Earth has had moderate temperatures throughout its early history, and neutral seawater acidity. This means other rocky planets could likely also maintain this equilibrium and allow life to evolve.
Science
During a recent survey of supermassive stars, an international team of astronomers discovered a star that is in quite a hurry. As they report in a new paper, the team tracked one yellow supergiant star cruising along at about 300,000 miles per hour, a velocity that would get you from the Earth to the Moon in about 48 minutes.
A 91自拍-led project spanning countries, years and institutions has attempted to reconstruct what the southern end of the world looked like during the Triassic period, 252 to 199 million years ago.
In a study published March 26 in Physical Review Letters, collaborators of the MAJORANA DEMONSTRATOR have shown they can shield a sensitive, scalable 44-kilogram germanium detector array from background radioactivity. This accomplishment is critical to developing a much larger future experiment to study the nature of neutrinos.
A pair of anglerfish, a species never before seen alive by humans, was recorded recently on camera by 91自拍ers aboard the LULA1000, a submersible operated by the marine science-focused Rebikoff-Niggeler Foundation.
With a new $700,000 grant awarded from the NOAA Ocean Acidification Program, scientists from the 91自拍’s Applied Physics Laboratory, Washington Sea Grant and the Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean have teamed with federal and tribal partners to study the social and ecological vulnerabilities of Olympic Coast ocean acidification.
Researchers at the 91自拍 and the Allen Institute for Brain Science have developed a new method to classify and track the multitude of cells in a tissue sample. In a paper published March 15 in the journal Science, the team reports that this new approach 鈥� known as SPLiT-seq 鈥� reliably tracks gene activity in a tissue down to the level of single cells.
Researchers at the 91自拍 have developed a set of tools to make MRI studies of our central nervous system easier to share.
Former 91自拍 Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Irving Shain has died. He was 92.
A 91自拍 study finds that women authors are significantly under-represented in high-profile academic journals.
High in Mongolia’s Gobi Desert, the climate is so dry and cold that glaciers shrank during the last ice age. Dating of rock deposits shows how glaciers in this less-studied region can behave very differently as the climate shifts.
A new study almost 20 years in the making provides some of the strongest evidence yet of the “speciation reversal” phenomenon in two lineages of common ravens.
The largest and oldest Chinook salmon 鈥� fish also known as “kings” and prized for their exceptional size 鈥� have mostly disappeared along the West Coast, according to a new study led by the 91自拍.
If online shopping continues to grow at its current rate, there may be twice as many trucks delivering packages in Seattle鈥檚 city center within five years, a new report projects 鈥� and double the number of trucks looking for a parking space.
Reductions in sea ice in the Arctic have a clear impact on animals such as polar bears that rely on frozen surfaces for feeding, mating and migrating. But sea ice loss is changing Arctic habitat and affecting other species in more indirect ways, new 91自拍 finds. Beluga whales that spend summers feeding in the Arctic are diving deeper and longer to find food than in earlier years, when sea ice covered more of the ocean for longer periods, according to…
Engineers at the 91自拍 have for the first time developed a method to safely charge a smartphone wirelessly using a laser.
Five faculty members at the 91自拍 have been awarded early-career fellowships from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The new Sloan Fellows, announced Feb. 15, include Maya Cakmak, assistant professor of computer science and engineering; Jiun-Haw Chu, assistant professor of clean energy and physics; Arka Majumdar, assistant professor of electrical engineering and physics; Jessica Werk, assistant professor of astronomy; and Chelsea Wood, assistant professor of aquatic and fishery sciences.
91自拍 engineers have turned tissue paper 鈥� similar to toilet tissue 鈥� into a new kind of wearable sensor that can detect a pulse, a blink of an eye and other human movement.
In a paper published Feb. 9 in Science Advances, scientists at the 91自拍 announced that they have successfully combined two different imaging methods 鈥� a type of lens designed for nanoscale interaction with lightwaves, along with robust computational processing 鈥� to create full-color images.
New findings could help scientists understand a little more about the elusive narwhal and how these marine mammals might fare in a changing climate.
A team of ecologists and economists is the first to test whether real-life ecological interactions produce economic benefits for the fishing industry. The results were published online Jan. 29 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
A study from the University of Colorado Boulder and the 91自拍 finds that the retreat of the ice sheet covering North America made Antarctic weather more similar from one year to the next.
High-speed recordings of Egyptian fruit bats in flight show that instead of using a primitive form of echolocation, these animals actually use a technique recently developed by humans for surveillance and navigation.
