University of Washington engineering students have won an international contest for their design to monitor water disinfection using the sun's rays. The students will share a $40,000 prize from the Rockefeller Foundation and are now working with nonprofits to turn their concept into a reality.

A tidal energy project in Puget Sound, the first on the U.S. West Coast, will help determine whether underwater energy turbines are environmentally sustainable. University of Washington researchers devising monitoring methods say the pilot project will have the most comprehensive environmental monitoring of any tidal energy installation to date.

Engineers are developing computer models to study how changes in water pressure and current speed around tidal turbines affect sediment buildup and fish health.

A team largely composed of UW undergraduate students has been selected as one of the recipients of a $100,000 Gates Foundation "Grand Challenges Explorations" grant. They will use the money to travel to Uganda to test their novel system for portable maternal ultrasound.

The Ultrasound-based Washington Molecular Imaging and Therapy Center will develop ultrasound as a cheap and safe way to advance medical imaging and therapy. The center aims to commercialize biomedical research and create jobs.

Two elite blogs often post the most interesting political videos that are then picked up by top general-interest blogs.

Engineering custom molecules is a revolutionary change that promises to advance a wide range of fields, and the University of Washington has established a new Molecular Engineering and Science Institute focused on medical and energy applications. Pat Stayton, a UW professor of bioengineering, has been named the institute's first director.

A novel online discussion site, the Living Voters Guide, brings voters together for a civil discussion on the ballot measures.

The UW is leading a five-year, $7.5 million project to study birds, insects and bats in order to develop autonomous aerial vehicles that can adapt to obstacles and fly in unpredictable conditions.

Using a home's electrical wiring as a giant copper antenna enables extremely low-power wireless sensors that run for decades on a single watch battery. The device could be used for low-cost medical monitoring or home sensing systems.

University of Washington engineers are developing the first device able to transmit American Sign Language over U.S. cellular networks. The tool is just completing its initial field test by participants in a UW summer program for deaf and hard-of-hearing students.

A study shows an in-car coach has the strongest effect on drivers most prone to distraction -- suggesting that technology could help prevent dangerous driving.

Engineers and physicians at the University of Washington have built a scaffold that supports the growth and integration of stem cell-derived cardiac muscle cells. A description of the scaffold was published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Biochemists and computer scientists at the University of Washington two years ago launched an ambitious project harnessing the brainpower of computer gamers to solve medical problems. Results published this week in the journal Nature show more than 55,000 players have played protein-folding Tetris, and beat the world's most powerful computers on problems that required radical moves, risks and long-term vision.

By combining a nanoparticle's magnetic and thermal properties, researchers have created a new type of medical imaging that virtually eliminates the background noise.

UW engineers have built an insectlike robot with hundreds of tiny legs. Compared to other such robots, the UW model excels in its ability to carry heavy loads - more than seven times its own weight - and move in any direction.

A UW study finds the tools used to align genomes from different species have quality-control issues.

A UW doctoral student on Wednesday will present results showing a need to address electronic security issues in cars with more sophisticated computer control and broader wireless connectivity.

Zensi, a research startup from the UW and Georgia Tech that uses simple technology to monitor electricity and water use in the home, has been acquired by international electronics company Belkin.

The National Academy of Engineering Seattle Grand Challenges Summit will take place May 2-3. The event features leaders from NASA, UW, MIT, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, GE, PATH and more discussing challenges for the 21st century.

UW and Cornell University students are taking digital photos of the campus in a game of virtual capture-the-flag. The game is part of a research project to create 3-D reconstructions from photos.

A new system makes it possible to add custom features to Microsoft Word, Adobe Photoshop, Apple iTunes or any other program. Custom computing would particularly benefit people with disabilities.

On Monday from 10:30 to 12:30, undergraduate students will present accessibility tools they built for mobile phones running the Android platform.

A group of computer scientists have found a way to tame multiprocessor computers, which behave in wildly unpredictable ways even as they become widespread in the industry.

