Thanks to the Coastal Observation and Seabird Survey Team of community volunteers, UW scientists can better understand the health of fragile marine ecosystems, predict the impact of a changing climate or of potential oil spills, and see the devastation of harmful algae blooms. More than a decade ago, Jeanne Finke’s friends invited her to join them for a walk on a stretch of beach known as South Pacific.
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Four University of Washington researchers have been named AAAS Fellows, according to a Jan. 31 announcement by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. They are among 506 new fellows from around the world, who are recognized for their “scientifically and socially distinguished achievements” in science and engineering. John Marzluff, a professor of wildlife science in the UW School of Environmental and Forest Sciences, is honored for advances in our understanding of how humans impact birds, and for communicating the importance of birds to the public.
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Many people are aware of plastic pollution in the oceans. Photos of turtles or seabirds entangled in plastic garbage first went viral in the 1990s, and the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is now the focus of highly publicized cleanup efforts. Less recognized is how marine plastic waste affects human populations, and the unequal burden on different communities. A report, “Towards an Equitable Approach to Marine Plastics Pollution,” outlines the current situation and attempts to address the problem.
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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. A team of researchers at the University of Washington — led by postdoctoral researcher Calum Cunningham and Laura Prugh, an associate professor of quantitative wildlife sciences — have found that one of those options would sharply reduce a hazard common to much of the country: deer-vehicle collisions.
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Mushrooms have a long-standing history as a culturally and nutritionally significant food source, yet we still have much to learn about our fungal friends. Enter the wondrous world of mushrooms: some toxic, some colorful; some cap-tipped, some mimicking a wave in the ocean. Regardless of how much research has been done on fungi, we have only scratched the surface, with only four percent of fungi species characterized.
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