Tag Archives: university of washington

Crowd Funding on Campus: UW Scientists Raise Money for Research Online

By Guest PostAugust 11, 2012Education, Environment, Science, Technologyacidification, alaska, cindy wu, climate change, crowdsourcing, david eaton, dee boersma, denny luan, Environment, internet, karen boenker, kickstarter, kiki jenkins, lauren kuehne, microcredit, microryza, new york, online campaign, pacific oysters, petridish, rachel aronson, rockethub, university of washington

When Rachel Aronson travels this month to Alaska, she and a local research assistant will interview people who are in danger of being displaced by climate change. She will also send about 100 postcards to her funders.

Aronson is among a growing number of University of Washington students, faculty and staff who are using online campaigns to pay for their research. Crowdsourcing uses the Internet to broadcast a question and pool the answers; crowd funding uses the Internet to post an idea and ask people to pony up money to make it a reality. (more…)

Division of Labor Offers Insight into the Evolution of Multicellular Life

By Guest PostAugust 8, 2012Scienceann dornhaus, avida, beacon center, beacon researchers, ben kerr, charles ofria, communication system, digital organism, evolution, evolution platform, evolutionary history, genetic material, heather goldsby, human economies, michigan state university, multi celled, multicellular life, organism, single celled, university of arizona, university of washington

EAST LANSING, Mich. — Dividing tasks among different individuals is a more efficient way to get things done, whether you are an ant, a honeybee or a human.

A new study by researchers at Michigan State University’s BEACON Center for the Study of Evolution in Action suggests that this efficiency may also explain a key transition in evolutionary history, from single-celled to multi-celled organisms.

The results, which can be found in the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, demonstrate that the cost of switching between different tasks gives rise to the evolution of division of labor in digital organisms. In human economies, these costs could be the mental shift or the travel time required to change from activity to another. (more…)

Americans Gaining More Weight than They Say

By Guest PostAugust 7, 2012General, Healthali mokdad, american adults, americans, behavioral risk factor, black, catherine wetmore, chronic condition, diabetes, health impact, heart disease, hispanic, native american, obesity, physical activity, smokers, united states, university of washington, weight

Despite the increasing awareness of the problem of obesity in the United States, most Americans don’t know whether they are gaining or losing weight, according to new research from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, also known at IHME, at the University of Washington.

Obesity increased in the U.S. between 2008 and 2009, but in response to the questions about year-to-year changes in weight that were included in the most widespread public health survey in the country, on average, people said that they lost weight. Men did a worse job estimating their own weight changes than women. And older adults were less attuned to their weight changes than young adults. The findings are being published in the article “In denial: misperceptions of weight change among adults in the United States” in the August edition of Preventive Medicine. (more…)

‘Documents that Changed the World’: A podcast series from Joe Janes

By Guest PostAugust 5, 2012Culture, Media, Politicsaids quilt, andrew brink, Barack Obama, bayeux tapestry, bill of rights, birth certificate, british broadcasting corp, change, credit card, declaration of independence, documents, elastic, france, history, joe janes, john snow, magna carta, mickey mouse, mystery of cholera, phrase, physician, podcast, president, steamboat willie, storytelling, the jazz singer, unabomber manifesto, university of washington, websters dictionary, world

The phrase occurred to Joe Janes out of the blue one day and immediately appealed to him. From there, ideas began to flow quickly.

Janes, associate professor in the University of Washington Information School, had been a fan of the British Broadcasting Corp. radio series “A History of the World in 100 Objects” and thought those shows effectively blended history and storytelling.

He got to wondering, what if he took a similar approach to information, telling about the twists and turns of history — through documents? (more…)

Critically Endangered Whales Sing Like Birds; New Recordings Hint At Rebound

By Guest PostAugust 1, 2012Natureacoustics, alaskan beaufort sea, Arctic, Arctic sea ice, birds, bowhead whales, breeding ground, catherine berchok, christian lydersen, commercial whaling, declines, endangered whales, fram strait, greenland, hydrophone, islands of norway, kate stafford, microphones, migration path, population, sing, skull, sue moore, university of washington, variety of tunes, whale song

When a University of Washington researcher listened to the audio picked up by a recording device that spent a year in the icy waters off the east coast of Greenland, she was stunned at what she heard: whales singing a remarkable variety of songs nearly constantly for five wintertime months.

