The bivalve-rich beaches of Hood Canal were all summer after detection of a marine biotoxin that causes , a life-threatening foodborne illness that affects the nervous system.

Given that Washington’s commercial shellfish industry employs nearly 2,400 people and brings in more than $240 million each year, a monthslong closure during peak season had sweeping consequences.

Detecting harmful algal blooms early is critical for consumer safety and trust in the industry. The Washington State Department of Health oversees a that monitors toxin levels in shellfish tissue from various growing areas. The effort is supported by an unofficial partner: , a program launched by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in 2006 that migrated to Washington Sea Grant several years later.

Unlike the DOH, SoundToxins screens the water for harmful algae, which can expedite detection. When SoundToxins monitors detected �� — a species of phytoplankton that produces the toxin that causes PSP — they quickly relayed the information to the DOH, which closed the impacted marine areas before anyone got sick.

Although this type of advance warning can save lives, the future funding of the program is uncertain. Washington Sea Grant relies on a patchwork of research grants and federal and state funds to operate SoundToxins. Recent cuts to research funding and the current state of Washington’s budget have illuminated the precariousness of funding for vital programs like this. Washington Sea Grant remains committed to working with state and federal partners to find the right funding pathway to keep SoundToxins running.

A quantified the value of SoundToxins with survey data. UW News spoke with program manager about the results and the program.

How is the monitoring program and the early detection of harmful algal blooms (HABs) valuable?

Michelle Lepori-Bui: Harmful algal blooms can be really detrimental to the shellfish industry as closures have a direct impact on revenue and because recalls and illnesses affect the reputation of shellfish as a safe and healthy food source. Robust monitoring programs and early warning of these events help protect public health and minimize these impacts. There are many benefits to early detection of HABs to the general public and recreational and commercial harvesters that can be hard to quantify. Farmers can benefit by modifying harvesting activities to minimize losses, avoiding recalls, and maintaining trust in the market, while shellfish consumers and coastal communities benefit from safe local food sources and working waterfronts.

How does the new study demonstrate the value of SoundToxins?

MLB: This survey sought to capture the many tangible and intangible benefits of the program and distill them into a single economic metric using an approach called ‘willingness to pay.’ The study found that shellfish growers value the program with a willingness to pay $533/year for phytoplankton monitoring. With changing environmental conditions, shellfish mortality events, and heat waves, growers are facing an extremely challenging production environment. The finding that they are willing to pay this amount, even during these challenging economic times, shows how valuable this program is to coastal communities.

How does SoundToxins support the state-led effort?

MLB: The DOH’s biotoxin monitoring program is a series of steps in compliance with the National Shellfish Sanitation Program that starts with monitoring for biotoxins in mussel tissue. Mussels typically pick up toxins faster than other species, so they are a good indicator, but other species are tested as well. If toxins are detected, they can initiate recreational and commercial closures.

We’re not part of the official regulatory process, but our work can guide the DOH’s efforts through early warning. We maintain a database populated with volunteer data and a map that uses red, yellow and green color coding to report HAB presence on the coast and in Puget Sound and surrounding waters. We notify the DOH via email when something changes and it uses that information to prioritize certain samples or request additional samples.

Who collects the data?

MLB: SoundToxins is a very cost-effective program because we have really amazing monitors, partners and volunteers. A lot of different folks do the actual monitoring. We work with tribes, growers, environmental education groups and individuals at 35 different sites throughout the region. We provide them with equipment and training and support the database, and they collect and analyze the samples, posting everything online within 24 hours.

What happened this summer? How was it different from years past?

MLB: We got an alert from our monitor in early June that they found Alexandrium cells in a sample from Hoodsport, which is pretty far south in Hood Canal. That alert went straight to the DOH and it reacted quickly, requesting more samples from various parts of Hood Canal.

Historically, there haven’t been many incidents of PSP in south Hood Canal. There were a few blooms in the early 2000s and a big bloom in 2015 that went further south than usual, close to Hoodsport but not to the end of Hood Canal. That was considered unprecedented and this year surpassed that.

It’s understood globally that harmful algal blooms are increasing in frequency, severity and impact. This is partially related to changing climate conditions. Also, phytoplankton like Alexandrium respond to nutrients in the water. The input of nutrients from human activities can influence blooms. We have seen things showing up in places they haven’t been before and increasing in intensity.

A lot of people are working on models to predict harmful algal blooms, but it’s complicated, especially in our area where there are a lot of complex water bodies. We need to continue doing the research to try to understand things better, but in the meantime, monitoring is critical.

Co-authors include Michelle Lepori-Bui, marine water quality specialist at Washington Sea Grant; , water quality specialist at Washington Sea Grant; Vera Trainer, a UW research scientist in environmental and forest science and director of the Olympic Natural Resource Center; of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution; and of NOAA; and Jerry Borchert and Tracie Barry of WA DOH.��

This research was funded by the NOAA National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science Prevention, Control, and Mitigation of HABs.

For more information, contact Lepori-Bui at mdtlb@uw.edu.��

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The U.S. House of Representatives this past summer that would make Daylight Saving Time (DST) permanent in the United States — meaning there would be no turning back the clocks each fall. Nineteen states, including Washington, . If the bill is ultimately signed into law, the change would go into effect in those states.

The bill is currently stalled in the U.S. Senate. are a central issue because permanent DST 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? ������˾�� 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.

