“The Return” is an illustrated story that portrays environmental health themes from a Native American perspective,

Through imaginative storytelling and art, “The Return” conveys environmental health from a Native American perspective.  A center within the UW School of Public Health worked with Native American tribes to create and publish the illustrated story as a 32-page comic book.

One of the goals of this Native Tradition, Environment and Community Health Project was to find out how Native American ways of understanding the world and our place in it differ from the Western concept of environmental health. Surveys, interviews, and talking circles identified three core themes of Native environmental health: community, wellness, and inter-relationship.

“The Return” was created from the findings. It is a dreamlike account of a Native woman and her baby, and tells how these three concepts are passed to the next generation.

Michelle Montgomery, senior fellow in the UW Department of Bioethics and Humanities at the UW Center for Genomics & Healthcare Equality, and Nicholas Salazar, a student at the Institute for American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, N.M., developed the book. Montgomery is a tribal member affiliated with the Haliwa Saponi and Eastern Band Cherokee.

The UW Center for Ecogenetics & Environmental Health and the Northwest Indian College co-managed the project. The effort began in 2008 with a collaborative grant from the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences.

The book was distributed at the 2013 American Indian Higher Education Consortium Student Conference in Green Bay, Wisc. More dissemination opportunities are planned. The end of the book contains a discussion guide and suggestions for related art projects.

“The Return” comic book is posted as a PDF.

Charles Roeder
Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Office: 206-543-6199
E-mail: croeder@uw.edu  
Web: http://www.ce.washington.edu/people/faculty/faculty.php?id=36
Expertise: Gusset plates and steel bracing frames; seismic behavior of steel and composite structures; fatigue of steel structures; temperature effects in structures; movements in bridges; bridge bearings and expansion joints

Jeffrey Berman
Assistant Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Office: 206-616-3530
E-mail: jwberman@uw.edu  
Web: http://www.ce.washington.edu/people/faculty/faculty.php?id=4
Expertise: Steel structures; seismic design and blast considerations for steel structures 

Mark Hallenbeck
Director of the Washington State Transportation Center
Office: 206-543-6261
E-mail: tracmark@uw.edu
Web: http://depts.washington.edu/trac/index.html
Expertise: Urban transportation planning and policy; electronic traffic monitoring; tolls; traffic simulations; intelligent transportation systems 

Anne Goodchild (available from 1-3 p.m. PST on Friday, May 24)
Associate Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Office: 206-543-3747
E-mail: annegood@uw.edu
Web: http://www.ce.washington.edu/people/faculty/faculty.php?id=14
Expertise: Freight transportation and logistics

John Stanton (email is best)
Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
E-mail: stanton@uw.edu
Web: http://www.ce.washington.edu/people/faculty/faculty.php?id=42
Expertise: General bridge knowledge; earthquake engineering, including seismic isolation; precast and pre-stressed concrete structures; concrete bridges

Marc Eberhard 
Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Office: (206) 543-4815
E-mail: eberhard@uw.edu
Web: http://faculty.washington.edu/eberhard/
Expertise: Reinforced concrete behavior and design; Earthquake engineering; Bridge engineering; Rapid construction

Kate Simonen
Assistant Professor, Department of Architecture
Office: 206-685-7282
E-mail: ksimonen@uw.edu
Web: http://arch.be.washington.edu/school/people/ksimonen
Expertise: High-performance building systems and environmental life cycle assessment of buildings, explaining engineering concepts to non-technical audiences.  

NIH

Above, a patient measures her blood sugar level. A clinical study will test whether certain medications can prevent diabetes, or slow the progression of the disease in newly diagnosed patients.

A clinical trial at the Veterans Affairs Puget Sound Health Care System and the University of Washington will address new approaches to prevent the development of type 2 diabetes or slow its progression. Participants will be treated with medications normally used for people who have had diabetes for at least one year. The study will enroll individuals who have prediabetes or have been recently diagnosed with diabetes, but who are not taking medications to treat the condition.

The Restoring Insulin Secretion, or RISE, Study will examine the effects of three such medication regimens.  Each will be administered for 12 months. The three regimens are: liraglutide plus metformin for 12 months; insulin for three months followed by metformin for nine months; and metformin alone for 12 months. The expectation is that the use of these medications before diabetes has developed will preserve or enhance the body’s ability to produce insulin, the hormone that is crucial to maintain normal blood sugar levels.

