A first-of-its-kind center housed at the 天美影视传媒 has received a from the National Science Foundation.

The offers a way for researchers to get their hands on state-of-the-art equipment to study the effects of natural disasters, such as hurricanes, wildfires and earthquakes. This facility contains more than 100 unique instruments, including a variety of drones and a remote-controlled boat that uses sonar to scan what鈥檚 happening underwater.

“Before RAPID, it was ad hoc, DIY or sometimes BYO (bring your own) equipment to a reconnaissance mission,” said facility director , a UW professor in the civil and environmental engineering department. “The few people who had reconnaissance instruments, such as lidar, tended to be very overburdened in the sense that they were asked to participate in numerous missions. It didn’t leave space and room for others to join.”

Since opening its doors in 2018, the RAPID Facility has transformed how data is gathered, processed and saved in the aftermath of natural disasters. So far, this center has supported 80 field missions around the world, including helping investigate and using a to develop new methods to assess the structural integrity of buildings after an earthquake.

Use the interactive visualization below to explore all 80 of the RAPID Facility’s deployments:

The NSF renewal grant provides this center with four additional years of funding and a 30% budget increase to advance the natural hazards reconnaissance field through new initiatives.

The RAPID Facility is part of a larger network of experimental research facilities at seven universities across the country. These centers were founded in 2016 through the NSF’s program.

“We have everything we need to start making even more significant breakthroughs in years to come,” Wartman said. “I am very optimistic about what will come from the RAPID. Even in the first few months of the renewal, I’ve seen exciting uses of data and innovations in reconnaissance.”

For more information, contact RAPID Facility staff at uwrapid@uw.edu.

4/1/22 update: Traffic congestion on campus is significant during cherry blossoms season and parking is limited. Please take light rail to the University District Station or park in the or .

The 29 cherry trees in the Quad usually reach peak bloom the third week of March, said UW arborist , and this year is on track to meet that timing. Warmer temperatures and mild weather all factor into when the cherry trees start to blossom and when they reach peak bloom.

Virtual viewing options are also available, including UW Video鈥檚 live webcam overlooking the Quad, a聽virtual tour聽with photos from campus and tweets from . Hear Shores explain how a cherry tree functions in this interactive 鈥渁natomy of a cherry tree鈥� illustration:

Once the trees reach peak bloom 鈥� when at least 70% of the blossoms have emerged 鈥� cooler temperatures, drier weather and lighter winds will keep the blossoms on the trees longer. The university asks that visitors not climb the trees or shake their branches, as this can cause damage.

Dozens of varieties of blossoming cherry and plum trees can be found across the Seattle area, with blooms visible from early February until, for some species, May. Petal colors range from white to light rose to dark pink, and cherry trees 鈥� unlike plums 鈥� have distinct horizontal-line patterns on their bark called . These help the trees 鈥渆xhale鈥� or release carbon dioxide and water.

Plum trees, which often are mistaken for cherry trees, bloom earlier than most cherries and don鈥檛 have lenticels on their bark.

The Seattle Department of Transportation maintains this of trees across the city. To see cherry trees in your neighborhood, click on 鈥淓xplore street trees鈥� in the top navigation bar, then click on 鈥渢rees by type鈥� and look for trees with the 鈥淧runus鈥� genus (cherry and plum trees).

For more information on the UW campus cherry blossoms, contact Michelle Ma at mcma@uw.edu.

But new research from the 天美影视传媒, believed to be one of the first large-scale assessments of medical crowdfunding in the U.S., shows that people in states with higher medical debt and lower rates of insurance coverage are more likely to try to raise money but less likely to succeed.

This so-called safety net, researchers point out, isn鈥檛 much of one at all.

鈥淲e tend to think of crowdfunding as something that can help out anyone in hard times, but this data really indicates that where people need the most help paying for health care, crowdfunding provides the least help,鈥� said , associate professor of nursing and health studies at UW Bothell.

The , published Feb. 3 in the American Journal of Public Health, collected data from more than 437,000 GoFundMe campaigns over a five-year period and analyzed, at the county and state level, crowdfunding use and outcomes. With the help of Census data and other information, Kenworthy and UW co-author , a graduate student in sociology, assessed how many campaigns were started, and how much money was raised, in areas with more or less income, medical debt and health insurance coverage.