In Washington, there would be almost 35 million more trips to school in the dark under permanent DST compared to the current system of switching between DST and Standard Time twice a year. The other 13 states followed a similar trend, with Georgia having the highest deviation from the current system — 71 million more trips. When the researchers extrapolated these results for the rest of the country, it added at least 2 billion more dark commutes to school.

The team also analyzed traffic collision data from the U.S. and found that it was roughly twice as likely for a fatal crash involving a school-aged pedestrian to occur during dark mornings than after sunrise.

The researchers Oct. 29 in Current Biology.

“It’s called the ‘Sunshine Protection Act’ because you get an extra hour of light at the end of the day. But you will take that hour from the morning. You could call it the Sunshine Destruction Act,” said senior author , UW professor of biology. “These dark mornings will inequitably affect children who have to go to school at a certain time. It’s a very tangible metric that anybody from any state or socioeconomic background can relate to. Nobody wants their kids to go to school in the dark.”

Dark mornings affect everyone. Exposure to bright light in the morning helps set our circadian clock, which helps regulate many facets of our lives, such as our mood, sleep and appetite. Without that morning light, our bodies struggle to regulate these key functions.

“When we send kids to school in the dark, we are depriving them from an opportunity to get that morning daylight,” said lead author , a UW postdoctoral scholar in biology. “We were asking what’s the cost for these children. We wanted actual numbers, a real number of kids based on the geographic location of each school.”

The study revealed the areas that would be the hardest hit by the switch: communities on the western edge of their time zones, such as Forks, Washington, and communities with early school start times. For example, Mississippi and Alabama schools have an average start time of earlier than 8 a.m. and both balloon from about 2 million dark trips for each state under the current system to more than 20 million dark trips for each state under permanent DST.

“Some districts probably never experience a dark commute under the current system, and, if this passes, suddenly they will wake up to this new reality that their kids are going to school in the dark,” Rodríguez Ferrante said. “Keep in mind that we used the actual start time listed for each school, and a lot of schools offer breakfast or other things before school, so the kids could be getting there even earlier.”

The researchers argue that permanent DST would also undo the benefits of having a delayed start time for high school students, which is intended to account for teenagers’ shifted circadian clock compared to kids and adults.

“I’ve heard the argument, ‘If we’re in permanent DST, we can just delay the school start time to address these issues,'” de la Iglesia said. “Well, if we do that, you will end up going to work later. And everything is going to get delayed. You will get out of work an hour later, and you will miss the opportunity to enjoy your evening light. And essentially, we’re just going to be realigning everybody to solar time. That, by definition, is Standard Time.”

Daniel Zhang, a high school student, and UW biology undergraduate students , , Jessie Lu, , Elena Kully-Rivera, , are also co-authors on this paper.

For more information, contact de la Iglesia at horaciod@uw.edu and Rodríguez Ferrante at guadarf@uw.edu.

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Pulling the strings: How stem cells in the developing fruit fly brain organize their DNA from outside the nucleus

Cells are very particular about the proper locations of their contents. For example, DNA is packaged in the nucleus in a highly specific way, but researchers are still trying to understand how this happens. For stem cells in the brain of a larval fruit fly — model organisms used to study processes such as early development — the DNA is organized so that the center of each strand, called the centromere, is at the top of the nucleus. In a paper in the Journal of Cell Biology, UW researchers describe how proteins outside the nucleus work alongside proteins inside the nucleus to control the position of centromeres. The researchers observed this mechanism by imaging stem cells within larval fruit fly brains and then using machine learning to measure how centromere locations change when specific proteins are removed. The research team also followed the locations of two specific genes that are far away from the centromeres. Both genes lost their usual positions in the nucleus when the centromeres strayed from their normal location, suggesting that proper centromere positioning may be important for orienting the rest of the DNA in the nucleus. Studying how and why DNA is organized in these stem cells can help researchers better understand how stem cells are regulated and how brains develop.

For more information, contact lead author Jennifer Taylor, UW postdoc in biology, at jatay@uw.edu.��������������

The other UW co-author is . A full list of funding is .

Micro language models let AI run instantly on small devices like smartwatches

Though artificial intelligence can refer to many technologies, the current AI boom has been driven by large language models, or LLMs. They power chatbots and AI agents by running predictions based on ever-increasing amounts of variables called “parameters.” Current cutting-edge models are estimated to have several trillion parameters, making them far too large to run on slower phones or small devices like smartwatches. In a paper at EMNLP 2026, UW researchers introduced “micro language models,” which run with 8-30 million parameters. These models are small enough to run on devices with limited computing power and give users instant responses that fill the lag before the device can access an LLM through the cloud. For instance, a user could ask their smartwatch a question and the micro language model would start responding instantly; then after four to eight words, the LLM would complete the response. The micro language model made mistakes in 4% to 8% of responses that the other model corrected seamlessly before continuing. In a user study, nine out of 10 participants preferred the paired system to the lagging responses from only a cloud model.

For more information, contact ulm@cs.washington.edu or visit .

The UW co-authors are , , and . A full list of co-authors and funding is in .

