The work, presented online May 27 in Nature Geoscience, shows that once the angle of a slope exceeds 30 degrees – whether from uplift, a rushing stream carving away the bottom of the slope or a combination of the two – landslide erosion increases significantly until the hillside stabilizes.

The Landsat satellite image at left shows a huge lake on the Tsangpo River behind a dam created by a landslide (in red, lower right of the lake) in early 2000. The image at right shows the river following a catastrophic breach of the dam in June 2000.

U.S. Geological Survey/NASA

"I think the formation of these landscapes could apply to any steep mountain terrain in the world," said lead author Isaac Larsen, a University of Washington doctoral student in Earth and space sciences.

The study, co-authored by David Montgomery, a UW professor of Earth and space sciences and Larsen's doctoral adviser, focuses on landslide erosion along rivers in the eastern Himalaya region of southern Asia.

The scientists studied images of more than 15,000 landslides before 1974 and more than 550 more between 1974 and 2007. The data came from satellite imagery, including high-resolution spy satellite photography that was declassified in the 1990s.

They found that small increases in slope angle above about 30 degrees translated into large increases in landslide erosion as the stress of gravity exceeded the strength of the bedrock.

"Interestingly, 35 degrees is about the same angle that will form if sand or other coarse granular material is poured into a pile," Larsen said. "Sand is non-cohesive, whereas intact bedrock can have high cohesion and should support steeper slopes.

"The implication is that bedrock in tectonically active mountains is so extensively fractured that in some ways it behaves like a sand pile. Removal of sand at the base of the pile will cause miniature landslides, just as erosion of material at the base of hill slopes in real mountain ranges will lead to landslides."

The researchers looked closely at an area of the 150-mile Tsangpo Gorge in southeast Tibet, possibly the deepest gorge in the world, downstream from the Yarlung Tsangpo River where the Po Tsangpo River plunges more than 6,500 feet, about 1.25 miles. It then becomes the Brahmaputra River before flowing through the Ganges River delta and into the Bay of Bengal.

Map by Wikimedia Commons user Pfly.

The scientists found that within the steep gorge, the rapidly flowing water can scour soil from the bases, or toes, of slopes, leaving exposed bedrock and an increased slope angle that triggers landslides to stabilize the slopes.

From 1974 through 2007, erosion rates reached more than a half-inch per year along some 6-mile stretches of the river within the gorge, and throughout that active landslide region erosion ranged from 0.15 to 0.8 inch per year. Areas with less tectonic and landslide activity experienced erosion rates of less than 0.15 inch a year.

Images showed that a huge landslide in early 2000 created a gigantic dam on a stretch of the Po Tsangpo. The dam failed catastrophically in June of that year, and the ensuing flood caused a number of fatalities and much property damage downstream.

That event illustrates the processes at work in steep mountain terrain, but the processes happen on a faster timescale in the Tsangpo Gorge than in other steep mountain regions of the world and so are more easily verified.

"We've been able to document the role that landslides play in the Tsangpo Gorge," Larsen said. "It explains how steep mountain topography evolves over time."

The work was financed by NASA, the Geological Society of America, Sigma Xi (the Scientific Research Society) and the UW Quaternary Research Center and Department of Earth and Space Sciences.

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For more information, contact Larsen at 206-265-0473 or larseni@uw.edu, or Montgomery at 206-685-2560 or dave@ess.washington.edu.

The ceremonies at CenturyLink Field start at 2 p.m.  Graduates begin to line up in the CenturyLink Event Center at noon. The academic procession begins at 1:30. The ceremony takes 2½ hours and could be shortened in the event of inclement weather. Commencement exercises will be held this year and next year at CenturyLink Field, while Husky Stadium is under construction. The ceremony will return to Husky Stadium for 2014.

The ceremony will be broadcast live on UWTV starting at 1:30 p.m. on Comcast channel 27 throughout the Puget Sound region, and also online via simulcast at http://www.uwtv.org/simulcast/. UWTV will also archive highlights of the ceremony, including the keynote address, at uwtv.org. DVDs of the commencement ceremony can be pre-ordered at http://bit.ly/J7bUhK.

Commencement speaker is Lisa Jackson, Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.

An audience of about 40,000 family members and guests is expected. Degrees are awarded to those who have completed academic requirements some time during the 2011-2012 academic year. An estimated 12,320 degrees will be awarded – 7,900 bachelor's degrees, 3,180 master's degrees, 670 doctorates and 570 professional degrees.

Other recipients of special honors to be acknowledged at the Seattle commencement include: the Alumnus Summa Laude Dignatus Award winner, Distinguished Teaching Award winners and the President's Medal Award winners — presented to two graduating seniors (a four-year student and a transfer student) with the most distinguished academic records.

Members of the board of regents, deans and other representatives of the university's 16 colleges and schools will participate in the ceremony.

Many of the colleges and schools also have separate graduation programs and investiture ceremonies (http://www.washington.edu/graduation/other-ceremonies).  Complete information is available at http://www.washington.edu/graduation/.

UW Bothell will be celebrating its 21st commencement ceremony at 2 p.m. Sunday, June 10, in Hec Edmundson Pavilion, Alaska Airlines Arena. Capt. Wendy Lawrence, a veteran astronaut, will be the speaker.

UW Tacoma will celebrate its 22^nd commencement ceremony at 10 a.m. Friday, June 8 in the Tacoma Dome. Susan N. Dreyfus, the president and CEO of Families International, will be the speaker.

