Natural Sciences Division

How long can a human live? New research predicts there's a chance that someone in the world will celebrate a 130th birthday in this century. Michael Pearce, a doctoral student in statistics at the UW, is quoted.

Through public events and exhibitions, connect with the UW community every week! This week, attend gallery exhibitions, watch recorded events, and more.

When Emily Levesque, associate professor of astronomy at the UW, was 2 years old, Halley’s Comet made its most recent close pass to Earth. Her older brother was observing the phenomenon for a school project and the whole family headed out to the backyard. Fussy, cold and afraid of the dark, young Levesque’s mood changed when her parents directed her attention to the night sky. From there she was hooked.

Are we ready to break up with our masks? Or is it hard to let go? Washington is open again (except for indoor events of 10,000-plus people) and mask restrictions have been relaxed, but with coronavirus variants still out there, people are confronting a new set of social and emotional challenges. Jane Simoni, professor of psychology at the UW, is quoted.

New insights and breakthroughs in artificial intelligence are coaxing, or forcing, proteins to give up their secrets. Scientists are now forging biochemical tools that could transform our world. The UW’s Lexi Walls, a postdoctoral researcher in biochemistry; David Baker, director of the UW Institute for Protein Design; and Longxing Cao, a postdoctoral researcher in biochemistry, are quoted. The UW’s Neil King, assistant professor of biochemistry, and Brooke Fiala, a researcher in the Institute for Protein Design, are mentioned.

Michael Pearce, a UW doctoral student in statistics, and Adrian Raftery, a professor of sociology, discuss the results of their new study.

Legacy Survey of Space and Time member and Associate Professor of Astronomy Mario Jurić discusses a giant comet.

With the publication of “Rare Earth: Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe” 20 years ago, the UW’s Peter Ward, professor of biology, and Donald Brownlee, professor of astronomy, explained why microbial life may be ubiquitous in the universe, but intelligent life may be rare indeed. They are now working on a sequel, tentatively titled “The Rare Earth Hypothesis: Assessing the Frequency of Complex Life in the Cosmos, in the Age of Exoplanet Discovery.”

There's a market for just about anything — and fossils are hot right now. Collectors are paying tens of thousands of dollars for the latest dig, and that's making it difficult for paleontologists to track important finds. The UW's Christian Sidor, curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Burke Museum and professor of biology, is interviewed. [This is the third segment on "The Record"]

Tatiana Toro, professor of mathematics at the UW, will maintain her tenure at the UW during her five-year director term of MSRI, a collaborative mathematics research center based in Berkeley. [This is part of "Tech Moves"]

While some social scientists, journalists and activists have been raising concerns about how social media is affecting our democracy, mental health and relationships, we haven’t seen biologists and ecologists weighing in as much. That’s changed with a new paper published in the prestigious science journal PNAS earlier this month, titled “Stewardship of global collective behavior.” The UW’s Joe Bak-Coleman, a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for an Informed Public, and Carl Bergstrom, professor of biology, are interviewed.

As each new generation inherits the world, vital knowledge is forgotten. Peter Kahn, professor of psychology and of environmental and forest sciences at the UW, is quoted.

"The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced in May 2021 that the nation’s total fertility rate had reached 1.64 children per woman in 2020, dropping 4% from 2019, a record low for the nation. The news led to many stories about a ‘baby bust’ harming the country ... But as a statistician and sociologist who collaborates with the United Nations Population Division to develop new statistical population forecasting methods, I’m not yet calling this a crisis," writes Adrian Raftery, professor of statistics at the UW.

Dr. Edward Diener, who graduated in 1974 with a Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Washington, has passed away.