56151537
submission
vinces99 writes:
Climate change is killing penguin chicks from the world’s largest colony of Magellanic penguins, not just indirectly – by depriving them of food, as has been repeatedly documented for these and other seabirds – but directly as a result of drenching rainstorms and, at other times, heat, according to new findings from the University of Washington.
Too big for parents to sit over protectively, but still too young to have grown waterproof feathers, downy penguin chicks exposed to drenching rain can struggle and die of hypothermia in spite of the best efforts of their concerned parents. And during extreme heat, chicks without waterproofing can’t take a dip in cooling waters as adults can.
56146249
submission
vinces99 writes:
A substantial fraction of the Neanderthal genome persists in modern human populations. A new analysis of 665 people from Europe and East Asia shows that more than 20 percent of the Neanderthal genome survives in the DNA of this contemporary group, whose genetic information is part of the 1,000 Genomes Project.
University of Washington scientists Benjamin Bernot and Joshua M. Akey, both population geneticists from the Department of Genome Sciences, report their results Jan. 29 in Science Express.
55933263
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vinces99 writes:
So, you think you’re a loyal supporter of a certain football team? Would you care to put that to a scientific test?
University of Washington psychologist Anthony Greenwald has developed a new version of his Implicit Association Test to measure the strength of one’s support for one of several football teams. Greenwald created the original Implicit Association Test in 1998 to gauge a person’s unconscious beliefs and hidden biases. He and colleagues have since adapted it for numerous scenarios, including racial attitudes during the 2012 presidential election.
Greenwald developed the current football test with psychologist Colin Smith at the University of Florida. It is designed for fans of the four teams that played in the NFC and AFC conference championships: Seattle Seahawks, Denver Broncos, New England Patriots and San Francisco 49ers. The 10-minute online test asks participants to respond quickly to images and words on the screen.
55505509
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vinces99 writes:
A mere glass full of water from Monterey Bay Aquarium’s 1.2 million-gallon Open Sea tank is all scientists really needed to identify the Pacific Bluefin tuna, dolphinfish and most of the other 13,000 fish swimming there. Researchers also discerned which of the species were most plentiful in the tank.
Being able to determine the relative abundance of fish species in a body of water is the next step in possibly using modern DNA identification techniques to census fish in the open ocean, according to Ryan Kelly, University of Washington assistant professor of marine and environmental affairs, and lead author of a paper in the Jan. 15 issue of PLOS ONE.
“It might be unpleasant to think about when going for a swim in the ocean, but the water is a soup of cells shed by what lives there,” Kelly said. Fish shed cells from their skin, damaged tissues and as body wastes.
“Every one of those cells has DNA and if you have the right tools you can tell what species the cell came from. Now we’re working to find the relative abundance of each species present,” he said.
55174225
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vinces99 writes:
University of Washington seismologists this week installed two strong-motion seismometers at CenturyLink Field in Seattle to augment an existing station in recording shaking from “earthquakes” expected on Saturday during the NFC divisional game between the Seattle Seahawks and New Orleans Saints. The Pacific Northwest Seismic Network is preparing a special website at www.pnsn.org/seahawks for the game to display seismograms from all three seismic stations in near-real time, and seismologists will also be available to explain interesting signals. Seismologists also will highlight interesting signals in tweets (@PNSN1) and on Facebook (thePNSN).
Seahawks fans, collectively known as “the 12th man,” have a well-known reputation for generating noise and shaking in the stadium during games. Perhaps the best-known example occurred on Jan. 8, 2011, during a 67-yard touchdown run by the Seahawks Marshawn Lynch that helped Seattle defeat New Orleans in an NFC Wild Card game. Scientists hope to record similar shaking during Saturday’s game to better understand how the stadium responds to the activity, and to measure the energy transmitted to the ground within the stadium and within the surrounding neighborhood. “Because the fault ruptures that generate earthquake waves are almost always buried by miles of rocks, scientists aren’t sure about the action at the source that results in seismic shaking. In a way, the Seahawks’ 12th man provides us an opportunity to get inside the source that’s generating seismic waves,” said seismic network operations manager Paul Bodin, a UW research associate professor of Earth and space sciences.