Thestudyis a nationwide program looking at the effects of various treatments to preserve insulin secretion and thereby prevent the development of diabetes or its progression early in the disease. The UW and VA diabetes research group in Seattle is one of three recruiting adult patients for the medication trial, along with the University of Chicago and Indiana University in Indianapolis.

Dr. Steven Kahn, professor of medicine, Division of Metabolism, Endocrinology and Nutrition, at the University of Washington,  leads the Seattle clinical trial and is also chairs the national study.

“We hope to identify people who are at high risk of developing diabetes as they have mild elevations in their blood glucose as well as individuals who have had diabetes for less than a year and have not required medications,” Kahn said.

“The purpose of the study,” he explained, “is to determine whether aggressively treating such patients with medications used in diabetes can slow the disease process and prevent the loss of the ability of the pancreas to make and release insulin.”

The study, sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, is currently recruiting patients. To be eligible, patients must be between 20 and 65 years old, have prediabetes or self-reported type 2 diabetes for less than one year, and must not have taken any medications to treat diabetes in the past. Participants also must be considered overweight or obese. The investigators aim to enroll 85 patients who will participate in the trial for 21 months.

More details are available at the National Institute of Health’s clinical trials website, identifier: NCT01779362.

To participate in the study, call 206-764-2768.

Gary Louie

The UW Percussion Ensemble will present “World Percussion Bash” May 28 in the Meany Studio Theater.

Spring is a great time for the arts at the UW, and this week is a perfect example. The School of Music offers several evenings of entertainment and the Henry Art Gallery hosts its annual exhibit of work by students earning master’s degrees in art and design.

Meanwhile, the School of Drama is staging one-act plays by Tennessee Williams. “The peak of my virtuosity was in the one-act plays,” the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer said, no doubt in his laconic southern drawl. “Some of which are like firecrackers on a rope.”

Also, Molly’s Café at the Henry has an exhibit of fanciful musical devices imagined by homeless youth and gathered by Information School doctoral student Jill Woelfer. And the Undergraduate Theater Society takes on an Alfred Hitchcock classic.

Master of Fine Arts/Master of Design exhibition, May 25 – June 23. The annual exhibit by graduating students, held at the Henry Art Gallery. Advance notes say students in these programs investigate and experiment with art while developing advanced techniques and engaging in critical discourse that strengthens their understanding of art, theory, methodology and practice. Jim Rittimann, the museum’s head preparator and exhibit designer, provides curatorial assistance and guidance. Public reception 7-9 p.m., May 24. RSVP online. Admission is $10, $6 for those 62 and older, and free to members and UW students, faculty and staff. 206-543-2280.

Catalin Rotaru

Catalin Rotaru, double bass, 2 p.m., May 26. The internationally known bassist, also a faculty member at Arizona State University, performs works by Faure, Mozart, Porumbescu, Chopin and Vieuxtemps in Brechemin Auditorium. The last in the 2012-13 Barry Lieberman and Friends series. Tickets are $15, cash or check at the door. 206-685-8384.

“World Percussion Bash,” 7:30 p.m., May 28. The UW Percussion Ensemble, co-directed by Tom Collier and Andrew Angell, shares its May 28th concert in the Meany Studio Theater with the UW Steel Band, directed by Shannon Dudley. The ensemble will perform contemporary works composed for a variety of percussion instruments, and the steel band performs Caribbean dance music and more, including an arrangement of “What a Wonderful World.” Tickets are $10-$15. 206-543-4880.

Anna Lamadrid of the School of Drama’s Professional Actor Training Program, in character for her role in an evening of one-act plays by Tennessee Williams.

Tennessee Williams one-act plays, May 29 – June 9. UW School of Drama presents five one-act plays written by Williams from the 1930s through the 1950s directed by master’s of fine arts directing candidates Leah Adcock-Starr and Tina Polzin, performed in the Glenn Hughes Penthouse Theater. The plays feature actors from the school’s graduate and undergraduate programs. Tickets are $10-$18, available online or through the UW Arts Ticket Office, 1313 NE 41^st St., 206-543-4880.

University Chorale, Chamber Singers and Baltic Tour Choir, 7:30 p.m., May 29. The chorale and chamber singers’ spring quarter concert in Meany Hall, featuring the choir assembled for a 2013 tour of the Baltics. The Chamber Singers will perform works by Eric Whitacre, Eric Barnum, Leonard Bernstein and the world premiere of “The Girl Child of Pompeii” by Robert Vuichard, for chorus and digitally processed sound. The University Chorale will perform works by Aaron Jay Kernis, Paul Mealor and others, and the tour choir will perform Latvian folk songs and other works. Tickets are $10-$15. 206-543-4880.

