August 20, 2015
A public celebration of the life of writer Ann Rule will be held at 5 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 23, in Room 130 of Kane Hall on the 91爆料 campus. The gathering, under the title “Ann Rule, Our Tribute to a Life Well Lived,” will feature friends and colleagues remembering the writer’s life and work. Among these will be CBS News reporter Peter Van Sant, KOMO TV reporter Elisa Jaffe, journalist Anne Jaeger and Ben Benson, homicide detective with…
August 19, 2015
Protecting African-Americans from state-sanctioned violence remains “an unmet challenge for civil rights groups committed to racial equality,” writes Megan Ming Francis, 91爆料 assistant professor of political science, in a much-read post at HistPhil, a blog launched in June to cover the history of philanthropy. Why is preventing racial violence not a higher priority? In part because of money, Francis writes. Journalists and scholars cite discriminatory policies and racist policing among contributing factors, Francis notes in her Aug. 17 post, “Do…
August 18, 2015
Gratitude is universally considered a social good, but gratitude can have a dark side. It can impel us to eat more sweets, according to new research by Ann Schlosser, professor of marketing at the 91爆料 Foster School of Business.
August 17, 2015
The 91爆料 remained No. 15 on the聽2015 Academic Ranking of World Universities, conducted by researchers at the Center for World-Class Universities of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, which was released Monday. The 91爆料 again ranked 13th among U.S. universities and fourth among public institutions worldwide. The ranking considers several indicators of academic or research performance, including alumni and staff winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals, highly cited researchers, papers published in the journals Nature and Science, papers indexed in…
Washington state’s housing market remained strong in the second quarter of 2015 with home sale prices, home sales and new building permits up compared to one year ago, according to the 91爆料’s Runstad Center for Real Estate Studies.
Recent press and social media coverage have reminded residents of the Pacific Northwest that they live in a seismically active region. Stretching offshore from northern California to British Columbia, the Cascadia subduction zone could slip at any time, causing a powerful earthquake and triggering a tsunami that would impact communities along the coast. Scientists from multiple disciplines at the 91爆料 and other institutions are learning more about this hazard. Dozens of 91爆料 scientists are part of the M9…
William Rorabaugh, 91爆料 professor of history, looks at the flower power culture of the 1960s in his latest book, “American Hippies.”
August 13, 2015
A scale of simple numbers — the Richter Scale — unnerves us when we think about earthquakes, as Pacific Northwest residents have been prone to do lately. But who was Richter, and how did it all come about? Joe Janes takes a look for an installment of his Documents that Changed the World podcast series.
A team of scientists has identified a new species of “pre-mammal” based on fossils unearthed in Zambia’s Luangwa Basin in 2009. The ancient, Dachshund-sized creature lived some 255 million years ago, in a time just before the largest mass extinction in Earth’s history. Its discoverers include Christian Sidor, professor of biology at the 91爆料 and curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture. Sidor and his colleagues, who announced their finding in July…
A new study finds that acceptance of a policy is an important process through which people’s beliefs and economic ideologies influence their support for putting a price on carbon emissions, but general acceptance doesn’t always lead to support. A 91爆料 researcher led a study looking at views towards a carbon pricing policy before and after the 2013 federal election in Australia, which was the first nation to repeal an existing carbon pricing policy. Despite heated debate on the…
91爆料 machine learning researchers have developed a new approach to optimization – a key step in predicting everything from election results to how proteins will fold – that won a top paper prize at the world’s largest artificial intelligence conference.
August 12, 2015
Researchers have shown that CO2 appears in streams by way of two different sources 鈥� either as a direct pipeline for groundwater and carbon-rich soils, or from aquatic organisms releasing the gas through respiration and natural decay.
August 11, 2015
The signs that an abused child might later commit crimes might not be obvious 鈥� that boisterous playground behavior from a third-grade boy, for example, or the 10-year-old girl who seems a little anxious or withdrawn. But new research from the 91爆料 suggests that troubling behaviors exhibited by abused children can be predictors of later criminal activity, and that those indicators differ between boys and girls. The study, published Aug. 11 in the Journal of Interpersonal Violence, found…
August 7, 2015
When 91爆料 oceanographers visited the deep-ocean Axial Volcano in late July, parts of the seafloor were still warm. The team knew to expect changes in the mile-deep volcano 300 miles off the Oregon coast. This spring, seafloor seismometers connected to shore by a new Internet cable showed that Axial Volcano, a 3,600-foot-tall underwater volcano, started shaking April 24 and shook continuously for several days. The recent visit, part of a larger cruise, was scientists’ first chance to see…
This year’s pathetic snow season wasn’t just a problem for skiers. Now that it’s summer, salmon are struggling because there’s not enough snowmelt to feed streams, and water managers are worried by lack of snowpack or summer rains to feed water supplies until the fall. When Gov. Jay Inslee first declared a drought in April, the Department of Ecology funded the office of the Washington State Climatologist at the 91爆料 to produce weekly updates on the current conditions….