Policy gaps impact migrant fishers in Washington state

The commercial fishing industry is key to Washington’s maritime economy, but there are concerns about exploitation and forced labor among fishers. While much of industry is regulated by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, exemptions in U.S. law mean some vessels aren’t subject to the same citizenship requirements. A research team from the UW Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies recently focused on understanding the experiences of migrant fishers pursuing albacore tuna, a highly migratory species, who dock or unload at ports in Washington state. Researchers found the exemptions allow migrant fishers to work without authorization or visas, leaving them vulnerable to forced labor and exploitation. Meanwhile, complicated policy and regulatory frameworks make it difficult to address workers’ rights violations. The researchers gathered information from 15 migrant fishers, 14 U.S. citizen fishers, and more than 35 subject matter experts. Every migrant fisher interviewed by the team reported experiences aligned with the International Labour Organization’s indicators of forced labor, and both migrant and U.S. citizen fishers reported difficult living and working conditions. Approaches to combating forced labor are varied and uneven, the researchers found, and additional work is needed to better understand and support the needs of Washington’s fishers. Along with the full report, the team also published .

For more information, contact , research director at the Bridges Center, at rerstad@uw.edu.

The other UW co-authors are , and .

Burrowing shrimp are on the move in a mudflat near you

Burrowing shrimp are a pest well known to shellfish growers. These pale-bodied creatures excavate mud as they dig into the ground, creating piles of sediment that suffocate oysters and clams growing on the surface. In estuaries on the west coast, shrimp beds reach densities of hundreds of shrimp per square meter, but the boundaries of beds change. in Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science shows that shrimp beds move up to 100 feet each year. The study took place at Willapa Bay over the course of three years and is the first to quantify how rapidly the boundaries of these beds shift over time. Researchers still don’t know why the shrimp move, but they observed a clear pattern in the ecosystem. Shrimp change the texture of sediment by eating organic matter and releasing finer particles, so sediment becomes muddier and more compact once they leave. After several years, these abandoned beds were colonized by eelgrass, a marker of ecosystem health. This “engineering” effect was less evident in areas where moving water keeps mud from settling. Studying these rapid shifts and the types of sediment left behind could ultimately help shellfish growers better protect their product.

For more information, contact co-author Jennifer Ruesink, a UW professor of biology, at ruesink@uw.edu.��������������

The other UW co-authors are Wesley Hull, Haleh Mawson, and . A full list of co-authors and funding is .

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Last month, a group of 175 researchers, including eight from the ������˾��, co-authored published in Earth’s Future and the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.

The paper provides a roadmap for future climate assessments in the U.S. by synthesizing the science and identifying research priorities based on existing gaps. “U.S. Climate Collection: Informing Assessment of Risks and Solutions” is the first article to appear in a launched by the American Geophysical Union and the American Meteorological Society.

Many of the scientists who co-authored this commentary were invited to contribute to the sixth National Climate Assessment (NCA), slated for early 2028, but were then dismissed in April 2025 after the Trump Administration for the assessment. The fifth NCA was published in 2023.��

The federal government is legally required to produce a National Climate Assessment chronicling climate change every four years per the . These assessments track new and evolving risks related to climate change, as well as options for mitigation and adaptation. The national scope is key to ensuring that funding and policies represent a broad range of experiences and concerns. 

“International assessments are valuable, but they are not always tailored to the specific regions and issues that are important in the United States. National assessments fill that gap,” said , Washington state climatologist and a research scientist in the UW Climate Impacts Group.

The special collection is not intended to replace the NCA but rather compile research for other scientists, policymakers and members of the public to aid in decision making. The commentary kicks off the collection by identifying where research has advanced, and how risks have changed, in the years since the last assessment. 

“Our understanding of climate change and its impacts continues to evolve,” said , professor of global health, of environmental and occupational health sciences, and of emergency medicine in the UW School of Medicine. “Conducting regular climate assessments allows us to systematically evaluate that new evidence, incorporate it into our understanding of current circumstances, present it to stakeholders, and apply it to near-term decisions in our respective sectors.” 

UW News asked each of the UW contributors to elaborate on their role in authoring the commentary and how it connects to their research.

, research scientist, UW Cooperative Institute for Climate, Ocean, and Ecosystem Studies: “I’m an oceanographer with intimate experience in federal research funding mechanisms and with a broad familiarity with ocean warming and CO2 uptake with associated acidification and feedback on marine ecosystems and fisheries. Initially I was appointed to coordinate among federal agencies, academics and policymakers, but that changed dramatically when the Trump administration eliminated NCA6. In the scramble I became more of an author, and an editor of the Ocean section. 

“Some of my research at the UW involves ocean model development in collaboration with NOAA. It was a natural fit to contribute to the discussions on ‘Simulations of ocean conditions’ and on ‘Innovations in ocean observation and data science.’”

, professor of urban and environmental planning “I led the urban team and the section on urban regions. Urban regions are central to climate assessments. They concentrate populations and human activities, contribute substantially to climate change, and shape how impacts propagate across neighborhoods, metropolitan systems, national supply chains, and global markets. They are also critical places to examine where mitigation and adaptation reinforce one another, where they create trade-offs, and how benefits, costs, and risks are distributed across communities. 

“Our section argues that future assessments must represent cities as complex dynamic systems. We call for comparative, long-term evaluation of urban mitigation and adaptation strategies. For nature-based solutions, that means testing performance under future climate conditions and assessing multiple functions, life-cycle costs, social and ecological outcomes, and trade-offs rather than simply measuring short-term, project-level benefits.”

Mauger: “I contributed to the Northwest section of the paper, based on my expertise in regional climate impacts and adaptation science, specifically around water and flooding. Our synthesis reflects many of the emerging issues I see in my work helping communities, tribes, agencies and others to understand and prepare for the effects of climate change. For example, we highlight new research on the effectiveness of resilience actions — as more communities take action on climate, I am seeing a greater need for research of this kind.”