The UW researchers have explored various angles of crowdfunding 鈥� who uses it, where they live and how successful their campaigns are. Last year, Igra and Kenworthy focused on crowdfunding during the first several months of the COVID-19 pandemic and found that聽 campaigns were more successful in wealthier and more educated communities, a trend they attributed not just to financial resources available in such communities, but also to potentially wider 鈥� and wealthier 鈥� social networks. Igra and Kenworthy also found that 90% of campaigns, regardless of location, failed to meet their goals.

In examining 2020 data 鈥� the last full year available 鈥� researchers said one statistic stood out: 33.8% of campaigns were unfunded. The percentage varied so much from that of previous years, when the portion ranged from zero to 4%, that researchers believe the pandemic alone wasn鈥檛 the cause. Rather, it appears more successful campaigns remain on the website longer, and thus previous years鈥� data may over-represent successful campaigns. In addition, unfunded campaigns appear to be removed from the site, either by the campaign creators or the website moderators, after one year, the researchers said.

鈥淏ecause the campaigns people see on social networks are almost always the small subset that are shared widely, the public may have the impression that crowdfunding is more likely to be successful than it really is,鈥� Igra said.

Greater transparency from all crowdfunding companies would allow more research and policymaking that could help address the very needs that crowdfunding purports to address, the researchers say. While thousands of people turn to crowdfunding to pay their medical bills, the study鈥檚 findings point to a more equitable and comprehensive solution: better health insurance coverage and social assistance programs.

鈥淩elying on marketplace-based solutions only deepens already steep health inequalities. This research underscores the need for broader safety net programs that provide help to all those who need it,鈥� Kenworthy said.

This study was funded by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, through the UW Center for Studies in Demography & Ecology.

For more information, contact Igra at igra@uw.edu or Kenworthy at njk8@uw.edu.

Air pollution is linked to multiple health conditions, including heart disease, cancer and cognitive decline. These effects vary depending on the source of air pollution. And not everyone is equally exposed to poor air quality.

天美影视传媒 researchers investigated disparities in exposure to six major air pollutants in 1990, 2000 and 2010 by comparing models of air pollution levels to census data 鈥� including where people live, their racial/ethnic background and their income status.

The team showed that while overall pollutant concentrations have decreased since 1990, people of color are still more likely to be exposed to all six pollutants than white people, regardless of income level, across the continental United States.

The researchers Dec. 15 in Environmental Health Perspectives.

“This is the first time anyone has looked comprehensively at all these main pollutants and watched how they vary over time and space,” said senior author , UW professor of civil and environmental engineering. “This paper is a chance to recognize that, while every community is unique, there are some factors that play out over and over again consistently across our country. If we go state by state, there’s no place where there are no environmental justice concerns.”

Previously the researchers showed that Americans of color were exposed to higher concentrations of (NO2), an outdoor pollutant from cars and trucks, in two census years: 2000 and 2010.

Now the team has expanded that research to look at five additional pollutants that are harmful to our health: (CO), (O3), (SO2) and 鈥� both larger particles, such as dust or pollen (PM10), and smaller particles, such as molecules from vehicle exhaust (PM2.5). For all pollutants except for PM2.5, the researchers also expanded the census years studied to include 1990, in which the Clean Air Act .

“There have been so many improvements,” said lead author , UW doctoral student in civil and environmental engineering. “But we still see these disparities persist, even after two decades.”

To get air pollution data for each year, the researchers used models that incorporate pollution estimates from multiple sources, including data from satellites and Environmental Protection Agency monitoring stations. These levels were then mapped onto census demographic groups 鈥� including four race/ethnicity categories (Black, Asian, Hispanic and white) and income 鈥� to determine estimated exposure to each pollutant for each group across states in the contiguous U.S. and Washington, D.C.

For each location, the team calculated both absolute and relative disparities. For absolute disparities, the researchers subtracted pollution exposures for each group from the average exposure for the state. The team determined relative disparities by dividing the absolute disparity by the average exposure across the country.

Grant number: R835873

Online advertisements are found frequently splashed across news websites. Clicking on these banners or links provides the news site with revenue. But these ads also often use manipulative techniques, researchers say.

