Cosmic Log
For the first time, researchers have discovered magnetism in the two-dimensional realm of monolayers, or materials that consist of a single atomic layer.
The material, known as chromium triiodide or CrI3, could play a role in new types of memory devices with faster data processing speeds.
A team led by researchers from the University of Washington and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology published their results this week in the journal Nature.
A new data analysis center for what’s expected to be torrents of astronomical imagery is taking shape at the University of Washington.
Thanks to contributions from software billionaire Charles Simonyi and other donors, researchers at the Astronomy Department’s DIRAC Institute are getting ready to crunch data from two wide-angle telescope surveys.
The first survey is the Palomar Observatory’s Zwicky Transient Facility, which is due to begin operations in August and will scan the entire accessible sky every night for supernovae and other cosmic outbursts.
The DIRAC Institute will also manage the development of analytical tools for the almost real-time processing of images from the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, a massive observatory that’s scheduled to start scanning the skies over Chile in 2019.
Delivering items with drones instead of trucks is likely to reduce carbon dioxide emissions for short-range trips, or on routes with few customers, according to a study conducted by transportation engineers at the University of Washington. The study, set for publication in Transportation Research Part D, suggests that trucks have the environmental advantage for longer-range trips and routes with lots of stops. Also, size matters.
Researchers from the University of Washington have taken advantage of synthetic biology to turn yeast cells into building blocks for digital information processing.
The experiment, described today in Nature Communications, turned the cells’ genetic code into NOR logic gates suitable for biologically based circuitry.
In digital circuitry that deals with ones and zeros, a NOR gate will produce a “1” output only if both inputs are “0.” To adapt yeast cells for digital processing, the UW team used a gene-editing method called CRISPR-Cas9 to replicate the interactions of ones and zeros with DNA and RNA molecules.
Twist Bioscience says it’s extending its collaboration with Microsoft and the University of Washington on a project aimed at perfecting a process for encoding digital data in DNA molecules.
In a news release issued today, San Francisco-based Twist said Microsoft will purchase 10 million strands of synthetic DNA from the company for use in future experiments. The deal comes more a year after an initial purchase of the same number of strands for data storage.
Last July, researchers at Microsoft and UW announced that they were able to store and read out a record 200 megabytes of DNA-encoded data with 100 percent accuracy.
“After working together for over a year, the organizations have improved storage density, thereby reducing the cost of DNA digital data storage by encoding more data per strand and increasing the throughput of DNA production,” Twist said.
What is hyperlapse? Like the bullet-time realm of “The Matrix,” hyperlapse videos provide an unorthodox perspective on time and space – and you can see the result in a two-minute clip created by the University of Washington’s Charles Johnson.
The technique captures time-lapse videos of an environment, with an additional twist: Instead of remaining stationary, the camera moves through the scene, making it seems as if you’re soaring through a speeded-up space-time continuum.
“If you follow my work, you know that for the past six months I’ve been getting into hyperlapse photography,” Johnson, a videographer and editor for University of Washington Intercollegiate Athletics, said today in a Facebook post. “I’ve been slowly collecting hyperlapses of the UW campus to make an official UW hyperlapse edit, and I’m glad to [be] finally able to release it in time for the UW 2017 Maker Summit!”
The University of Washington’s Department of Chemistry will be the beneficiary of a $12 million gift from an unusual source: one of its own professors. Most of the money committed by professor emeritus Larry Dalton and his wife, Nicole Boand, will go to establish the Dalton Postdoctoral Fellowship in Chemistry, the UW announced today.
The University of Washington says the first Nobel laureate in its history, Hans Georg Dehmelt, has passed away in Seattle at the age of 94 after a long illness.
Dehmelt won a share of the Nobel physics prize in 1989 for his work with ion traps, a type of apparatus that uses an array of electromagnetic fields to isolate electrically charged atoms and subatomic particles, and hold them in place for highly accurate measurements.
It takes more than the luck o’ the Irish to win the St. Patrick’s Day Medal from Science Foundation Ireland, but the University of Washington’s Adrian Raftery has what it takes.
Raftery was born in Dublin but has been a statistician and sociologist on UW’s faculty for 30 years. He’s the founding director of UW’s Center for Statistics and the Social Sciences, and Thomson Reuters named him the world’s most cited researcher in mathematics for 1995-2005.
Those are the right qualifications for the St. Patrick’s Day Medal. SFI, the Irish government’s primary agency for funding and promoting research and science education, established the annual award in 2014 to honor Irish-born scientists who live and work in the United States.
“It means a lot to me to be honored by my own country,” Raftery said in a UW report on the ceremony.
Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny awarded the medal for academic achievement to Raftery on March 15 at the United States Institute of Peace in Washington, D.C.
There’s no question that an extra $50 million will raise the University of Washington’s profile in computer science and engineering – but how high can it rise? How worried should MIT and Carnegie Mellon University be?
Here’s the message from Ed Lazowska, who’s marking his 40th year on the UW faculty and now holds the university’s Bill & Melinda Gates Chair in Computer Science and Engineering: Don’t worry, but make room.
“The goal here is, instead of there being a Top 4 program, to be a Top 5 program, and for us to be the fifth,” Lazowska said. “And we’re very close to that.”