The Ecological Society of America on Wednesday awards. , a 91̽�� assistant professor of environmental and forest science, was named an Early Career Fellow, which recognizes scientists for contributions to advancing and applying ecological knowledge within eight years of completing a doctorate.

Willing studies how microbes respond, and help plants cope with, environmental change. focuses on fungi and other microbes living near plant roots. Much like the gut microbiome, these communities play a critical role in plant nutrition, immune function and overall forest health.

Willing’s lab focuses on understanding these communities and how they are shifting with climate change. Her research integrates methods from various scientific disciplines to gain insight into the ecosystem-wide impact of fungi.

“I work across pretty diverse fields, from fungal ecology to plant and forest ecology,” Willing said. “Integrating everything together is challenging, but I think it’s a critical intersection to study right now and this award is a nice acknowledgement of that.”

As a Faculty Fellow, Willing also collaborates with federal, state and tribal agencies to incorporate fungi into climate adaptation planning.

Many of her lab’s projects examine responses to climate change. For example, one of Willing’s current grad students is studying fungi in post-fire ecosystems.

Some fungal groups are fire-adapted, meaning that they can withstand wildfire better than others. After wildfire, the soil often becomes hydrophobic, which causes water to run off the surface instead of soaking in. This increases the risk of erosion, among other consequences. Fungi help seedlings to establish and stabilize the soil by helping it retain water.

Early findings from her lab indicate that prolonged fire suppression, a stewardship strategy intended to minimize wildfire impacts, can limit microorganisms fire tolerance, which then exacerbates the damage caused by a fire.

“There are lots of different nuances that we’re really just starting to understand,” Willing said.

She hopes this work can help inform future forest management practices. Although there are many mushroom enthusiasts in the Pacific Northwest, Willing is one of few scientists in the region studying how these organisms fold into broader ecosystems.

Most of the data on microbial communities was collected within the past 20 years or so, which makes it difficult to gauge how these organisms are responding to climate change. Another project in Willing’s lab involves conducting genetic analyses on preserved plant specimens to establish a baseline for fungal health.

“Our understanding of what fungal and bacterial communities were like before the onset of rapid warming is really limited,” Willing said.

Building this baseline will help researchers see how microbial communities are evolving and reveal management opportunities.

Without fungi, life on Earth couldn’t exist as we know it. Dead logs and fallen leaves would simply accumulate, with nothing to break them down and return their nutrients to the soil.

“Fungi are involved in everything,” Willing said. “In the cycle of life, they are at the beginning, helping plants to take root across every ecosystem on Earth, and at the end, helping to create lush soils for future life to flourish.”

ESA will acknowledge and celebrate fellows during a ceremony on July 27 at the annual meeting in Salt Lake City. Early Career Fellows are elected for five years.

For more information about her work, contact Willing at willingc@uw.edu.

91̽�� researchers developed the first system that incorporates tiny cameras in off-the-shelf wireless earbuds to allow users to talk with an AI model about the scene in front of them. For instance, a user might turn to a Korean food package and say, “Hey Vue, translate this for me.” They’d then hear an AI voice say, “The visible text translates to ‘Cold Noodles’ in English.”

The prototype system called VueBuds takes low-resolution, black-and-white images, which it transmits over Bluetooth to a phone or other nearby device. A small artificial intelligence model on the device then answers questions about the images within around a second. For privacy, all of the processing happens on the device, a small light turns on when the system is recording, and users can immediately delete images.��

The team will April 14 at the Association for Computing Machinery Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in Barcelona.��

“We haven’t seen most people adopt smart glasses or VR headsets, in part because a lot of people don’t like wearing glasses, and they often come with , such as recording high-resolution video and processing it in the cloud,” said senior author , a 91̽��professor in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering. “But almost everyone wears earbuds already, so we wanted to see if we could put visual intelligence into tiny, low-power earbuds, and also address privacy concerns in the process.”

Cameras use far more power than the microphones already in earbuds, so using the same sort of high-res cameras as those in smart glasses wouldn’t work. Also, large amounts of information can’t stream continuously over Bluetooth, so the system can’t run continuous video.��

The team found that using a low-power camera — roughly the size of a grain of rice — to shoot low-resolution, black-and-white still images limited battery drain and allowed for Bluetooth transmission while preserving performance.