Oh no 鈥� you’ve lost your smartphone. Anxiety spikes as you check pockets and bags. But wait 鈥� there it is and your worries vanish. All is well, and you feel yourself again, whole again. What’s up with that? Michelle Carter, an assistant professor in the 91爆料 Information School, has studied and given a name to this feeling of reliance on 鈥� even seeming to become one with 鈥� the information technologies of our lives. She calls it…
August 6, 2015
Abusive and controlling men are more likely to put their female partners at sexual risk, and the level of that risk escalates along with the abusive behavior, a 91爆料 study found. Published in the Journal of Sex Research in July, the study looked at patterns of risky sexual behavior among heterosexual men aged 18 to 25, including some who self-reported using abusive and/or controlling behaviors in their relationships and others who didn鈥檛. The research found that men who were physically…
August 5, 2015
91爆料 researchers have released new guidelines to make MakerSpaces more accessible to people with disabilities, as more communal spaces with soldering irons, 3-D printers, sewing machines and other “making” tools pop up on campuses and neighborhoods nationwide.
August 4, 2015
At a 91爆料 workshop this week, a hundred graduate students from around the country will explore a question that everyone is asking these days: What can data science do for me? To land an invite to the Data Science 2015 workshop on Aug 5 – 7, they were asked to identify a single challenge, big idea or solution that data science 鈥� the process of extracting knowledge and making discoveries from vast amounts of data 鈥� could advance…
When 91爆料 design professor Karen Cheng collaborated with students to create an infographic from publicly available City of Seattle data and published it in a local design magazine, the result was so good they were invited to present their work to the Seattle Police Department. Cheng, professor in the School of Art + Art History + Design, worked with design graduate student Catherine Lim and seniors Melissa Leith and Karlie Grasle to create two infographics, one on how public money…
91爆料 scientists recently announced the name of a new genus and species of frogfish, which are small, stocky creatures found in most tropical and subtropical oceans around the world.
August 3, 2015
Crystals play an important role in the formation of substances from skeletons and shells to soils and semiconductor materials. But many aspects of their formation are shrouded in mystery. Scientists have long worked to understand how crystals grow into complex shapes. Now, an international group of researchers has shown how nature uses a variety of pathways to grow crystals beyond the classical, one-piece-at-a-time route. “Because crystallization is a ubiquitous phenomenon across a wide range of scientific disciplines, a shift in…
The 91爆料 has again been named to Princeton Review’s Green Rating Honor Roll, receiving the highest possible score for the 2014-15 school year. This is the fifth year in a row the 91爆料 has achieved this distinction and the seventh year overall since the program began eight years ago. The 91爆料 was among 24 colleges and universities to receive the top rating, out of 804 institutions reviewed for their sustainability-related practices, policies and academic offerings. “The University of…
Almost 30 years ago, two 91爆料 researchers developed a program that aimed to reduce problem behaviors among young people by implementing preventive measures at the community level. That program, Communities That Care, is now being used in states across the nation and has been shown to reduce risk factors that lead to problems such as substance abuse and juvenile crime. But whether it was primarily the reduction of risk factors 鈥� or also the strengthening of protective ones…
The 91爆料 is investing up to $37 million in the Washington Nanofabrication Facility, which makes things for researchers and outside companies that aren’t practical, economical or possible to fabricate at commercial foundries: inconceivably tiny devices, chips made from unconventional materials that industrial factories won’t touch and devices that probe the boundaries of our universe.
Various sight recovery therapies are being developed by companies around the world, offering new hope for people who are blind. But little is known about what the world will look like to patients who undergo those procedures. A new 91爆料 study seeks to answer that question and offers visual simulations of what someone with restored vision might see. The study concludes that while important advancements have been made in the field, the vision provided by sight recovery technologies…
July 31, 2015
A product recall is never good news for a firm. Research from the Foster School of Business indicates a recall is not necessarily good news for competitors, either.
