From a new president and聽lasers cooling liquids to spotting rare sea creatures and major collaborations, great things have聽happened聽at the 天美影视传媒聽in 2015.聽Here’s a look back at the top stories of the year. These stories were chosen based on the total number of聽views they received on our website and are not in any particular order. UW Regents name Ana Mari Cauce president October 13, 2015 The 天美影视传媒 Board of Regents selected Interim President Ana Mari Cauce to be…
Does legal marijuana tempt pot users to consume more alcohol 鈥� or are they likely to opt for cannabis instead of chardonnay? A 天美影视传媒 team of researchers sought to address those questions in the context of evolving marijuana policies in the United States. Their findings, published online Dec. 21 in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research, highlight the difficulties of gauging the impact of a formerly illicit drug as it moves into the mainstream. Recreational marijuana use…
The UW’s Center for Sensorimotor Neural Engineering has won a $16M NSF grant to develop the first implantable device to reanimate paralyzed limbs and restore motor function in stroke or spinal cord injury patients.
The large, fast-moving mudslide that buried much of Oso, Washington in March 2014 was the deadliest landslide in U.S. history. Since then it’s been revealed that this area has experienced major slides before, but it’s not known how long ago they occurred. 天美影视传媒 geologists analyzed woody debris buried in earlier slides and used radiocarbon dating to map the history of activity at the site. The findings, published online Dec. 22 in the journal Geology, show that a massive…
Forests help remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by storing it in trees, but a sizeable amount of the greenhouse gas actually escapes through the soil and into rivers and streams, a new paper finds.
It took 100 million years for oxygen levels in the oceans and atmosphere to increase to the level that allowed the explosion of animal life on Earth about 600 million years ago, according to a study co-authored by two 天美影视传媒 scientists and led by the University College London.
Increasing numbers of grandmothers across the United States are raising their grandchildren, many of them living in poverty and grappling with a public assistance system not designed to meet their needs. LaShawnDa Pittman, an assistant professor in the 天美影视传媒鈥檚 Department of American Ethnic Studies, interviewed 77 African American grandmothers living in some of the poorest areas of south Chicago. Her findings were published in November in the first issue of The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social…
When an earthquake struck Nepal in late April 2015, thousands of lives were lost in the initial disaster. But it was hard to assess the scale of the damage to rural areas, and still lurking were threats from unstable slopes and dammed glacier-fed lakes that could dislodge at any time to flood villages below. A 天美影视传媒 Tacoma faculty member was part of an international team of scientists who worked with government agencies and private companies on a massive…
A new 天美影视传媒 study confirms that composting food scraps is better than throwing them away, and also calculates the environmental benefits associated with keeping these organic materials out of landfills.
A new UW study finds that fuel efficiency improvements needed to meet U.S. climate commitments are on par with what the auto industry delivered in the 1970s and 1980s.
A 天美影视传媒 graduate student saw green-starved Ballard as an opportunity to call attention to areas in the neighborhood that have restoration potential. Her new report, the “Ballard Green Spaces Project,” identifies 55 sites that could be restored as natural areas for people and wildlife, increasing the neighborhood’s total amount of accessible green spaces.
UW historian James Gregory’s new collaborative digital project, “Mapping American Social Movements through the 20th Century” uses data visualization and interactive maps to depict the progress of various social movements — with more to come.
Two 天美影视传媒 researchers have uncovered details of the radically divergent strategies that two common tree species employ to cope with drought in southwestern Colorado. As they report in a new paper in the journal Global Change Biology, one tree species shuts down production and conserves water, while the other alters its physiology to continue growing and using water.
The long, slow 2014 eruption of Iceland’s Bardarbunga volcano offers a testbed to show how sulfur emissions, from volcanoes or humans, act to brighten clouds and reflect more sunlight.
Mark A. Smith is a 天美影视传媒 professor of political science and adjunct professor of comparative religion. He is the author of “Secular Faith: How Culture Has Trumped Religion in American Politics,” published in September by University of Chicago Press. He answered a few questions about his book for UW Today. What’s the concept behind this book? My book’s overarching theme is that Americans have much more in common politically than you’d expect from observing how the media covers…
UW researchers have reconstructed 3-D models of celebrities such as Tom Hanks from large Internet photo collections. The model can deliver speeches that the real actor never performed – one step toward developing fully interactive digital personas of people from family or historic photo collections.
Criminals are meant to pay their debts to society through sentencing, but a different type of court-imposed debt can tie them to the criminal justice system for life and impact their ability to move forward with their lives. Though debtors鈥� prisons were eliminated in the United States almost two centuries ago, a modern-day version exists in the dizzyingly complex system of fines and fees levied against people as they move through the court system. Offenders are charged for everything from…
A citizen science project that asks volunteers to transcribe historic ships’ logbooks to uncover data about past Arctic climate has added logbooks from hundreds of whaling ships. The hunters’ handwritten logs will provide new clues about the history of Arctic climate and sea ice.
