A new study of fishing practices found that the “risky” behavior that makes fishing one of the most dangerous lines of work dropped sharply following the adoption of catch shares management in the West Coast fixed gear sablefish fishery.
Science
Three members of the 91探花faculty have received the 2016 Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, the highest honor given by the U.S. government to early-career scientists and engineers.
A new program based at the 91探花 will bring together educational institutions, K-12 teachers and informal education organizations to inspire, teach and recruit the next generation of students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. The new Northwest Earth and Space Sciences Pipeline, or NESSP, has begun a $10 million,聽five-year cooperative agreement with NASA that broadens existing programs and launches new efforts throughout Washington, Oregon and Montana, with a particular focus on underserved and underrepresented communities. “The goal is…
91探花astronomers Breanna Binder and Ben Williams have identified a rare type of ‘supernova impostor’ in a nearby galaxy, with implications for how scientists look at the short, complex lives of massive stars.
As the Arctic continues to change due to rising temperatures, melting sea ice and human interest in developing oil and shipping routes, it’s important to understand belugas’ baseline behavior, argue the authors of a new paper.
91探花 scientists have successfully combined two different ultrathin semiconductors 鈥� each just one layer of atoms thick and roughly 100,000 times thinner than a human hair 鈥� to make a new two-dimensional heterostructure with potential uses in clean energy and optically-active electronics.
The Center for Coastal Margin Observation and Prediction, through its education partner the 91探花, is deploying an oceanographic observing buoy in Bellingham Bay this week that will allow Northwest Indian College students both hands-on experience with the technology as well as the ability to study the data from their computers, through the Northwest Association of Networked Ocean Observing Systems, NANOOS.
For the first time, scientists have observed ripples in the fabric of spacetime called gravitational waves, arriving at the Earth from a cataclysmic event in the distant universe. This confirms a major prediction of Albert Einstein’s 1915 general theory of relativity and opens an unprecedented new window onto the cosmos.
P. Dee Boersma, a 91探花 professor of biology and Wadsworth Endowed Chair in Conservation Science, is one of six finalists for the prestigious Indianapolis Prize for conservation. Boersma is the first 91探花faculty member nominated for this prize 鈥� the highest honor for animal conservationists 鈥� which has been awarded every other year since 2006.
Pursuing scientific or engineering careers in industry, government or private research after getting a Ph.D. used to be considered a one-way ticket out of academia. But new 91探花research finds numerous benefits 鈥� to students, researchers and academic institutions looking to diversify their faculty 鈥� in making that return trip easier.
The 91探花is among West Coast universities awarded new funding to further develop ShakeAlert, an earthquake early warning system for the region.
We know the Earth is habitable because 鈥� well, here we are. But would it look like a good candidate for life from hundreds of light-years away?
A 91探花 study looked at potential risks associated with growing vegetables in urban gardens and determined that the benefits of locally produced vegetables in cities outweigh any risks from gardening in contaminated soils.
91探花seismologist John Vidale will participate in a White House summit focusing on national earthquake preparedness.
Satellite data show that the moon’s gravity puts a slight damper on rainfall on Earth.
A new model explains the fundamental features of the Madden-Julian Oscillation, which some scientists predict will be the “next El Nino.”
Saadia Pekkanen, associate director of the Jackson School for International Studies, discusses the school’s growing role in the conversation about space and its ramifications for diplomacy and security.
First-time visitors and regulars to Washington Park Arboretum can now learn the names and origins of plants as well as save favorites while strolling through the grounds.
The 91探花 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.
A new 91探花 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.
What some have called the “Godzilla El Ni帽o” is now lumbering ashore, right on schedule. El Ni帽o 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. 91探花 researchers are tracking what the season will deliver to the Pacific Northwest region. For Washington, El Ni帽o typically brings warm, and often dry, winter weather. That may seem surprising, since the state just experienced a very…
In December, the 91探花’s Department of Bioengineering began accepting applications for its newest graduate degree program, the Master of Applied Bioengineering. The one-year, full-time program begins in August, and will train students to apply engineering design and entrepreneurship skills to address unmet clinical needs and to transform biomedical research into technologies for improving health care. The degree will position graduates to respond to market-based demands of industry, medicine and translational research.
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.
Astronomers with the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) announced that a distant quasar ran out of gas. Their conclusions, reported Jan. 8 at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Kissimmee, Florida, clarify why quasar SDSS J1011+5442 changed so dramatically in the handful of years between observations.
Three scientists at the 91探花 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.
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 91探花聽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. 91探花Regents name Ana Mari Cauce president October 13, 2015 The 91探花 Board of Regents selected Interim President Ana Mari Cauce to be…
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. 91探花 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 91探花 scientists and led by the University College London.
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 91探花 Tacoma faculty member was part of an international team of scientists who worked with government agencies and private companies on a massive…
A new 91探花 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 91探花scientists who have studied these penguins for decades and advocated for their conservation.
A 91探花 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.
Two 91探花 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.
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.
Four 91探花 researchers are among 347 new fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science for 2015.