Shawn Luttrell/University of Washington

What if humans could regrow an amputated arm or leg, or completely restore nervous system function after a spinal cord injury?

A new study of one of our closest invertebrate relatives, the acorn worm, reveals that this feat might one day be possible. Acorn worms burrow in the sand around coral reefs, but their ancestral relationship to chordates means they have a genetic makeup and body plan surprisingly similar to ours.

A study led by the University of Washington and published in the December issue of the journal Developmental Dynamics has shown that acorn worms can regrow every major body part — including the head, nervous system and internal organs — from nothing after being sliced in half. If scientists can unlock the genetic network responsible for this feat, they might be able to regrow limbs in humans through manipulating our own similar genetic heritage.

“Regeneration gives animals or populations immortality,” said senior author Billie Swalla, director of Friday Harbor Laboratories and a UW biology professor. “Not only are the tissues regrown, but they are regrown exactly the same way and with the same proportions so that at the end of the process, you can’t tell a regenerated animal from one that has never been cut.”

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Two University of Washington professors are leading an effort to help U.S. fisheries consider the larger marine environment, rather than just a single species, when managing a fishery.

Tim Essington, a UW professor of aquatic and fishery sciences, and Phil Levin, a UW professor of practice with the School of Environmental and Forest Sciences and lead scientist at The Nature Conservancy, head a taskforce convened by the Lenfest Ocean Program to guide managers on implementing ecosystem-based fisheries management. After two years of regional workshops, meetings and literature reviews, the group just released its recommendations report.

Essington and Levin will take part in related briefings Nov. 16 on Capitol Hill and to the White House’s Council for Environmental Quality.

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Abigail Swann/University of Washington

Major forest die-offs due to drought, heat and beetle infestations or deforestation could have consequences far beyond the local landscape.

Wiping out an entire forest can have significant effects on global climate patterns and alter vegetation on the other side of the world, according to a study led by the University of Washington and published Nov. 16 in PLOS ONE.

“When trees die in one place, it can be good or bad for plants elsewhere, because it causes changes in one place that can ricochet to shift climate in another place,” said lead author Elizabeth Garcia, a UW postdoctoral researcher in atmospheric sciences. “The atmosphere provides the connection.”

Just as conditions in the tropical Pacific Ocean can have distant effects through what we now understand as El Niño, the loss of a forest could generate a signal heard around the world — including by other plants.

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Humans have always been frightened and fascinated by lightning. This month, NASA is scheduled to launch a new satellite that will provide the first nonstop, high-tech eye on lightning over the North American section of the planet.

University of Washington researchers have been tracking global lightning from the ground for more than a decade. Lightning is not only about public safety — lightning strike data have recently been introduced into weather prediction, and a new UW study shows ways to apply them in storm forecasts.

“When you see lots of lightning, you know where the convection, or heat-driven upward motion, is the strongest, and that’s where the storm is the most intense,” said co-author Robert Holzworth, a UW professor of Earth and space sciences. “Almost all lightning occurs in clouds that have ice and where there’s a strong updraft.”

The recent paper, published in the American Meteorological Society’s Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology, presents a new way to transform lightning strikes into weather-relevant information. The U.S. National Weather Service has begun to use lightning in its most sophisticated forecasts. This method, however, is more general and could be used in a wide variety of forecasting systems anywhere in the world.

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The reason for the location of Mount St. Helens is an enigma. The volcano lies farther west than other peaks in the Cascades volcanic arc. Research published this week may begin to explain why. The last major eruption of Mount St. Helens, about 50 miles northeast of Portland, was in 1980. The mountain spewed steam and ash in 2004, and has since been rebuilding a new lava dome.

The study was led by scientists at the University of New Mexico with co-authors at the University of Washington, Rice University and Cornell University. All are part of an ambitious effort to use remote sensing to better understand the hidden passageways beneath one of the country’s most dangerous active volcanoes. The UW Environment co-authors are Ken Creager and John Vidale, both professors in the Department of Earth & Space Sciences. Other co-authors are Brandon Schmandt at the University of New Mexico, Alan Levander at Rice University, Eric Kiser at the University of Arizona and Geoff Abers at Cornell University.

The paper, published Nov. 1 in Nature Communications, analyzes compressional waves traveling through the crust and reflecting off the mantle below the volcano. Results show that on one side the mantle is largely serpentinite, a rare, moisture-absorbing, dark-green mineral that can look like a snake’s skin. But the mantle below the eastern half of the mountain is mostly olivine, a common mineral that allows water — thought to play a key role in volcanic eruptions — to percolate up and into the overlying crust.

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