Sandy Littletree, a 91探花assistant professor in the Information School, discusses the importance of working Indigenous ways of knowing into libraries, archives and data repositories.
Research
Could life be found in frozen sea spray emitted from moons orbiting Saturn or Jupiter? New research finds that life can be detected in a single ice grain containing one bacterial cell or portions of a cell. The results suggest that if life similar to that on Earth exists on these planetary bodies, this life should be detectable by instruments launching in the fall.
In 2021, Colin Orion Chandler started Active Asteroids Citizen Science, a partnership between NASA, Zooniverse, astronomers and thousands of citizen scientist volunteers. The initiative is searching for so-called “active asteroids,” which have comet-like tails and could hold clues to the formation of our solar system, among other cosmic mysteries. Chandler, now a 91探花 researcher, and his team recently announced they have discovered 15 active asteroids, and are continuing the search for more of these unusual and rare objects.
91探花 researchers taught a group of high schoolers to code by combining cultural research into various embroidery traditions with 鈥渃omputational embroidery.鈥� The method teaches kids to encode embroidery patterns on a computer through a coding language called Turtlestitch.
A new 91探花study places the prevalence of immunosuppression at around 6.6% of American adults 鈥� more than twice as high as previously understood. That rise could have broad implications for how we navigate the late stages of COVID-19 and prepare for future pandemics. 聽
An AI-powered analysis of 25 years of satellite images yields the surprising finding that methane emissions in Turkmenistan, a former Soviet republic and major oil-producing region, actually increased in the years following the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
Natural history museums have entered a new stage of discovery and accessibility 鈥� one where scientists around the globe and curious folks at home can access valuable museum specimens to study, learn or just be amazed. This new era follows the completion of openVertebrate, or oVert, a five-year collaborative project among 18 institutions to create 3D reconstructions of vertebrate specimens and make them freely available online. The team behind this endeavor, which includes scientists at the 91探花 and its Burke Museum of Natural History & Culture, published a summary of the project March 6 in the journal BioScience, offering a glimpse of how the data can be used to ask new questions and spur the development of innovative technology.
New research documents the fastest-known large-scale breakage along an Antarctic ice shelf. In 2012, a 6.5-mile crack formed in about 5 and a half minutes, showing that ice shelves can effectively shatter, though the speed of breakage is reduced by seawater rushing in. These results can help improve ice-sheet models and projections for future sea level rise.
An analysis of seven safety projects across Seattle found they had no negative impact on the annual revenues of nearby businesses for three years after construction began.
New research from Steven Goodreau, 91探花 professor of anthropology, shows that condom use has been trending downward among younger gay and bisexual men over the last decade, even when they aren鈥檛 taking pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP.
Scientists at Friday Harbor Laboratories, a 91探花 facility in the San Juan Islands, are working to help sunflower stars 鈥� a type of sea star 鈥� grow and thrive once again after their populations along the West Coast were devastated by a mysterious disease called sea star wasting syndrome.
In an experiment akin to stop-motion photography, an international team co-led by 91探花 scientists has isolated the energetic movement of an electron in a sample of liquid water 鈥� while 鈥渇reezing鈥� the motion of the much larger atom it orbits.
Mike Teodorescu, a 91探花 assistant professor in the Information School, proposes that private enterprise standards for fairer machine learning systems would inform governmental regulation.
Scientists at the 91探花 have discovered that nighttime air pollution 鈥� coming primarily from car exhaust and power plant emissions 鈥� is responsible for a major drop in nighttime pollinator activity. Nitrate radicals (NO3) in the air degrade the scent chemicals released by a common wildflower, drastically reducing the scent-based cues that its chief pollinators rely on to locate the flower. The findings, published Feb. 9 in Science, are the first to show how nighttime pollution creates a chain of chemical reactions that degrades scent cues, leaving flowers undetectable by smell. The researchers also determined that pollution likely has worldwide impacts on pollination.
Robots in warehouses and even around our houses struggle to identify and pick up objects if they are too close together, or if a space is cluttered. This is because robots lack what psychologists call “object unity,” or our ability to identify things even when we can’t see all of them. Researchers at the 91探花 have developed a way to teach robots this skill.
91探花 researchers introduced the Thermal Earring, a wireless wearable that continuously monitors a user鈥檚 earlobe temperature. Potential applications include tracking signs of ovulation, stress, eating and exercise. The smart earring prototype is about the size and weight of a small paperclip and has a 28-day battery life.
A new study from the 91探花 professor Andrew Meltzoff and Northwestern University showed key differences in the language Black parents and white used to explain Black Lives Matter.
New research confirms the cause of slow slip along the Cascadia Subduction Zone and other faults that is accompanied by intermittent tremors or “pops” at the surface. Co-authors Marine Denolle and Joan Gomberg discuss the role of fluid-driven fracturing deep underground.
