The 91爆料 has earned a Gold rating from the 鈥嬧�婼ustainability Tracking, Assessment & Rating System, or STARS.

The STARS ratings, administered by the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education, are good for three years and are based on self-reported assessments. The 91爆料 has held a Gold rating from STARS since first participating in 2012.

鈥淭he STARS Gold rating is recognition of all the hard work being done across our campus by staff, students and faculty for sustainability,鈥� 91爆料 Sustainability director Lisa Dulude said. 鈥淎s we celebrate Earth Day in April, this achievement is a reminder of the 91爆料鈥檚 commitment to embed sustainability in everything we do, and the benefits of this work for our environment and our community.鈥�

The STARS report covers the 91爆料 in Seattle and includes questions on sustainability performance in academics, planning and administration, engagement and operations. About 380 schools worldwide have active STARS ratings. Gold is the second-highest tier. There are 17 schools that have achieved the highest Platinum rating. 91爆料 Bothell also holds a STARS Gold rating.

All STARS reports are public, and the .

STARS is the most wide-reaching sustainability report, and the information collected gives the 91爆料 a comprehensive view of its sustainability performance and allows for comparison to peer universities. It can also provide insight on areas where additional efforts might be needed.

The information is used to inform the 91爆料鈥檚 Sustainability Action Plan, which sets out the University鈥檚 sustainability goals. The first Sustainability Action Plan was adopted in 2020, and the 91爆料 is currently in the process of creating an updated Plan, which will be finalized by summer 2026.

鈥淭he 91爆料 has long been a sustainability leader in higher education, as evidenced by our long track record of STARS Gold ratings,鈥� Dulude said. 鈥淲ith the Sustainability Action Plan update, working groups have identified several areas to set measurable targets, which ensure we will continue that leadership.鈥�

The 91爆料鈥檚 sustainability efforts are also on show in recognition of Earth Day on April 22. Events organized by a variety of groups across the 91爆料 happen throughout the month, including volunteer opportunities, workshops and more. You can see the on the 91爆料 Sustainability site.

Even on a campus like the 91爆料鈥檚 鈥� home to particle accelerators, wave tanks and countless other bespoke pieces of equipment 鈥� 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 鈥� the coldest possible temperature in the universe.听

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

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

Or there鈥檚 the lab鈥檚 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 91爆料.

鈥淭he idea of this lab is to improve access to quantum hardware,鈥� Parsons said. 鈥淚t’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鈥檛 have the resources yet for their own equipment. So we鈥檙e 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.鈥�

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鈥� students developed a machine that can suspend charged particles 鈥� in this case, tiny grains of pollen 鈥� in midair using electric fields. Researchers use the same technique to trap single atoms and manipulate their quantum properties, making the lab鈥檚 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.听

鈥淨uantum mechanics is inherently counterintuitive, and that makes it a powerful teaching tool,鈥� Parsons said. 鈥淚n 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鈥檛 match expectations, how to test simple cases and how to build understanding about hardware step by step.鈥�

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.听

鈥淭raditional computers use bits, which can only be one or zero. A qubit, on the other hand, we can make one plus zero,鈥� Parsons said. 鈥淚t’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.鈥�

QT3 is part of a collaborative effort to solidify 91爆料 as a leader in quantum research and applications. Most of the lab hardware was funded by a congressional earmark championed by Senator Maria Cantwell鈥檚 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 91爆料 has also spent the past decade investing heavily in faculty with quantum expertise.

鈥淰ery few places have expertise across the full quantum stack, from materials up to algorithms,鈥� said , a 91爆料 professor of physics and founder of QT3. 鈥淭he 91爆料 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.鈥�

The lab is now available to researchers and students across the 91爆料, 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.听

鈥淗ere in academia, we can improve the building blocks for applied technologies like quantum computing, and then transfer those learnings to industry for further scaling,鈥� Parsons said.

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

The Peace Corps announced Tuesday that the 91爆料 is again since the international program launched in 1961.