Kate Stafford, an oceanographer with UW’s Applied Physics Lab, set out to find if any endangered bowhead whales passed through the Fram Strait, an inhospitable, ice-covered stretch of sea between Greenland and the northern islands of Norway. Only around 40 sightings of bowhead whales, which were hunted almost to extinction, have been reported there since the 1970s. (more…)

Got Milk? Climate Change Means Stressed Cows in Southern U.S. May Have Less

By Guest PostJuly 11, 2012Environmentclimate change, dairy cows, dairy industry, dry arizona climate, eric salathe, florida, guillaume mauger, heat of summer, holstein milk, humidity, maricopa, milk production, nancy gohring, northern california, southern us, stressed cow, temperature, tillamook, university of washington, yoram bauman

“Cows are happy in parts of Northern California and not in Florida” is a good way to sum up the findings of new research from the University of Washington, said Yoram Bauman, best known as the “stand-up economist.”

Bauman and colleagues found that the decline in milk production due to climate change will vary across the U.S., since there are significant differences in humidity and how much the temperature swings between night and day across the country. For instance, the humidity and hot nights make the Southeast the most unfriendly place in the country for dairy cows.

Their study combined high-resolution climate data and county-level dairy industry data with a method for figuring out how weather affects milk production. The result is a more detailed report than previous studies and includes a county-by-county assessment — that will be available to farmers — of the impact climate change will have on Holstein milk production in the U.S. through 2080. (more…)

Scientists Discover New Trigger for Immense North Atlantic Ocean Spring Plankton Bloom

By Guest PostJuly 7, 2012Environmentadam huxtable, amala mahadevan, atlantic ocean, biological pump, bjarni saemundsson, carbon dioxide, climate, climate on earth, CO2, craig lee, diatoms, don rice, eddies, emily kallin, eric d asaro, fossil fuel, global carbon cycle, holiday fireworks, mary jane perry, michael ohmart, microscopic plants, modulate, north atlantic bloom, not sunlight, nsf, ocean physics, oceanic cycling, oxygen, photosynthesis, physical biological model, phytoplankton, research vessel, silica, sun, surface warming, university of maine, university of washington, us beachgoers, whirlpools, whoi, zooplankton

Ocean eddies help jump-start plankton blooms that spread across hundreds of square miles

On this July 4^th week, U.S. beachgoers are thronging their way to seaside resorts and parks to celebrate with holiday fireworks. But across the horizon and miles out to sea toward the north, the Atlantic Ocean’s own spring and summer ritual unfolds. It entails the blooming of countless microscopic plants, or phytoplankton.

In what’s known as the North Atlantic Bloom, an immense number of phytoplankton burst into existence, first “greening,” then “whitening” the sea as one or more species take the place of others.

What turns on this huge bloom, what starts these ocean fireworks? Is it the Sun’s warmth? (more…)

UW Deploying Seismic Sensors in Hope of Getting to Bottom of Spokane Quakes

By Guest PostJune 29, 2012Environmentautomated earthquake, bill steele, cascades, detector, douglas gibbons, echoes, fault, geological structure, internet access, mild earthquake, motion sensor, netquakes, ocean shores, oregon, project, puget sound region, seismic network, seismometer, spokane, spokane area, university of washington, Washington, yakima

It’s been a decade since a swarm of relatively mild earthquakes shook up parts of Spokane. Now, armed with the right tools, scientists want to find out what was at fault.

“It was always something not as well understood as we thought it should be,” said Douglas Gibbons, a University of Washington researcher in Earth and space sciences, who is guiding installation of strong-motion sensors as part of a project called NetQuakes.

NetQuakes will install a half-dozen seismometers in the Spokane area by the end of June, mostly in volunteers’ homes, to help improve understanding of what lies beneath the city. (more…)