Combined bands: “Made in America,” 7:30 p.m., May 30. The UW Wind Ensemble, Symphonic Band and Campus Band present a concert featuring works about America or by American composers. Along with works by Stravinsky, Milhaud, and Ives, the program includes the overture to “Candide,” by Leonard Bernstein, “American Games,” by Nicholas Maw and “Concerto for Flute and Wind Orchestra” by Mike Mower, featuring UW Wind Ensemble concerto competition winner Colleen McElroy as soloist. In Meany Hall. Tickets are $10-$15. 206-543-4880.

The Music Emote is a device conceived by a homeless young person, presented in an exhibit at the Henry Art Gallery’s Molly’s Cafe.

Exhibit: “Music is My Life,” May 30 – Aug. 29. As part of her dissertation research in the UW Information School in 2012, doctoral student Jill Woelfer asked homeless young people age 15 to 25 to imagine a music device that could help someone experiencing homelessness, then draw a picture of that device and write a story about a situation where it could be used. This exhibit, in Molly’s Café at the Henry Art Gallery, consists of eight panels with reproductions of 18 of those drawings and stories, prepared by a community-based team led by Woelfer. The goal of the project, Woelfer said, is “to bring the voices of homeless young people to the community in order to increase understanding and spark further discussions.” Learn more online or on Facebook.

Play: “The 39 Steps,” May 30 – June 9. The Undergraduate Theater Society presents a play by Patrick Barlow and Alfred Hitchcock based on Hitch’s 1935 adventure film. The fast-paced intrigue starts when a lonely man meets a mysterious, thickly accented woman who claims to be a spy. A murder sets in action this story with more than 40 characters performed by a cast of four, dozens of locales and a few Hitchcock jokes along the way. In the Hutchinson Hall Cabaret Theater. Tickets are $5-$10.

School of Art graduation exhibits:

• Masters of fine arts show by painting and drawing students Carly Cummings and Marcus Watson, May 28 – June 1, Sand Point Gallery. Reception 6-8 p.m. May 27.
• Three-dimensional Forum (3D4M) exhibit in the Jacob Lawrence Gallery for several students receiving their bachelor of fine art degree, May 28 – June 7. Reception 4-7 p.m. May 28.
• Three-dimensional Forum (3D4M) exhibit in the Ceramic and Metal Arts Building for Master of Fine Arts student Jared Bender, May 28 – June 1. Reception 6 p.m., May 28.
• Alley Art Party: Students in an Interdisciplinary Visual Arts capstone class present senior projects in a single night in the alley between 42^nd and 43^rd streets along 15^th Ave. NE. 5-8 p.m. May 29. More information on Facebook.

Seaglider was developed in 1997 by researchers at the School of Oceanography and Applied Physics Laboratory. In UW research the device has set records for the distance traveled and time spent alone at sea, using buoyancy to glide up and down through the ocean while using minimal power.

Kongsberg will pick up where previous licensee iRobot left off, handling orders for customers external to the UW. The Norwegian-owned company plans to hire five or six new employees to build Seagliders at its Lynwood facility.  The UW Seaglider Fabrication Center, managed by Fritz Stahr, will continue to employ three full-time staff members and two students to build and service Seagliders for UW researchers, and to service units sold before there was a commercial provider for the technology.

The Boldt decision revisited
Richard R. Whitney, a UW emeritus professor of fisheries, will give a public talk about his role in the Boldt decision, a 1974 ruling that gave Washington tribes an equal share of the state’s salmon catch. The talk is at 4 p.m. Thursday, May 23, in Fishery Sciences 102, and is free and open to the public.

Richard Whitney

Whitney’s talk, “My Fisheries Management Experience with Judge George H. Boldt in his Case United States v. The State of Washington,” will provide a firsthand account of the science and politics of those years. Whitney served as technical adviser to Judge Boldt from March 1974, one month after he handed down the ruling, until 1979, when the U.S. Supreme Court reviewed and affirmed the decision.

Whitney was a UW fisheries professor from 1983 to 1993. He previously held positions at the University of Maryland, the University of California, Los Angeles, and the predecessor to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. He is co-author of “Inland Fishes of Washington” and was elected in 2008 to the American Fisheries Society’s Fisheries Management Hall of Excellence.

U. of Minnesota president to speak
Eric Kaler, University of Minnesota president and former UW professor of chemical engineering, will speak on campus Tuesday, May 28, about challenges and opportunities for the nation’s top research universities.