For 2025, the 91爆料 placed No. 7 among universities with 15,000 or more enrolled undergraduates in total number of Peace Corps volunteers, according to the Peace Corps. In total, more than 3,175 91爆料 graduates have gone on to service opportunities abroad as volunteers.

The 91爆料 is proud to prepare students to engage meaningfully with the world, said Ahmad Ezzeddine, 91爆料 vice provost for global affairs.听

鈥淭he Peace Corps remains one of our nation’s most effective avenues for citizen diplomacy, and we are grateful for its long history of strengthening communities around the globe,鈥� Ezzeddine said.

Volunteers in the Peace Corps work side by side with communities to help to address real needs through agriculture, community economic development, education, environment, health and youth in development projects, Peace Corps acting Director Richard E. Swarttz said.听

鈥淪ixty-five years after our founding, the Peace Corps is still going strong,鈥� he said.

According to the Peace Corps, 38 91爆料 alumni served in 26 countries around the world during the past fiscal year, including Albania, Montenegro, Armenia, Cameroon, Colombia, countries in the Eastern Caribbean, Ecuador, Fiji, Georgia, Guatemala, Guinea, Guyana, Lesotho, Madagascar, Mexico, Morocco, Namibia, Paraguay, Peru, the Philippines, South Africa, Tanzania, Thailand, Timor-Leste, Togo, Vanuatu and Zambia.

To better reflect the combined contributions of volunteers who serve traditional 27-month assignments and Peace Corps Response volunteers who serve for 6-12 months, the Peace Corps counted alumni volunteers who served at any point during the 2025 fiscal year for the 2026 rankings. Previously, colleges and universities were ranked on a one-day annual headcount of volunteers on Sept. 30, the last day of the fiscal year.听

More than 250,000 Americans have served in the Peace Corps around the world since President John F. Kennedy initiated the program in 1961.

Learn more about .

Since Ryan Calo joined 91爆料 School of Law in 2012, he has become a leading expert on the law and emerging technology.听聽

Calo believes that few interesting questions 鈥� especially around technology 鈥� can be resolved by reference to a single discipline.听

Calo is a co-founder of the , and the . He is also a professor in the and an adjunct in the .听

Calo鈥檚 newest book, 鈥�,鈥� published late last year, is a guide to a legal analysis of regulation and technology. Nearly a decade ago, Calo realized that the most recent book on the topic was published in the 1970s. He decided it was time for an updated resource reflecting current, rapidly evolving technology and the present regulatory environment.听

91爆料 News spoke with Calo about the book and the current legal and policy climate in the United States.

Who is the intended audience for 鈥淟aw and Technology鈥�?

Ryan Calo: I wrote it primarily for new entrants to the field, be they junior scholars or students. I also hoped that the themes would resonate with more senior scholars and that it would be useful outside of academia for either analysis or instruction. Because ultimately, what the book does is proposes a methodology for analyzing technology from a legal perspective.听

I spent a lot of time interacting with policymakers, staffers on Capitol Hill, people who work for senators and members of Congress. A legislator might come to a staffer and say,聽 鈥淗ey, my constituents are really worried about augmented reality or AI. They’re really worried about deep fakes.鈥� That staff member doesn’t really have a place to start, and they end up just calling up experts, reading New York Times articles, talking to industry, but not in any kind of methodical way. This book is designed to help them figure out what’s going on.听

I also hope that this book would be of use to people who are in practice and want to be more methodical about analyzing a given technology.听

Technology evolves fast. How should the legal system and policymakers prepare to navigate the relationship between law and emerging technologies?

RC: Many of us have an expectation that technology is just going to change. It’s just going to evolve, and our job as lawyers or judges or policymakers, is to kind of scramble and accommodate the resulting disruption, and perhaps try to restore the status quo. Part of what I hope to see is legal scholars and policymakers acknowledging that the disruption isn鈥檛 inevitable.

