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.

GOLD RIVER, Calif. -The Huskies turned the Pac-12 Rowing Championships into a coronation.

Ranked No. 1 in the nation, the Washington crew program held to the form they've exhibited all season by sweeping all four races at the inaugural conference championships on Sunday morning at Lake Natoma. It was the 35th conference title for the storied UW program, which has now won the event five times in the last six years.

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.

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.

Overall, sales returned to a level close to the average of the last 20 years, reflecting both a return to the market by first-time and move-up buyers and continued interest in distressed properties by investors, according to the Runstad Center for Real Estate Studies at the UW.

“The prevalence of distressed properties in some neighborhoods held prices back,” said Glenn Crellin, associate director for research at the center.