Connecting Research and Experts with Journalists

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Long-term climate phenomena have happened throughout history, but scientists increasingly are able to see how cycles such as El Nino might affect weather a year or even a decade from now. A University of Washington researcher says that information can give developed nations time to avoid a potential climate catastrophe.

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Being male doesn't generate a lot of respect or status in the insect world. At best males are merely tolerated and thoroughly dominated by females. But a University of Washington research has discovered the first species of social insect, a wasp, where males rule the nest.

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Flipping a nano-scale molecular switch may regulate cell-binding in a protein involved in healing and other biological activities. Computer simulations show that, like untying a shoelace, tugging on a strand of the protein fibronectin unravels a loop critical to cell recognition but allows the protein to easily reassemble.

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Joblessness, not race, is the key predictor of all forms of violent death -- homicide, accidental death and suicide -- according to a study by University of Washington demographers who looked at census data and vital records for Chicago. They also found the average life expectancy for poor black males dropped by 1 1/2 years between 1970 and 1990.

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For three decades social scientists have had little success in figuring out how a person's race affects the outcomes of crimnal cases. Now University of Washington researchers have found that court reports prepared prior to sentencing by probation officers consistenly portray black and white juvenile offenders differently, leading to harsher sentencing recommendations for blacks.

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University of Washington engineers are testing a new concrete framing system that enables large buildings to ride out an earthquake with minimal damage. The system employs concrete columns and beams reinforced with steel cables stretched like rubber bands which pull a building back to its original position after an earthquake.

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A package of interventions targeted at teachers, parents and children throughout the elementary school years had long-lasting effects in reducing levels of violent behavior, drinking and sexual intercourse and in improving school performance at age 18 among urban children, according to a study by University of Washington

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Friendship with your spouse is the foundation of a happy marriage says a University of Washington psychologist after nearly 25 years of studying what makes marriages blossom or shrivel. "Men aren't from Mars, nor women from Venus," but really want the same thing from a relationships, he says.

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Scientists from the University of Washington and the British Antarctic Survey explain in the March 25 Nature how they successfully used ground-penetrating radar to show the precise location for each layer of glacial ice, a key to correctly interpreting ice cores to glean climate data.

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Like teenage boys hanging out on a street corner, animals behave differently when they're in a large group than when they're by themselves. The mechanics and patterns of nature's aggregations - schooling fish, flocking birds or swarming insects - help understand how such groups behave in, and survive, trying conditions, says a University of Washington zoologist.