We need to empower independent researchers to figure out what’s going on with new technology. Right now researchers are disempowered because they don’t have access to the relevant data and platforms. And many times when they try to get that data, they get served with a cease and desist letter.听

We need to protect whistleblowers and make sure there’s adequate, truly top-notch expertise within government. If you have those things, then you’re much more likely to be able to figure out what could go wrong with these technologies without having to observe the harm unfold over a long period of time, as we have with the internet and now with AI.

You mentioned the School of Law鈥檚 leadership in tech policy. How is the 91爆料 positioned nationally in this space?

RC: We are really among the leaders in this area.听

The School of Law has a lot of tech policy offerings, including a . Many faculty have contributed to scholarship over the years. We have lots of faculty writing about law and technology.听

We also have been really a model for impactful interdisciplinary collaboration. Law students can work in the clinic or the Tech Policy Lab. I’m one of the founders of the Center for an Informed Public, which bridges human centered and design engineering as well as the Information School and dozens of other departments including psychology, education and even geography.听

A third important example is the . We did a whole year of work mapping out who was doing work in the space 鈥� all the centers, all the labs, all the initiatives 鈥� all the people on the three campuses identified as working at this intersection.听

We’re leaders across the country at the law school in terms of our student offerings in our research, but we are also part of that interstitial glue. People think of the iSchool, which they should. They think of computer science, which they should. But they also should think about who else is in the center of this, who else is at the heart of it, and the School of Law is a big part of that.

There鈥檚 been a lot of news lately about states trying to regulate AI and the federal government pushing back. What鈥檚 your perspective?

RC: If I were trying to sabotage the innovation edge of the United States, I would do at least two things, maybe three.听

First, I would divest in basic research. The United States has had an innovation edge over the rest of the world in large part because of decisions made in the 1950s and beyond to invest in basic research. I would dismantle that, and I would try to make it really hard for universities to do research, either by spending less, disrupting the relationships, or messing with overhead in ways that makes research impossible.听

The second thing I would do is make it really hostile for outside innovators to come in and participate in knowledge production here. I would, whether xenophobically or not, try to make it really hard for people with ideas and talent and knowledge to come here to the United States to work on teams with other Americans, to stay here and teach in our schools, to found companies. The second enormous advantage the United States has had is that the country has become attractive because of its commitment to the rule of law and its robust higher ed system, and that鈥檚 built on its innovation and investment in research. People from all over the world come here to try and make the next Google and Amazon, or are teaching in our schools and contributing to our ecosystem.听

The third thing I would do in this hypothetical situation is remove non-existent hurdles to transformative technologies like AI. What do I mean? Federal leaders are currently talking about getting out of the way of AI, but there aren’t any regulations about AI, really. There are some state laws that have a kind of European flavor of risk management, like and . There are specific things that states are worried about, including deep fakes and labeling online social media accounts that are automated. There’s almost nothing standing in the way of AI innovation in terms of regulation.听

The way that our system is structured is that the individual states, under our concept of federalism, are supposed to be laboratories of ideas, experimenting with legislation, and showing that it works or it doesn’t. Pretending that you’re pro-innovation because you’re trying to stamp out the very few regulatory hurdles that companies have to have to abide by all in the name of competing with China, which has AI laws, is just senseless. We’re much better off following the wisdom of the founders, who said, 鈥淗ey, if you have something new in society, let the states serve as laboratories for different laws, and we can all learn from each other about how that’s going.鈥� That’s classic federalism and it used to be a pillar of conservative thinking.听

The President doesn’t have the power to boss the states around in terms of their legislative capacities. And Congress has taken up the question of whether to try to preempt AI laws, and they resignedly declined. I just want to comment that the overall strategy of the administration has been deeply anti-innovation in its impact, even though it is vociferously proinnovation in its rhetoric.

Any final thoughts?