, principal scientist, UW Climate Impacts Group: “I also contributed to the Northwest section of the paper. My work at UW aims to provide the science, tools and guidance needed by governments and communities as they respond to climate impacts and prepare for those to come. Most of this work is focused on the Northwest, with a heavy emphasis on ecosystems and natural resources. The Northwest section of the paper highlights many of the climate risks and adaptation advances and challenges my partners on the ground face every day.”

Hess: “The takeaways from the health section, which I helped draft, are that we need more information on health impacts from extreme weather and compound events, as well as information on the costs of these impacts. We also need more strategies for advancing adaptation in public health and health care systems; we need health care interventions to protect patients at particular risk; we need more information on nature-based solutions; and we need more information to help convey the health benefits of a clean energy transition. 

“The recommendations related to interventions and adaptation in the health sector are particularly relevant to my work at the UW, which is focused on climate change health impacts and opportunities for increasing resilience of the public health and health care systems. I research these issues and also provide leadership related to sustainability and climate resilience for UW Medicine.”

, professor of global health and of environmental and occupational health sciences: “I was an author on the Air Quality chapter that focused on how climate change could alter exposures to poor quality, from pollen to wildfire smoke to indoor and outdoor air quality. One of my areas of research at UW is quantifying the extent to which reducing greenhouse gas emissions could reduce morbidity and mortality from outdoor air pollution. The evidence is robust that the economic value of the health benefits from reducing greenhouse gas emissions would be of the same order of magnitude — if not larger — than the costs of reducing emissions. In other words, reducing greenhouse gas emissions would benefit Americans by decreasing hospitalizations and deaths.”

Other UW co-authors include , research scientist of environmental and forest sciences and Deputy Director of the Western Fire and Forest Resilience Collaborative and , affiliate professor of environmental and forest sciences. 

For more information, contact Alberti at malberti@uw.edu.

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For the last three years, while studying at the ������˾��, was also teaching in local prisons. She headed to a penitentiary in Monroe weekly, as well as one in Gig Harbor, working with organizations such as the and the .��

Doing this work, Eiger, a doctoral student in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering, noticed a disconnect. The technology incarcerated people had to use to communicate with anyone outside of prison was “really inefficient, unusable, frustrating and expensive,” Eiger said. For instance, each message cost money to send, but it didn’t necessarily reach the recipient. Why was this technology so much worse than the messages she sent for free? And how did its failings affect the people using it?

In three recent papers, Eiger and her coauthors explore technologies used in policing, in prisons and to monitor people after release, with a focus on their effects on people.

UW News spoke with Eiger and , senior author on the papers and a UW professor in the Allen School, about the three papers and the themes that emerged across them.��

Can you explain the studies?

Yael Eiger: The first paper focuses on technologies like . Securus basically owns the market for technology that incarcerated people use to communicate with their loved ones, lawyers or anyone in the outside world. But reports have shown that just from communicating with them. They’re charged just to send an email. So we interviewed formerly incarcerated people and loved ones of currently incarcerated people about their experiences with these technologies.��

For the second, we ran workshops with people when they were released from prison. We started realizing how much digital literacy was playing a role in people’s outcomes after release. I would have students who’d maybe used a pager, then were incarcerated for decades and released into a society where artificial intelligence existed. So navigating things like applying for housing, jobs or food stamps was so difficult without baseline digital literacy. One of the things we also kept hearing about was people falling for scams often — phishing scams over text, email or phone.��

For the third, I went to a big conference expo where companies try to sell their technology products to prison and police officials. I collected all the advertising literature, and we did a taxonomy of the technology being sold. We came up with a set of case studies of this technology, looking at some of the most pressing and urgent harms or risks of using it — whether that’s a First Amendment problem or a Fourth Amendment right-to-privacy problem in the legal setting, or bias and fairness risks of using AI.��

Could you give me an example of a product at that expo?

YE: I was spamming Franzi the whole time with pictures I was taking. One that jumps out is an AI chatbot called . It’s basically a booth, maybe six feet tall and two to three feet wide, and you sit on a chair inside it, all encased in bulletproof glass. The premise is that when people are newly incarcerated or transferred to a new prison, they normally have to talk to a caseworker about their educational attainment goals and history. But this takes time, and often incarcerated people are distrustful of this process and don’t share much. So this company, Vantage, created a chatbot to have this conversation with them and elicit information they might not otherwise feel comfortable telling an officer, recording and analyzing it from a bunch of different sources.

That stood out to me because I was physically within this technology booth, and the privacy policies — how the AI processes, saves and retains the data, who it’s shared with, what AI model is being used — were not clear at all.

Most prisons are public but they’re filled with private products like those I saw at the expo. There are tons of public-private partnerships and contracts between private companies and public entities, paid for by taxpayers, but we don’t have much transparency into the technologies, the contracts, how data sharing happens, or whose rights are being respected, consumer protections and so on. It’s a very opaque ecosystem.

What are some important takeaways from these three papers?

Franziska Roesner: Often, when we think about consumer security and privacy, we’re thinking about technologies that consumers themselves buy and use. But in the carceral context, it’s very much technology being used by, or on, people who have no control or choice in using it. The people making decisions about buying it, and what features to prioritize and what failure cases matter, are just not aligned with the people it’s used on.

