As medical researchers and engineers try to shrink diagnostics to fit in a person's pocket, one question is how to easily move and mix small samples of liquid.

UW researchers have built and patented a surface that, when shaken, moves drops along certain paths to conduct medical or environmental tests.

One popular climate record that shows a slower atmospheric warming trend than other studies contains a data calibration problem, according to a new UW study.

The finding is important because it helps confirm that models that simulate global warming agree with observations, said Stephen Po-Chedley, a UW graduate student in atmospheric sciences.

Beth Kolko's experimental research course, Hackademia, brings the hacker spirit to campus. Its mission: "Building functional engineers, one blinky LED at a time."

After two years developing the course, Kolko recently gave talks in Berlin and at Harvard University, and will present at the International Conference on Collaboration Technologies and Systems and at a summer participatory design conference.

In 1962, a parcel at the northern tip of Lake Union was a toxic waste dump, the result of an industrial plant that turned coal to natural gas. By 1976, however, it was Gas Works Park, the result of a gutsy experiment in landscape architecture led by Richard Haag, a University of Washington emeritus professor of architecture.

A new exhibit explores Gas Works Park and 11 other reclaimed parks and public spaces in a series of sketches, photographs and architectural renderings.

UW biologist Mike Beecher understands better than most the messages that pass between song sparrows. He and his students have been studying the birds' communication patterns in Seattle's Discovery Park for more than 25 years.