55087725
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vinces99 writes:
New parents often hear the advice that the more they talk to their baby, the more their baby will learn language. Now new findings show that what spurs early language development isn’t so much the quantity of words as the style of speech and social context in which speech occurs.
The more parents exaggerated vowels – for example “How are youuuuu?” – and raised the pitch of their voices, the more the 1-year olds babbled, which is a forerunner of word production. Baby talk was most effective when a parent spoke with a child individually, without other adults or children around.
Parents can use baby talk when going about everyday activities, saying things like, “Where are your shoooes?,” “Let’s change your diiiiaper,” and “Oh, this tastes goooood!,” emphasizing important words and speaking slowly using a happy tone of voice.
“It’s not just talk, talk, talk at the child,” said co-author Patricia Kuhl, co-director of the University of Washington's Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences. “It’s more important to work toward interaction and engagement around language. You want to engage the infant and get the baby to babble back. The more you get that serve and volley going, the more language advances.”
54961139
submission
vinces99 writes:
Pine Island Glacier is one of the biggest routes for ice to flow from Antarctica into the sea. The floating ice shelf at the glacier’s tip has been melting and thinning for the past four decades, causing the glacier to speed up and discharge more ice. Understanding this ice shelf is a key for predicting sea-level rise in a warming world. A paper published Jan. 2 in the advance online version of the journal Science shows that the ice shelf melting depends on the local wind direction, which is tied to tropical changes associated with El Niño. The study, led by author Pierre Dutrieux at the British Antarctic Survey, uses new data to show how winds and topography control how much warm water reaches the ice shelf. University of Washington co-authors provided atmospheric modeling expertise to help interpret the observations and show how they are related to climate conditions in the tropical Pacific Ocean. “These new results show that how much melt the Antarctic ice sheet experiences can be highly dependent on climatic conditions occurring elsewhere on the planet,” said co-author Eric Steig, a UW professor of Earth and space sciences. The Pine Island ice shelf has thinned nearly continuously since observations began in the 1970s. Earlier studies have shown that warm deep-ocean water is melting the ice shelf from below, suggesting that warming global oceans are gradually targeting the underside of the ice sheet. But the picture is more complex, say authors of the new study. The deep ocean has been getting warmer but, more importantly, more warm water has been reaching the ice shelf.
54252777
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vinces99 writes:
Scientists have discovered a second code hiding within DNA that contains information that changes how scientists read the instructions contained in DNA and interpret mutations to make sense of health and disease. A research team led by Dr. John Stamatoyannopoulos, University of Washington associate professor of genome sciences and of medicine, made the discovery. The findings, reported in the Dec. 13 issue of Science, are part of the Encyclopedia of DNA Elements Project funded by the National Human Genome Research Institute. Since the genetic code was deciphered in the 1960s, scientists have assumed that it was used exclusively to write information about proteins. UW scientists were stunned to discover that genomes use the genetic code to write two separate languages. One describes how proteins are made, and the other instructs the cell on how genes are controlled. One language is written on top of the other, which is why the second language remained hidden for so long.
“For over 40 years we have assumed that DNA changes affecting the genetic code solely impact how proteins are made,” said Stamatoyannopoulos. “Now we know that this basic assumption about reading the human genome missed half of the picture. These new findings highlight that DNA is an incredibly powerful information storage device, which nature has fully exploited in unexpected ways.” The genetic code uses a 64-letter alphabet called codons. The UW team discovered that some codons, which they called duons, can have two meanings, one related to protein sequence and one related to gene control. These two meanings seem to have evolved in concert with each other. The gene control instructions appear to help stabilize certain beneficial features of proteins and how they are made. The discovery of duons has major implications for how scientists and physicians interpret a patient’s genome and will open new doors to the diagnosis and treatment of disease.
