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The Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center Bone Marrow Transplant Program at Seattle Cancer Care Alliance (SCCA) was recently recognized for outperforming its anticipated one-year survival rate for allogeneic transplant patients. The new performance results were calculated by the Center for International Blood and Marrow Transplant Research (CIBMTR) and published in the 2014 Transplant Center-Specific Survival Report. The annual report is designed to provide potential stem cell transplant recipients, their families, and the public with comparative survival rates among transplant centers. This is the second consecutive year the Fred Hutch Bone Marrow Transplant Program at SCCA has achieved higher than expected one-year survival rates, an accomplishment that only 12 other institutions have achieved.

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SPOKANE, Washington – Cory Notestine, a counselor at Alamosa High School in Alamosa, Colorado, and a 2008 graduate of Gonzaga University’s Master of Arts in School Counseling Program, will be honored by First Lady Michelle Obama at a White House ceremony on Friday, Jan. 30 for being named the 2015 national School Counselor of the Year.

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A $3.9 million, five-year project in Washington state will identify and treat toddlers with autism in the critical years before age 3 - when specialized services can greatly improve their skills and behavior.

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An innovative new program developed at the University of Washington was designed specifically to help parents of children in foster care navigate the process of court-ordered visitations and become better parents. Called STRIVE, will be offered at no cost online and aims to reunite families while reducing the tremendous costs associated with children in care.

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Dorothy “Dottie” Thomas, wife and research partner to 1990 Nobel laureate E. Donnall Thomas, M.D., died the evening of Friday, Jan. 9. She was 92. Don Thomas, pioneer of the bone marrow transplant and former director of the Clinical Research Division at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, preceded her in death on Oct. 20, 2012, also at age 92.

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University of Washington seismologists will again be monitoring the ground-shaking cheers of Seahawks fans, this year with a bigger team, better technology and faster response times.

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Heat pump water heaters are an energy-efficient alternative to conventional electric resistance water heaters. Now research shows heat pump water heaters can also reduce an entire home’s energy use – if they’re connected to the appropriate ducting.

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Inspired by its Community Health Needs Assessment (CHNA) 2012-2015 report, Seattle Cancer Care Alliance (SCCA) recently launched a health improvement grant program. The new community program addresses specific cancer screening, early detection, and prevention needs for at risk populations in King, Snohomish, and Pierce counties. Designed to build sustainable collaborations with Washington communities, SCCA selected seven local nonprofit organizations to receive funds. The SCCA Community Health Improvement Grant program awarded funds up to $7,500 to grantees.

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WebQuit is an online quit-smoking program and research study being conducted by researchers at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. The WebQuit study, funded by the National Cancer Institute, is testing two online quit-smoking programs to learn which one is most useful to help people quit.

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About one-third of people with type 1 diabetes (T1D) produce insulin, as measured by C-peptide, a byproduct of insulin production, even upward of forty years from initial diagnosis, according to a first-of-its-kind, large-scale study conducted by researchers from T1D Exchange. This sheds new light on the long-accepted belief that these patients lose all ability to produce any insulin; this could have significant policy implications, said researchers from T1D Exchange, whose Clinic Network involves a national consortium of diabetes centers. The findings were published online this week in Diabetes Care.

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Many of the worst West Coast winter floods involve heavy rains and melting snow, and UW hydrology experts are using the physics of these events to better predict the risks.

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The Web designer version of reality show personality and carpenter Ty Pennington would most likely instigate a slow clap at the recent transformation of the Media Operations page on the 446th Airlift Wing public website.

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The holiday season can be a mixed blessing. While many look forward to the glittering lights, festive music, decadent treats, jovial office parties and family gatherings, they may equally dread the stress of decorating, entertaining, cooking, shopping, wrapping presents, traveling and dealing with obnoxious Uncle Harry. Far from being a mild annoyance, stress – particularly prolonged stress – can have profound physical effects, from high blood pressure to compromised immune function. Fred Hutch behavioral psychologists offer tips for reducing stress throughout the holidays -- and beyond.

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Scientists from the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory will present a variety of research at the 2014 American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting, which runs Monday, Dec. 15 through Friday, Dec. 19 at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco. Noteworthy PNNL research presentations are highlighted.

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SPOKANE, Washington – Not many sixth-graders can say they have been published in an academic journal, but Caleb Lefcort can cross that distinction off his list. Caleb got into a discussion with his father, Hugh Lefcort, professor of biology at Gonzaga University, as to whether the seed burrs from cheatgrass would survive the laundry cycle. Hugh believed the seeds would not survive. Instead of simply taking his father’s word for it, Caleb – who was in fourth grade at the time – suggested the scientific method: an experiment. What the researchers discovered surprised them.

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Katmai Oncology Group has joined the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance (SCCA) Network to become its eleventh affiliate in the greater Northwest. The affiliation will expand local access to cancer treatment options and help foster advances in cancer care.

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Water off Washington’s coast is warming a third of a mile down, where seafloor methane shifts from a frozen solid to a gas. Calculations suggest ocean warming is already releasing significant methane offshore of Alaska to California.

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Planets orbiting close to low-mass stars — easily the most common stars in the universe — are prime targets in the search for extraterrestrial life. But new research led by an astronomy graduate student at the University of Washington indicates some such planets may have long since lost their chance at hosting life because of intense heat during their formative years.

