Space vehicles like SpaceX’s Falcon 9 are designed to be reusable. But this means that, like Olympic gymnasts hoping for a gold medal, they have to stick their landings. Landing is stressful on a rocket’s legs because they must handle the force from the impact with the landing pad. One way to combat this is…
How to Train Your Robot to Feed You Dinner
About 1 million adults in the United States need someone to help them eat, according to census data from 2010. It’s a time-consuming and often awkward task, one largely done out of necessity rather than choice. Researchers at the University of Washington are working on a robotic system that can help make it easier. After…
Researchers Develop 3-D Printed Objects That Can Track and Store How They Are Used
Cheap and easily customizable, 3-D printed devices are perfect for assistive technology, like prosthetics or “smart” pill bottles that can help patients remember to take their daily medications. But these plastic parts don’t have electronics, which means they can’t monitor how patients are using them. Now engineers at the University of Washington have developed 3-D…
Tissue Paper Sensors For Robotics
University of Washington engineers have turned tissue paper — similar to toilet tissue — into a new kind of wearable sensor that can detect a pulse, a blink of an eye and other human movement. The sensor is light, flexible and inexpensive, with potential applications in health care, entertainment and robotics. The technology, described in…
How To Store Information In Your Clothes Invisibly, Without Electronics
A new type of smart fabric developed at the University of Washington could pave the way for jackets that store invisible passcodes and open the door to your apartment or office. The UW computer scientists have created fabrics and fashion accessories that can store data — from security codes to identification tags — without needing…
‘Smart’ Paper Can Conduct Electricity, Detect Water
In cities and large-scale manufacturing plants, a water leak in a complicated network of pipes can take tremendous time and effort to detect, as technicians must disassemble many pieces to locate the problem. The American Water Works Association indicates that nearly a quarter-million water line breaks occur each year in the U.S., costing public water utilities about…
How to Store Information in Your Clothes Invisibly, Without Electronics
A new type of smart fabric developed at the University of Washington could pave the way for jackets that store invisible passcodes and open the door to your apartment or office. The UW computer scientists have created fabrics and fashion accessories that can store data — from security codes to identification tags — without needing…
New App Uses Smartphone Selfies To Screen For Pancreatic Cancer
Pancreatic cancer has one of the worst prognoses — with a five-year survival rate of 9 percent — in part because there are no telltale symptoms or non-invasive screening tools to catch a tumor before it spreads. Now, University of Washington researchers have developed an app that could allow people to easily screen for pancreatic…
Catching The IMSI-Catchers: Seaglass Brings Transparency To Cell Phone Surveillance
Modern cell phones are vulnerable to attacks from rogue cellular transmitters called IMSI-catchers — surveillance devices that can precisely locate mobile phones, eavesdrop on conversations or send spam. Recent leaks and public records requests have revealed that law enforcement in many U.S. cities have used the surveillance devices to locate suspects or hunt for illegal…
Kids, Parents Alike Worried About Privacy With Internet-Connected Toys
Hello Barbie, CogniToys Dino and other toys connected to the internet can joke around with children and respond in surprising detail to questions posed by their young users. The toys record the voices of children who interact with them and store those recordings in the cloud, helping the toys become “smarter.” As Wi-Fi-enabled toys like…
Life After FitBit: Appealing to Those Who Feel Guilty Vs. Free
Personal tracking tools—technologies that meticulously count our daily steps, map our runs, account for each purchase – fall in and out of favor in users’ lives. People abandon self-tracking for different reasons, University of Washington researchers have found. Some don’t like what their Fitbit or financial tracking tools reveal, others find collecting data a hassle, don’t…
Proxima B is in Host Star’s Habitable Zone, But Could It Really Be Habitable?
The world’s attention is now on Proxima Centauri b, a possibly Earth-like planet orbiting the closest star, 4.22 light-years away. The planet’s orbit is just right to allow liquid water on its surface, needed for life. But could it in fact be habitable? If life is possible there, the planet evolved very different than Earth,…
Health Sensing Tool Measures Lung Function Over Phone Call
Most people in the developing world who have asthma, cystic fibrosis or other chronic lung diseases have no way to measure how well their lungs are functioning outside of a clinic or doctor visit. But many do have access to a phone, though it may be a 10-year-old flip phone or a communal village landline…
Undergrads Win Prize for Gloves That Translate Sign Language
Two University of Washington undergraduates have won a $10,000 Lemelson-MIT Student Prize for gloves that can translate sign language into text or speech. The Lemelson-MIT Student Prize is a nationwide search for the most inventive undergraduate and graduate students. This year, UW sophomores Navid Azodi and Thomas Pryor—who are studying business administration and aeronautics and astronautics engineering,…
Life or Illusion? Avoiding ‘False Positives’ In The Search For Living Worlds
Research from the University of Washington-based Virtual Planetary Laboratory published Feb. 26 in Astrophysical Journal Letters will help astronomers better identify — and thus rule out — “false positives” in the search for life beyond Earth. Powerful future devices such as the James Webb Space Telescope, set for launch in 2018, may help astronomers look…
Quiet Quasar Has Apparently Eaten Its Fill
Astronomers with the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) announced that a distant quasar ran out of gas. Their conclusions, reported Jan. 8 at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Kissimmee, Florida, clarify why quasar SDSS J1011+5442 changed so dramatically in the handful of years between observations. “We are used to thinking of the sky as…
Iceland Volcano’s Eruption Shows How Sulfur Particles Influence Clouds
It has long been suspected that sulfur emissions can brighten clouds. Water droplets tend to clump around particles of sulfuric acid, causing smaller droplets that form brighter, more reflective clouds. But while humans have pumped sulfur into Earth’s atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution, it’s been hard to measure how this affects the clouds above. New…
Engineering a Better Solar Cell
One of the fastest-growing areas of solar energy research is with materials called perovskites. These promising light harvesters could revolutionize the solar and electronics industries because they show potential to convert sunlight into electricity more efficiently and less expensively than today’s silicon-based semiconductors. These superefficient crystal structures have taken the scientific community by storm in…
Reflected Smartphone Transmissions Enable Gesture Control
With almost all of the U.S. population armed with cellphones – and close to 80 percent carrying a smartphone – mobile phones have become second-nature for most people. What’s coming next, say University of Washington researchers, is the ability to interact with our devices not just with touchscreens, but through gestures in the space around…
New Smartphone App Can Detect Newborn Jaundice in Minutes
Newborn jaundice: It’s one of the last things a parent wants to deal with, but it’s unfortunately a common condition in babies less than a week old. Skin that turns yellow can be a sure sign that a newborn is jaundiced and isn’t adequately eliminating the chemical bilirubin. But that discoloration is sometimes hard to…
No-Power Wi-Fi Connectivity Could Fuel IoT Reality
Imagine a world in which your wristwatch or other wearable device communicates directly with your online profiles, storing information about your daily activities where you can best access it – all without requiring batteries. Or, battery-free sensors embedded around your home could track minute-by-minute temperature changes and send that information to your thermostat to help…
Dissolvable Fabric Loaded with Medicine Might Offer Faster Protection Against HIV
Soon, protection from HIV infection could be as simple as inserting a medicated, disappearing fabric minutes before having sex. University of Washington bioengineers have discovered a potentially faster way to deliver a topical drug that protects women from contracting HIV. Their method spins the drug into silk-like fibers that quickly dissolve when in contact with…