RC: We have an environment in the U.S. that promotes innovation, sometimes through laws, such as laws that protect intellectual property, and laws that make people feel safe enough to use products and services that companies can sell them to us. There鈥檚 not, and never has been, a one-to-one correlation between regulation and promoting innovation. It’s really important that we acknowledge, as a society and community, that sometimes laws are written in the service of innovation. What you want is a favorable regulatory environment, not a complete absence of the rule of law.

For more information, contact Calo at rcalo@uw.edu.听

The 91爆料 is the best in the U.S. and No. 2 in the world for library and information management, according to the 2026 released Wednesday. Three other 91爆料 subject areas placed in the top 10 in the world: geology, geophysics and Earth and marine sciences.

This ranking tracks an analysis of reputation and research output, conducted by . The consultancy looks at more than 18,300 individual university programs at more than 1,700 universities in 100 locations around the world. The ranking spans 55 academic disciplines across five broad faculty areas including arts and humanities; engineering and technology; life sciences and medicine; natural sciences; and social sciences and management.

The 91爆料 has 29 programs in the top 100, 14 in the top 50, and four in the top 10, including:

• Library and information management 鈥� No. 2
• Geology 鈥� No. 8
• Geophysics 鈥� No. 9
• Earth and marine sciences 鈥� No. 10

Visit the rankings site for .

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鈥檚 time to bloom.

At the 91爆料 Harris Hydraulics Lab, an odd scene plays out. Over and over again, researchers from the 91爆料 and the (PNNL) pass a small rubber model of a marine animal through a large tank filled with flowing water and fitted with a spinning turbine. On some runs, the model bonks against the turbine blades; on others, it receives a glancing blow or sails past undisturbed. When bonks or knicks occur, a small collision sensor on one of the turbine鈥檚 blades detects the impacts and plots the interactions in a computer program.

The researchers are repeatedly simulating something that they hope will rarely happen in the wild: a collision between marine wildlife like a seabird, seal, fish or whale 鈥� or submerged debris like logs 鈥� and an underwater turbine.听

鈥淲e want to make sure we鈥檙e minimizing the chances of a collision in the first place,鈥� said Aidan Hunt, a senior research engineer in mechanical engineering at the 91爆料 and member of the (PMEC). 鈥淏ut if a collision were to occur, we want to be able to detect it, and potentially avoid it, in real time. The available evidence suggests that collisions are rare, but we鈥檙e taking a 鈥榯rust-but-verify鈥� approach.鈥�

Marine energy 鈥� power harvested from tides, waves and currents 鈥� has enormous potential as a clean, renewable resource. But more information is needed about how large, commercial installations of underwater turbines or power-generating buoys could affect marine wildlife, whether through increased noise in the environment, habitat change or direct interactions with equipment.听

The marine collision experiments are part of the , a collection of projects led by PNNL to study the environmental impact of marine energy.听

The work at Harris Hydraulics follows a by PNNL and the 91爆料 Applied Physics Lab using a four-foot-tall prototype turbine installed at the entrance to Sequim Bay. In that study, researchers trained an underwater camera on the turbine for 109 days and then catalogued every instance of an animal approaching or interacting with the turbine. The camera captured more than 1,000 instances of fish, birds and seals approaching the turbine blades. There were only four collisions, and all were small fish.听

鈥淭his study was a first step, but a promising one,鈥� said co-author , a research scientist at the 91爆料 Applied Physics Lab. 鈥淲e didn鈥檛 see any endangered species in our study, and the risk of collision for seals and sea birds seemed to be quite low. We鈥檙e excited to get back out there with the camera and learn even more.鈥�

The Sequim Bay experiment generated hours of valuable data, but that degree of intense monitoring may not be practical in large commercial installations in the future. Cheaper impact sensors, like the ones logging bath toy impacts at Harris Hydraulics, could be a solution, researchers say.听聽

The project is funded by the U.S. Department of Energy鈥檚 Hydropower & Hydrokinetics Office, through the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory鈥檚 Triton Initiative and the TEAMER program.