July 30, 2015
A national coalition of experts that includes two 91爆料 researchers has a bold plan to reduce behavioral health problems such as violence and depression among young people across the country by 20 percent in a decade. And their proposal rests on one simple principle: prevention. The group鈥檚 paper, recently published on the National Academy of Medicine website, recommends implementing evidence-based prevention programs on a national scale to reduce a host of problems ranging from drinking to delinquent behavior,…
The U.S. Geological Survey today announced $5 million in funding that will allow the 91爆料 and three other institutions to help transition the prototype ShakeAlert earthquake early warning system, under development since 2005, into a public-facing tool.
July 29, 2015
The Puget Sound Partnership on Wednesday adopted new targets that seek to quantify aspects of the natural environment that boost our collective happiness and wellness. These people-focused benchmarks will help inform restoration plans and assess future progress in cleaning up Puget Sound.
Two 91爆料 scientists have been elected as new fellows of the American Geophysical Union. The Earth sciences group recognizes only one in 1,000 members each year for major scientific work and sustained impact. The 91爆料 honorees are among 60 new 2015 fellows from U.S. and international institutions. They will both be honored in December at the union’s annual meeting in San Francisco. Christopher Bretherton, a 91爆料 professor jointly appointed in the departments of Atmospheric Sciences and Applied Mathematics,…
As shadows lengthened and day turned to night on Saturday, Oct. 22, in the year 4004 BCE, God created the universe. Or, perhaps not. Still, that’s the time and date for creation determined, after long and painstaking research, by Irish scholar and church leader James Ussher, author of the 17th century chronology, Annals of the World.
It’s been a strange summer for Puget Sound and the Pacific Ocean that feeds it. Water temperatures are warmer than usual, shellfish harvesting has been closed because of a long-lived toxic algae bloom, and oxygen levels in some areas continue to drop, meaning fish kills could be a reality this fall. Local scientists from multiple agencies and organizations have been tracking these unusual trends for the past several months. They now say it’s time for the general public to understand…
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced last week it is committing $88,000 in event-response funding for our state to monitor and analyze an unusually large and long-lived bloom of toxic algae that has been affecting shellfish in the region. 91爆料-based Northwest Association of Networked Ocean Observing Systems, or NANOOS, was awarded $75,000 of the grant money to monitor and analyze the bloom in Washington state waters. “This is a response to an event, and we’ve got a good network…
July 28, 2015
“Antigona,” a dance production by Soledad Barrio & Noche Flamenca that was born at the 91爆料, has been nominated for two Bessie awards — the highest tribute in the New York dance world.
July 27, 2015
New findings by researchers at the Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences (I-LABS) at the 91爆料 demonstrate for the first time that an early social behavior called gaze shifting is linked to infants’ ability to learn new language sounds.
July 24, 2015
BlackPast.org, an extensive online reference center聽for African-American history and African ancestry created by 91爆料 history professor Quintard Taylor, has been honored by the National Education Association. The website has won the 2015 Carter G. Woodson Award, given annually by the education association and the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, which Woodson founded. Woodson (1875-1950) was a journalist, historian and author. In 1926 he announced celebration of “Negro History Week,” considered a precursor to the nationwide…
July 23, 2015
91爆料 astronomers were recently reminded that the diplomatic axiom to “trust, but verify” also applies to scientific inquiry when they analyzed fresh data from a distant galaxy. As they reported in July in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, a puzzling stellar phenomenon may not be what other astronomers had reported. They studied a binary star system called NGC 300 X-1, nestled within a far-flung galaxy in the constellation Sculptor. Starting in 2007, scientists reported that this system…
Recreational boaters and commercial fishing boats in Western Washington can get free oil-spill reporting and cleanup kits this summer as part of a new campaign to prevent spills in Puget Sound. Washington Sea Grant, based at the 91爆料, along with U.S. Coast Guard Sector Puget Sound, the Washington Department of Ecology and the state’s Clean Marina Program have partnered to give out more than 1,000 free kits this summer. Each kit contains oil-absorbent pads, a 15-inch bilge sock, gloves, a…
July 22, 2015
In recognition of their outstanding records of scientific achievement, 12 91爆料 professors聽will be inducted this fall into the聽Washington State Academy of Sciences. The professors will be honored for their 鈥渨illingness to work on behalf of the academy鈥� to bring top-quality scientific methods to research issues pertaining to Washington state. The induction ceremony will聽be held Sept. 17 at the organization’s eighth-annual meeting at the Seattle Museum of Flight. One 91爆料 professor joins as a member by virtue of his…