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Note to reporters:

Reporters and photographers should park in the lot at the south end of the stadium, off Royal Brougham Way. Permits are required for this lot and will be emailed to media in advance; please contact Bob Roseth with email addresses and other questions. The parking lot can be accessed from both the west (viaduct side) and east (I-5 side). From the west, take the ramp that leads up from intersection of Occidental and Royal Brougham. Turn left into garage. From the east, follow signs from 4^th Avenue S. and Royal Brougham. The signs lead the way up a curling ramp. Turn right into garage.

The UW's Burke Museum will host a booth at Science Expo Day at Science Center and will host behind-the-scenes events during the Seattle Science Festival.

Andrew Waits

What's it like to build a solar race car, measure an ocean wave or drive a Mars rover? How do our genes determine our traits? How will astronomers find new Earthlike planets? And oh yeah — how exactly do antacids work?

The answers, and more, will be revealed at Science Expo Day, a free, daylong, family-friendly celebration of science June 2 at Seattle Center. Lots of University of Washington programs and people will be featured among about 150 interactive experiments, games, exhibits and performances.

It's all part of the Seattle Science Festival, happening at various locations through June and into July — with much UW involvement — and including Science Festival Week June 3-10.

Children visiting Science Expo Day June 2 will get to build and race model solar cars such as this with the Center for Materials and Devices for Information Technology Research.

Center for Materials and Devices for Information Technology Research

Also, the five-lecture Science Luminaries series will feature UW computer science Professor Yoshi Kohno discussing cyber security. He's in excellent company, as other lecturers include theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, paleontologist Jack Horner and former astronauts Bonnie Dunbar and George "Pinky" Nelson.

This first-ever science festival roughly coincides with the 50^th anniversary of the Seattle World's Fair and the Pacific Science Center (which was called the United States Science Pavilion for the fair). It's all about making science accessible and fun.

Bryce Seidl, chief executive officer of the Science Center — which is the festival's main organizing agency — said that too often, young people perceive science, technology and engineering as "overly difficult, dry and devoid of creativity.

"It's difficult to imagine a more compelling force for reversing student disinterest in these fields than face-to-face interaction with dynamic, engaging, interested practitioners of these fields from all walks of life, backgrounds and education."

Science Expo Day's 130-some exhibitors will include a host of UW-related booths. Here are just a few:

• Animations and a computer game on the science and art of protein folding, from biochemistry and computer science and engineering.
• A demonstration of guiding a remote-controlled robot to view discoveries made on Mars, from the department of Earth and space sciences and the Washington NASA Space Grant Consortium.
• A hands-on experiment on how crushing pills — Tums, in this case — can affect how they work, from the School of Pharmacy.
• An exhibit showing how genes affect traits, and the making of a "genetic traits tree" showing traits common among participants.
• Hands-on activities showing how scientists can learn what planets' atmospheres are made of from afar, and how extrasolar Earthlike planets might be found.
• A Facebook-based interactive game about restoring wetlands from UW Bothell.
• An exhibit on how ocean waves are measured and the significance of the data. Also, taste the ocean and learn if your tongue is a good salinometer. Both from the Applied Physics Laboratory.
• Conservation Remix, a daylong event June 2 at Town Hall is meant to appeal to a mix of students, scientists and other citizens of Puget Sound and is organized by UW's Conservation Magazine and biology department.

The month-plus festival includes a number of UW-related events. Here's a brief look (learn more on the festival's online calendar).

• Lectures about Venus by UW astronomy professors in 120 Kane Hall on June 4, a day before that planet "transits" the sun. Woody Sullivan will discuss "Transits of Venus and the Quest for the Scale of the Universe" and Victoria Meadows will talk about "Venus: Our Modern Day Understanding of the Earth's Twisted Sister."
• Kohno will join national security expert Deborah Gracio and Pablos Holman, hacker and security expert, for "Hackers," a discussion of identity theft, viruses, worms and other cyber-perils June 9 at Town Hall.
• Visit the UW, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and other research institutions in the South Lake Union Science Trek for elementary and middle school students on June 8.
• Behind the Scenes at the Burke Museum: Tour the museum's various collections in a number of different tours June 3-7.
• Kids can build and race their own solar cars, and all can learn how chemistry and engineering research is making it possible to make solar cells from inexpensive plastic, for future use on buildings, windows and even clothing.
• Student RND, a Bellevue based-nonprofit dedicated to inspiring students to study science and headed by UW computer science undergraduate Edward Jiang will hold free classes on 3D printing, laser cutting and more June 4-9.

The UW is one of many area cultural, educational, research and business agencies collaborating to make the Seattle Science Festival a reality.

The festival may not exactly blind your family with science, as the song goes — but it might open their eyes a little.

A University of Washington mathematician is part of an international team working to understand invisibility and extend its possible applications. The group has now devised an amplifier that can boost light, sound or other waves while hiding them inside an invisible container.

"You can isolate and magnify what you want to see, and make the rest invisible," said corresponding author Gunther Uhlmann, a UW mathematics professor. "You can amplify the waves tremendously. And although the wave has been magnified a lot, you still cannot see what is happening inside the container.”

The findings are published online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

As a first application, the researchers propose manipulating matter waves, which are the mathematical description of particles in quantum mechanics. The researchers envision building a quantum microscope that could capture quantum waves, the waves of the nanoworld. A quantum microscope could, for example, be used to monitor electronic processes on computer chips.

The authors dubbed their system "Schrödinger's hat," referring to the famed Schrödinger's cat in quantum mechanics. The name is also a nod to the ability to create something from what appears to be nothing.

"In some sense you are doing something magical, because it looks like a particle is being created. It's like pulling something out of your hat," Uhlmann said.

Matter waves inside the hat can also be shrunk, though Uhlmann notes that concealing very small objects "is not so interesting."

A matter wave hitting a Schrodinger's hat. The wave inside the container is magnified. Outside, the waves wrap as if they had never encountered any obstacle.