天美影视传媒 researchers were curious about what types of political ads people saw during the 2020 presidential election. The team looked at more than 1 million ads from almost 750 news sites between September 2020 and January 2021. Of those ads, almost 56,000 had political content.

Political ads used multiple tactics that concerned the researchers, including posing as a poll to collect people’s personal information or having headlines that might affect web surfers’ views of candidates.

The researchers Nov. 3 at the ACM Internet Measurement Conference 2021.

“The election is a time when people are getting a lot of information, and our hope is that they are processing it to make informed decisions toward the democratic process. These ads make up part of the information ecosystem that is reaching people, so problematic ads could be especially dangerous during the election season,” said senior author , UW associate professor in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering.

The team wondered if or how ads would take advantage of the political climate to prey on people’s emotions and get people to click.

“We were well positioned to study this phenomenon because of our previous research on misleading information and manipulative techniques in online ads,” said , UW professor in the Allen School. “Six weeks leading up to the election, we said, ‘There are going to be interesting ads, and we have the infrastructure to capture them. Let’s go get them. This is a unique and historic opportunity.'”

The researchers created a list of news websites that spanned the political spectrum and then used a to visit each site every day. The crawler scrolled through the sites and took screenshots of each ad before clicking on the ad to collect the URL and the content of the landing page.

The team wanted to make sure to get a broad range of ads, because someone based at the UW might see a different set of ads than someone in a different location.

The researchers used natural language processing to classify ads as political or non-political. Then the team went through the political ads manually to further categorize them, such as by party affiliation, who paid for the ad or what types of tactics the ad used.

“We saw these fake poll ads that were harvesting personal information, like email addresses, and trying to prey on people who wanted to be politically involved. These ads would then use that information to send spam, malware or just general email newsletters,” said co-author , UW doctoral student in the Allen School. “There were so many fake buttons in these ads, asking people to accept or decline, or vote yes or no. These things are clearly intended to lead you to give up your personal data.”

Ads that appeared to be polls were more likely to be used by conservative-leaning groups, such as conservative news outlets and nonprofit political organizations. These ads were also more likely to be featured on conservative-leaning websites.

The most popular type of political ad was click-bait news articles that often mentioned top politicians in sensationalist headlines, but the articles themselves contained little substantial information. The team observed more than 29,000 of these ads, and the crawlers often encountered the same ad multiple times. Similar to the fake poll ads, these were also more likely to appear on right-leaning sites.

“One example was a headline that said, ‘There’s something fishy in Biden’s speeches,'” said Roesner, who is also the co-director of the . “I worry that these articles are contributing to a set of evidence that people have amassed in their minds. People probably won’t remember later where they saw this information. They probably didn’t even click on it, but it’s still shaping their view of a candidate.”

The researchers were surprised and relieved, however, to find a lack of ads containing explicit misinformation about how and where to vote, or who won the election.

“To their credit, I think the ad platforms are catching some misinformation,” Zeng said. “What’s getting through are ads that are exploiting the gray areas in content and moderation policies, things that seem deceptive but play to the letter of the law.”

The world of online ads is so complicated, the researchers said, that it’s hard to pinpoint exactly why or how certain ads appear on specific sites or are viewed by specific viewers.

“Certain ads get shown in certain places because the system decided that those would be the most lucrative ads in those spots,” Roesner said. “It’s not necessarily that someone is sitting there doing this on purpose, but the impact is still the same 鈥斅� people who are the most vulnerable to certain techniques and certain content are the ones who will see it more.”

To protect computer users from problematic ads, the researchers suggest web surfers should be careful about taking content at face value, especially if it seems sensational. People can also limit how many ads they see by getting an ad blocker.

, a UW undergraduate student studying computer science is also a co-author on this paper. This research was funded by the National Science Foundation, the , and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

For more information, contact badads@cs.washington.edu.

Grant number: CNS-2041894

The UW-led study set out to assess the effect of culturally tailored countermarketing messages on drink choices, similar to stark anti-smoking campaigns, and involved more than 1,600 Latinx parents who participated by joining Facebook groups. Study authors focused on this demographic because Latinx children have a , and the beverage industry , said Dr. , lead author and clinical professor of health systems and population health in the UW School of Public Health.

