UW researchers explore benefits of mindfulness

June 1, 2015

Mindfulness

Whether it’s coping with college or taming an addiction, mindfulness has real medical and practical benefits, and it’s something UW researchers have been exploring for decades.

Since she was a student in pharmacy school, Shelly Gray has felt a strong connection to the situation many elderly patients find themselves in: “I was struck by how many different medications older adults are taking, as well as their struggle with trying to keep those medications straight,” she recalls.

Hazy on the law

More than two years after Washington legalized marijuana, parents and teens may be hazy on the specifics of the law.

Leaves tell a story

Miniscule, fossilized pieces of plants could tell a detailed story of what the Earth looked like 50 million years ago.

March 1, 2015

Brain discovery

A couple of years ago a scientist looking at dozens of MRI scans of human brains noticed something surprising: a large fiber pathway that seemed to be part of the network of connections that process visual information.

Mirage Earths

Planets orbiting close to low-mass stars—the most common stars in the universe—are prime targets in the search for extraterrestrial life. But new research led by an astronomy graduate student at the UW indicates some such planets may have long since lost their chance at hosting life.

Baby face

It’s a game parents like to play: What will my child look like when she grows up? A computer could now answer the question in less than a minute.

Brain spotting

Football concussions get a lot of attention, but UW researchers want to know how a single brain injury can affect an ordinary person decades down the line.

December 1, 2014

Clues from bird brains

Brain cells that multiply to help birds sing their best during breeding season are known to die back naturally later in the year. For the first time, researchers have described the series of events that cue new neuron growth each spring.

Phone training

Mobile phones have become second-nature for most people. What’s coming next, say UW researchers, is the ability to interact with our devices not just with touchscreens, but through gestures in the space around the phone.

Toddler logic

Researchers have found that children as young as 2 intuitively use mathematical concepts such as probability to help make sense of the world.

September 1, 2014

Tide turner

Tidal power holds tremendous potential, especially here in the Evergreen State, because of the sheer volume of water moving in and out of Puget Sound each day.

Robot response

UW electrical engineers have developed telerobotics technology that could make disaster response faster and more efficient.

June 1, 2014

Robot observers

This fall the UW will complete installation of a massive digital ocean observatory. Dozens of instruments will connect to power and Internet cables on the sea floor, but the observatory also includes a new generation of ocean explorers: robots that will zoom up and down through almost two miles of ocean to monitor the water conditions and marine life above.

March 1, 2014

Lake Mars

The mystery of how the surface of Mars, long dead and dry, could have flowed with water billions of years ago may have been solved by research that included a University of Washington astronomer.

Brain sugar

A growing body of evidence suggests that the brain plays a key role in glucose regulation and the development of type 2 diabetes.

Genetic echo

Researchers led by Dr. John Stamatoyannopoulos have discovered a second code hiding within DNA. This second code contains information that changes how scientists read the instructions contained in DNA and interpret mutations to make sense of health and disease.

Research