Natural Sciences Division

Researchers led by UW biology Professor Horacio de la Iglesia have found that whether you live in a rural or urban environment, your sleep patterns are affected by a full moon. On the nights leading up to full moon, people fall asleep later and sleep less overall.

New experiments have answered the decades-old question of how pieces of splitting nuclei get their spins. George Bertsch, professor emeritus of physics at the UW, is quoted.

The shapes of fossilized teeth from 65.9 million-year-old, squirrel-like creatures suggest that the branch of the tree of life that gave rise to humans and other primates flowered while dinosaurs still walked the earth. The UW’s Gregory Wilson Mantilla, Burke Museum curator of vertebrate paleontology and professor of biology, and Brody Hovatter, a graduate student in Earth and space sciences, are quoted.

Black-and-white tuxedos may be the conventional dress code in the penguin world, but one dashing individual is breaking the status quo with an à la mode yellow coat. Dee Boersma, professor of biology at the UW, is quoted.

When two University of Washington researchers asked people to draw two women — one likely to be sexually harassed, and one who would never find herself in such a position — the results were clear: Looks are everything. The UW's Cheryl Kaiser, professor of psychology, Bryn Bandt-Law, a doctoral student in psychology, are quoted. Jin Goh, a former postdoctoral researcher at the UW now at Colby College, is mentioned.

In the contest over who could make the most accurate coronavirus forecast, it was global institutions versus a guy living with his parents in Santa Clara. Dr. Christopher Murray, director of the UW Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, is quoted. Carl Bergstrom, professor of biology at the UW, is mentioned.

Ian Kretzler, a Ph.D. anthropology graduate, and Samson Jenekhe, professor of chemical engineering and chemistry, have been recently awarded honors.

A new study says that carbon emission cuts need to be about 80% more ambitious to stay below 2 degrees Celsius global warming — considered a threshold for climate stability and climate-related risks such as excessive heat, drought, extreme weather and sea level rise. The UW's Adrian Raftery, a professor of statistics, and Pieran Lu, a doctoral student in statistics, are quoted.

Ashleigh Theberge, an assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry, and Jodi Young, an assistant professor in the School of Oceanography, have been named 2021 Sloan Fellows.

Any parent doing the hard work to teach their kids about the dangers of racism must also look inward. All of us have internal biases that manifest both implicitly and explicitly and, if we’re not careful, we may be subtly influencing our children to have those biases, too. A UW study is referenced.

The pledges countries made to reduce emissions as part of the 2015 Paris agreement are woefully inadequate, and the world must nearly double its greenhouse gas-cutting goals to avoid the most catastrophic effects of climate change, according to research published Tuesday. Adrian Raftery, professor of statistics at the UW, is quoted.

Amid an acrid national controversy, the CDC proposed detailed criteria for returning students to classrooms. Carl Bergstrom, professor of biology at the UW, is quoted.

Professor of biology Carl Bergstrom is featured in this article for his popular course "Calling BS: Data Reasoning in a Digital World."

Optimism is tempered by the fact that while case numbers have been decreasing steadily, they are still much higher than they were during the first wave. And looming over all the recent progress is the threat of more contagious coronavirus variants that are already spreading rapidly in the U.S. — along with concerns that variants could pose problems for the current round of vaccines. Carl Bergstrom, professor of biology at the UW, is quoted.

Seven UW scientists were included on Cell Mentor's list of 1,000 inspiring Black scientists, including postdoctoral chemistry fellow Tam’ra-Kay Francis and Assistant Professor of mathematics Bobby Wilson.