鈥淭he negative health effects associated with the consumption of sugary drinks 鈥� such as tooth decay or, later in life, diabetes 鈥� are disproportionately affecting this community,鈥� Krieger said. 鈥淲e want these and other kids to be able to avoid developing strong taste preferences for a product that鈥檚 ultimately going to harm them.鈥�

To design their study, , researchers consulted focus groups involving dozens of Latinx parents from across the country to get their perceptions of how marketing works, how they think about what they are buying for their children, as well as how to culturally tailor messages that would resonate in their community.

鈥淭hey know that targeted marketing happens all the time in the digital era, but what really got them was the fact that they were given deceptive information that they felt was leading them to make unhealthy choices on behalf of their kids,鈥� Krieger said.

That industry marketing, Krieger added, led parents to believe fruit drinks are healthy beverages by creating a 鈥渉alo of health鈥� around the product. Ads, labels, and even online games and cartoons often contain claims about nutrients such as vitamin C and images of healthy kids drinking their products while participating in sports.

With information from those focus groups and the aid of a Latinx marketing firm, the researchers created countermarketing graphics and messages in Spanish and English designed to elicit outrage, fear of the harmful effects on children and other negative emotions. The messages called out specific brands and images, along with describing the adverse effects of these products.

鈥淲e looked at anti-tobacco messages and the words and types of images they used,鈥� Krieger said. 鈥淲e wanted messages that would appeal to folks on an emotional level as well as a cognitive one, because that鈥檚 what research shows drives people to make choices.鈥�

The researchers then enrolled 1,628 Latinx parents 鈥� predominantly female and from lower-income households 鈥� to participate in Facebook groups for six weeks to study the impact of countermessages on those parents鈥� beverage choices and fruit drink perceptions.

Sample messages

Message text: Your body turns sugar you drink into fat which can result in diabetes.

Message text: WARNING: Calling it natural does not make it good for your kids.

Message text: Activate your kid鈥檚 health by giving them thirst quenching water instead of sugary fruit drinks. The choice is clear.

The study divided parents into three groups. The two 鈥渋ntervention鈥� groups were those who received fruit drink countermessages only, and those receiving a combination of countermessages plus water promotion messages. The third group, the control group, saw safety messages about car seats. Using a simulated online store that offered fruit drinks, soda, water, milk or 100% fruit juice, parents from all three groups chose a drink for their kids and received money they could use to buy the drink in a real store.

The researchers found that parents who saw countermarketing messages alone or combined with pro-water messages were less likely to buy a fruit drink and more likely to buy water. Specifically, parents in the fruit-drink countermarketing group decreased their virtual purchases of these drinks by 31% compared to the control group, and by 43% by the group receiving the combined messages. Parents in the combination group did choose water more often than the first group.

Based on those choices, the authors estimated that children in the combination group consumed 22% less added sugar than the average for children two- to five-years-old. In exit surveys, the authors wrote, the parents in both intervention groups were also 鈥渟ignificantly鈥� less likely to trust fruit drink brands.

The researchers said the study is the first to 鈥渄emonstrate the efficacy of countermessages delivered solely via social media as well as the first to specifically target sweetened beverage consumption among young children.鈥� As a result of this study, the researchers have also created for use by anyone to campaign against fruit drink purchases for children.

As executive director of and with an extensive background in the development and evaluation of community-based chronic disease prevention programs, including a stint with Public Health-Seattle & King County, Krieger hopes the study will be used widely to curb consumption of sugary fruit drinks.

鈥淔or me, there鈥檚 no point in doing a study if it is not going to be applied to changing things in the world, so we鈥檝e formed an advisory group and created the toolkit and a plan to reach out to national organizations and encourage them to use the messages,鈥� Krieger said.

Co-authors include Taehoon Kwon, who worked on the study while a UW graduate student in economics; Rudy Ruiz, of Interlex, a multicultural advocacy marketing agency聽in San Antonio; , a clinical instructor in the UW School of Public Health; and Jiali Yan and Christina Roberto at the University of Pennsylvania. This research was funded by the Healthy Eating Research Program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation; and the Arcora Foundation, the foundation of Delta Dental of Washington.

###

For more information, contact Dr. Krieger at jwkrieg@uw.edu.

When a massive wildfire tears through a landscape, what happens to the animals?

