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Washington Sea Grant oversees the SoundToxins program, which monitors for harmful algal blooms in Puget Sound and the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and helps flag toxins before shellfish producers ship off their product.

Permanent Daylight Saving Time would lead to darker mornings from November to March. This would mean darker commutes for everyone, but how much would it affect children going to school? Ä¢¹½ÊÓÆµ researchers did the math for 14 out of the 19 states that preapproved the change. Using school start times, enrollment data, and latitude and longitude measurements, the team calculated just how many days each child would be commuting to school in the dark and then added the trips together.

Using preliminary data from the Simonyi Survey Telescope at the NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory, scientists have discovered a new dwarf planet candidate in our solar system. If confirmed, the distant world would join Pluto, Ceres, Eris, Haumea and Makemake as our system’s sixth official dwarf planet.

Ä¢¹½ÊÓÆµ astronomer Emily Levesque will soon add a new role as editor-in-chief of the prestigious American Astronomical Society Journals to her ongoing work studying red supergiants and other stellar oddities.

A group of 175 researchers, including eight from the Ä¢¹½ÊÓÆµ, co-authored a commentary published in Earth’s Future and the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society that provides a roadmap for future climate assessments in the U.S. by synthesizing the science and identifying research priorities based on existing gaps.

A Ä¢¹½ÊÓÆµ-led center for optoelectronics — technologies that combine light and electronics — brings researchers from 14 universities across the U.S. together with the mission to develop new materials to transform information technology with light. Founded in 2021, NSF IMOD has received a second round of funding from the NSF to continue its work for the next five years.

A NASA satellite originally designed to study large bodies of water may also be able to monitor most of the world’s irrigation canals, according to a new Ä¢¹½ÊÓÆµ study. This capability could help farmers and water managers around the world manage resources, prepare for droughts and improve food security in their communities.

Explore recent research from the Ä¢¹½ÊÓÆµ: ancient capybara and palm fossils found in the desert, a window into the bottom of the food web, waves that go a different way, environmental advocacy in Colombia, the mechanics of blood clotting and a superconducting surprise.

Coral reefs provide protection for fish, and researchers are interested in how the health of the reef affects the ability of fish to communicate with each other. This fall, Jj Milan, a Ä¢¹½ÊÓÆµ doctoral student in the biology department, and Ä¢¹½ÊÓÆµ research scientist Bob Oxborrow are traveling to the Maldives to study how humbug damselfish communicate with each other.

A Ä¢¹½ÊÓÆµ-led research team has discovered the best-preserved fossil feathers from the Mesozoic era — in fossilized dinosaur poop. Some of these feathers have features that look like modern birds’ feathers. This finding can help researchers better understand why and how some birds survived the catastrophic event 66 million years ago that killed 75% of life on the planet.

American public health agencies don’t routinely test wastewater for sexually transmitted infections, but new research led by the Ä¢¹½ÊÓÆµ and the Washington State Department of Health found that such methods could be used to effectively identify Chlamydia trachomatis, the bacteria that causes chlamydia.

Melinda Webster, a research scientist at the Ä¢¹½ÊÓÆµâ€™s Applied Physics Laboratory, is the lead author on a new study that catalogs changes in Arctic and Antarctic sea ice over the past 50-plus years. She spoke with Ä¢¹½ÊÓÆµ News about the story behind the numbers.

Hossein Naghavi, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at the Ä¢¹½ÊÓÆµ, explores new applications for an underused segment of the electromagnetic spectrum known as the “terahertz band.â€� Naghavi recently received a grant from the Department of Energy to create powerful yet lightweight sensors using terahertz waves, which could aid emergency responders, autonomous vehicles, security systems and more.

After tracking birds in the Puget Sound lowlands for 12 years, researchers conclude that birds respond better to some development configurations than others, highlighting measures developers can take to protect native species while still meeting the region’s growing demands.

Ä¢¹½ÊÓÆµ researchers created the Landslide Exposure Database, the first resource that maps per-building landslide vulnerability across the United States. The study estimates that roughly 6.5 million U.S. residents are highly vulnerable to landslides, and overturns the conventional picture of landslide risk in the U.S. by identifying high concentrations of exposure in Appalachia as well as a surprising urban-rural divide.

Housed in the Ä¢¹½ÊÓÆµ School of Pharmacy, the Institute for Innovations in Drug Delivery and Disposition (I2D3) brings together experts in artificial intelligence, drug discovery, pharmacology, data science and biotechnology to ease the bottleneck between promising molecules and successful drugs. 

While the majority of the world just wants to swat mosquitoes, three Ä¢¹½ÊÓÆµ researchers find these insects fascinating. They told Ä¢¹½ÊÓÆµ News what it’s like to study mosquitoes and why these critters are actually really important.

Every summer, Ä¢¹½ÊÓÆµ researchers head to northern Botswana to study how large predators, such as lions and African wild dogs, are affected by climate change and other shifts in their environment. Ä¢¹½ÊÓÆµ News asked a few team members to describe their plans for this summer.

Efforts to restore fish passage are cropping up across the country, but these projects come with hefty price tags. In a new study, Ä¢¹½ÊÓÆµ researchers explore different approaches to improving the benefits from investments in salmon recovery.

Ä¢¹½ÊÓÆµ researchers examined almost 3,000 science guidelines and assessment questions for any connections to society. Of the approximately 200 elements that had real-world implications, many discussed ethics and public health issues.

Burrowing shrimp, native to Washington, create problems for shellfish farmers. As their name suggests, these creatures burrow in marine sediments, and the excavated material piles up on the surface, which can smother oysters and clams growing there. State-funded research led by the Ä¢¹½ÊÓÆµ offers a new, non-chemical approach to controlling shrimp populations in shellfish-growing areas.