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While Google has long been synonymous with search, people are increasingly seeking information directly through video platforms such as YouTube. Videos can be dense with information: text, audio, and image after image. Yet each of these layers presents a potential source of error or deceit. And when people search for videos directly on a site like YouTube, sussing out which videos are credible sources can be tricky.

Social media. The climate crisis. Political polarization. The tumult of a pandemic and online learning. Teens today are dealing with unprecedented stressors, and over the past decade their mental health has been in sustained decline. Levels of anxiety and depression rose after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Researchers who want to bridge the divide between biology and technology spend a lot of time thinking about translating between the two different "languages" of those realms. "Our digital technology operates through a series of electronic on-off switches that control the flow of current and voltage," said Rajiv Giridharagopal , a research scientist at the University of Washington.

A recent United Nations report found that the world generated 137 billion pounds of electronic waste in 2022, an 82% increase from 2010. Yet less than a quarter of 2022's e-waste was recycled. While many things impede a sustainable afterlife for electronics, one is that we don't have systems at scale to recycle the printed circuit boards (PCBs) found in nearly all'electronic devices.

TikTok's swift ascension to the upper echelons of social media is often attributed to its recommendation algorithm, which predicts viewer preferences so acutely it's spawned a maxim: " The TikTok algorithm knows me better than I know myself." The platform's success was so pronounced it's seemed to spur other social media platforms to shift their designs.

In a speech to a group of religious broadcasters in February, Donald Trump promised to create a task force to counter "anti-Christian bias," which he said would investigate the "discrimination, harassment and persecution against Christians in America." It's not the first time Trump has claimed that Christians are being persecuted, and he's not alone.

A parent interacting with a baby is a heart-warming and universal scene. The parent speaks in a high-pitched voice - known as "parentese" - as they respond positively to the baby's babbling and gestures, commonly with eye contact and smiles. These connections don't just make for a touching sight. New research from the University of Washington's Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences (I-LABS) shows they're important for infant language growth, too.

The ice-encrusted oceans of some of the moons orbiting Saturn and Jupiter are leading candidates in the search for extraterrestrial life. A new lab-based study led by the University of Washington in Seattle and the Freie Universität Berlin shows that individual ice grains ejected from these planetary bodies may contain enough material for instruments headed there in the fall to detect signs of life, if such life exists.

Not all'asteroids are alike. Some of them, known as "active" asteroids, sport comet-like tails of gas and dust. Studying active asteroids could reveal clues to how the solar system formed and how Earth became a water-bearing oasis for life. They may also aid future space missions. Active asteroids are also rare.

In an experiment akin to stop-motion photography, an international team of scientists has isolated the energetic movement of an electron in a sample of liquid water - while "freezing" the motion of the much larger atom it orbits. The finding reveals the immediate response of an electron when hit with an X-ray, an essential step in understanding the effects of radiation exposure on objects and people.

A team led by researchers at the University of Washington has discovered a major cause for a drop in nighttime pollinator activity - and people are largely to blame. The researchers found that nitrate radicals (NO3) in the air degrade the scent chemicals released by a common wildflower, drastically reducing the scent-based cues that nighttime pollinators rely on to locate the flower.

Smart accessories are increasingly common. Rings and watches track vitals, while Ray-Bans now come with cameras and microphones. Wearable tech has even broached brooches. Yet certain accessories have yet to get the smart touch. University of Washington researchers introduced the Thermal Earring, a wireless wearable that continuously monitors a user's earlobe temperature.

The Cascadia Subduction Zone is a massive geologic fault that last ruptured in January 1700. But while this fault has stayed quiet for centuries, it regularly generates small tremors that accompany gradual, nondisruptive movement along the fault. The tiny tremor events and slow slippage are known collectively as " episodic tremor and slip." Seismic waves associated with these tremor events are recorded and tracked by the UW's Pacific Northwest Seismic Network.

As climate change warms the planet, weather patterns are likely to shift. Even the consistency of snow - how fluffy it is, for example - could change. Laura Prugh , a wildlife ecologist and University of Washington associate professor in the School of Environmental & Forest Sciences, wants to know how these changing conditions will affect how predators hunt prey.

As industrial computing needs grow, the size and energy consumption of the relevant hardware must keep up with those demands. A solution to this dilemma could lie in superconducting materials, which reduce that energy consumption exponentially. Imagine cooling a giant data center - full of constantly running servers - down to nearly absolute zero, enabling large-scale computation with incredible energy efficiency.

While it is common to see Amazon Prime vans circling the city of Seattle year-round, there might be even more deliveries than usual right now, thanks to the Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals that rang in the holiday season. Researchers at the University of Washington were curious how the delivery of e-commerce products affects pollution levels across the Seattle metropolitan area, which includes Tacoma, Seattle, Bellevue and Everett.

Beluga whales are highly social and vocal marine mammals. They use acoustics to navigate, find prey, avoid predators and maintain group cohesion. For Alaska's critically endangered Cook Inlet beluga population, these crucial communications may compete with a cacophony of noise from human activities. New research from the University of Washington, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Alaska Fisheries Science Center and the Alaska Department of Fish and Game is the first to document the complex vocal repertoire of the Cook Inlet beluga whale population.

For more than a century, American cities have been sliced and diced by high-traffic roadways. Interstate highways and wide arterials are now a defining feature of most metropolitan areas, their constant flow of cars spewing pollution into nearby neighborhoods. Researchers have only just begun to understand the health risks posed by all that pollution.

To paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of declining phytoplankton in the North Atlantic may have been greatly exaggerated. A prominent 2019 study used ice cores in Antarctica to suggest that marine productivity in the North Atlantic had declined by 10% during the industrial era, with worrying implications that the trend might continue.

Generative artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT, an AI-powered language tool, and Midjourney, an AI-powered image generator, can potentially assist people with various disabilities. These tools could summarize content, compose messages or describe images. Yet the degree of this potential is an open question, since, in addition to regularly spouting inaccuracies and failing at basic reasoning , these tools can perpetuate ableist biases.