Several of your co-authors were formerly incarcerated. How did that collaboration affect your research?��

YE: It felt quite natural. These co-authors were instrumental to this research — whether through data analysis or, in the scams paper, organizing workshops and partnerships with community organizations. They contributed more to the paper than a typical co-author would. So it was clear to me that they were going to be authors, if they wanted that.

There’s a history of researchers going to work among marginalized groups and taking advantage of their expertise and their histories without crediting them, which in my opinion is both unethical and makes for worse research.��

FR: There’s also always a risk when you’re working with marginalized populations that you come in, write the paper, get research credit for it in your academic community. And you get separated from what should be the actual goal, which is improving whatever it is you’re studying.

What do you want the public to know about this research?

YE: It’s always my goal to increase compassion and understanding about people we may not know or normally encounter. Having people speak for themselves, with a researcher able to lend a stamp of legitimacy or just listen to those experiences, is important to me.

Also, there are very tangible ways we can increase incarcerated people’s security and privacy in a compassionate way that doesn’t have to be at odds with the goals of lowering crime, preventing crime and making society safer. We have rights as people — free speech, a right to privacy. I’d like policymakers and technology providers to see the opportunity to make things better, and the general public to have a more compassionate understanding of these kinds of problems.

That’s not an unrealistic expectation. For instance, policymakers in 2022 released coming in and out of prison. So there’s a lot of legislation in this space that I think could make things a lot better.

FR: The general public’s exposure to these various surveillance technologies also raises concerns. We’ve seen that with Flock cameras and the upset that has been raised, and cities backing away from them. These technologies affect everyone.

A full list of co-authors and funding is included in the papers.��

For more information, contact Eiger at yeiger@cs.washington.edu and Roesner at franzi@cs.washington.edu.

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A ������˾��-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. This research has broad ranging applications, from enabling photorealistic virtual reality displays for telehealth calls, to secure, optical quantum communication links to ensure that data remains private on the internet.

Founded in 2021 as a , the , or NSF IMOD, has received a second round of funding from the NSF to continue its work for the next five years.

The research tackled by NSF IMOD is so interdisciplinary that it requires researchers from backgrounds such as chemistry, physics, engineering and materials science to work together.

“There’s still this idea that scientists go in their labs, put on their safety goggles and lab coats, and then work alone for hours at a time. The point of this center is to tackle problems that are too big for one scientist or even two or three to tackle by themselves,” said NSF IMOD director , UW professor of chemistry. “We have all these people from different disciplines working together to advance optoelectronics and semiconductor technology that we couldn’t do just as individual scientists.”

“Until our center came along, quantum dots were thought of as something you made in a beaker in a chemistry lab. And if you could paint them on a TV or phone display, that was great,” said Ginger, who is also the B. Seymour Rabinovitch Endowed Chair in Chemistry and the chief scientist at the UW . “But they weren’t something that you could put as a discrete component in an optoelectronic circuit. That’s something that we’ve proven you can do.”

With chemists, material scientists, mechanical engineers, chemical engineers, physicists and electrical engineers on the team, researchers at NSF IMOD created something unprecedented: a way to print quantum dots, . The team showed that they could strategically place quantum dots into specific cavities, which could one day be the building blocks for quantum communication, and possibly even quantum computing.

The team hopes to continue this research direction over the next five years, further refining quantum dots as well as the cavities the dots get placed into.

NSF IMOD’s interdisciplinary nature gets passed down to its students as well. One of the center’s main goals is to develop researchers into leaders in the fields of semiconductor and optoelectronic technology. Every summer, NSF IMOD trainees from different disciplines come together at the UW for in multiple disciplines. The students synthesize quantum dots, study single photons of light in UW’s , make quantum dots, and learn to calculate the electronic structures of advanced materials. The collaborations established during this course and throughout the NSF IMOD training program helps students graduate with the ability to work in complex, interdisciplinary teams.

Trainees also gain real-world experience in the form of internships at a variety of companies, including some of NSF IMOD’s industry and national lab partners. A partial list of NSF IMOD’s partners includes ; ; ; ; ; and More partner information can be found on .

“We’re already seeing our students get hired at everything from startup companies to large semiconductor firms for the exact skills they’re being trained for in the center,” Ginger said. “We’re really excited to see our students start taking important roles, and then eventually we hope they move into leadership roles in this space of commercializing new semiconductor materials.”

And it’s not just graduate students who benefit from NSF IMOD. The center hosts a program, and has programming for younger students as well. As part of their science communication training, NSF IMOD trainees become who can facilitate outreach events, such as at the Pacific Science Center. The team has also developed a for K-12 teachers to find lesson plans to use in their own classrooms.

“Just as the atomic structure of a quantum dot produces unique and exciting properties, the exceptionally interdisciplinary structure of NSF IMOD is enabling foundational science and technological innovations that would not otherwise be possible,” said , a program director in the NSF Directorate for Mathematical and Physical Sciences, which manages NSF IMOD.

Over the past five years, NSF IMOD has published 140 papers, hosted 36 undergraduate students through its REU program and hosted more than 85 outreach events.

“One day I hope that we’ll have photonic computing where we’re massively reducing the energy cost for computation by using a computing paradigm that’s based on the research we’re doing now,” Ginger said. “That’s the kind of thing that’s probably still a decade or more away. But that’s why the government invests in basic science now, because the basic science research of the materials today leads to technology that exists 15 years from now.”