The speed of vessels operating near endangered killer whales in Washington is the most influential factor 鈥� more so than vessel size 鈥� in how much noise from the boats reaches the whales, according to a new study published today in the online journal PLOS ONE.
Home sale prices increased but sales themselves were fewer in Washington state in the third quarter of 2015, according to the Runstad Center for Real Estate Studies in the UW’s College of Built Environments.
A collaboration between 天美影视传媒 developmental psychologists and computer scientists has demonstrated that robots can “learn” much like babies – by experiencing the world and eventually imitating humans.
In developing or war-ravaged countries where government censuses are few and far between, gathering data for public services or policymaking can be difficult, dangerous or near-impossible. Big data is, after all, mainly a First World opportunity. But cell towers are easier to install than telephone land lines, even in such challenged areas, and mobile or cellular phones are widely used among the poor and wealthy alike. Now, researchers with the 天美影视传媒 Information School and Computer Science and Engineering…
Effective teachers don’t just impact their own students’ achievement, they can significantly improve the performance of their fellow teachers’ students, new research shows.
Four 天美影视传媒 researchers are among 347 new fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science for 2015.
Neutrinos may be small, but when it comes to prizes, they pack quite a punch. In October, it was announced that two scientists who headed international projects to study these miniscule, seemingly ephemeral subatomic particles will share the Nobel Prize in Physics. On Nov. 8, these same scientists joined five of their colleagues from other neutrino projects to accept the 2016 Breakthrough Prize in Physics. The $3 million prize will be shared among the over 1,300 scientists, including University of…
天美影视传媒 scientists have sequenced the complete genetic makeup of a species of ecologically important algae, which may aid in biofuel production.
The Power Over Wi-Fi (PoWiFi) system developed by UW engineers is one of the most innovative and game-changing technologies of the year, according to Popular Science, which included it in the magazine’s annual “Best of What’s New” awards announced this week.
A new report by the 天美影视传媒 synthesizes all the relevant research about the future of the Puget Sound region to paint a picture of what to expect in the coming decades, and how to prepare.
Since the first laser was invented in 1960, they’ve always given off heat. 天美影视传媒 researchers are the first to solve a decades-old puzzle 鈥� figuring out how to make a laser refrigerate water and other liquids.
Paleontologists with the 天美影视传媒’s Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture find that tiny organisms called foraminifera have a big story to tell about the health of Puget Sound. Two recent studies about the health of Bellingham Bay and inlets in the Bremerton area found the diversity and number of foraminifera 鈥� single-celled marine organisms that live on the sea floor 鈥� deteriorated significantly. The decline of these microscopic organisms is consistent with the deterioration of snails and other larger marine animals, even though analysis showed a reduction of chemical pollutants in Bellingham Bay and Bremerton over the same period of time.
The 天美影视传媒 held its first ever Innovation Summit today in Shanghai, China. The event brought together industry leaders from China and the United States, who discussed how they are turning ideas into impact, connecting academia to industry and helping solve the world鈥檚 most pressing problems.
When President Barack Obama visited the shrinking Exit Glacier in September, he pointed to a very obvious sign of our warming planet literally at his feet. Less visible, but perhaps more indelible, signs of changing climate lie in the oceans. A 天美影视传媒 researcher argues in the journal Science that people — including world leaders who will gather later this month in Paris for global climate change negotiations — should pay more attention to how climate change’s impacts on…
An atmospheric haze around a faraway planet 鈥� like the one which probably shrouded and cooled the young Earth 鈥� could show that the world is potentially habitable, or even be a sign of life itself.
With high-tech weather radars, weather balloons, ground instruments and NASA’s DC-8 flying laboratory, scientists will be watching rain and snow storms on Washington’s famously wet Olympic Peninsula.
A report from the interdisciplinary UW Tech Policy Lab on the challenges of augmented reality suggests such systems should be adaptable to change, resistant to hacking and responsive to the needs of diverse users.
By age 5 children have a sense of self-esteem comparable in strength to that of adults, according to a new study by 天美影视传媒 researchers.
The National Science Foundation has selected the 天美影视传媒, along with the University of California, San Diego and the University of California, Berkeley, to co-lead one of four Big Data Regional Innovation Hubs around the country.
In science, decades can pass between a proposed theory and its real-world application. That is precisely what 天美影视传媒 mathematics professor Gunther Uhlmann was expecting when he and three colleagues proposed a means to develop an electromagnetic wormhole in a 2007 paper in Physical Review Letters. Their theoretical wormhole 鈥� an invisible tube for electromagnetic fields 鈥� would cloak an electromagnetic field while it passed through the tube, creating a “secret” connection between the entry and exit point. Uhlmann…
A nearby exoplanet has an atmosphere that might be similar to Earth’s before life evolved. In an attempt to simulate the structure of this exoplanet’s atmosphere, UW researchers became the first to simulate three-dimensional exotic clouds on another world.
A new study in Ecology shows that Alaskan Dolly Varden trout, once they reach about 12 inches in length, can retire permanently from going to sea. They rely on digestive organs that can massively expand and contract and a unique relationship with sockeye salmon.