G. Uhlmann, U. of Washington

Uhlmann, who is on leave at the University of California, Irvine, has been working on invisibility with fellow mathematicians Allan Greenleaf at the University of Rochester, Yaroslav Kurylev at University College London in the U.K., and Matti Lassas at the University of Helsinki in Finland, all of whom are co-authors on the new paper.

The team helped develop the original mathematics to formulate cloaks, which must be realized using a class of engineered materials, dubbed metamaterials, that bend waves so that it appears as if there was no object in their path. The international team in 2007 devised wormholes in which waves disappear in one place and pop up somewhere else.

For this paper, they teamed up with co-author Ulf Leonhardt, a physicist at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland and author on one of the first papers on invisibility.

Recent progress suggests that a Schrodinger’s hat could, in fact, be built for some types of waves.

"From the experimental point of view, I think the most exciting thing is how easy it seems to be to build materials for acoustic cloaking," Uhlmann said. Wavelengths for microwave, sound and quantum matter waves are longer than light or electromagnetic waves, making it easier to build the materials to cloak objects from observation using these phenomena.

"We hope that it's feasible, but in science you don't know until you do it," Uhlmann said. Now that the paper is published, they hope to find collaborators to build a prototype.

The research was funded by the National Science Foundation in the U.S., the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and the Royal Society in the U.K., and the Academy of Finland.

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For more information, contact Uhlmann at 206-543-1946 or gunther@math.washington.edu. He will be out of the country starting Wednesday, May 30 and best reached via email. Uhlmann is on leave at UC Irvine through the end of June.

University of Washington bioengineers have developed the first structure to grow small human blood vessels, creating a 3-D test bed that offers a better way to study disease, test drugs and perhaps someday grow human tissues for transplant.

The findings are published online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"In clinical research you just draw a blood sample," said first author Ying Zheng, a UW research assistant professor of bioengineering. "But with this, we can really dissect what happens at the interface between the blood and the tissue. We can start to look at how these diseases start to progress and develop efficient therapies."

Researchers made a functional microvessel that spells the letters "UW." The white bar measures 100 micrometers, about the width of a human hair.

Y. Zheng, U. of Washington

During a period of two weeks, the endothelial cells grew throughout the structure and formed tubes through the mold's rectangular channels, just as they do in the human body.

When brain cells were injected into the surrounding gel, the cells released chemicals that prompted the engineered vessels to sprout new branches, extending the network. A similar system could supply blood to engineered tissue before transplant into the body.

After joining the UW last year, Zheng collaborated with the Puget Sound Blood Center to see how this research platform would work to transport real blood.

Engineered microvessels can form bends and T-junctions, like this one. The blue dots are the nuclei of the cells in the vessel walls, and the red lines are the cell junctions. Smooth muscle cells (green) wrap and tighten around the vessels, just as they do in the human body.

Y. Zheng, U. of Washington

The engineered vessels could transport human blood smoothly, even around corners. And when treated with an inflammatory compound the vessels developed clots, similar to what real vessels do when they become inflamed.

The system also shows promise as a model for tumor progression. Cancer begins as a hard tumor but secretes chemicals that cause nearby vessels to bulge and then sprout. Eventually tumor cells use these blood vessels to penetrate the bloodstream and colonize new parts of the body.

When the researchers added to their system a signaling protein for vessel growth that's overabundant in cancer and other diseases, new blood vessels sprouted from the originals. These new vessels were leaky, just as they are in human cancers.

"With this system we can dissect out each component or we can put them together to look at a complex problem. That's a nice thing—we can isolate the biophysical, biochemical or cellular components. How do endothelial cells respond to blood flow or to different chemicals, how do the endothelial cells interact with their surroundings, and how do these interactions affect the vessels' barrier function? We have a lot of degrees of freedom," Zheng said.

The system could also be used to study malaria, which becomes fatal when diseased blood cells stick to the vessel walls and block small openings, cutting off blood supply to the brain, placenta or other vital organs.

"I think this is a tremendous system for studying how blood clots form on vessels walls, how the vessel responds to shear stress and other mechanical and chemical factors, and for studying the many diseases that affect small blood vessels," said co-author Dr. José López, a professor of biochemistry and hematology at UW Medicine and chief scientific officer at the Puget Sound Blood Center.

Future work will use the system to further explore blood vessel interactions that involve inflammation and clotting. Zheng is also pursuing tissue engineering as a member of the UW's Center for Cardiovascular Biology and the Institute for Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine.

Other co-authors are UW physics senior Samuel Totorica; Abraham Stroock, Michael Craven, Nak Won Choi, Michael Craven, Anthony Diaz-Santana and Claudia Fischbach at Cornell; Junmei Chen at the Puget Sound Blood Center; and Barbara Hempstead at Weill Cornell Medical College.

The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health, the American Heart Association, the Human Frontier Science Program and Cornell University.

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For more information, contact Zheng at 206-543-3223 or yingzy@uw.edu.

Determining the proper time to flower, important if a plant is to reproduce successfully, involves a sequence of molecular events, a plant's circadian clock and sunlight.

Understanding how flowering works in the simple plant used in this study – Arabidopsis  – should lead to a better understanding of how the same genes work in more complex plants grown as crops such as rice, wheat and barley, according to Takato Imaizumi, a University of Washington assistant professor of biology and corresponding author of a paper in the May 25 issue of the journal Science.

"If we can regulate the timing of flowering, we might be able to increase crop yield by accelerating or delaying this. Knowing the mechanism gives us the tools to manipulate this," Imaizumi said. Along with food crops, the work might also lead to higher yields of plants grown for biofuels.

