Tag: University of Washington

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How to get water on Mars? Cook it out of the soil

Utopia Planitia on Mars
This vertically exaggerated view shows scalloped depressions in a part of Mars where such textures prompted researchers to check for buried ice, using ground-penetrating radar. They found about as much frozen water as the volume of Lake Superior. (NASA / JPL-Caltech / Univ. of Arizona Photo)

Scientists say there’s enough water in just one region of Mars to fill up Lake Superior – if only it could be extracted from subsurface ice.

So how can future Red Planet settlers take advantage of those deposits to produce the drinkable water, breathable oxygen and hydrogen-based rocket fuel they’ll need? Researchers at the University of Washington are working on a way.

Their research builds upon a technology that was pioneered almost two decades ago, known as the water vapor adsorption reactor, or WAVAR. Adam Bruckner, a professor in UW’s Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, worked with students to develop a device that could extract tiny amounts of water vapor from the Martian atmosphere.

The WAVAR device was successfully tested in Mars-type conditions, but there wasn’t any funding to move the technology beyond proof of concept.

“NASA has not really funded in-situ resource utilization for research work on that at all,” Bruckner told GeekWire. WAVAR does make a cameo, however, in the fictional tale of Red Planet settlement depicted in “Mars,” a miniseries airing on National Geographic Channel.

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UW’s David Thouless wins Nobel physics prize

David Thouless
UW Professor Emeritus David Thouless is one of the winners of this year’s Nobel Prize for physics. (Credit: Kiloran Howard / Trinity Hall, University of Cambridge)

David Thouless, a British-born professor emeritus at the University of Washington, has been awarded half of this year’s Nobel physics prize for untangling the topological mysteries of superconductors, superfluids and other weird materials.

“Over the last decade, this area has boosted front-line research in condensed matter physics, not least because of the hope that topological materials could be used in new generations of electronics and superconductors, or in future quantum computers,” the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said in today’s announcement of the award.

The other physicists named as Nobel laureates are Princeton’s Duncan Haldane and Brown University’s Michael Kosterlitz. The Nobel Prize committee allocated half of the $930,000 (8 million Swedish kronor) award to Thouless, with the other half to be shared by Haldane and Kosterlitz.

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Arctic sea-ice study is bad news for polar bears

Image: Polar bear
A polar bear tests the strength of thin Arctic sea ice. (Credit: Mario Hoppmann via Imaggeo.EGU.eu)

Scientists have long known that Arctic climate change is bad news for bears, but University of Washington researchers quantify just how bad it is in a study published today.

The study in The Cryosphere, a journal of the European Geosciences Union, is said to be the first to assess the impact of sea ice changes for 19 different populations of polar bears across the entire Arctic region, using the metrics that are most relevant to polar bear biology.

“This study shows declining sea ice for all subpopulations of polar bears,” Harry Stern, a researcher with UW’s Polar Science Center, said in an EGU news release.

The analysis draws upon 35 years’ worth of satellite data showing daily sea-ice concentration in the Arctic. There’s a consistent trend toward earlier thawing in the spring, and later freezing in the winter. Between 1979 and 2014, the total number of ice-covered days declined at the rate of 7 to 19 days per decade. Over the course of 35 years, seven weeks of good sea-ice habitat were lost.

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‘Interscatter’ tech opens new data frontiers

Image: 'Interscatter' contact lens
University of Washington researcher Vikram Iyer holds up a contact lens that’s been fitted with interscatter electronics. (Credit: Mark Stone / University of Washington)

Contact lenses and brain implants that can transmit data may sound like science-fiction gizmos  but researchers at the University of Washington are turning them into science fact, thanks to a technological trick they call interscatter communication.

The technology relies on super-low-power devices that can reflect wireless transmissions such as Bluetooth signals, transforming them into data-carrying Wi-Fi signals in the process.

Such devices require mere millionths of a watt to work, and can be shrunk down to the size of a computer chip. The technique is described in a paper to be presented next week at the Association for Computing Machinery’s SIGCOMM 2016 conference in Brazil.

The researchers developed interscatterers shaped like contact lenses and brain implants as test cases.

“Wireless connectivity for implanted devices can transform how we manage chronic diseases,” Vikram Iyer, a UW electrical engineering doctoral student, said today in a news release. “For example, a contact lens could monitor a diabetics blood sugar level in tears and send notifications to the phone when the blood sugar level goes down.”

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Microsoft, UW raise the bar on DNA data storage

Image: DNA in test tube
The pink smear of DNA at the end of this test tube can store incredible amounts of encoded digital data. (Credit: Tara Brown Photography / University of Washington)

Computer scientists from Microsoft and the University of Washington say they’ve set a new standard for DNA storage of digital data – but they acknowledge that the standard won’t last long.

For now, the bar is set at 200 megabytes. That’s how much data the researchers were able to encode in synthetic DNA pairings, and then correctly read out again. The encoded files included a high-definition music video by the band OK Go, titled “This Too Shall Pass”… the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in more than 100 languages … the top 100 books from Project Gutenberg … and the Crop Trust’s global seed database.

But Karin Strauss, the principal Microsoft researcher on the project, acknowledges that so much more is theoretically possible.

“You could pack an exabyte of data in an inch cubed,” she told GeekWire. An exabyte is equal to 8 quintillion bits of information, which is much more information than is contained in the Library of Congress. (Exactly how much more? That’s a matter of debate.)

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UW says prof violated sex harassment rules

The University of Washington says that an internal investigation has found virus researcher Michael Katze violated sexual harassment policies – and that disciplinary action is currently under consideration.

Michael Katze
The University of Washington says virologist Michael Katze has violated university sexual harassment policies. (Credit: UW)

“His conduct was inappropriate and not in any way reflective of the university’s values,” UW spokesman Norm Arkans said today in a statement posted online. “This is why the matter is now in the faculty disciplinary process, through which an appropriate outcome will be adjudicated.”

The statement came after BuzzFeed published a lengthy report delving into the details of the investigation. The UW case is the latest in a series of academic sexual-harassment cases to come to light.

Buzzfeed quoted Katze’s attorney, Jon Rosen, as saying that Katze will “continue to vigorously defend against the false and salacious charges pending before the University of Washington adjudication panel.”

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Cancer gene research wins White House honors

University of Washington geneticist Mary-Claire King gets set to receive her National Medal of Science from President Barack Obama at the White House on Thursday. (Credit: National Science and Technology Medals Foundation)
University of Washington geneticist Mary-Claire King gets set to receive her National Medal of Science from President Barack Obama at the White House on Thursday. (Credit: National Science and Technology Medals Foundation)

A quarter-century after her discovery of the BRCA1 breast cancer gene, University of Washington geneticist Mary-Claire King has received the nation’s highest scientific honor – and high praise from President Barack Obama – for her achievements.

King’s status as a winner of the National Medal of Science was announced last December, but after some delays on account of weather, Obama finally put the gold medal around her neck during a White House ceremony on Thursday.

The president said “every single American should be grateful” for the career path that King, 70, chose back in the late 1960s when she was starting out in college.

“At a time when most scientists believed that cancer was caused by viruses, she relentlessly pursued her hunch that certain cancers were linked to inherited genetic mutations,” Obama said. “This self-described ‘stubborn’ scientist kept going until she proved herself right. Seventeen years of work later, Mary-Claire discovered a single gene that predisposes women to breast cancer.”

The discovery has had a huge impact on cancer diagnosis and prevention, highlighted by actress Angelina Jolie’s decision to undergo a preventive double mastectomy in 2013 because she carried the BRCA1 gene.

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