While many animals have adapted to live with wildfires of the past 鈥� which were smaller, more frequent and kept ecosystems in balance across the West 鈥� it鈥檚 unclear to scientists how animals are coping with today鈥檚 unprecedented megafires. More than a century of fire suppression coupled with climate change has produced wildfires that are now bigger and more severe than before.

In a rare stroke of luck, researchers from the 天美影视传媒, the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of California, Santa Barbara, were able to track a group of black-tailed deer during and after California鈥檚 third-largest wildfire, the 2018 . The megafire, which torched more than 450,000 acres in northern California, burned across half of an established study site, making it possible to record the movements and feeding patterns of deer before, during and after the fire. The were published Oct. 28 in the journal Ecology and Evolution.

鈥淲e don’t have much information on what animals do while the flames are burning, or in the immediate days that follow after wildfires,鈥� said co-lead author , a postdoctoral researcher at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis at UC Santa Barbara. 鈥淚t was kind of a happy accident that we were able to see what these animals were doing during the wildfire and right after, when it was still just a desolate landscape.鈥�

The researchers were surprised by what they learned. Of the 18 deer studied, all survived. Deer that had to flee the flames returned home, despite some areas of the landscape being completely burned and void of vegetation to eat. Most of the deer returned home within hours of the fire, while trees were still smoldering.

Having access to this location information 鈥� from previously placed wildlife cameras and GPS collars 鈥� is rare when studying how animals respond to extreme and unpredictable events, like megafires.

鈥淭here are very few studies that aim to understand the short-term, immediate responses of animals to wildfires. When a fire sweeps through and dramatically changes the landscape, its impact in those initial days is undervalued and absent in the published literature,鈥� said co-lead author , a doctoral student at the UW School of Environmental and Forest Sciences.

The study took place northwest of Sacramento at the University of California鈥檚 , where the researchers were studying the movements of black-tailed deer. Before the Mendocino Complex Fire started, the team had placed tracking collars on 18 deer and positioned several dozen motioned-activated wildlife cameras across the area.

On July 27, 2018, the research team based in Hopland saw smoke nearby. Within hours, they were told to leave immediately and not return to the property, as large flames swept through. In total, a little over half of the research center鈥檚 land was burned by the Mendocino Complex Fire that was, at the time, California鈥檚 largest wildfire.

Kreling, who needed data from the site for her senior-year undergraduate thesis at UC Berkeley, decided to pivot 鈥� or, in the words of her collaborators, 鈥渢urn lemons into lemonade.鈥� The wildlife tracking technology and photos allowed Kreling and co-authors instead to look at how deer change their use of space during and immediately after large disturbances like wildfires, and how this event influenced their body condition and survival.

鈥淪eeing the drastic changes on the landscape got me wondering what it鈥檚 like for animals on the land to actually deal with the repercussions of having an event like this sweep through,鈥� Kreling said. 鈥淗aving the infrastructure in place was very useful to see what happened before, compared to what happened after.鈥�

Despite the challenges of having little to eat, all of the deer returned soon after the fire. Deer from burned areas had to work harder and travel farther to find green vegetation, and researchers noticed a decline in body condition in some of these animals. Still, their loyalty to home is a tactic that likely helped this species survive past wildfires.

It’s unknown whether this loyalty-to-home strategy will prove helpful, or harmful, in the future. Smaller wildfires encourage new vegetation growth 鈥� tasty for deer 鈥� but massive wildfires can actually destroy seed banks, which reduces the amount of plants available to eat. In this case, some of the deer that had to expand their home range to eat did so at the expense of their body condition.

鈥淭hese deer have evolved this behavioral strategy that has clearly worked for them, but the big question mark is, as fires get more intense and frequent, will this behavior actually trap animals in these habitats that are seeing massive disturbances on the scale of nothing that has happened before in their evolutionary history,鈥� Gaynor said.

The specific patterns observed with these deer likely can鈥檛 be applied to other large mammals in different regions, the authors said. But it鈥檚 an interesting case study to explore what extreme disturbances, like large wildfires, might mean for animals. Meanwhile, co-author , a doctoral student at UC Berkeley, is continuing to look at the long-term effects of the fire on the health and reproductive capacity of this population of deer, which is still being tracked.

Other co-authors are and at UC Berkeley.聽McInturff is now an assistant professor at the UW.

This research was funded by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.

For more information, contact Kreling at skreling@uw.edu and Gaynor at gaynor@nceas.ucsb.edu.