54151613
submission
vinces99 writes:
An atmospheric peculiarity the Earth shares with Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune is likely common to billions of planets, University of Washington scientists have found, and knowing that may help in the search for potentially habitable worlds. For more than a century it has been known that there is a point in Earth's atmosphere at about 40,000 to 50,000 feet, called the tropopause, where the air stops cooling and begins growing warmer, In the 1980s, NASA spacecraft discovered tropopauses in the atmospheres of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, as well as Saturn’s largest moon, Titan — and all occurring at about one-tenth of the air pressure at Earth’s surface.
A new paper by UW astronomer Tyler Robinson and planetary scientist David Catling, published online Dec. 8 in the journal Nature Geoscience, uses basic physics to show why this happens, and suggests that tropopauses are probably common to billions of thick-atmosphere planets and moons throughout the galaxy. “The explanation lies in the physics of infrared radiation,” said Robinson. Atmospheric gases gain energy by absorbing infrared light from the sunlit surface of a rocky planet or from the deeper parts of the atmosphere of a planet like Jupiter, which has no surface. The research shows that at high altitudes atmospheres become transparent to thermal radiation due to the low pressure. The findings could be used to extrapolate temperature and pressure conditions on the surface of planets and work out whether the worlds are potentially habitable — the key being whether pressure and temperature conditions allow liquid water on the surface of a rocky planet.
53897825
submission
vinces99 writes:
Like humans, some song sparrows are more effusive than others, at least when it comes to defending their territories. New findings from the University of Washington show that consistent individual differences exist not only for how aggressive individual song sparrows are but also for how much they use their signals to communicate their aggressive intentions. The findings, published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, show that while many birds signal their intentions clearly, other “strong silent types” go immediately to aggressive behavior and ultimately attack without first signaling their intentions. “The results are the first to explicitly link individual differences in a personality variable to communication in a wild animal,” said lead author Çalar Akçay, who did the study when he was a UW graduate student. He is now a postdoctoral associate at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. As any pet owner can attest, animals have consistent individual differences, or personalities. Some may be more aggressive or bold, shy or laid back. Such personality differences have been noted in a number of species ranging from insects to primates and, of course, humans. But the role of personality in animal communication has not been studied. “There is a growing realization in the field that factoring in personality variables will help solve many thorny problems in animal behavior, such as do animals signal honestly,” said Michael Beecher, co-author and a UW professor of psychology and biology. In other words, if a bird knew the personality of its opponent, it would have a better understanding of when to expect an attack. “The strong silent types are just as assertive as the signaling types, they just don’t advertise their aggressive intentions,” Beecher said. “You want to distinguish strong silent types from true wimps that don’t signal and won’t attack.”
53849545
submission
vinces99 writes:
Quantum entanglement, a perplexing phenomenon of quantum mechanics that Albert Einstein once referred to as “spooky action at a distance,” could be even spookier than Einstein perceived. Now, some physicists believe the phenomenon might be intrinsically linked with wormholes, hypothetical features of space-time that in popular science fiction can provide a much-faster-than-light shortcut from one part of the universe to another. But here’s the catch: One couldn’t actually travel, or even communicate, through these wormholes, said Andreas Karch, a University of Washington physics professor who is co-author of a paper on the research in Physical Review Letters. Quantum entanglement occurs when a pair or a group of particles interact in ways that dictate that each particle’s behavior is relative to the behavior of the others. In a pair of entangled particles, if one particle is observed to have a specific spin, for example, the other particle observed at the same time will have the opposite spin. The “spooky” part is that, as previous research has confirmed, the relationship holds true no matter how far apart the particles are – across the room or across several galaxies. If the behavior of one particle changes, the behavior of both entangled particles changes simultaneously, no matter how far away they are. Recent findings indicate that the characteristics of a wormhole are the same as if two black holes were entangled, then pulled apart. Even if the black holes were on opposite sides of the universe, the wormhole would connect them.