There was also the matter of placement.��

“One big question we had was: Will your face obscure the view too much? Can earbud cameras capture the user’s view of the world reliably?” said lead author , who completed this work as a 91̽��doctoral student in the Allen School.��

The team found that angling each camera 5-10 degrees outward provides a 98-108 degree field of view. While this creates a small blind spot when objects are held closer than 20 centimeters from the user, people rarely hold things that close to examine them — making it a non-issue for typical interactions.

Sixteen participants also wore VueBuds and tested the system’s ability to translate and answer basic questions about objects. VueBuds achieved 83-84% accuracy when translating or identifying objects and 93% when identifying the author and title of a book.

This study was designed to gauge the feasibility of integrating cameras in wireless earbuds. Since the system only takes grayscale images, it can’t answer questions that involve color in the scene.��

The team wants to add color to the system — color cameras require more power — and to train specialized AI models for specific use cases, such as translation.�� 

“This study lets us glimpse what’s possible just using a general purpose language model and our wireless earbuds with cameras,” Kim said. “But we’d like to study the system more rigorously for applications like reading a book — for people who have low vision or are blind, for instance — or translating text for travelers.” 

Co-authors include , a 91̽��master’s student in the Allen School, and , , , and , all 91̽��students in electrical and computer engineering.��

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

Even on a campus like the 91̽��’s — home to particle accelerators, wave tanks and countless other bespoke pieces of equipment — the machinery in the stands out. Take the dilution fridge, a large, white, cylindrical device that can cool a small chamber to one hundredth of a kelvin above absolute zero — the coldest possible temperature in the universe.��

“This is the coldest fridge money can buy,” said , a 91̽��assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering and the former director of the lab, which goes by the nickname QT3. “When it’s running, the chamber inside this device is about 100 times colder than outer space. At that temperature, it’s much easier to study and manipulate a material’s quantum properties.”

The lab also houses a photon qubit tabletop lab: a nondescript set of boxes, lasers and lenses that can demonstrate the “spooky” — a term scientists actually use — phenomenon known as quantum entanglement, where two particles appear to communicate instantaneously with each other despite being physically apart.

Or there’s the lab’s latest acquisition, the scanning tunneling microscope, which can image individual atoms within a solid material, allowing researchers to study the structure of materials at the smallest scales.

An interdisciplinary group of researchers has been marshalling resources and expertise to create QT3 for three years, and now, the lab is opening its doors as a unique one-stop shop resource for quantum researchers and educators at the UW.

“The idea of this lab is to improve access to quantum hardware,” Parsons said. “It’s rather hard to acquire equipment like this. And there are a lot of researchers that may have good ideas that they want to test, but don’t have the resources yet for their own equipment. So we’re inviting researchers, initially from across campus, but also from other universities and from industry, to come in and test their ideas. This can be a hub for quantum experts to share their ideas and collaborate.”

The lab also boasts hardware that can demonstrate known quantum principles and techniques, making it useful for students in quantum fields. In addition to the entanglement device, Parsons’ students developed a machine that can suspend charged particles — in this case, tiny grains of pollen — in midair using electric fields. Researchers use the same technique to trap single atoms and manipulate their quantum properties, making the lab’s ion-trapping machine good practice for more complex work.

Some students even work at the lab through an undergraduate staffing program, and have helped install instrumentation, write code to power equipment and build parts for custom microscopes. The program provides yet another avenue for students to get hands-on experience with unusual machinery and techniques.��

“Quantum mechanics is inherently counterintuitive, and that makes it a powerful teaching tool,” Parsons said. “In the QT3 lab, students will encounter systems where their everyday intuition breaks down, and they must rely on careful reasoning and experimentation instead. They learn how to debug when results don’t match expectations, how to test simple cases and how to build understanding about hardware step by step.”

The cosmically cold dilution fridge remains something of a centerpiece, even as the lab fills up with specialized equipment. The extreme environment within the device strips heat, light and other stray energy away from materials, allowing researchers to observe the peculiar quantum properties that remain. One such property is superposition, or the ability of a particle like an electron to maintain multiple mutually exclusive properties at the same time. Scientists use superposition to create a powerful, tiny piece of technology: a quantum bit, or qubit.��

“Traditional computers use bits, which can only be one or zero. A qubit, on the other hand, we can make one plus zero,” Parsons said. “It’s both at the same time, and only when we measure it do we find out which one it is. We can use this unusual property to build a new class of computers that excel at tasks like communications and encryption.”

