A new laser mapping technology and smartphone app developed by ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø electrical engineers allows you to point your phone at a plate of food and get an estimate of the total calories and nutrition.
News releases
The ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø is home to 26 researchers included on Thomson Reuters’ list of “The World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds” for 2015, which was released Jan. 14. The distinction, based on an analysis of over a decade of research paper citations among 21 general scientific fields, is meant to recognize scientists who are most cited by their peers.
The ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø Press, the MIT Press, Duke University Press, the University of Georgia Press, and the association of American University Presses (AAUP) join forces to create the University Press Diversity Fellowship Program.
A new ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø study finds that urban crops in Seattle could only feed between 1 and 4 percent of the city’s population, even if all viable backyard and public green spaces were converted to growing produce.
Researchers have found clear evidence that communities rich in species are substantially healthier and more productive than those depleted of species, once complicating factors are removed.
ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø computer scientists, with a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, are launching a new research group to develop technological solutions that will make financial products more available to the lowest-income people around the world.
What some have called the “Godzilla El Niño” is now lumbering ashore, right on schedule. El Niño tends to influence North American weather after the first of January, and indeed, we’re seeing warm temperatures in Alaska and much-needed rain in California. ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø researchers are tracking what the season will deliver to the Pacific Northwest region. For Washington, El Niño typically brings warm, and often dry, winter weather. That may seem surprising, since the state just experienced a very…
Along the West Coast, ocean acidification and hypoxia combine with other factors, such as rising ocean temperatures, to create serious challenges for marine life, a new study finds.
Three scientists at the ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø have proposed a way to speed up common bioassays used in research and diagnostics. Their solution, reminiscent of the magic behind washing machines, could reduce wait times to a fraction of what they once were. As they report in the journal Small, biological assays that once took hours could instead take minutes.
The built environment influences decisions to walk or bike differently for lower- and higher-income groups, ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø researchers have found. Neighborhood density, accessible destinations and fewer vehicles were associated with more walking and biking in lower-income groups, while neighborhood attractiveness was relevant for higher-income groups.
Seattle’s past — from its earliest years to the turn of the 21st century — will be the topic of the Winter 2016 History Lecture Series, “Excavating Seattle’s Histories: People, Politics, Place,” running Wednesdays from Jan. 13 to Feb 3, with an additional panel discussion on Feb. 10.
Today’s college graduates tend to be highly trained and employable but often lack a key skill needed for post-college life: how to identify and ask their own questions, according to a new study.
Does legal marijuana tempt pot users to consume more alcohol — or are they likely to opt for cannabis instead of chardonnay? A ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø 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 ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø’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. ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø 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 ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø 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 ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø’s 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 ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø Tacoma faculty member was part of an international team of scientists who worked with government agencies and private companies on a massive…
A new ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø 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.
On Dec. 3, the legislature for Argentina’s Chubut province established a new marine protected area off Punta Tombo, which would help preserve the feeding grounds for about 500,000 Magellanic penguins that make their home along this rocky stretch of Argentine coast. This is welcome news for the ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø scientists who have studied these penguins for decades and advocated for their conservation.
A new ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø 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.
Suicide is a tough issue to broach. How could an adult know if a child in the community might be suicidal and when to intervene? Is it appropriate to ask a friends or colleagues if they’re considering suicide? If someone is in crisis, what’s the best way to respond? Forefront: Innovations in Suicide Prevention hopes to give people in three Washington rural counties with some of the highest suicide rates in the state the skills and knowledge to address such…
The ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø will offer a new Master of Science in Data Science program to provide students with advanced technical expertise in managing, modeling and visualizing big data to meet the growing needs of industry and research.
A ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø 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.
ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø 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 ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø 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.
The College of Arts & Sciences at the ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø is saddened to lose one of its most prominent faculty members and a longtime leader in the Seattle theater community, Sarah Nash Gates. Gates passed away on Friday evening, December 4, surrounded by family and close friends.
ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø 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’ 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 – more so than vessel size – 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 ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø’s College of Built Environments.
A collaboration between ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø 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 ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø Information School and Computer Science and Engineering…
The ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø is among the most sustainable schools in North America, according to the Sustainability Tracking, Assessment and Rating System (STARS).
Four ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø researchers are among 347 new fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science for 2015.
ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø scientists have sequenced the complete genetic makeup of a species of ecologically important algae, which may aid in biofuel production.
The ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø has joined schools across the country in signing on to a White House climate pledge. The pledge is part of the Nov. 19 White House and Higher Education Climate Day of Action. The White House and the State Department will bring together leaders from higher education institutions to call for action on climate change and encourage a strong agreement at the upcoming Paris Climate Change Conference of world leaders. The ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø is strongly committed to a…