53213339
submission
vinces99 writes:
Researchers are working on predicting and controlling disease by looking at the interrelationships of people, other living creatures and their habitats. Human-animal medicine explores the unprecedented convergence of human, animal and environmental health in a world that is increasingly interdependent, said Dr. Peter Rabinowitz of the University of Washington School of Public Health. “Recent global pandemics such as SARS and influenza H1N1 require that we look at new paradigms for healthy coexistence,” he said. Rabinowitz recently arrived from Yale University to direct the UW Animal-Human Medicine Project. He and Dr. Ali Mokdad of the UW Department of Global Health and the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation will lead separate studies in what is called One Health, which integrates veterinary, ecological and medical sciences. Rabinowitz’s team will investigate whether intestine-cohabitating microorganisms shared between livestock and children might be a key to correcting malnutrition in developing nations. Malnutrition causes nearly half of the deaths in children under 5 worldwide. The global burden of this disease is shouldered predominately in Africa and Southeast Asia and is difficult to alleviate. In Kenya, the researchers want to see whether children living in close proximity to domestic animals harbor gut microbes that can affect nutritional status. If so, it’s possible that resetting the gut microbiome — tiny organisms residing and interacting in the lower digestive tract — in livestock can be a sustainable intervention to improve children’s health and development, the researchers say.
53208697
submission
vinces99 writes:
Digital activism is usually nonviolent and tends to work best when social media tools are combined with street-level organization, according to new research from the University of Washington. The findings come from a report by the Digital Activism Research Project run by Philip Howard, a UW professor of communication, information and international studies. “This is the largest investigation of digital activism ever undertaken,” Howard said. “We looked at just under 2,000 cases over a 20-year period, with a very focused look at the last two years.” He and his coauthors oversaw 40 student analysts who reviewed news stories by citizen and professional journalists describing digital activism campaigns worldwide. A year of research and refining brought the total down to 400 to 500 well-verified cases representing about 150 countries. The research took a particularly focused look at the last two years. Howard said one of their main findings is that digital activism tends to be nonviolent, despite what many may think. “In the news we hear of online activism that involves anonymous or cyberterrorist hackers who cause trouble and break into systems. But that was 2 or 3 percent of all the cases — far and away, most of the cases are average folks with a modest policy agenda” that doesn’t involve hacking or covert crime.
53082109
submission
vinces99 writes:
He only came to get the iconic footage through a series of coincidences, and later regretted what he had done. It was the last film he would ever shoot. The 26.6 seconds of color film that Abraham Zapruder shot in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, became arguably the most widely known, discussed and analyzed bit of film in history — showing, as it did, the assassination of a president. The Zapruder film seems a natural entry into the Documents that Changed the World series of podcasts created by Joe Janes, professor in the University of Washington Information School, who uses the podcasts to explore the origin and often evolving meaning of historical documents, both famous and less known. Though the Zapruder film in itself did not alter history, it depicted a moment when the nation changed forever. “If it’s not the most scrutinized motion picture ever, it must have the greatest ratio of eyeballs to frames of all time,” Janes said. “We all know the film, at least hazily, but as is so often the case, the small details are less widely known — all the coincidences and chance happenings that led him to get the film at all, the angle he got, the view he got ... the saga of that day in getting the film developed and copied, and then the subsequent developments through publication, investigations, government seizure — and tons of controversy."
52925313
submission
vinces99 writes:
Recent research shows that tree cover actually causes snow to melt more quickly on the western slopes of the the Pacific Northwest's Cascade Mountains and in other warm, Mediterranean-type climates around the world. At the same time, open, clear gaps in the forests tend to keep snow on the ground longer into the spring and summer. Common sense would seem to indicate the shade of a tree would help retain snow, and snow exposed to sunlight in open areas will melt, as is typical in regions such as the Northeast, Midwest and much of Canada, where winter temperatures are below freezing. But Jessica Lundquist, a University of Washington associate professor of civil and environmental engineering, found that in Mediterranean climates – where the average winter temperatures usually are above 30 degrees Fahrenheit – snow tends to melt under the tree canopy and stay more intact in open meadows or gaps in a forest. This happens in part because trees in warmer, maritime forests radiate heat in the form of long-wave radiation, contributing to snow melting under the canopy first. The finding has implications for regions such as the Pacific Northwest that, despite plentiful annual rainfall, depend heavily on melting snowpack for drinking water and healthy river flows during dry summer months.
