College of Arts and Sciences

Professor Don Pember was a favorite of communication students.

At first glance, hummingbird bills look like straws — long and thin, perfect for sipping nectar. But a new study reveals that this comparison is far from accurate. Alejandro Rico-Guevara, assistant professor of biology at the UW and curator of birds at the UW Burke Museum, is quoted.

This week, OpenAI launched what its chief executive, Sam Altman, called “the smartest model in the world”—a generative-AI program whose capabilities are supposedly far greater, and more closely approximate how humans think, than those of any such software preceding it. The start-up has been building toward this moment since September 12, a day that, in OpenAI’s telling, set the world on a new path toward superintelligence. Emily M. Bender, professor of linguistics at the UW, is quoted.

Hummingbirds, among the smallest birds on the planet, flap their wings at as much as 80 beats a second. And scientists have been studying how they get enough nectar to satisfy that energy demand. Alejandro Rico-Guevara, assistant professor of biology at the UW and curator of birds at the UW Burke Museum, is quoted.

Three new species of superconductivity were spotted this year, illustrating the myriad ways electrons can join together to form a frictionless quantum soup. Matthew Yankowitz, assistant professor of physics and of materials science and engineering at the UW, is quoted.

Since 2018 the Zwicky Transient Facility, an international astronomical collaboration based at the Palomar Observatory in California, has scanned the entire sky every two to three nights. As part of this mission, the ZTF's Bright Transient Survey has been counting and cataloging supernovae — flashes of light in the sky that are the telltale signs of stars dying in spectacular explosions.

Hummingbird bills — their long, thin beaks — look a little like drinking straws. But new research shows just how little water, or nectar, that comparison holds. University of Washington scientists have discovered that the hummingbird bill is surprisingly flexible.

One of the smallest declared majors at UW offers skills beyond speaking the language.

Washington had the smallest rightward shift of any state in the 2024 presidential election, an Axios analysis finds — although, after three weeks of vote counting, it's no longer true that the state trended slightly more blue. Victor Menaldo, professor of political science at the UW, is quoted.

Married couples across the U.S. have had access to no-fault divorce for more than 50 years, an option many call crucial to supporting domestic abuse victims and key to preventing already crowded family courts from drowning in complicated divorce proceedings. Mark Smith, professor of political science at the UW, is quoted.

When he isnât lecturing at the University of Washington or pursuing his doctoral studies at the University of California, Davis, Tory Johnston (Quinault) co-hosts a global Indigenous radio show, Sounds of Survivance.

The UW’s Molecular Engineering and Materials Center and Center for Integration of Modern Optoelectronic Materials on Demand, in collaboration with partner institutions, have been selected for NSF Partnerships for Research and Education in Materials (PREM) awards totaling $13.6 million to broaden participation and access to materials science resources, education, training, and career opportunities at minority-serving institutions.   

"Climate policy should not become associated with halted mobility, dark and cold buildings, and spoiled food in refrigerators. An important collective (as opposed to household) level response to outages is to strengthen grid resilience via undergrounding power lines," write the UW's Nives Dolšak, professor of marine and environmental affairs, and Aseem Prakash, professor of political science.

"Imagine you are a blue whale swimming up the California coast, as you do every spring. You are searching for krill in the Santa Barbara Channel, a zone that teems with fish, kelp forests, seagrass beds and other undersea life, but also vibrates with noise from ship traffic. Suddenly, the noise gets louder," writes Anna Nisi, a postdoctoral scholar of biology at the UW.

Ship strikes are a leading threat to large whales, with global shipping routes overlapping 92% of their habitats, a new study finds. But protecting whales in the most dangerous collision hotspots would require action over just 2.6% of the ocean’s surface, researchers conclude, potentially saving thousands of whales with minimal disruption to global trade. Briana Abrahms, assistant professor of biology at the UW, is quoted.