NSF is expected to provide NSF IMOD $22 million over the five-year term of the award. The 14 academic institutions that make up NSF IMOD are the ������˾��; University of California, Berkeley; Columbia University; University of Chicago; Northwestern University; University of Pennsylvania; University of Maryland; Georgia Institute of Technology; University of Colorado Boulder; Arizona State University; Rice University; Lehigh University; City College of New York; and University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

In addition to Ginger, other UW faculty involved with NSF IMOD include , associate professor of physics and of electrical and computer engineering at the UW; , a UW professor of chemistry; , professor of electrical and computer engineering; , associate professor of mechanical engineering and of materials science and engineering, and technical director of the Washington Clean Energy Testbeds; and , professor of physics and of electrical and computer engineering. Fu chairs UW . Fu, Lin and Majumdar are faculty members with the UW . Cossairt, Fu, Lin, Majumdar and MacKenzie are member faculty at the Clean Energy Institute. Ginger, Fu, Lin, Majumdar and MacKenzie are faculty researchers with the UW .��

For more information, contact Ginger at dginger@uw.edu.

Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. National Science Foundation.

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If someone leaves the faucet running in your bathroom and the house floods, it’s easy to assign responsibility for the damage. But for other disasters — bigger, costlier and more complicated ones — the link between cause and effect isn’t as clear.

In recent years, scientists have improved methods for connecting extreme weather events, sometimes called climate disasters, to climate change. Advancements in clarify how burning fossil fuels has increased the likelihood of extreme weather occurring. These findings form the backbone of a attempting to hold major emitters responsible for deaths and damages incurred during climate disasters.

A new ������˾�� study takes this work a step further by showing that past emissions from — the top 178 oil, gas, coal and cement producers — will continue impacting our environment for decades to come.

The results in PLOS Climate.

“We know that fossil fuel emissions have caused a lot of warming, and we’re seeing the impacts of that, but the question is: How long does that warming last into the future?” said , a UW associate professor of atmospheric and climate science.

If greenhouse gas emissions were to plummet tomorrow, the environment would not revert to its old self. Carbon majors have emitted more than a trillion tons of carbon dioxide, a substantial portion of which will remain in the air, trapping heat, for millennia.

Even if we stop emitting, Earth will remain approximately 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial temperatures.

“We expect continued warming of the climate until we stop fossil fuel emissions,” Frierson said. “The only stable future is one with no fossil fuels burned at all.”

To arrive at this conclusion, researchers simulated global climate through 2500 using the Finite Amplitude Impulse Response, or , model in both low and higher emissions scenarios, with and without emissions from carbon majors through 2024.

In a future where greenhouse gas emissions are limited, carbon majors are responsible for a larger percent of warming above preindustrial levels.

In higher emissions scenarios, where fossil fuel burning continues unabated, Earth becomes much warmer as emissions rise. In the most extreme scenario tested, future emissions cause a much larger percentage of warming than carbon majors. But the total temperature change from carbon majors is about the same.

“The amount of warming is calculable and relatively independent of future emissions,” Frierson said. “If there are legal decisions about accountability, the responsibility is not just now, it will continue for many many years into the future.”

The relationship between greenhouse gases and global warming is not new. In fact, scientists understood the risks many decades ago. Efforts to hold emitters accountable hinge on allegations that companies knew about those risks and concealed that information from the public, sometimes employing .

This new study shows that the gasses released by leading emitters, from both extracting and burning fossil fuels, may also be responsible for events that have not happened yet. Emissions from the past can increase the odds of a future disaster through persistent warming.

“This is important for current decisions about fossil fuels,” Frierson said. “Future fossil fuel production will exacerbate climate disasters for many decades to come, so new legal battles about who is accountable should be expected for many years.”

Lauren Henrie, a former student of Environmental Science and Resource Management at the UW, is a co-author.��

For more information, contact Frierson at dargan@uw.edu.

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Once coyotes get a taste for city living, the call of the wild fades to a whisper. Food is abundant and predators are few. Research indicates that coyotes enjoy the benefits of urban areas enough to put up with all the people, and Seattle is no exception.

Over the past century, coyotes have colonized every major metropolitan area in North America. Chicago is home to an , and in Los Angeles, urban coyote density is at least seven times higher than in wild areas. Coyotes are often spotted in parks and neighborhoods , but the lack of formal data makes it difficult for researchers to track trends.

“We observed a ninefold increase in coyote density in Seattle compared to more natural and wild areas of the state,” said lead author , a UW professor of environmental and forest sciences. “That might surprise people who think of coyotes as afraid of humans, but I think it just shows how ideal the urban setting is for coyotes.”

The results in Environmental Research: Ecology.

In the study, researchers analyzed coyote scats collected throughout Seattle and from wild study areas near Winthrop in north-central Washington and Chewelah in the northeastern part of the state. They estimated density based on how often they picked up a scat from the same animal, identifying 261 total coyotes from 842 scats.

Researchers were also curious about factors that influence density within the city, such as the luxury effect — where wealthier neighborhoods have more plant and animal diversity. Researchers compared the coyote density maps to ones showing pollution level, tree cover, buildings and roads, human population density and income level. Of those factors, only human density seemed to influence the coyotes.

“In Seattle, human population density had a negative effect on coyote density. But when you compare coyote abundance in Seattle to areas with far fewer people, the coyote population was much higher in the city,” Prugh said.

