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Since their protection under the Endangered Species Act, wolf populations have been making a comeback in the continental United States. Conservationists have argued that the presence of wolves and other apex predators, so named because they have no known predators aside from people, can help keep smaller predator species in check.

Like many of life's challenges, it turns out that dental plaque is all about how you respond. A team of microbiologists, immunologists and periodontists in the University of Washington's School of Dentistry are expanding upon their recent discovery that people's gums respond to plaque with three distinct types of inflammation.

Tiny pieces of plastic in the ocean might seem innocuous on their own, but their growing presence is a frustrating issue facing marine ecosystems. The particles' small size makes them difficult to clean up, and it also allows them to easily burrow into marine environments or even get ingested by ocean organisms.

A pair of studies to be published April 15 in the journal Science paint a new picture about apes, ancient Africa and the origins of humans. Many scientists had once hypothesized that the first apes to evolve in Africa more than 20 million years ago ate primarily fruit and lived within the thick, closed canopy of a nearly continent-wide forest ecosystem.

The field of plate tectonics is not that old, and scientists continue to learn the details of earthquake-producing geologic faults. The Cascadia Subduction Zone - the eerily quiet offshore fault that threatens to unleash a magnitude-9 earthquake in the Pacific Northwest - still holds many mysteries. A study led by the University of Washington discovered seeps of warm, chemically distinct liquid shooting up from the seafloor about 50 miles off Newport, Oregon.

An international team of scientists has for the first time detected neutrinos created by a particle collider. The discovery, announced March 19 by the Forward Search Experiment - or FASER collaboration - at the 57th Rencontres de Moriond Electroweak and Unified Theories conference in Italy, promises to deepen scientists- understanding of the nature of neutrinos, which are the most abundant particle in the cosmos.

When COVID-19 vaccines became obtainable in the United States, the policy of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was that individuals should receive the first available vaccine. New research from the University of Washington suggests that might not have been the most effective strategy. The study , recently published online in the journal Production and Operations Management, considers whether individuals should be able to select their vaccine type.

In the Pacific Northwest and British Columbia, scientists have been sounding the alarm about the plight of southern resident orcas. Annual counts show that population numbers, already precarious, have fallen back to mid-1970s levels. Most pregnancies end in miscarriage or death of the newborn. They may not be catching enough food.

Research on the impacts of climate change often considers its effects on people separately from impacts on ecosystems. But a new study is showing just how intertwined we are with our environment by linking our warming world to a global rise in conflicts between humans and wildlife. The research, led by scientists at the University of Washington's Center for Ecosystem Sentinels and published Feb.

The red streaks crisscrossing the surface of Europa, one of Jupiter's moons, are striking. Scientists suspect it is a frozen mixture of water and salts, but its chemical signature is mysterious because it matches no known substance on Earth. An international team led by the University of Washington may have solved the puzzle with the discovery of a new type of solid crystal that forms when water and table salt combine in cold and high-pressure conditions.

From Twitter under Elon Musk to the layoffs at technology companies, chief executive officers are more visible than ever. Their choices are publicized and scrutinized, affecting employees, customers and society at large. The wide-ranging impact of CEOs inspired new research from the University of Washington that examines their decision-making tendencies.

Volcanoes draw plenty of attention when they erupt. But new research led by the University of Washington shows that volcanoes leak a surprisingly high amount of their atmosphereand climate-changing gases in their quiet phases. A Greenland ice core shows that volcanoes quietly release at least three times as much sulfur into the Arctic atmosphere than estimated by current climate models.

Sarah McQuate Empathy is critical to having supportive conversations about mental health. But this skill can be tricky to learn, especially in the moment when a person is sharing something hard. A team led by researchers at the University of Washington studied how artificial intelligence could help people on the platform TalkLife , where people give each other mental health support.

An international team of researchers has combined satellite imagery and climate and ocean records to obtain the most detailed understanding yet of how the West Antarctic Ice Sheet - which contains enough ice to raise global sea level by 11 feet, or 3.3 meters - is responding to climate change.

Astronomers have been gazing at the Triangulum galaxy for centuries. But they-ve never seen it quite like this. On Jan. 11 at the 241st meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Seattle, a team led by scientists at the University of Washington and the Center for Computational Astrophysics unveiled results using the Panchromatic Hubble Andromeda Treasury Triangulum Extended Region - or PHATTER - survey.

More than a century of preserved fish specimens offer a rare glimpse into long-term trends in parasite populations. New research from the University of Washington shows that fish parasites plummeted from 1880 to 2019, a 140-year stretch when Puget Sound - their habitat and the second largest estuary in the mainland U.S. warmed significantly.

Research from the University of Washington shows that signals from the upper atmosphere could improve tsunami forecasting and, someday, help track ash plumes and other impacts after a volcanic eruption. A new study analyzed the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha-apai eruption in the South Pacific earlier this year.

Today, by and large, patients receive a diagnosis of Alzheimer's only after they exhibit well-known signs of the disease, such as memory loss. By that point, the best treatment options simply slow further progression of symptoms. But research has shown that the seeds of Alzheimer's are planted years - even decades - earlier, long before the cognitive impairments surface that make a diagnosis possible.

The number of U.S. adult handgun owners carrying a loaded handgun on their person doubled from 2015 to 2019, according to new research led by the University of Washington. Data come from the 2019 National Firearms Survey (NFS), an online survey of U.S. adults living in households with firearms, including nearly 2,400 handgun owners.

In much of the United States, there is a twice-yearly shift in timekeeping between standard time and daylight saving time, or DST, which delays both sunrise and sunset to make mornings darker and evenings brighter. Recently, scientists, policy experts, lawmakers and citizens have debated abandoning the twice-a-year switch and adopting either year-round standard time or DST.