Tag: University of Washington

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How robots and mini-organs can save real humans

Kidney organoids
This is a bird’s-eye view of a microwell plate containing kidney organoids that were produced from human stem cells by a robotic system. The yellow boxed region is shown at higher magnification to reveal individual organoids. Red, green and yellow colors mark distinct segments of 3-D kidney tissue. (UW Medicine Photo / Freedman Lab)

Good news, everybody: Robots can now create human mini-organs from stem cells. What could possibly go wrong?

The method may sound like a nightmare from HBO’s AI thriller “WestWorld,” but researchers from the University of Washington School of Medicine say it really is good news.

“This is a new ‘secret weapon’ in our fight against disease,” Benjamin Freedman, a medical researcher at the UW Institute for Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine and the Kidney Research Institute, said in a news release.

The robotic system could accelerate the production and use of organ tissues that don’t have to be cut out of an actual human but are nevertheless suitable for research and drug discovery. The system is described in a study published online today in the journal Cell Stem Cell.

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Number crunchers are on the trail of dark energy

Saul Perlmutter
Berkeley astrophysicist Saul Perlmutter discusses the implications of the universe’s accelerating expansion at the University of Washington. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle)

Big data just might give astronomers a better grip on the answer to one of the biggest questions in physics: Exactly what’s behind the mysterious acceleration in the expansion rate of the universe, also known as dark energy?

And that means the number crunchers at the University of Washington’s DIRAC Institute have their work cut out for them.

The role of data analysis in resolving the mystery came to the fore on May 14 during a talk given at the DIRAC Institute’s first-ever open house on the UW campus. The speaker was none other than Berkeley astrophysicist Saul Perlmutter, who won a share of the Nobel Prize in physics in 2011 for finding the first evidence of dark energy.

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Fossil hunters unveil Antarctica’s Triassic treasures

Christian Sidor
Christian Sidor, Burke Museum curator of vertebrate paleontology and a biology professor at the University of Washington, recounts the discovery of Triassic fossils. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle)

More than 100 fossil specimens at Seattle’s Burke Museum provide a fresh window into how life thrived in Antarctica about 250 million years ago, thanks to global warming.

The slabs of rock document a time in the early Triassic Era when temperatures got so warm that Earth’s tropics were a virtual “dead zone.” The flip side of that climate equation is that Antarctica, which was still connected to what’s now Africa back then, was temperate enough to support weird sorts of amphibians and other forms of life.

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Astrobiologist wins SETI Institute’s Drake Award

Victoria Meadows
University of Washington astrobiologist Victoria Meadows holds up a rock sample. (UW Photo)

University of Washington astrobiologist Victoria Meadows has become the first woman to receive the SETI Institute’s Frank Drake Award, named after a pioneer in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

Meadows directs UW’s graduate program in astrobiology and is the principal investigator for the Virtual Planetary Laboratory, which is based at UW and administered by the NASA Astrobiology Institute.

Under Meadows’ guidance, researchers affiliated with the VPL use computer modeling to assess the potential habitability of planets beyond our solar system. About two dozen institutions, including UW and other universities as well as NASA centers, participate in the VPL program.

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Plasmonic modulator could lead to new chips

Electro-optic modulator
Artist’s rendering shows an electro-optic modulator. (VCU Illustration / Nathaniel Kinsey)

Researchers have created a miniaturized device that can transform electronic signals into optical signals with low signal loss. They say the electro-optic modulator could make it easier to merge electronic and photonic circuitry on a single chip. The hybrid technology behind the modulator, known as plasmonics, promises to rev up data processing speeds.

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Get an inside look at the New Burke Museum

New Burke Museum
The New Burke Museum rises from its construction site on the University of Washington campus. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle)

Stealing a sneak peek at the University of Washington’s new Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture is like looking at the mastodon skeleton in the old Burke Museum: It’s not fleshed out, but it gives you an idea how impressive the real thing can be.

In the mastodon’s case, we’re talking about a creature that lived 10,000 years ago. But when it comes to the New Burke, we’re talking about a modernistic, airy museum that’s 66 percent larger than the Old Burke next door.

The exterior construction part of the $99 million project is essentially complete, and the next phase — creating the exhibits and workspaces, and transferring an estimated 16 million objects from the Old Burke to the New Burke — will begin within just a few weeks.

To mark the transition (and kick off a fundraising campaign), the Burke’s staff gave journalists as well as museum members and donors a first look at the new building, plus a behind-the-scenes look at the collections in the 56-year-old building that currently serves as the museum’s home.

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Protein designers get a boost for flu vaccine project

David Baker
David Baker heads the University of Washington’s Institute for Protein Design. (UW Medicine Photo)

The University of Washington’s Institute for Protein Design has won an $11.3 million grant from the Open Philanthropy Project to cook up a public health breakthrough: a universal flu vaccine.

This marks the San Francisco-based nonprofit group’s first gift to a research effort in the Seattle area, and one of its largest gifts to date. Open Phil’s main funders are Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and philanthropist Cari Tuna, a husband-and-wife team.

The grant will accelerate the institute’s efforts to advance the field of protein design and put it to use in real-world applications.

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Triassic fossils get their day in the sun

Triassic creatures
An artist’s conception shows Teleocrater, an early dinosaur relative, feeding on a Cynognathus carcass while hippo-like dicynodonts look on. All of these creatures lived in Tanzania during the mid-Triassic period, about 240 million years ago. (Mark Witton / Natural History Museum, London),

“Jurassic Park” may be all the rage this summer, but a research team led by the University of Washington’s Christian Sidor is kicking it up a notch with a batch of 13 studies focusing on fossils from the Triassic period (252 million to 199 million years ago), which came just before the Jurassic.

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Antarctic drone duty gets a successful start

Seaglider at work
Pierre Dutrieux, an oceanographer from Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, works on one of the three Seaglider underwater drones deployed in West Antarctica. (Paul G. Allen Philanthropies Photo)

A scientific team supported by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen is reporting the successful deployment of a trio of undersea drones to monitor how climate change affects Antarctica’s ice sheets.

Now it’s up to the drones.

“We are so pleased with both the initial data collection and the unprecedented operational success of the mission thus far,” Spencer Reeder, director of climate and energy for Paul G. Allen Philanthropies, said in a news release. “It is hard to fathom that we have already witnessed multiple fully autonomous Seaglider forays of up to 140 kilometers round-trip under the ice shelf.”

The project is being conducted by researchers from the University of Washington and Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, with almost $2 million in funding from Allen.

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Video captures anglerfish in a sexual hookup

Anglerfish
A video still shows a female anglerfish with whiskery fin-rays glowing in the deep-sea dark. The rays may be bioluminescent, or they may be reflecting light from a submersible’s lamps. The male of the species can be seen hanging from the female’s belly. (Rebikoff-Niggeler Foundation Photo)

Scientists studying deep-sea anglerfish have long known about the bizarre mismatch between the species’ whiskered females and teeny-tiny males. But they’ve never captured video of live fish mating — until now.

A newly released video, captured by researchers Kirsten and Joachim Jakobsen during a five-hour dive in a submersible off the Azores in the mid-Atlantic, documents the sexual hookup for the first time.

Ted Pietsch, a University of Washington professor emeritus of aquatic and fishery sciences and curator emeritus of fishes at the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, was stunned by the footage.

“This is a unique and never-before-seen thing,” Pietsch said in a UW news release issued March 22. “It’s so wonderful to have a clear window on something only imagined before this.”

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