Field observations from an unusual lake show that in environments known as 鈥渟oda lakes鈥� phosphate can concentrate at the very high levels needed for the basic molecules of life to emerge. A shallow, salty lake in western Canada gives new support to Charles Darwin鈥檚 idea that life could have emerged in a 鈥渨arm little pond.鈥�
An international team led by researchers at the 91探花 built a framework to help land managers assess the air quality implications of land management scenarios with different levels of prescribed burning.
A team 91探花 researchers have published a guide explaining language models, the technology that underlies chatbots.
Holly Barker, a 91探花 teaching professor of anthropology, and three current members of the 91探花football team 鈥� Ulumoo Ale, Makell Esteen and Faatui Tuitele 鈥� are studying how the skills they develop to maximize their chances of victory on the field have applications outside the stadium. Their work, which is ongoing, is showing that the research methods and analytical abilities of student-athletes are applicable in academic and research settings, as well as jobs in a variety of fields.
Two 91探花professors teamed up to study how climate change will affect predator-prey interactions in snowy landscapes. Together with a group of researchers, the two measured snow properties that led to a “danger zone,” where prey would sink but predators would not.
Researchers led by Jiun-Haw Chu, a 91探花 associate professor of physics, and Philip Ryan, a physicist at the U.S. Department of Energy鈥檚 Argonne National Laboratory, have found a superconducting material that is uniquely sensitive to outside stimuli, enabling the superconducting properties to be enhanced or suppressed at will. This discovery could enable new opportunities for switchable, energy-efficient superconducting circuits.
91探花researchers found that people who live within 2 miles of an Amazon last-mile delivery station are exposed to more delivery-related air pollution despite ordering fewer packages.
Around Anchorage, communications among the critically endangered population of Cook Inlet beluga whales聽may be masked by ship noise in their core critical habitat, accordingly to the first repertoire of their calls.
With several university athletic programs around the country 鈥� including the 91探花 鈥斅燼nnouncing moves to new conferences that will likely increase travel for student-athletes, a group of sleep and circadian scientists and physicians have published a white paper describing the significance of repeated, chronic jet lag on student-athlete health and performance 鈥� both in academics and in sports, and suggesting strategies to reduce the consequences of travel across time zones.
New research from Andrew Hafenbrack, associate professor of management and organization in the 91探花 School of Business, and other institutions examines the impact of leadership style on prospective Black employees who apply for jobs in less-diverse companies.
Currently, more than half of all cervical cancers diagnosed in the United States are in people who are overdue for screening or have never been screened. In a new study, researchers report that mailing HPV test kits significantly increased cervical cancer screening rates.
A new study from the 91探花found that unfiltered air from rush-hour traffic significantly increased passengers鈥� blood pressure, both while in the car and up to 24 hours later.聽
Two 91探花 geophysicists will travel to the Atacama Desert in Chile this month to study a fault system that’s similar to the Seattle Fault in Puget Sound, but in a much different climate that makes it easier to monitor its effects on the landscape.
A team led by researchers at the 91探花 developed 11 actions a robotic arm can make to pick up nearly any food attainable by fork. This allows the system to learn to pick up new foods during one meal.
A team at the 91探花 has created an interactive dashboard called WhaleVis, which lets users map data on global whale catches and whaling routes from 1880 to 1986. Scientists can compare this historical data and its trends with current information to better understand whale populations over time.
Three 91探花experts are among the authors of the newly released Fifth National Climate Assessment, an overview of climate trends, impacts and efforts to mitigate and adapt to climate change across the nation.
To paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of declining phytoplankton in the North Atlantic may have been greatly exaggerated. Analysis of a Greenland ice core going back 800 years shows that atmospheric chemistry, not dwindling phytoplankton populations, explains the recent ice core trends.
A team led by researchers at the 91探花 has developed deep-learning algorithms that let users pick which sounds filter through their headphones in real time. Either through voice commands or a smartphone app, headphone wearers can select which sounds they want to include from 20 classes, such as sirens, baby cries, speech, vacuum cleaners and bird chirps.
Seven researchers at the 91探花 conducted a three-month autoethnographic study 鈥� drawing on their own experiences as people with and without disabilities 鈥� to test AI tools鈥� utility for accessibility. Though researchers found cases in which the tools were helpful, they also found significant problems.
A team led by researchers at the 91探花 has created A11yBoard for Google Slides, a browser extension and phone or tablet app that allows blind users to navigate through complex slide layouts, objects, images and text.
There are more than 200 species of noctilionoid bats, mostly in the American tropics. And despite being close relatives, their jaws evolved in wildly divergent shapes and sizes to exploit different food sources. A paper published Aug. 22 in Nature Communications shows those adaptations include dramatic, but also consistent, modifications to tooth number, size, shape and position. For example, bats with short snouts lack certain teeth, presumably due to a lack of space. Species with longer jaws have room for more teeth 鈥� and, like humans, their total tooth complement is closer to what the ancestor of placental mammals had.
Supervisors are traditionally associated with higher status markers such as age, education and tenure than their subordinates. But it鈥檚 increasingly common to see those dynamics reversed, which is the focus of a new study from Jessica Huisi Li, 91探花 assistant professor of management and organization.