Although coyotes are wary of people, the conditions that dense human populations create favor their survival. Urban coyotes are less likely to be killed or go hungry than their wild counterparts.

that fear of mortality may play a role in determining where coyotes live. In the wild, larger carnivores such as wolves and mountain lions hunt coyotes, but in cities they get to masquerade as apex predators. Farmers and landowners are also more likely to kill coyotes to protect their livestock in rural settings.

The only things that regularly kill urban coyotes are cars and disease.

Cities also offer a wider variety of food options for coyotes. Scat analyses showed that urban coyotes’ diets were more than twice as diverse as those of wild coyotes, although .

Rabbits are the choice prey for coyotes in most ecosystems and the abundance of one often impacts the other. Seattle’s over the past few decades changed urban ecology, and may have helped draw coyotes to the region.

“Coyotes and rabbits have a natural relationship, even in a highly altered environment like Seattle,” Prugh said. Rabbit density could be an even stronger predictor of coyotes than humans, she added, but there isn’t enough data to test the theory.

Although long-term coyote population data is also limited, there is overwhelming anecdotal evidence of coyote abundance increasing in the past few decades, Prugh said.

Sightings are more common at dusk and dawn, but coyotes are now as well. They tend to avoid people, but residents have raised concerns about coyotes and displaying territorial or behavior.

Because they are territorial, coyotes will fight each other over turf. This behavior helps control their population in the absence of other predators. Cities can only support so many coyotes, but Prugh isn’t sure whether Seattle has met that limit yet.

Either way, the coyotes aren’t going anywhere fast.

“One thing that coyotes have shown over and over is that they are incredibly resistant to control efforts,” said Prugh. “With enough food, they will just have more pups.”

The study also highlights some of the often overlooked ways that coyotes can benefit the ecosystem. For example, by munching on young plants, and coyotes help them by munching on rabbits.

“Whether there are too many or too few coyotes is sort of a societal question, but ultimately our answer might not matter,” said Prugh. “Coyotes are here to stay in cities, and it is up to us to learn how to live with them.”

Co-authors include , lab manager at the UW; of Purdue University; and of Colorado State University; of the Wildlife Institute of India; of New Mexico State University; and of the University of California Berkeley.

This research was funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, the UW Royalty Research Fund, the Woodland Park Zoo, the Animal Welfare Institute and the Fulbright India program.

For more information, contact Prugh at lprugh@uw.edu.

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Claims of “smart” toys go back decades. See and . But generative artificial intelligence is increasing the capabilities of interactive toys. The company , for instance, markets itself as a “magical workshop where toys come to life.” Its plush toys like or one modeled on have onboard AI models that let them talk to kids, remember their conversations and personalize responses. But we know little about how such toys affect kids and even how kids play with them.��

Last summer, ������˾�� researchers gathered eight kids on campus to explore such questions. The 6-11 year olds played with three Curio toys and reflected on the experience with , a group of researchers who work with kids to collaboratively design technologies.��

The kids initially were curious, asking introductory questions, such as “What is your name?” and exploring how the toys work. Do they react when a kid tickles their toes? They do not, which proved a disappointment. Some features delighted the kids, like when a toy said its favorite number was seven. But the toys frequently couldn’t respond well to more complex questions. It “didn’t listen to me like 26 million times,” one participant said. So they turned to antagonizing the toys, calling them “ugly” and “evil” and joking about throwing them in the ocean.��

The team June 25 at the Interaction Design and Children conference in Brighton, United Kingdom.��

“The juxtaposition of this plushie toy that also had signs of intelligence was both interesting and disturbing for the kids,” said co-lead author , who completed this research as a UW doctoral student in human centered design and engineering and is currently a researcher at . “If parents are considering buying these toys for children, they need to be aware that while the toys can be fun and relational and dynamic, they also come with possible harms. They’ll give wrong answers, or flatter the kids excessively, or could manipulate the kids into attachment.”��

The eight kids came in for two sessions to play with the toys and then complete a “comicboarding” activity, where they filled in comic panels imagining what might happen next if they kept playing with the toys.��

The study builds on KidsTeam’s long-running vein of research looking at how kids respond to tech — exploring what makes a technology “creepy” and how smart kids actually think AI is.��

“For as long as children have played with toys, they’ve imparted their imagination to the toy to make it move and talk,” said co-author , a UW associate professor in the Information School and director of KidsTeam UW. “Now the script has been flipped and the toy has this imitation of imagination. We’ve never lived through that before, and we don’t know what questions children will ask or how long they’ll even want to play with these toys. So it’s really important to give them opportunities to discuss these technologies we’re handing down to them.”

Co-authors include , a UW doctoral student in human centered design and engineering; , a UW doctoral student in the Information School; of Rutgers University, who completed this research as a UW doctoral student; , a UW professor in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering; and , UW professor and chair of human centered design and engineering.��

This research was funded by the National Science Foundation, the Institute of Education Sciences, the U.S. Department of Education, and the Institute of Museum and Library Services.��

For more information, contact Dangol at aayushi@foundry10.org and Yip at jcyip@uw.edu.