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SPOKANE, Washington – Gonzaga University has announced its intention to engage in a community-focused exploration of a medical education and research partnership with the University of Washington School of Medicine in Spokane. This announcement follows an invitation, made to Gonzaga by the University of Washington, to consider forming a new partnership to sustain and potentially expand UW Spokane’s medical school and create opportunities to grow biomedical research in Spokane.

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SPOKANE, Washington – Christopher Birmingham, a Gonzaga University senior from Tacoma, Washington, who has focused his studies on developing robots to help the disabled and the elderly, has won a Marshall Scholarship, a prestigious and extraordinarily competitive award that enables future leaders to undertake advanced graduate study at universities in the United Kingdom.

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A new study will help researchers create longer-lasting, higher-capacity lithium rechargeable batteries, which are commonly used in consumer electronics. In a study published in the journal ACS Nano, researchers showed how a coating that makes high capacity silicon electrodes more durable could lead to a replacement for lower-capacity graphite electrodes.

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For the ninth consecutive year, The Leapfrog Group today named Virginia Mason to its annual list of Top Hospitals in the nation.

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A team of four Gonzaga University accounting students is thanking Zag Nation this Thanksgiving. An eleventh-hour burst of support from Gonzaga and its friends last week has powered the team to the finals of the prestigious PricewaterhouseCoopers National Accounting Case Competition in New York City in January.

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A study tracking the worldwide migration of professional workers to the United States found that the nation is attracting a smaller proportional share of those workers relative to other countries - raising questions about the U.S.'s ability to remain competitive in attracting top talent.

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A new study using data from the social networking site LinkedIn showed a sharp drop-off in the proportional number of skilled workers migrating to the United States. The study is believed to be the first ever to measure global migration of professionals to the U.S.

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A new site displays real-time ocean acidification data for the open ocean and protected bays in Alaska, Washington, Oregon and California.

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The Self-Sufficiency Standard for Washington State 2014 report finds that the costs of meeting basic needs have far outstripped wages statewide, particularly for families.

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Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, a world leader in lifesaving research to prevent, detect and treat cancer, HIV/AIDS and other deadly diseases, announced today that it has named an internationally renowned expert in cancer genetics and precision medicine as its new president and director. D. Gary Gilliland, M.D., Ph.D., a physician-scientist with a background in academic medicine and the pharmaceutical industry, will take the helm as Fred Hutch’s new leader on Jan. 2.

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A scientist looking at MRI scans of human brains noticed a large fiber pathway that seemed to be part of the network that processes visual information. He just couldn’t couldn’t find it in any of the modern textbooks.

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Scientists using a microbe that occurs naturally in eastern cottonwood trees have boosted the ability of willow and lawn grass to withstand the withering effects of the nasty industrial pollutant phenanthrene.

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Preterm birth is the leading cause of death for children under 5 worldwide, and a new scientific paper reveals a startling lack of knowledge about what causes it and how to prevent it. Published in the November issue of Science Translational Medicine, “Prevention of Preterm Birth: Harnessing Science to Address the Global Epidemic” shines a light on the urgent need for a larger, coordinated research effort to discover how to identify women at risk of preterm birth and develop prevention interventions.

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University of Washington electrical engineers have developed a way to automatically track people across moving and still cameras by using an algorithm that trains the networked cameras to learn one another’s differences.

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Instead of carbon dioxide, or CO2, creating a blanket that slowly warms the planet, long-term warming happens because a darker surface and more moist air can absorb more of the incoming rays.

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Seattle Children’s today announced the opening of patient enrollment for its new cellular immunotherapy clinical research trial designed to induce remission in children suffering from neuroblastoma, one of the deadliest forms of childhood cancer.

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A potentially groundbreaking study by Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center scientists, published online today in the journal PLOS ONE, suggests that the worst effects of reperfusion injury may be prevented with a safe, simple solution: a dose of iodide, a chemical form of the element added to ordinary table salt.

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Reserve Airmen from Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington, will provide air transportation and logistics support in Dakar, Senegal from November 2014 to May 2015 for operations supporting the Department of Defense's Ebola response.

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Within weeks of publishing surprising new insights about how zebrafish get their stripes, the same University of Washington group is now able to explain how to "erase" them.

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A “therapy car” developed at Virginia Mason Hospital & Seattle Medical Center is being used by its physical and occupational therapists to help patients recovering from hip and knee replacement surgery simulate getting in and out of a real vehicle without falling or injuring themselves.

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University of Washington researchers have successfully replicated a direct brain-to-brain connection between pairs of people as part of a scientific study following the team's initial demonstration a year ago. In the newly published study, which involved six people, researchers were able to transmit the signals from one person's brain over the Internet and use these signals to control the hand motions of another person within a split second of sending that signal.

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Living healthy is hard. Most people who try to change habits, such as smoking, will lapse. But science is giving new hope. Dr. Jonathan Bricker is an internationally recognized scientific leader in a bold approach called acceptance and commitment therapy. A Stanford researcher called his use of the approach “a breakthrough in behavioral research [that] has major public health implications for the major causes of preventable death.”

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A synthetic fish is helping existing hydroelectric dams and new, smaller hydro facilities become more fish-friendly. The latest version of the Sensor Fish – a small tubular device filled with sensors that analyze the physical stresses fish experience – measures more forces, costs about 80 percent less and can be used in more hydro structures than its predecessor, according to a paper published in the journal Review of Scientific Instruments.

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People with muscular dystrophy could one day assess the effectiveness of their medication with the help of a smartphone-linked device, a new study in mice suggests. The study used a new method to process ultrasound imaging information that could lead to hand-held instruments that provide fast, convenient medical information.