute of Technology .

In 2013, 14.1 percent of Washington residents (967,282 people) were living in poverty, up from 13.5 percent (915,278 people) in 2012. Two other states, New Jersey and New Mexico, also saw significant increases in their poverty rates and number of poor residents during this period.

“This increase in the poverty rate alongside higher income inequality shows that the economic recovery has not reached many low-income Washingtonians,” said , director of the at the 天美影视传媒 and an associate professor of social work.

New Jersey and Washington were the only two states where both poverty and inequality 鈥� how inequitably income is distributed 鈥� increased.

North Dakota saw the number of poor people, but not its poverty rate, increase, while four states 鈥� Colorado, New Hampshire, Texas and Wyoming 鈥� saw their poverty rates and/or numbers decrease. In the remaining 42 states and the District of Columbia, poverty rates and the number of people in poverty were unchanged from 2012.

“The poverty rate is an indicator of how well the most vulnerable do in our economy. The overall national picture suggests that economic growth is failing to reach everyone,” Romich said.

Poverty rates vary widely across the state of Washington. For example, Kitsap and Island counties had a poverty rate of 11.3 percent, while 20.8 percent of Yakima County residents were estimated to be poor. As a whole, the Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue metropolitan area had a lower poverty rate (12.6 percent) than the state, but some cities within the metropolitan area, such as Everett and Tacoma, face higher poverty rates.

The estimated was $58,405, unchanged from the last two years. For comparison, in the nation as a whole, median household income rose in 14 states and remained unchanged in 36 states and the District of Columbia. Median income in the Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue area was $67,479, giving the Seattle area the sixth-highest median income among the nation’s 25 largest metropolitan areas.

Income increased for middle- and upper-income Washingtonians, with the largest gains going to households in the top 5 percent of the income distribution. Income for the bottom 40 percent of households was statistically unchanged. As a result, income inequality in Washington state increased between 2012 and 2013. Income inequality increased significantly nationwide and in 14 other states.

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For more information, contact Romich at romich@uw.edu or 206-372-7034.

鈥淭he amount of private support the UW received this past year is a strong testament to the commitment that our donors 鈥� and the community 鈥� have to this institution and particularly the work our faculty do to make it such an extraordinary place,鈥� said Young. 鈥淭he generosity of gifts 鈥� at every level 鈥� will have a tremendous impact on the success of our students, faculty, and programs across the entire university, programs that improve lives here in the state of Washington and around the globe.鈥�

Private fundraising does not replace the university鈥檚 core education funding from state appropriations and tuition, but significantly enhances its ability to serve students, support research and make the UW a world-class university.

Contributions of various sizes from 108,696 donors helped the UW reach the new high, with more than 40,000 of them giving $99 or less. Private and family foundations contributed $117 million to support research grants, faculty, students and programs 鈥� marking the second time UW has received more than $100 million in corporate and foundation donations.

A historic $56 million estate gift to the School of Law in September from late local philanthropist Jack MacDonald was the largest in the law school鈥檚 114-year history and the largest estate gift to come to the UW. The annual income from the trust will support faculty, programs and student scholarships in perpetuity.

Other fundraising highlights include $161,690,171 to UW Medicine, $36,455,596 to the School of Public Health, $43,138,395 to the College of Engineering, and $37,409,494 to Intercollegiate Athletics, most of which are payments on pledges made to help renovate Husky Stadium.

鈥淭his is a tremendous vote of confidence our supporters have given this university,鈥� said Connie Kravas, UW Vice President for Advancement. 鈥淭hat we received $144 million more than we ever have is beyond all expectations. And to think about the impact that every single gift will have 鈥� from helping a student pay for college or giving faculty the tools they need to prepare our students for life beyond the UW, to supporting research that can change lives for the better 鈥� it鈥檚 really awe inspiring.鈥�

Top corporate and foundation donors:

• Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
• Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation
• The Paul G. Allen Family Foundation
• Jack McDonald Estate

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CPAP use for sleep apnea hushes cancer-related聽genes

A common treatment for sleep apnea, continuous positive airway pressure, or CPAP, may be associated with the suppression of cancer-related genes, according to a new UW . The link between cancer and sleep apnea is controversial, and the current study is among the earliest to systematically examine the effects of therapeutic CPAP on gene transcription. Dr. Sina Gharib, lead author and UW assistant professor of medicine, said that the study is a “preliminary step in our understanding of how the physiological disturbances caused by sleep apnea adversely affect cellular function.” Read more on .

Ethical medicine, Lesson 1: Recognize your聽viewpoint

How do doctors learn to guide patients’ decisions when there are alternative courses of action or when dealing with polarizing medical choices, such as abortion and genetic testing? In a Q&A, Wylie Burke, a UW professor of bioethics and humanities, explains how she helps medical students and residents understand their own assumptions, expectations and biases. “Ethics is every day, not just the dramatic, should-we-pull-the-plug dilemmas. Ethics is being competent in your field; that鈥檚 a fundamental ethical obligation for a professional,” she said. Read more on .

In Vietnam, reducing harm of battery聽recycling

Many聽Vietnam聽communities make money by recycling lead from used car batteries, but at the cost of widespread lead contamination. Researchers from the UW School of Public Health with collaborators at the Vietnamese National Institute of Occupational and Environmental Health analyzed surface lead levels in nine homes and a school in a village near Hanoi. The measurements allowed the team to discover how lead spreads through a community. Now they are developing an education and training program and a health assessment. Read more on .