At specific times of year, flowering plants produce a protein known as Flowering Locus T in their leaves that induces flowering. Once this protein is made, it travels from the leaves to the shoot apex, a part of the plant where cells are undifferentiated, meaning they can either become leaves or flowers. At the shoot apex, this protein starts the molecular changes that send cells on the path to becoming flowers.

Changes in day length tell many organisms that the seasons are changing. It has long been known that plants use an internal time-keeping mechanism known as the circadian clock to measure changes in day length. Circadian clocks synchronize biological processes during 24-hour periods in people, animals, insects, plants and other organisms.

Imaizumi and the paper's co-authors investigated  what's called the FKF1 protein, which they suspected was a key player in the mechanism by which plants recognize seasonal change and know when to flower. FKF1 protein is a photoreceptor, meaning it is activated by sunlight.

Takato Imaizumi and Young Hun Song in the Takato plant lab at the University of Washington.

U of Washington

"The FKF1 photoreceptor protein we've been working on is expressed in the late afternoon every day, and is very tightly regulated by the plant's circadian clock," Imaizumi said. "When this protein is expressed during days that are short, this protein cannot be activated, as there is no daylight in the late afternoon. When this protein is expressed during a longer day, this photoreceptor makes use of the light and activates the flowering mechanisms involving Flowering Locus T. The circadian clock regulates the timing of the specific photoreceptor for flowering. That is how plants sense differences in day length."

This system keeps plants from flowering when it's a poor time to reproduce, such as the dead of winter when days are short and nights are long.

The new findings come from work with the plant Arabidopsis, a small plant in the mustard family that's often used in genetic research. They validate predictions from a mathematical model of the mechanism that causes Arabidopsis to flower that was developed by Andrew Millar, a University of Edinburgh professor of biology and co-author of the paper.

"Our mathematical model helped us to understand the operating principles of the plants' day-length sensor," Millar said. "Those principles will hold true in other plants, like rice, where the crop's day-length response is one of the factors that limits where farmers can obtain good harvests. It's that same day-length response that needs controlled lighting for laying chickens and fish farms, so it's just as important to understand this response in animals.

"The proteins involved in animals are not yet so well understood as they are in plants but we expect the same principles that we've learned from these studies to apply."

First author on the paper is Young Hun Song, a postdoctoral researcher in Imaizumi's UW lab. The other co-authors are Benjamin To, who was a UW undergraduate student when this work was being conducted, and Robert Smith, a University of Edinburgh graduate student. The work was funded by the National Institutes of Health, and the United Kingdom's Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council.

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For more information:
Imaizumi, 206-543-8709, takato@uw.edu

"Hornswoggled," a piece by Shaun Roberts, is among the work on display at the Henry Art Gallery in its Master of Fine Arts and Master of Design exhibit, running though June 17. To its left is "Troubadour," also by Roberts.

Peter Kelley

Every spring, students graduating with masters degrees in art and design exhibit work in an eclectic, fun, even challenging show at the Henry Art Gallery. And each year the artists owe thanks to Jim Rittimann, Henry head preparator and exhibition designer, who selects the pieces and makes sure they're installed to their best advantage.

The 2012 Master of Fine Arts and Master of Design Thesis Exhibition runs from May 26 through June 17 with a public opening 7 to 9 p.m. Friday, May 25.

Music abounds on campus, too as spring quarter winds down. There's jazz, guitar, the Chamber Singers, University Choirs, plus percussionists riff on Led Zeppelin and the Steel Drum Band takes on "Yesterday" — hmm, well played, School of Music.

Wind Ensemble, symphonic, concert, and campus bands, 7:30 p.m., May 24. The combined bands present works including "Morning Star" by David Maslanka, "Concerto for Cello and Wind Instruments" by Jacques Ibert, "Danzon" by Leonard Bernstein, "Colonial Song" by Percy Grainger, and "Outdoor Overture" by Aaron Copland. Meany Hall. Tickets are $10-$15. 206-543-4880.

"The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee," May 24 to June 3. The Undergraduate Theater Society presents this popular musical comedy about six young people struggling to find their place in the world despite overbearing parents. In the Hutchinson Hall Cabaret Theater. Tickets are $5-$10.

2012 Master of Fine Arts / Master of Design Thesis Exhibition, May 26 – June 17. From the School of Art. Students presenting work are Caitlin Berndt, Byung Cho, Lyndsey Colburn, Tamblyn Gawley, Hilary Gray, Hannah O'Gorman, Amy Keeling, Sergei Larionov, Snehai Mantri, Adam Matthew, Dan Ostrowski, Shaun Roberts, Andrew Salituri, Steve Sewell, Anthony Sonnenberg and Rodrigo Valenzuela. Public opening 7-9 p.m. May 25, RSVP online.

Guitar Ensemble, 7:30 p.m. May 26. Students of Michael Partington present a diverse program of music in Brechemin Auditorium from North and South America, Armenia, Bulgaria, Cuba, England, Japan, Java and Serbia for two, three and four guitars, plus solo guitar with percussion, flute and voice. Tickets are $5. 206-685-8384.

School of Art exhibits by graduating students:
Painting and drawing MFAs, May 28 to June 2. Work by Tamblyn Gawley and Shaun Roberts, Sandpoint Gallery. Reception 6-8 p.m., May 28.
Art by Adam Matthew, May 29 to June 2. Master of fine arts student from the 3D4M (3-Dimensional Forum) program, in the Ceramic and Metal Arts Building. Reception is 6-8 p.m., May 29.
Interdisciplinary Visual Arts, May 30. Student work and presentations, 3-5 p.m., Room 204 of the Art Building.