The Burke聽Museum聽has always been a second home to聽Owen聽Oliver聽(Quinault聽Indian Nation聽and Isleta Pueblo),聽a recent University of聽Washington聽graduate. His father, Marvin Oliver, was a renowned artist, UW emeritus professor of American Indian Studies and adjunct curator at the聽museum;聽his聽sister,聽Lisa,聽did her graduate research at the Burke.

During his senior year, Owen Oliver created a downloadable , highlighting聽the Indigenous presence on campus, including the Burke Museum, which is the first stop on the tour.

UW News met up with Oliver to ask about his inspiration for the tour, what he hopes people get out of it and to聽assist in creating聽a virtual map version.

Below is聽the聽virtual version of the tour you can use to guide yourself around campus as you read through聽Oliver鈥檚 descriptions of each stop.

Read more about Oliver鈥檚 work as a UW student in this聽鈥溾�澛爌iece from January 2021.

Now, two 天美影视传媒 scientists have developed a statistical framework that incorporates key COVID-19 data 鈥� such as case counts and deaths due to COVID-19 鈥� to model the true prevalence of this disease in the United States and individual states. Their approach, July 26 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, projects that in the U.S. as many as 60% of COVID-19 cases went undetected as of March 7, 2021, the last date for which the dataset they employed is available.

This framework could help officials determine the true burden of disease in their region 鈥� both diagnosed and undiagnosed 鈥� and direct resources accordingly, said the researchers.

鈥淭here are all sorts of different data sources we can draw on to understand the COVID-19 pandemic 鈥� the number of hospitalizations in a state, or the number of tests that come back positive. But each source of data has its own flaws that would give a biased picture of what鈥檚 really going on,鈥� said senior author , a UW professor of sociology and of statistics. 鈥淲hat we wanted to do is to develop a framework that corrects the flaws in multiple data sources and draws on their strengths to give us an idea of COVID-19鈥檚 prevalence in a region, a state or the country as a whole.鈥�

Data sources can be biased in different ways. For example, one widely cited COVID-19 statistic is the proportion of test results in a region or state that come back positive. But since access to tests, and a willingness to be tested, vary by location, that figure alone cannot provide a clear picture of COVID-19鈥檚 prevalence, said Raftery.

Other statistical methods often try to correct the bias in one data source to model the true prevalence of disease in a region. For their approach, Raftery and lead author , a UW doctoral student in statistics, incorporated three factors: the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases, the number of deaths due to COVID-19 and the number of COVID-19 tests administered each day as reported by the . In addition, they incorporated results from random COVID-19 testing of Indiana and Ohio residents as an 鈥渁nchor鈥� for their method.

The researchers used their framework to model COVID-19 prevalence in the U.S. and each of the states up through March 7, 2021. On that date, according to their framework, an estimated 19.7% of U.S. residents, or about 65 million people, had been infected. This indicates that the U.S. is unlikely to reach herd immunity without its ongoing vaccination campaign, Raftery and Irons said. In addition, the U.S. had an undercount factor of 2.3, the researchers found, which means that only about 1 in 2.3 COVID-19 cases were being confirmed through testing. Put another way, some 60% of cases were not counted at all.

This COVID-19 undercount rate also varied widely by state, and could have multiple causes, according to Irons.

鈥淚t can depend on the severity of the pandemic and the amount of testing in that state,鈥� said Irons. 鈥淚f you have a state with severe pandemic but limited testing, the undercount can be very high, and you鈥檙e missing the vast majority of infections that are occurring. Or, you could have a situation where testing is widespread and the pandemic is not as severe. There, the undercount rate would be lower.鈥�

In addition, the undercount factor fluctuated by state or region as the pandemic progressed due to differences in access to medical care among regions, changes in the availability of tests and other factors, Raftery said.

With the true prevalence of COVID-19, Raftery and Irons calculated other useful figures for states, such as the infection fatality rate, which is the percentage of infected people who had succumbed to COVID-19, as well as the cumulative incidence, which is the percentage of a state鈥檚 population who have had COVID-19.

Ideally, regular random testing of individuals would show the level of infection in a state, region or even nationally, said Raftery. But in the COVID-19 pandemic, only Indiana and Ohio conducted random viral testing of residents, datasets that were critical in helping the researchers develop their framework. In the absence of widespread random testing, this new method could help officials assess the true burden of disease in this pandemic and the next one.

