Washington’s new power couple.

Broadband access continues to be a problem in rural parts of the country. But Microsoft and the Chelan County Public Utility District may have just killed the proverbial two birds with one stone.The two organizations announced a unique partnership Friday where the PUD...

From trash to treasure.

Experts estimate that 28 billion pounds of plastic are dumped into our oceans every year. Some predict there could be more plastic than fish by 2050.The Million Waves Project hopes to turn some of that pollution into prosthetics. Approximately 40 million people in...

A labor of loaf.

Mmm, the smell of fresh bread. Just like mom used to make. The operative words here are “mom” and “used to.”A Washington company has unveiled a new breadmaking robot that can crank out 10 loaves of fresh bread an hour. No human required.Debuted...

Taking a quantum leap.

Quantum physics is a strange world indeed, but Boeing, Microsoft and others are exploring this new frontier to see how it can be applied to computer science. It’s so important, in fact, that Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella says that along with artificial...

When the future came to town.

The dustbin of history is littered with famously bad predictions about what the future holds.And yet, in 1962 Washington State invited the world to Seattle to get a glimpse of the future. The occasion, a world’s fair; the first to be held in the United States in more...

Seattle flexes its high-tech muscles.

Watch out Silicon Valley, Seattle is hot on your tail as the leader in high-tech. So says John Connors, managing partner of Ignition Partners, the Seattle-area venture capital firm. The company has invested in 64 high-tech startups in the Pacific Northwest, compared...

A concrete idea for recycling carbon fiber.

Carbon fiber can be found in airplanes, cars and wind turbine blades these days. Unfortunately, about 30% of this miracle material is waste product. Figuring out what to do with much waste carbon fiber has been a problem for the industry, as many of the most popular...

The birthplace of the electric bass.

Washington invents a lot of stuff. But some of our inventions are could-haves instead of should-haves. Such is the case with the electric bass guitar. While Fender likes to claim all the fame for inventing the bass guitar, the credit really goes to Paul Tutmarc, a...

Brewing better proteins for industry.

The metabolic changes that happen in the time-tested process of fermentation are now being applied to the development of new proteins that can result in advanced materials, specialty chemicals for agriculture and improved pharmaceuticals. Seattle-based Arzeda...

Perimatics is UW innovation lab’s 127th startup.

The hits just keep coming for the University of Washington’s CoMotion innovation lab. Perimatics is the latest in the long list of spinoffs CoMotion has spawned, its 127 startup to date. The new company is the brainchild of Kalyani Velagapudi and Bala Nair and...