QT3 is part of a collaborative effort to solidify 91̽��as a leader in quantum research and applications. Most of the lab hardware was funded by a congressional earmark championed by Senator Maria Cantwell’s office. Departmental funding from across the College of Engineering and the College of Arts and Sciences helped rehab the lab space. The National Science Foundation provided seed funding for the instructional lab equipment.

The 91̽��has also spent the past decade investing heavily in faculty with quantum expertise.

“Very few places have expertise across the full quantum stack, from materials up to algorithms,” said , a 91̽��professor of physics and founder of QT3. “The 91̽��has quantum faculty in electrical and mechanical engineering, physics, computer science, materials science and chemistry. Our faculty work on superconducting qubits, spin defects, photons, trapped ions, neutral atoms and topological qubits. Our advantage is the breadth of our investment.”

The lab is now available to researchers and students across the UW, and private companies are encouraged to reach out about partnering. Parsons has already used the lab to teach a graduate-level class in electrical and computer engineering for students who included employees from Boeing, Microsoft and quantum computing company IonQ. The lab is hiring for a full-time manager to maintain the equipment and help users make the most of the facility.��

“Here in academia, we can improve the building blocks for applied technologies like quantum computing, and then transfer those learnings to industry for further scaling,” Parsons said.

For more information, contact Parsons at mfpars@uw.edu.

Nautilus and Allonautilus cephalopods and their extinct ancestors have been drifting through of the ocean for more than 500 million years. Researchers have spent the last 40 years trying to understand how these mysterious “living fossils” thrive in areas with limited nutrients. published in Scientific Reports, a UW-led team documented new habits and habitats for current Nautilus and Allonautilus species. These creatures appear to live in deeper water than their extinct cousins did, and the younger ones live twice as deep as the fully mature adults. Nautilus and Allonautilus species scavenge their food and never stop moving. While a few species migrate hundreds of meters down at dawn and then back up at dusk every day, the team found that most species aren’t quite as intrepid. The researchers also describe a new population of Allonautilus in waters off the island , one of several populations thriving due to hunting restrictions inspired in part by research efforts from this team.

For more information, contact senior author , 91̽��professor of both biology and Earth and space sciences, at argo@uw.edu.

Other 91̽��co-authors are , and . A full list of co-authors and funding is included

Green clay tennis courts become carbon negative after 10 years

The United States has around a quarter of a million tennis courts, 40,000 of which are helping mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. Green clay tennis courts, an alternative to traditional hard courts and the red clay courts popular in Europe, are constructed with a type of rock that reacts with carbon dioxide and water to sequester carbon as a stable dissolved salt. In , 91̽��researchers show that in the U.S., green clay courts remove 25,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere each year and 80% of green clay courts make up for construction emissions within 10 years. Moving forward, the researchers hope to experiment with other materials that also remove carbon dioxide without compromising performance for players.

For more information contact lead author , 91̽��assistant professor of oceanography, at fjpavia@uw.edu.

A full list of co-authors and funding is available .

Temperature dynamics, not just extremes, impact heat tolerance in mussels

Intertidal mussels, forming bumpy layers on shoreline rocks, withstand significant temperature swings as the tide ebbs and flows. These creatures live in one of the most thermally variable environments on Earth, but a new study shows that the rate, timing and duration of heating and cooling impact their metabolic rate, a proxy for overall health. At the UW’s , researchers exposed mussels to temperature regimens with equal highs and lows but different patterns of change. Even when the average temperature for a set period was the same, the mussels’ response was distinct. These results, , show that predicting how marine organisms respond to climate change means considering how temperature changes over time, not just how warm it gets.

For more information, contact lead author , assistant professor of biology at the College of the Holy Cross and a mentor for the 91̽��Friday Harbor Laboratories , at mnishizaki@holycross.edu.

The other 91̽��co-author is . A full list of co-authors and funding is available .

When algae stop growing, bacteria start swarming

Tiny geometric algae, called , produce nearly a quarter of the world’s organic matter by photosynthesis. In the microscopic marine universe, diatoms coexist with both harmful and helpful bacteria. A new study, , describes how a recently identified species of marine bacteria targets diatoms based on growth phase and nutrient availability. Growing diatoms can resist bacterial attacks, but when growth ceases, the bacteria modulate their gene expression patterns to become aggressive — first swimming and releasing compounds that damage the diatom and then clustering around them to feed. Bacteria can also overcome the diatom’s defenses in nutrient-rich environments. These findings highlight the dynamic relationship between bacteria and algae in the lab. Moving forward, researchers will explore what, if anything, changes in a more complex environment.