For more information, contact Hunt at ahunt94@uw.edu or Emma Cotter at emma.cotter@pnnl.gov.

We are pleased to see criminal charges filed with the court related to the occupation of the Interdisciplinary Engineering Building. This is an important step in ensuring accountability for those who perpetrated this occupation, in addition to the suspensions that the students arrested in the building received through the student conduct process. We value free speech and expression but also must continue to be a campus community where dangerous, unlawful actions are not tolerated.

We appreciate the hard work by the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, 91爆料 Police and law enforcement partners who investigated a complex case involving a large number of individuals.

March 1 is World Seagrass Day, which celebrates the flowering plants that look like blades of grass waving in our oceans and in Puget Sound. as an opportunity “to promote and facilitate actions for the conservation of seagrasses in order to contribute to their health and development.”

, 91爆料 professor of biology, studies the relationship between the environment and marine organisms, including eelgrass, the primary species of seagrass that resides in the waters in and around Washington.

In honor of World Seagrass Day, 91爆料 News asked Ruesink to explain what seagrass is and what makes the seagrasses in Washington unique.

What is seagrass and why is it important?

Jennifer Ruesink: Seagrasses are 鈥渓and plants鈥� that have moved into ocean habitats. They have roots, stems, leaves, flowers, fruits and seeds. There are only about 70 species of seagrasses, representing just 0.02% of all flowering plant species.

Seagrass matters to humans in many ways. It cycles nutrients and carbon, provides habitat for fish and decapods, and it anchors sediment in place, which contributes to shoreline stabilization. It鈥檚 a sentinel species for good water quality 鈥� in fact, impaired water quality from nutrient pollution, coastal building and erosion are its biggest threats.

Beyond these utilitarian values, seagrass is 鈥渨onderful鈥� in the truest sense of that word 鈥� the way it grows, moves and shapes the environment provides a continual source of wonder.

What makes seagrass different from seaweed and other ocean plants?

JR: In addition to seagrasses, there are many other photosynthetic organisms that live in the ocean. Collectively they provide half of our global oxygen. But the others are different from seagrasses: Seaweeds, also known as macroalgae, do not make roots or flowers. Tiny microalgae live on ocean surfaces, even on the seagrass leaves themselves. Other photosynthetic organisms, such as phytoplankton, drift as single cells or small colonies in the water.

Seagrasses are colloquially called 鈥済rasses鈥� because many have grass-like shapes with long strap-like leaves that grow from the base, and their stems move horizontally underground. From an evolutionary perspective, seagrasses do not group with the terrestrial grass family but instead have unique families or share relatives with freshwater plants.

What does seagrass look like in the ocean?

JR: If you think of a prairie on land, it is full of different plant species that grow to different heights, flower at different times, and extract light and nutrients with different efficiencies. Seagrass meadows are the prairies of the ocean, but they frequently consist of just one seagrass species. Because the number of seagrass species is so small, much of the dramatic variability occurs within single species, rather than across multiple species. Here in Washington we mostly have the same species 鈥� eelgrass, or Zostera marina 鈥� that鈥檚 found from 23-70 degrees north latitude on both sides of the Pacific and Atlantic Ocean.

Tell us about eelgrass in Washington.

JR: The remarkable thing is that there is so much of eelgrass variability present within our state. For example, some populations have shoots that replicate solely by branching, making genetic copies of themselves as they go. Other populations have shoots that never branch, but instead germinate, flower and die within a summer, overwintering as seeds. Shoots in Washington range from a diminutive 0.7 feet to nearly 6.5 feet long.

It makes sense that this diversity within a species is a product of evolving in the varied environments of Washington鈥檚 vast and convoluted shoreline. We think this variability should confer resilience to change, but that鈥檚 an ongoing exploration.