Percussion Ensemble: "World Percussion Bash," 7:30 p.m., May 29. The Percussion Ensemble shares the stage with the Steel Drum Ensemble and the Husky Drum Line. Program highlights will include "Bonham for Seven Percussionists and Drum Set Soloist," based on classic beat patterns used by drummer John Bonham on Led Zeppelin recordings, featuring drummer Thomas Campbell. Also, the Steel Drum Band plays the Lennon and McCartney's "Yesterday" (worth the price of admission alone, in this Art Roundup's view) and the drum line will play cadences used in its work with the Husky Marching Band. In Meany Studio Theater. Tickets are $10-$15. 206-543-4880.

The Percussion Ensemble will perform May 29 in Meany Studio Theater.

Joanne de Pue

Chamber Singers, "The Artist’s Voice," 7:30 p.m., May 29. The group, under the direction of Geoffrey Boers, presents a concert exploring the wide range of sounds made by the human voice. Program selections include "In Lumine" by UW composer Huck Hodge and "Pericolose-un giorno-bellezze," by UW composer Richard Karpen, featuring soprano Maria Mannisto. Tickets are $10-$15. 206-543-4880.

Studio Jazz Ensemble and Modern Band, 7:30 p.m., May 30. These two School of Music groups present their year-end concert in the Meany Studio Theater. It's an evening of big band jazz and original modern jazz compositions. Tickets are $10-$15. 206-543-4880.

University Choirs: "UW Sings," 7:30 p.m., May 31. The University Singers, Women's Choir, and Men’s Glee Club present their popular year-end concert in Meany Hall. Program highlights include the Women's Choir performing "Every Time I Feel the Spirit," with UW instrumentalists; the University Singers performing "Come Travel With Me" and the Men's Glee Club singing "Ol' Man River," by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II. Tickets are $10-$15. 206-543-4880.

The goals of the UW Research Affiliates Program on Transporters are twofold. First, it will provide quantitative information on drug transporters. The data  would help better predict the fate of new drugs early in development and thereby expedite the movement of promising drugs  into clinical trials. Second, the findings would enhance the collective knowledge about personalized medicine by better predicting the potential for drug-drug interactions and by showing how an individual’s genetics might influence the processing of  certain drugs.

A nucleoside transporter is expressed at the plasma and the mitochondrial membrane in cells.

The program's researchers hope to achieve these aims by studying and measuring the drug transporters produced in various human tissues and cells. Transporters are membrane proteins in tissues. They help the body absorb, distribute, metabolize and excrete drugs. Such transporters exist throughout the body, including in the liver, kidney, red blood cells and the brain.

For more than a decade, Unadkat’s lab has studied drug transporters in the disposition, efficacy and toxicity of drugs such as those used in the treatment of hepatitis C and HIV infection. Before translating findings from this in-vitro research (done in the test tube) to in-vivo studies (those conducted in the body), Unadkat realized additional research was required. He wanted to know more about the amount and type of transporters present in human tissues.

“Recognizing this gap in knowledge, our lab embarked on setting up a program a few years ago to quantify the level of expression of transporters in human tissues,” said Unadkat.

To do so, he set up a collaboration with Yurong Lai, a Pfizer scientist and a former postdoctoral fellow of the Unadkat Lab.Their novel approach links mass spectrometry (an analytical technique that identifies chemicals by their mass and charge) with liquid chromatography (an analytical technique for separating ions or molecules that are dissolved in a solvent). Seed funding for this work came from Pfizer.

Over time, Unadkat wanted to find a way to share collective expertise and resources with others in the industry who were conducting similar research. He began discussions with scientists from across the pharmaceutical research industry. With the help of two UW offices that help facilitate academia-industry partnerships and help secure support for sponsored collaborations — the UW Center for Commercialization and the UW Office of Sponsored Programs — UW Research Affiliates Program on Transporters came into being late last year with the three major research companies on board. Additional discussions are under way with other companies that have expressed interest in joining the initiative.

This two-part human brain scan shows the transporter-mediated distribution of a drug in the presence and absence of a transporter inhibitor.

Through the initiative, Unadkat, lead scientist Bhagwat Prasad and other scientists and graduate students in the Unadkat Lab are measuring expression of transporters in human tissues and in other kinds of cells and tissues sent from pharmaceutical companies. Members of the program will communicate their results and next steps through regular online and in-person meetings and through online access to the data generated by the Unadkat Lab. This kind of collaboration will mark a first for the companies..

“Such multi-company collaboration is rare because pharmaceutical companies are competitors,” said Unadkat. “Astrazeneca, Genentech and Merck were willing to collaborate and fund UWRAPT because the research is not proprietary.”

In fact, the information that comes from the program's research will benefit the School of Pharmacy and all the companies involved in drug-development research. All data generated by the program will be shared with all three companies and eventually be published.

What’s more, the UW Research Affiliates Program on Transporters partnership will help the School of Pharmacy train future scientists in pharmaceutical research. The program is intended to be a multi-year, public-private collaborative research venture.

Ultimately, Unadkat and his colleagues hope that by improving understanding about the quantity and types of transporters expressed in human tissues, they will advance the collective knowledge about how medicines are processed by the body. In turn, this will help health care providers prevent drug interactions and understand how genetics affects the way individuals process medications.

Pursuant to the provisions of WAC 197-11-460 & 510 and WAC 478-324-140, the University of Washington hereby provides public notice of the: AVAILABILITY OF FINAL SUPPLEMENTAL ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT STATEMENT (FSEIS*).

Project Name: Recreational Sports Intramural Activities Field No. 1 Improvements

Proponent: University of Washington

Description of Proposal: Improvements include installation of approximately 150,000 square feet of artificial turf, curb, pedestrian paths, light poles providing night time field illumination and fencing.  The total disturbance will be approximately 200,000 square feet.  The project does not impinge upon the University Slough and its riparian areas and setback.