For more information, contact lead author , 91̽��postdoctoral fellow in oceanography, at dawiener5@gmail.com.

Other 91̽��co-authors are and . A full list of co-authors and funding is available .

Humans look to nature for sustenance and nourishment — food, water, energy, transportation, culture, tradition, adventure and so on. With the population of the United States now exceeding 340 million, humans are demanding more of the natural world than ever before. To understand the consequences, researchers set an ambitious goal: a wellness check on nature.

Nature is a sweeping category that includes everything from massive mountains to tiny urban gardens. Its health can’t be summarized in just a few words. In fact, it took researchers 868 pages, split into 13 chapters, to report the condition of lands, waters, wildlife, and biodiversity and describe links to human health and safety, culture, economy, and national security.

The new report, , is available for public comment and scientific review until May 30.

“The Nature Record tells an honest story,”  said , director of The Nature Record and interim executive director of the UW’s EarthLab. “It does not shy away from the scale of change we are seeing in nature — but it also shows that our choices matter, and that there are real, tangible ways to restore and sustain the systems we depend on.”

The preliminary findings are a mixed bag. On one hand, the report details a long history of resource extraction and habitat loss that will be difficult to reverse. At the same time, it shows how restoration and Indigenous stewardship approaches can help turn things around.

For example, the report states that approximately 50% of U.S. land is used for agriculture. This means farmers and ranchers must be involved in efforts to protect ecosystems and preserve biodiversity, Levin said.

The U.S. has millions of miles of rivers, which are fragmented by tens of thousands of large dams and as many as 2 million small dams and culverts.

Damming rivers disrupts fish migration and degrades ecosystem health. Ecological concerns have spurred hundreds of dam removals in the past decade, after which rivers quickly rebounded. In some places, fish have returned to spawning grounds that were inaccessible for generations.

“The assessment documents many examples where ecosystems and communities are recovering together,” Levin said. “These success stories show that change is possible when science, policy and communities align.”

The project began in 2022 following an executive order calling for an assessment of nature. Levin, selected to lead the effort, assembled a national team of experts to work on what was then called the National Nature Assessment.

Then, in January 2025, just weeks before the team was due to deliver a first draft, the effort came to a screeching halt when the federal government canceled the effort.

Undeterred, the team, including more than 170 scientists and experts, decided to continue working independently. They published a draft of The Nature Record in March.

“We built this to be useful,” Levin said. “And the only way it becomes truly useful is if people engage with it — question it, add to it, and help shape what comes next.”

He encourages people of all backgrounds to engage with the report and share feedback on the clarity, relevance and thoroughness, including representation of diverse perspectives.

In addition to documenting how humans are changing nature, the record provides important insights into how nature influences quality of life. Access to nature varies widely across the U.S. — the benefits of nature are not equally shared, nor is the burden of going without. Social and historical factors often determine whether communities enjoy greenspaces and clean drinking water, among other essentials.

“This assessment reflects not just the state of nature, but the relationships people have with it,” said deputy director , principal research scientist at the UW’s EarthLab. “We want people to see themselves in this work — whether through their communities, their values, or the places they care about — and to help shape how it evolves.”

For more information, contact Levin at pslevin@uw.edu.

Four 91̽�� researchers have been named AAAS Fellows, according to . They are among 449 newly elected fellows from around the world, who are recognized for their “scientifically and socially distinguished achievements” in science and engineering. New Fellows will receive an official certificate and a gold and blue rosette pin — representing science and engineering, respectively — to commemorate their election.

A tradition dating back to 1874, election as an AAAS Fellow is a lifetime honor. AAAS Fellows play a crucial role in shaping public policy, advancing scientific research and influencing national and global perspectives on critical issues. Becoming a AAAS Fellow is among the most distinct honors within the scientific community, and those elevated to the rank have made distinguished efforts to advance science or its applications. All fellows are expected to meet the commonly held standards of professional ethics and scientific integrity.