Washington also has two seagrass species other than Zostera marina: Ruppia maritima, which is a fast-growing species characteristic of brackish channels in saltmarshes, and Nanozostera japonica, which was established in the state in the 1950s after being inadvertently introduced from Japan. You can find them all growing together in a few places.

How would you suggest that someone celebrate World Seagrass Day?

JR: There are plenty of public-access shores around Seattle 鈥� including Golden Gardens and the south side of Alki Point 鈥� where you can see eelgrass growing. At this time of year, you might see nearby. These small geese feed on eelgrass to fuel their migration. To see eelgrass, you need a low tide since it can鈥檛 handle staying out of the water very long. On World Seagrass Day, good low tides occur after dark 鈥� around 9 p.m. in the Seattle area. If you do find seagrass, you can take a picture and help data collection about its distribution by uploading your information to iNaturalist or .

Any time you鈥檙e at the beach, you might find eelgrass washed up on shore: Keep an eye out for the leaves 鈥� green, flexible rectangles 鈥� especially if they’re connected to chunky brown cylinders 鈥� the stems, or . Each node on the rhizome is the scar of a former leaf. This is fun to think about because it helps demonstrate the dynamic lifestyle of this plant: Each leaf lasts a couple of months before it鈥檚 left behind on the rhizome and decays. Meanwhile the production of a new leaf every couple of weeks both turns over the biomass and moves the shoot along the sediment.

The point of 鈥淲orld Days鈥� in general is to raise awareness about global issues of concern and to celebrate accomplishments: If you pass the news about Washington eelgrass along to someone else, that鈥檚 a celebration!

For more information, contact Ruesink at ruesink@uw.edu.

Learn more about Jennifer Ruesink’s eelgrass research

Ruesink’s recent research on eelgrass delves into understanding the mechanism behind eelgrass flowering:

• (collaboration with Takato Imaizumi, 91爆料 biology professor)
• (collaboration with Kerry Naish, 91爆料 professor in the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences, and Takato Imaizumi, 91爆料 biology professor)
• (collaboration with Kerry Naish, 91爆料 professor in the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences),

Last December was the warmest on record for Washington, . As the mild winter continues, many of the plants in our gardens are starting to show signs of small buds, even though it’s only February.

, a 91爆料 professor of biology, studies the genes that plants use to monitor seasonal changes. 91爆料 News asked Imaizumi to talk about how plants know when to bloom and whether this might change in warmer winters.

How do plants know when it’s time to bloom?

Takato Imaizumi: There are two major factors that plants use to sense the seasons: light 鈥� the presence or absence, the intensity, or the color at a specific time of day 鈥� and temperature. To control flowering time, plants sense light conditions in the leaves and temperature at shoot tips, which are buds that contain cells that allow the plant to grow and make a flower.

All plants use both factors, but some plants rely more on temperature than light. Some examples include tulips, crocus and cherry blossoms. Plants that rely more on light include mustard greens, cabbage, rapeseeds and chrysanthemum, though temperature is still important for these plants.

Other environmental factors that can affect bloom time include water and the availability of nutrients.

How do you think the warmer weather in December has affected the plants here in Washington?

TI: Temperatures will affect plant growth and development. I assume that warmer ambient temperatures will accelerate the flowering process of some plants that use temperature information to control flowering time.

How does studying the genes involved in the timing of plant flowering help with conservation biology?

TI: Proper timing of flowering is crucial for reproductive success and the health of a plant species. Understanding how the flowering genes are regulated will help us predict how future changes in climate may affect flowering times. That will give us a better sense of which plants may struggle.

This information could also help us design restoration strategies for plants that are struggling. For example, if we wanted to introduce a plant to a novel environment, we would have some ideas about what it would require to thrive. Plants are adapted to local environments. Even within the same species, a plant that lives farther north may require different light and temperature conditions to grow and flower compared to the same species growing farther south. When we think about transplanting plants for conservation, learning specific environmental requirements may increase the chance of transplant success.

For more information, contact Imaizumi at takato@uw.edu.