Location: University of Washington Seattle Campus, East Campus.  3200 NE Clark Road.  The site is bounded by NE 45^th Street on the north, Mary Gates Memorial Drive and Laurel Village on the east, Clark Road on the south and University Slough and the Golf Driving Range on the west.

Lead Agency: University of Washington

Copies Available: A limited number of copies are available while supplies last at the Capital Projects Office, University of Washington, Box 352205, University Facilities, Seattle, WA 98105.  Additional copies may be obtained for the cost of copying.  CDs are available at no charge.

The document is also available at: http://www.cpo.washington.edu/html/Projects_SEPA.htm

Responsible Official:
Richard K. Chapman
Associate Vice President for Capital Projects
Capital Projects Office
University of Washington, Box 352205
Seattle,  WA 98107
(Telephone 206.543.5200)

Contact:
Jan Arntz, Environmental Planner
Capital Projects Office
University of Washington, Box 352205
Seattle,  WA 98107
(Telephone 206.543.5200)

Pediatrician James Stout is an innovator in long-distance training of health professionals.

Asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease are common medical problems, especially among low-income and minority populations. These groups have more severe cases of these lung diseases and a greater number of hospitalizations because of their illness.

“My view is that anyone with either of these diagnoses deserves the test as part of their overall assessment,” Stout said, who also is a pediatrician at the Odessa Brown Children’s Clinic, a satellite of Seattle Children’s Hospital located in the Central District.

He pointed to other studies revealing that up to 65 percent of general pediatricians do not use spirometry in routine asthma care. Even when spirometry is performed in primary-care doctor’s offices, many of the tests don’t meet American Thoracic Society quality standards, research has indicated.

Usually sprirometry is taught hands-on, with an experienced provider demonstrating how it’s done, letting trainees try it and interpret the results, and then coaching the trainees until they consistently perform it correctly.

However, in-person training is inconvenient for some providers to obtain. Practicing primary-care providers in rural areas have long travel distances to teaching sites, and those working in physician shortage areas or in safety-net practices for vulnerable populations are reluctant to spare time from their patients.

Stout and his group devised a multimedia online training that primary-care professionals in pediatrics, family medicine and internal medicine, as well as their support staff, typically nurses and medical assistants, can take in their offices. The Web-based training is followed by several weeks of ongoing coaching. Health care professionals can hook up one brand of spirometers to a secure system that transmits the results, without any information that identifies the patient, to experts who check for problems in the healthcare professional’s technique.

A spirometer for testing lung function in asthma and emphysema and before-and-after smoking cessation.

EasyOne

Spirometry training can be put to use in other ways in primary care practices. For example, it could be performed as part of a smoking cessation program. Patients may then be motivated to continue to abstain from tobacco as they watch their lung function get better over time.

A paper recently published in Academic Pediatrics evaluating the training for health professionals shows that it translates to better asthma care for patients.  Stout's team has since refined the approach and delivered it to more than 250 practices in a score of states. Ongoing technical improvements, he said, has made the training more user-friendly.

“The program we deliver now, Spirometry 360, is both shorter and better than the one we tested in the trial,” Stout said.

Does the online education in spirometry translate to better health for asthma patients? As part of Stout’s research team, Dr. Rita Mangione-Smith, professor of pediatrics, Division of General Pediatrics, has been leading a study to see if the online training improves health outcomes for children with asthma. The preliminary findings are positive; final results should be available later this year. Mangione-Smith is also a scientist at the Seattle Children’s Research Institute.

“Even though traditionally these types of hands-on skills are taught in person,” Stout said, “our team has proven that this procedure can be learned successfully over long distance and that this training improved asthma care in the pediatric practices we studied.”

This latest development in long-distance spirometry training may pave the way for teaching other sophisticated procedures over the miles through advances in learning technology and telecommunications. The University of Washington has licensed this particular approach to remote medical training as Spirometry 360.

The Academic Pediatric paper evaluating the effectiveness of remote teaching of spirometry is “Learning from a Distance: Spirometry Training in Improving Asthma Care.”  In addition to Stout and Mangione-Smith, other UW and Seattle Children’s Research Institute investigators on the study were Drs. Karen Smith, Chuan Zhou, Cam Solomon and Michelle M. Garrison. Dr. Allen Dozer from New York Medical College in Valhalla was also part of the study team.

A federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality grant funded the study.

The Hiker Memorial statue in Woodland Park was erected in 1924 by veterans of the Spanish-American War.

Tim Wright

Historic monuments are stone-solid proof of the old adage that history is written by the victors. But time marches on, new wars and issues obscure the past in the public consciousness, and even markers of stone are forgotten and left untended.

Then too, there are monuments that glorify bloodshed now regretted in hindsight, while others celebrate individuals whose legacies may have tarnished with passing decades.

University of Washington doctoral candidate Tim Wright sets students off to explore such half-forgotten monuments, and others more well known, each year in his unique class, "Fact or Fiction: Historical Monuments of the Pacific Northwest."

The students will present their findings from 2:30 to 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, June 5, in the Allen Auditorium of Suzzallo-Allen Library. The event is free and the public is invited.

Student Scott Feltrup studied the history of the statue of Christopher Columbus in Waterfront Park, dedicated in 1978 after initial refusal by the Seattle Arts Commission. Feltrup learned that the statue has been vandalized near Columbus Day in recent years, causing the city to cover it with a wooden box near that holiday (a scene depicted in 2009 by artist Gabriel Campanario, the Seattle Times "Seattle Sketcher").

This statue of Christopher Columbus in Waterfront Park was dedicated in 1978. The City of Seattle tends to cover it near Columbus Day to protect from vandalism.