This year’s 91̽��AAAS fellows are:

, professor of biochemistry at the 91̽��School of Medicine and the director of the 91̽��Medicine Institute for Protein Design, was recognized for his groundbreaking work in computational protein design. Baker’s early work was in predicting how chains of chemicals fold into molecular structures that determine protein functions. He went on to design new proteins from scratch to carry out tasks in medicine, technology and sustainability. His team is developing vaccines, targeted drug delivery for cancer, enzymes to break down environmental pollutants and innovative biomaterials, among other endeavors. Baker received the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his scientific achievements to benefit humankind. He has also been awarded the Overton Prize in computational biology, Feynman Prize in Nanotechnology, Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences and Wiley Prize in Biomedical Sciences.

, professor and chair of neurobiology and biophysics at the 91̽��School of Medicine, was honored for her distinguished contributions to cognitive and systems neuroscience. Buffalo, who is the Wayne E. Crill Endowed Professor, is particularly noted for her pioneering research on the neural basis of remembering and learning, and for advancing translational research into broader insights on human brain function. She studies the relationship between eye movements and activity in the hippocampus and other nearby brain regions involved in forming memories, navigating and recalling the emotional context of past events. She is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, which presented her with the Troland Award for innovative, multidisciplinary studies. She also helps train postdoctoral scholars at the 91̽��Medicine Institute for Translational Immunology.

, professor and chair of genome sciences at the 91̽��School of Medicine, was noted for her distinguished contributions to the fields of genetics and genomics. She is known for advancing knowledge of the mechanisms underlying molecular evolution and genetic variation in yeasts and in humans. Her lab develops new tools to study mutations and their consequences, genome structure, gene interactions, and the evolution of gene expression. She has a longstanding interest in how copy number variations — how many times a particular segment of DNA repeats — affect adaptation, and how these variations arise. Dunham applies her genomics methods to diverse topics, including the biology of aging and the emergence of multi-drug antibiotic resistance. Dunham is a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University and was a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Faculty Scholar.

, 91̽��professor of chemistry, was honored for distinguished contributions to the theoretical understanding of nanoscale light-matter interactions, particularly for the design and interpretation of advanced spectroscopies that use electrons and light to probe material excitations. Masiello is an applied physicist whose research focuses on creating simple-yet-rich theoretical models that bring insight and understanding to observations spanning from quantum materials to nanophotonics. Masiello was hired as an assistant professor at the 91̽��in 2010. He is a faculty member in both the Molecular & Engineering Sciences Institute and the Institute for Nano-Engineered Systems, and is also an adjunct professor of applied mathematics and of materials science and engineering. Masiello’s honors include receiving an NSF CAREER Award and a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, called PECASE, awarded by President Obama at the White House.

This winter was ; as a result, many snowy, alpine areas have seen bouts of winter rainfall where there would ordinarily only be snow. These unusual weather patterns have contributed to an abysmal ski season, but they can also set the stage for dangerous avalanches. At temperatures close to freezing, precipitation can fall as rain but freeze when it hits the snow, forming an icy crust. Snow that accumulates on top of that crust is unstable and prone to abrupt slides, causing an avalanche that can close down a major highway in moments, endanger backcountry skiers and more.

Avalanche experts in Western Washington know how to manage the risks associated with rain-on-snow events, but many of their counterparts in colder regions like Eastern Washington, Idaho and Montana are less familiar with these dynamics. New research from the 91̽�� shows that as winters in these regions warm, their snowpacks may come to resemble those of maritime areas, with more rain-on-snow events, icy crusts and complex avalanche forecasting.��

The findings in ARC Geophysical Research.

“This winter’s warmth is a harbinger,” said lead author , a 91̽��graduate student of civil and environmental engineering. “We know that temperatures will keep rising, and our work is a red flag for cooler regions of the greater Pacific Northwest, such as Idaho and Western Montana, that aren’t used to dealing with ice crusts and their resulting avalanche problems.”

The study is part of a larger effort to understand the structure of snow as it accumulates, which has implications for weather and avalanche forecasting, wildlife dynamics and more.��

“Snow scientists are pretty good at measuring snow depth and volume,” said senior author , a 91̽��professor of civil and environmental engineering. “We’re also pretty good at figuring out how much water you get if all that snow melts. But our models aren’t as good at representing snow structure, such as layers of different densities and crystal types that increase avalanche risks. And we really want to know how the structure of snow changes as the climate changes. That’s a tricky question that no one has tackled, particularly for rain-on-snow conditions.”