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Motion-triggered cameras showcase the prevalence of ‘nectar robbing’ in Hawaiian flowers

Some long curved bills are the perfect implement for drawing sweet nectar from deep within a lobelioid flower. As birds reach into flowers to access the nectar stored near the base, their bills can brush against the ‘ pollen-bearing structures, making hungry honeycreepers important pollinators. But some of these specialized honeycreepers have gone extinct. Shorter-billed species can now “rob” nectar — without contacting the flower’s pollen-bearing structures — from the endangered flowers. A UW-led team used motion cameras to gauge how often nectar robbing occurs. The results, in Ecology and Evolution, reveal both nectar robbing and pollination visits, showcasing a broader pattern that the team previously identified . Nectar robbing can damage flowers and leave less nectar for other potential pollinators. The researchers 3D printed a bird bill to simulate nectar robbing and track changes in nectar availability and the plants’ ability to reproduce. Damaged flowers often struggled to replenish their nectar stores, but were still able to produce fruit and viable seeds. These studies are part of a that aims to catalog Hawaiian bird-plant interactions through time, specifically tracking how these interactions are reshaped by extinction.

For more information, contact lead author , a UW research scientist in the biology department, at sam.case24@gmail.com.

The other UW co-authors are , Christopher Steinbronn and . A full list of co-authors and funding is .

People with anxious attachment styles are more likely get emotionally involved with ChatGPT

rose to popularity in the late 20th Century as a way to categorize how people bond with others. Someone with an anxious attachment style, for instance, fears abandonment and rejection, whereas someone with an avoidant attachment style is independent at the cost of personal closeness. In , UW researchers explored how peoples’ attachment styles affect their interactions with ChatGPT. The team analyzed the chat histories of 105 young adults, each of whom completed an attachment-style survey. Researchers found that they could automatically detect peoples’ attachment styles based on their interactions with the chatbot. People with an anxious attachment style were more likely to be emotionally involved with the AI system, writing things like “Can you please love me?” and “I miss my ex and I can’t sleep because of it.” Anxious users were also more prone to trust ChatGPT and to follow its recommendations. The team argues that this highlights the need for policies that prohibit companies from psychologically profiling users without their consent, since it leaves them vulnerable to manipulation.

For more information, contact senior author , a UW associate professor in the Information School, at alexisr@uw.edu or lead author , a doctoral student in the Information School, at marxwang@uw.edu.

The other UW co-authors are , , and .

Nursing is a major energy suck, but it’s difficult to estimate the toll for many marine mammals

Marine mammals lactate like any other mammal, but the energetic demands are difficult to measure in wild animals and thus not well understood.�� Researchers are concerned that some marine mammals may not be getting enough food, which can lead to failure to reproduce and . To understand the link between nutritional status and reproduction, researchers need to know what marine mammals require to rear offspring. A published in PLOS One modeled the daily costs of lactation using data from semi-aquatic and terrestrial mammals to explore whether results could be generalized to other species, like whales and dolphins. Modeling could approximate lactation costs of certain understudied marine mammals, including seals and sea lions, but appeared unable to produce accurate estimates for whales and dolphins. Lactation costs increase over time for most animals, but seem to be higher early in lactation for marine mammals, possibly due to their fully aquatic lifestyle. The study highlights a need for other methods to fill the remaining data gap to better understand the impacts of environmental change on marine mammals.

For more information, contact lead author , a research scientist in the UW Cooperative Institute for Climate, Ocean, & Ecosystem Studies, at emchuron@uw.edu. Funding information is .

Simulations suggest that lasers could ‘calm’ persnickety plasma

could supply humanity with — provided that scientists and engineers can work out how to create sustained fusion reactions safely, efficiently and affordably. The trick is in the taming of , a superhot state of matter made of free-floating electrons and atomic nuclei. When compressed to outlandish pressures and temperatures in a reactor, the nuclei fuse with one another, releasing energy. In that extreme environment, plasma forms instabilities that can derail a fusion reaction; much fusion research is focused on “calming” volatile plasma. published in Physics of Plasmas, UW researchers and other collaborators simulated a novel strategy to control instabilities using two opposing laser beams. By tuning the lasers’ properties — such as their frequency and polarity — the researchers prevented instabilities from growing and cascading. Surprisingly, the lasers also delayed other instabilities within the plasma, even though they were not directly targeted by the laser fields. By taking advantage of interactions within the plasma, the researchers found a way to calm instabilities indirectly. The results could help experts develop algorithms that stabilize plasma in real time, sustaining fusion conditions long enough to produce useful energy.

For more information, contact , UW professor of aeronautics and astronautics at shumlak@uw.edu.

A full list of co-authors and funding is .

When exposed to air, new nanomaterial becomes magnetic at high temperatures

While fridge magnets are great for saving favorite recipes, modern magnetic materials are useful for improving fiber optics or quantum information sciences technology. If you zoomed in on most fridge magnets, you’d see the atoms arranged in a repeated lattice structure called a “spinel.” These structures are made up of three types of atoms, generically referred to as atoms “A,” “B” and “X.” In a paper in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, UW researchers describe two new spinels made of silver, chromium and selenium ions. These are among the first spinels to include a silver ion in the “A” slot, the slot that determines the “vibe” of the spinel, or how it will react to various stimuli, such as light, heat or air. When exposed to air, the original spinel loses silver ions and transforms into the second spinel. The second spinel maintains its magnetic properties up to 400 Kelvin, or 260 degrees Fahrenheit; the original loses its magnetism at 152 K, or -185 F. This is the largest change ever documented in what is known as the Curie temperature, or the highest temperature at which a material is still magnetic. The researchers plan to continue to explore these two materials and what they can teach us about the fundamentals of magnetism.

For more information, contact lead author , UW doctoral student in chemistry, at ekbacong@uw.edu.����������

The other UW co-authors are Charlize Agag, , , , Yinuo Xu, , , and . A full list of co-authors and funding is .

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