Scott Feltrup

Eric Catlett explored the history of the 1856 Battle of Seattle monument in City Hall Park, which he writes "has all but vanished from the historical memory of the city." The monument was presented to the city in 1916 by the Daughters of the American Revolution.

Adam McJunkin looked at the Hiker statue in Woodland Park, which remembers fallen soldiers from the Spanish-American War and the Philippine War. He details the history of what he calls this "all but forgotten" marker in plain sight, as well as a plaque later added remembering the U.S.S. Maine and made of scraps from its wreckage.

Niguel Quiroz studied the history of the Medicine Creek Treaty marker near Olympia. "The signing of the Medicine Creek Treaty is one of Washington state's most well-known events, and it has remained controversial since its ratification due to the resistance on the part of some Native Americans under the leadership of Chief Leschi," Quiroz wrote. "What then, would the Native Americans hope to memorialize if they had the opportunity to create a Medicine Creek Treaty marker?"

Wright said, "Historic monuments stand at the intersection of history and memory. Deliberately built into the landscape, they can shape our understandings of the past and influence the way we think about the present and the future."

He added, "But monuments seldom tell the whole story."

Xiaodong Xu garners Department of Energy early-career grant
Xiaodong Xu, a UW assistant professor in the departments of materials science and engineering and physics, has been awarded an Early Career Research Program grant by the Department of Energy. The program, now in its third year, supports outstanding scientists early in their careers working in areas of interest to the energy department. Xu's was among 68 grants selected from nearly 850 applicants. The award covers up to $150,000 in research expenses annually for five years.

Xu's proposal concerning photon-electron interactions in Dirac quantum materials will investigate new materials at the quantum level. These materials display unusual interactions between incoming light, electrical charge transport and electron spin. His research seeks to better understand these interactions, potentially leading to new high‐speed electronics, memory devices and solar cells.

Ethnic Cultural Center's 'Raise the Roof' party Thursday
The Samuel E. Kelly Ethnic Cultural Center will host a "Raise the Roof" party Thursday, May 24, at 3 p.m., at the building’s renovation site on the corner of Brooklyn Ave Northeast and Northeast 40^th Street. Students, staff, faculty and community members are invited to sign a beam and watch as a crane lifts this beam to the top of the roof.

Food will be available courtesy Seattle’s first Native American food truck, Off the Rez. For more information, visit the ECC web site.

The new Samuel E. Kelly ECC is undergoing an extensive renovation and is scheduled to open in late fall of 2012. Check out photos of the building progress: April 5, 2012, Jan. 31, 2012, Dec. 2, 2011 and Oct. 12, 2011 - Groundbreaking.

New financial conflict of interest regulations
The UW’s policy on financial conflicts of interest is being revised so that it complies with new public health service regulations which go into effect Aug. 24.  Implementation processes to ensure compliance with the new regulations are still under development. Email communications will occur throughout the summer, and the new financial conflict of interest website will be updated frequently.

For all investigators, the monetary threshold for disclosing a significant financial interest will be lowered from $10,000 to $5,000, with no threshold for disclosure of equity in a non-publicly traded company. All investigators disclosing a significant financial interest will use a new electronic reporting tool currently under development.

Investigators engaged in public health service-funded research must complete online financial conflict-of-interest training prior to the expenditure of funds on any newly-funded projects; all significant conflicts of interest related to institutional responsibilities must be disclosed; the institution must make conflict-of-interest information publicly available prior to the expenditure of any funds; and investigators must disclose all travel reimbursement sponsored by (i.e., paid by an outside entity) or reimbursed by an outside entity for travel after Aug. 24, 2012.  Travel reimbursement from the following outside entities does not need to be reported:  an institution of higher education, a federal/state/local government, an academic teaching hospital, a medical center, or a research institute affiliated with an institution of higher education.

The staff in the Office of Research is available to assist and answer any questions.

'Cirque,' an activism traveling carnival, launches June 2 at UW Tacoma
UW’s Q Center is celebrating National Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Pride with "Cirque," Washington state's first student LGBT arts and activism traveling carnival, with Tacoma, Spokane and Seattle events.

Cirque features live music, performances, slam poetry, speakers, carnival games, food and refreshments at 5 p.m. Saturday, June 2, in UW Tacoma’s Philip Hall. The event is free. Register at http://depts.washington.edu/cirque

Preceding the UW Tacoma program, at 2 p.m., Cirque presents a talk by David C. Ward, the curator of the Smithsonian-curated Tacoma Art Museum Hide/Seek queer art exhibit in its final week. Tacoma Art Museum offers a discounted rate and exclusive tour through Cirque that afternoon. The UW Tacoma events are sponsored by Office for Equity & Diversity, the Diversity Resource Center, Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences and the Arts and Lectures Fund.

Cirque will have an event later in June in Spokane at which it will honor individuals statewide who have advanced the Q Center’s mission of building and facilitating queer academic and social community though education, advocacy, and support services.

Details about the Seattle events are still in the works. For more information, contact: leoule@uw.edu or cirque@uw.edu

Buddy Ratner recognized for contributions to field of biomaterials
The European Society for Biomaterials has chosen Buddy Ratner, a UW professor of bioengineering and chemical engineering, for the 2012 George Winter Award, recognizing outstanding contributions to the field of biomaterials. The committee cited Ratner's excellence in research, his vision and his leading role in the promotion of biomaterials science worldwide. He will be honored at next year's society conference in Madrid, where he will present the award lecture.

Glaciology graduate student to discuss science behind SIFF film 'Chasing Ice'
Kristin Poinar, a UW graduate student in glaciology, will join director Jeff Orlowski following two screenings of the movie “Chasing Ice” to talk about the science behind melting glaciers. The documentary features stark video of vanishing glaciers, shot over years using time lapse cameras deployed in the Arctic. Inspired by National Geographic photographer James Balog, the film aims to shine a spotlight on the effects of climate change.