To dig into that question, the researchers studied how warming influences ice layer formation in seasonal snowpacks. First, they collected temperature and precipitation data captured by 53 monitoring stations across the Pacific Northwest for the past 25 years. They used a computer model to identify days when ice layers likely formed at each location. They then checked the model against real-world measurements at one of the locations — a station at Snoqualmie Pass — and found that the model matched the measurements with 74% accuracy.

Finally, they used the same model to simulate those same 25 winters at 2 C and 4 C warmer than they were, and looked for changes to the number of ice crusts across the region. , the Pacific Northwest is expected to warm by 2 C to 5 C by 2050 as compared to pre-2000 temperatures.

The results were split regionally by the Cascade mountains. In colder, inland parts of the Pacific Northwest — places like Eastern Washington, Idaho and Montana — higher temperatures created more rain-on-snow days and more avalanche-prone ice layers. Locations in the warmer, maritime Cascades saw the opposite effect: Higher temperatures created slush instead of ice, potentially reducing the avalanche risk associated with ice crusts.��

The predicted snowpack changes may also impact wildlife behavior. Some foraging mammals, such as reindeer, dig down into the snow in search of food and may have a hard time breaking through an icy crust. Conversely, firm ice might provide a better running surface for animals fleeing predators. Specific regional effects will require additional study.

What’s clear now is that those who work or play in avalanche terrain in broad swaths of the Pacific Northwest — and even beyond — may need to adjust to a new set of risk factors.

“I’d love to see this shared with avalanche forecasters widely, both as a call to action and as a way to help them understand what their snowpack might look like in the future,” Alden said.

, the director of geospatial science at Audubon Alaska and former doctoral student of environmental and forest sciences at the UW, is a co-author.

This research was funded by the NASA Interdisciplinary Research in Earth Science program and the 91̽��Program on Climate Change’s Graubard Fellowship.

For more information, contact Alden at cdalden@uw.edu.

Plowing, or tilling, is an age-old agricultural practice that readies the soil for planting by turning over the top layer to expose fresh earth. The method — intended to improve water and nutrient circulation — remains popular today, but concerns about soil degradation have prompted some to return to regenerative methods that disturb the soil less.

In a new study, a team led by 91̽�� researchers examined the impact of tilling on soil moisture and water retention using methods originally designed for monitoring earthquakes. Researchers placed fiber optic cables alongside fields at an experimental farm in the United Kingdom and recorded ground motion from plots receiving different amounts of tillage and compaction from tractor tires pulling farm equipment.

The study, , shows that tilling and compaction disrupt intricate capillary networks within the soil that give it a natural sponge-like quality.

“This study offers a clear explanation for why the process of tillage, one of humanity’s oldest agricultural activities, changes the structure of soil in ways that affect how it soaks up water,” said co-author , a 91̽��professor of Earth and space sciences.

The link between tilling and soil degradation has been established for quite some time, but the rationale is less robust.

“It’s counterintuitive,” Montgomery said.

Tilling is supposed to create holes for water to reach the roots of plants, but it breaks these small channels in the soil instead, causing rain to pool on the surface and form a muddy crust. Over time, this can increase erosion and flood risk. The researchers observed this phenomenon in detail using seismological methods.

For the past decade or so, physical scientists have been exploring ways to harness the fiber optic cable network to make remote observations. They use a technique called distributed acoustic sensing, or DAS, that records ground motion based on cable strain. Because the technology is so sensitive, it can also capture the speed at which sound waves pass through a substance, which is called seismic velocity.

When soil gets wet, seismic velocity changes. Sound moves slower through mud than dry dirt.

“We wanted to find out whether seismic tools could be used to understand how soil — under different treatment regimens — would respond to environmental variability,” said senior author , a 91̽��associate professor of Earth and space sciences.

An experimental farm near Newport in the United Kingdom, affiliated with Harper Adams University, turned out to be an ideal testing ground for their experiment.

The farm is split into rows that have received consistent cultivation for more than two decades.

There are no-till rows, rows tilled 10 centimeters deep and rows tilled 25 centimeters. Compaction is a byproduct of tilling caused by tractors. Different levels of compaction were tested by modulating tractor tire pressure.

“We took advantage of a natural experiment that had already been done, but just not yet measured,” Montgomery said.