After six months of repair and restoration 鈥� assisted by UW astronomer and sundial expert Woody Sullivan 鈥� Olympia’s iconic Territorial Sundial is back in place.
UW atmospheric sciences faculty and graduate students are in Tasmania studying how clouds form over Antarctica’s Southern Ocean.
A team of astronomers including Eric Agol of the 91自拍 has found that the seven Earth-sized planets orbiting the star TRAPPIST-1 are all made mostly of rock, and some could even have more water 鈥� which can give life a chance 鈥� than Earth itself. The 91自拍 was led by Simon Grimm of the University of Bern in Switzerland, and published Feb. 5 in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics. Agol is among about two dozen co-authors. The scientists…
After an “extreme makeover” that went from stem to stern on five decks of the ship, the R/V Thomas G. Thompson is ready to get back to work exploring the world’s oceans. The 91自拍’s School of Oceanography, part of the College of the Environment, operates the 274-foot ship, which arrived on campus in 1991. In summer 2016, with funding from the U.S. Office of Naval Research, the National Science Foundation and the UW, the vessel headed to a…
The Department of Energy鈥檚 Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and the 91自拍 announced the creation of the Northwest Institute for Materials Physics, Chemistry and Technology 鈥� or NW IMPACT 鈥� a joint 91自拍 endeavor to power discoveries and advancements in materials that transform energy, telecommunications, medicine, information technology and other fields.
In a published Jan. 25 in Current Biology, 91自拍 91自拍ers report that mosquitoes can learn to associate a particular odor with an unpleasant mechanical shock akin to being swatted. As a result, they’ll avoid that scent the next time.
A 91自拍 study has found a simple approach to look for life that might be more promising than just looking for oxygen.
Researchers from the Molecular Information Systems Lab at the 91自拍 and Microsoft are looking to collect 10,000 original images from around the world to preserve them indefinitely in synthetic DNA manufactured by Twist Bioscience. DNA holds promise as a revolutionary storage medium that lasts much longer and is many orders of magnitude denser than current technologies.
By developing a synthetic version of the plant hormone auxin and an engineered receptor to recognize it, 91自拍 biology professor Keiko Torii and her colleagues are poised to uncover plants’ inner workings, raising the possibility of a new way to ripen fruits such as strawberries and tomatoes.
91自拍 91自拍ers have published the first major assessment of small hydropower dams around the world 鈥� including their potential for growth 鈥� and highlight the incredibly variability in how dams of varying sizes are categorized, regulated and studied.
For this year’s University Faculty Lecture, 91自拍 chemistry professor Michael Gelb will discuss the science behind screening newborns for treatable 鈥� but rare 鈥� genetic diseases.
An experiment using hundreds of plastic drifters in the Gulf of Mexico shows that rather than simply spread out, as current calculations would predict, many of them clumped together in a tight cluster.
More than three centuries ago, a French monk made thousands of drawings of plants and animals, traveling under the authority of King Louis XIV to the French Antilles to collect and document the natural history of the islands. These drawings were often the first ever recorded for each species and were completed in remarkable detail. The illustrations were nearly lost forever during the tumultuous French Revolution, and the volumes compiled by Father Charles Plumier were discovered by chance, found serving…
A new study in the Journal PLOS ONE details what removing the two dams on the Elwha River meant for the nearshore marine ecosystem.
A new grant will let a 91自拍-based project add a new fleet to its quest to learn more about past climate from the records of long-gone mariners. The UW is among the winners of the 2017 鈥淒igitizing Hidden Special Collections and Archives鈥� awards, announced Jan. 4 by the Washington, D.C.-based Council on Library and Information Resources. The new $482,018 grant to the UW, the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration and the National Archives Foundation will support 鈥淪eas…
A small group of fishes 鈥� possibly the world’s cleverest carnivorous grazers 鈥� feeds on the scales of other fish in the tropics. A team led by biologists at the 91自拍’s Friday Harbor Laboratories is trying to understand these scale-feeding fish and how this odd diet influences their body evolution and behavior.
Drug treatments can save lives, but sometimes they also carry unintended costs. After all, the same therapeutics that target pathogens and tumors can also harm healthy cells. To reduce this collateral damage, scientists have long sought specificity in drug delivery systems: A package that can encase a therapeutic and will not disgorge its toxic cargo until it reaches the site of treatment 鈥� be it a tumor, a diseased organ or a site of infection. In a paper published Jan….