Poinar anticipates answering questions about moulins – kilometer-deep holes through the ice sheet bored by meltwater each summer – which figure prominently in the film. She may also share expertise on subjects including glacier acceleration and the use of satellite images to study glacier change.

The film, featured as part of the Seattle International Film Festival, screens on June 9 at 6:30 at Harvard Exit and June 10 at 1 at SIFF Cinema Uptown.

Jeff Hou named community builder
Jeff Hou, chairman of the Department of Landscape Architecture, has been presented a Community Builder Award by the Seattle Chinatown International District Preservation and Development Authority. Hou brought stakeholders together for improvements in the International District, including the recently re-opened International Children’s Park. Hou has also been a leader in the King Street Visioning Project, which aims to revitalize the core of the International District.

Organized by staff with Conservation Magazine and the University of Washington Department of Biology, the event is meant to appeal to a mix of students, scientists and other citizens of Puget Sound.

"We want people to come away from this event with a sense that conservation isn't just about stopping bad things from happening, but also about starting good things. They will get a glimpse of the kind of environmental innovations that are possible when we include engineers, architects, cooks and entrepreneurs in the environmental conversation," said Estella Leopold, UW professor emeritus of biology and an event host. "It turns out that environmental inspiration can be found in the most unexpected places."

The event will be from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, June 2, at Seattle's Town Hall and will feature 11 speakers talking about food, agriculture, built environments, energy, technology and business. Two are from the UW, the rest are with other U.S. and European institutions and organizations. Veteran science journalists David Malakoff with Science magazine and John Nielsen, a former environmental correspondent with National Public Radio, will guide discussions audience discussions.

"This event is not only about listening to the speakers – it’s also about listening to the audience," said Dee Boersma, UW professor of biology and co-organizer of the event. For example, Earthfix, a media project of Northwest public radio and television stations, will host a digital story booth where participants can share their thoughts and stories about environmental issues.

Now is the time for this kind of regional event, Boersma said.

"The Puget Sound region and the UW are emerging hubs for environmental innovation," she said. "We have a tremendous combination of interests and expertise here—environmental concern, technological know-how, and business entrepreneurship. This event mixes these communities up and brings smart people together to imagine a greener future."

Winter 2012 edition

Tickets can be purchased online for $50 – $25 for students– and include a catered lunch and a one-year subscription to Conservation Magazine, a quarterly UW publication distributed in 58 countries. There will be a limited number of tickets available at the door.

Major sponsors of the event with Conservation Magazine are the Bullitt Foundation, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, UW College of Arts and Sciences and UW College of the Environment. Fifteen other UW and community organizations are partners.

"Just as TED originally brought to the web ideas worth spreading about technology, entertainment and design, we hope to launch something similar for the environment," said UW's Kathryn Kohm, editor of Conservation Magazine and the other co-organizer of the remix event.

For more information contact Lindsey Doermann, doermann@uw.edu, 206-221-5292.

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For more information, news media can contact:
Boersma, 206-616-2185, boersma@uw.edu
Kohm, 206-685-4724, kkohm@uw.edu

Mark Lanegan

A walk past Ninth and James unleashes memories and visions for composer/singer Mark Lanegan in “Harborview Hospital.”  His song is on the recently released album, Blues Funeral.

Lanegan lived for a time on Seattle’s First Hill, site of the University of Washington-operated hospital.  It’s hard to say how much of his mystical lyrics arose from his own experiences or the universality of any troubled soul seeking mercy, acceptance and solace.

Lanegan’s deep-in-the-chest baritone is a rough patch of road. It’s the voice of a tough guy fallen on hard times. The song's persona judges himself harshly:  “All around this place, I was a sad disgrace.”   What percolates in his mind while stopping outside the hospital lifts and sinks him.  Either way is “beautiful and still.”

Formerly a member of “Screaming Trees,” he is the lead singer of the Mark Lanegan Band. He grew up in Ellensburg, Wash., and makes his home in Los Angeles. He is now on a North American performance tour.

View the KEXP video premiere of the 4AD session of “Harborview Hospital.”

Here are the lyrics, copyright Mark Lanegan Band, all rights reserved.

It's 1963 again in our latest installment of Lost and Found Films, where readers help identify historic bits of film from the Audio Visual Materials Library, provided by film archivist Hannah Palin.

This time we take a look at the More Hall Annex and its nuclear reactor in a silent, black-and-white film a bit under two minutes long.

It begins with shots of the building's exterior as people file by, and then shows a man in a white lab coat and bow tie discussing and pointing to an elaborate diagram on the wall. He is then seen as one of three scientists measuring radiation levels, working panels of controls and looking at readouts.

But who is that scientist with the side part, greased hair, dark-framed glasses and lab coat? What is this trio measuring with an instrument that looks like a hair dryer? And what are they recording in that huge ledger?
This film is one of hundreds of reels that Palin is trying to identify for archiving purposes. She has clips from the late 1930s through the 1970s — some from research projects, some from campus events and some from commercial films or campus productions.

There's plenty of information about the nuclear reactor that operated on the UW campus until 1988. Palin dug up a 2006 Seattle Times article about the dismantling of the reactor, a 2009 blog about its history and an article by The Daily's Will Mari.

Still, Palin says, "We're not nuclear scientists, so we're looking for details about who exactly is in this film clip, and exactly what they are doing."

So, if you have expertise in this area and can help, put down that Geiger counter and write a comment below.

Previous Lost and Found Films in 2012.

•    "University Parking," from 1960.
•    "Inaugural," from 1958.