The researchers lined their experimental plots with a fiber optic cable. They collected continuous ground motion data for 40 hours and combined it with weather data over the same period, which featured light to moderate rainfall and mild temperatures.

“We observed the natural vibration of the ground and found that it is really sensitive to environmental factors, including precipitation,” said , lead author and former 91̽��postdoctoral researcher of Earth and space sciences, now at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

They determined how each cultivation strategy impacted the soil’s response to rainfall by comparing trends in seismic velocity across study sites. Shi developed various models to process the data and help the researchers understand seismic velocity in terms of soil moisture.

The method is straightforward, inexpensive and offers far better spatial and temporal resolution than previous monitoring tools.

The researchers believe it could help farmers understand how to manage their land, provide real time flooding alerts, improve earth systems models by refining estimates of atmospheric water content and better inform seismic hazard maps with data on liquefaction risk.

Additional co-authors include , a 91̽��professor of atmospheric and climate science, , a 91̽��research assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering, from the University of California Santa Cruz, formerly at Purdue University, , , and from Harper Adams University, from the University of Exeter 

This study was funded by The Pan Family Fund, the Murdock Charitable Trust, the 91̽��College of the Environment Seed Fund, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, and a National Environmental Research Council cross-disciplinary research capability grant.��

For more information, contact Denolle at mdenolle@uw.edu.��

Plants, like people, have a circadian clock and they sense seasonal changes to light and temperature. Plants that bloom in the spring use the longer days and warmer temperatures as seasonal cues that it’s time to bloom.

Mosquito-borne diseases, such as dengue, malaria and Zika, . Mosquitoes are increasingly becoming resistant to current insecticides, leading to a pressing need for new methods to prevent mosquito bites — and the potential transmission of disease.

New research by an international team, including researchers at the 91̽��, provides insight into how an organic compound common in plant-based mosquito repellents affects mosquitoes. The study, , reveals that Aedes aegypti mosquitoes use a specific sensory receptor to detect and avoid borneol (pronounced “bor-nee-ohl”), an organic compound found in several aromatic plants, including camphor trees, rosemary and other aromatic herbs.

“We were surprised by how sensitive the mosquitoes were to this repellent,” said co-author , a 91̽��professor of biology. “By identifying the odorant receptor, we can now develop and test repellents that are even more effective than borneol, in that they last longer and are more repellent.”

The researchers discovered that Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, which are the major carrier of dengue and yellow fever viruses, have a single odor receptor, called OR49, that is highly tuned to detect borneol.

When a mosquito encounters this compound, OR49 activates a specific nerve cell in a mosquito’s maxillary palp, one of its primary organs for detecting odors and locating human hosts. That signal then travels from the nerve cell to a distinct region of the mosquito’s brain, triggering avoidance behavior.

To test how critical this receptor is, the researchers disabled the Or49 gene. Without OR49, the repellent signal essentially disappeared. The mosquitoes’ neurons no longer responded to borneol and the insects were far less likely to avoid it.

Researchers at the 91̽��were instrumental in collecting neural recordings from the mosquito brains to identify how the mosquito olfactory system processes borneol and other similar compounds and repellents.

“Because the repellency through the OR49 receptor is so strong, we might be able to identify other volatile odors that activate the same receptor to ‘push’ mosquitoes away from people,” said co-senior author , associate professor of biology at Baylor University. “The new compounds might be easier and cheaper to produce, or safer and more acceptable to the human nose than existing repellent formulations.”

This research bridges basic neuroscience and public health, offering fresh insight into how tiny sensory signals can have life-saving implications. That is central to the premise of the team’s larger research goal: understanding the genetic basis for how Aedes aegypti is attracted to sources of nectar. The team hopes to create a new generation of mosquito attractants that can be used in traps for enhancing mosquito surveillance and control.

“The knowledge gained in these studies will inform similar studies in mosquitoes that transmit malaria, plus other biting insects that continue to exert negative impacts on human flourishing on a global scale,” Pitts said.

, a 91̽��postdoctoral scholar in the biology department, is a co-author on this paper. A full list of co-authors is included . This research was funded by the Israel Science Foundation; the National Institutes of Health; the National Science Foundation; the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; the Science and Technology Development Plan Project of Jilin Province, China; and the Ministry of Science & Technology, Israel.

For more information, contact Riffell at jriffell@uw.edu.

Adapted from .