鈥淲e think this tool can make a difference by giving the people in charge a more accurate picture of how many people are infected, and what fraction of them are being missed by current testing and treatment efforts,鈥� said Raftery.

The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health.

For more information, contact Raftery at raftery@uw.edu.

As smoky air becomes more common during Washington鈥檚 wildfire season, many wildlife enthusiasts wonder: What happens to the birds?

Few studies have looked at wildfire smoke impacts on animals, let alone birds. And as Washington and the larger West Coast continue to experience more massive wildfires and smoke-filled air, understanding how birds are affected by smoke 鈥� and how air pollution may influence our ability to detect birds 鈥� are important factors for bird conservation.

Researchers from the 天美影视传媒 now provide a first look at the probability of observing common birds as air pollution worsens during wildfire seasons. They found that smoke affected the ability to detect more than a third of the bird species studied in Washington state over a four-year period. Sometimes smoke made it harder to observe birds, while other species were actually easier to detect when smoke was present. The June 29 in the journal Ornithological Applications.

鈥淲e want to know how wildfire smoke affects birds and other wildlife, and this study is a great place to start,鈥� said lead author , a doctoral candidate in the UW School of Environmental and Forest Sciences. 鈥淪moke clearly has an impact on detection of wildlife, and that hasn鈥檛 been adequately explored in the literature to date. Now we know that smoke pollution specifically affects our observations of birds and our ability to detect them.鈥�

The researchers combined data from , an online citizen-science program managed by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, with publicly available data from an extensive network of air quality monitors across Washington state. They were able to analyze how fine particulate matter, known as PM2.5 and a marker of smoke pollution, affected the probability of observing 71 common bird species during the wildfire seasons of 2015 to 2018. Higher concentrations of smoke affected the chances of observing 37%, or 26, of the bird species included in the study.

Sixteen of the bird species were harder to observe with more wildfire smoke, the study found. These include turkey vultures, Canada geese, two gull species, bald eagles and several other birds of prey. Many of these birds are observed circling high above the ground, so it鈥檚 not surprising that people would have a harder time detecting them on smoky days, the authors said. However, 10 additional species were easier to observe when smoke concentrations were higher. These include three types of warblers, cedar waxwing, spotted towhee and California quail.

The reasons for this aren鈥檛 clear and are outside of the scope of this study, but the authors lay out some hypotheses for future exploration. It could be that reduced visibility due to smoke pushes some birds lower to the ground where they can be more easily seen and heard. Or, as smoke prompts birds of prey to relocate, that could alleviate pressure on some songbirds and cause them to be more active 鈥� and thus more detectable by people.

鈥淭hese behavioral changes are all hypotheticals, and we very much hope that researchers follow up on them because we have a lot to learn about how smoke affects wildlife,鈥� Sanderfoot said.

Conservation and management efforts rely on the ability to observe animals in the wild, and it鈥檚 no different for birds. Air pollution clearly plays a role in detecting animals, and this paper makes the case that it should be considered alongside other factors like time of day, temperature and precipitation that all can influence observations of animals.

鈥淚f we see or hear birds more or less frequently because of smoke, that also impacts bigger inferences we make in terms of how certain bird populations are doing,鈥� said senior author , an associate professor in the School of Environmental and Forest Sciences. 鈥淲e want to get that part right, so we first need to understand the effect of air pollution on how we’re seeing birds in the wild.鈥�

The researchers chose a four-year study period that included some summers where wildfire smoke was heavy in parts of the state, and other summers where smoke was negligible. All of the species included in the study had to have had at least 750 observations recorded for the first year (2015), and all observations used were within about 20 miles (32 kilometers) of an air quality monitor in Washington.

Data from the catastrophic 2020 wildfire season was not part of this analysis, although air quality during that period was worse than in any of the years in the study. As extreme wildfire seasons like 2020 become more common, it鈥檚 important to consider the influence of events like these in future studies, the researchers said.

This research was funded by the National Science Foundation and the McIntire-Stennis Cooperative Forestry Research Program from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture.

For more information, contact Sanderfoot at oliviavs@uw.edu and Gardner at bg43@uw.edu.