A team of experts led by a UW civil engineer traveled to Haiti to evaluate the impact of the magnitude-7 earthquake. The report to the U.S. Geological Survey and the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute finds no surface evidence of the fault, but widespread damage related to poor building practices.

Electrodes attached to the surface of the human brain show that imagining movements to control a computer cursor generates larger-than-life brain signals in less than 10 minutes of training.

A material derived from crustacean shell and algae supports the growth of new stem cells, offering a possible replacement to today's Petri dishes lined with animal byproducts.

Civil engineers at the University of Washington and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' Seattle office have taken a first look at how dams in the Columbia River basin, the nation's largest hydropower system, could be managed for a different climate.

Greenroads, developed over the past three years by UW engineers and collaborators at the global engineering firm CH2M Hill, aims to do for road construction what the LEED system has done for the building industry.

A Web tool that generates color maps of projected temperature and precipitation changes using 16 of the world's most prominent climate-change models is being demonstrated in Copenhagen, Denmark, in conjunction with the climate summit underway there. It also is the subject of a presentation Tuesday, Dec. 15, at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco.

In real estate, it's location, location, location. And when it comes to why girls and women shy away from careers in computer science, a key reason is environment, environment, environment.

Dime-sized temperature sensors that were first built for the refrigerated food industry have been adapted to sense mountain microclimates.

In most of the world children must share computers. A new device lets up to four children share a computer screen to do interactive math problems, effectively quadrupling the number of computers available for such exercises.

The University of Washington will be part of a team that will conduct a regional smart energy grid demonstration project.

Computer scientists at the UW are using Android, the open-source mobile operating system championed by Google, to transform a cell phone into a flexible data-collection tool. Their free suite of tools, named Open Data Kit, is already used by organizations around the world that need inexpensive ways to gather information in areas with little infrastructure.

University of Washington leaders today officially broke ground on a molecular engineering building. The underground instrumentation space that minimizes vibrations and electromagnetic interference will be the largest such lab space on the West Coast.

Robots equipped with wireless and sensing capabilities are available for use in the home. But the safety and privacy risks of these devices are not yet adequately addressed, according to a new University of Washington study.

The newly named Automobili Lamborghini Advanced Composite Structures Lab will test the safety of structures built out of new composite materials.

An event will be held Tuesday to formalize a partnership between the UW and Automobili Lamborghini on composites research for sports cars.

Less than a year ago a UW engineering lab was the first to generate ceramic objects in a 3-D printer. Now the lab has done it again, for glass.

The UW was among nine research institutions from around the world that collaborated on the first successful demonstration of multiple biomedical robots operated from locations in the U.S., Europe and Asia. UW engineers also helped develop the standard protocol used in the tests.

Using tourist photos downloaded from the Web, computer scientists created a digital version of Rome in about a day.

For the first time researchers have run an electrical circuit entirely off power in trees. The findings suggest a new power source for wireless sensors.

A new organic material lets both positive and negative charges flow efficiently. It permits a simpler design of organic electronics, using a single material for transporting positive and negative charges.

UW experts who can address a variety of computer-related issues.

A statistical analysis reveals distinct patterns in the placement of Indus symbols, and creates a hypothetical model for the unknown language.

A team of engineers and medical experts has been able to illuminate brain tumors by injecting fluorescent nanoparticles into the bloodstream. The tiny particles can safely cross the blood-brain barrier, an almost impenetrable barrier that protects the brain from infection.

For the first time, researchers combine nanoparticles used for medical imaging and therapy in one tiny package.

Private information scattered all over the Internet and impossible to control. A new system, called Vanish, puts an expiration date on electronic text. Electronic communication sent using Vanish -- such as e-mail, Facebook posts and chat messages -- would have a brief lifetime and then self-destruct.

University of Washington engineers used a novel underwater manufacturing technique to build biomimetic cilia. The hairlike appendages mix tiny volumes of liquid to speed up biomedical reactions.