Eric Kaler

Kaler taught at UW for seven years starting in 1982 before moving on to the University of Delaware and later to Stony Brook University in New York. He has been president at Minnesota since 2011.

He will speak to a general audience on “The Future of the American Research University” at 3 p.m. May 28 in the Lyceum of the Husky Union Building for the chemical engineering department’s first Bruce A. Finlayson Lecture. The lecture, the department’s largest event of the year, honors Finlayson, a chemical engineering professor emeritus who previously taught with Kaler. In a separate talk, Kaler will have a more technical presentation on surfactant microstructures at 10:30 a.m. May 28 in the Bill & Melinda Gates Commons (CSE 691) of the Allen Center for Computer Science & Engineering.

Both talks are free and open to the public. A reception will follow the afternoon talk at 4 p.m. in the HUB Lyceum.

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An Ethics Feature in the May-June issue of the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine describes the lessons learned as the Madras Medical Group transformed itself into a pharma-free clinic.  The small, private clinic of five physicians no longer has contact with detailers – representatives from the pharmaceutical industry who visit physicians to educate them about medications. The clinic also refuses drug samples, gifts and lunches from pharmaceutical companies.

Alice C. Gray

Pharma-free medical practices refuse gifts, lunches, educational programs and samples from pharmaceutical industries.

The corresponding author of the paper, David V. Evans, practiced at the clinic and is now an assistant professor of family medicine at the University of Washington. He and his colleagues at the Oregon State University College of Pharmacy and at University of Oregon Health & Sciences University  examined the clinic’s successful methods to change a culture ingrained in medicine.

“Detailing – selling drugs by educating physicians –  was first reported as a problem in the late 1950’s,” Evans said.  Since then, extensive research indicates that detailing can encourage physicians to prescribe medicines that may not be appropriate, necessary or cost-effective for patients, and that may pose safety concerns.

Academic medical centers, such as medical schools and teaching hospitals,  Evans noted, have critically looked at detailing,  have advocated against it nationally, and have set institutional policies prohibiting or limiting student, resident and faculty contact with detailers .

However, he added, three-fourths of the country’s physicians practice in the community, where interactions between physicians and pharmaceutical representatives are still commonplace.  Although some states have curbed contact between drug reps and physicians, most physicians in small, independent practices have little guidance on how to become pharma-free, the authors of the paper observed.

“Changing this situation is not easy, but with a deliberate and thoughtful approach it can occur,” Evans said.  Although his clinic’s personnel were not unanimous in wanting to go pharma-free, approaching it in smaller steps helped to decrease dissent.

First, those championing a pharma-free clinic quantified the presence of detailers and their marketing strategies.  This data helped convince the physicians and staff that a problem existed.  The staff and physicians then voiced their concerns. These included doing without prescription samples for patients.

The clinic then scheduled sessions for their health professionals to keep current about medications by reviewing rigorous scientific studies. To replace the pharma-sponsored lunches, the clinic held its own regular lunches for their clinicians and staff.  Clinic staff told patients about the change, and news media in the local area informed the nearby public.  The clinic also created a chart comparing average monthly costs of many heavily marketed drugs with first-line, less-expensive or generic drugs, if such alternatives were available.

“Becoming pharma-free at our clinic was not an overnight thing,” said Evans. “Cultural change takes time.  Eventually even the initial dissenters in the clinic came to feel good about the change, and it became a point of pride.”

Now, as a UW medical school faculty member who teaches medical students and residents, Evans, along with colleague Pam Pentin, educate future physicians on effectively managing drug detailers, including how to turn all of them away.

“One of the concerns,” Evans said, “is that medical students and residents may come up through their education without ever having interacted with a drug representative.  It’s important to teach medical students and residents how detailers operate in the real world. At the UW, family medicine residents learn about detailer strategies during their third-year practice management curriculum.  This year’s graduating residents will be the first to have taken the training.”

As of 2009, there was one drug sales representative for every eight physicians.  Despite increased scrutiny and regulation, Evans and his colleagues noted that the percentage of primary care physicians with industrial relationships remains high at 84 percent.  Evans explained that most drug reps are well trained and personable. They use marketing strategies time-tested in the social sciences.

“It’s a sophisticated operation. For example, before they go in to see physicians,” he said, “detailers sit in their cars data-mining on their electronic devices. They find out the physicians’ prescribing patterns from databases in which the patients’ names and other identifying information have been removed. They know how much a doctor has prescribed of drug A, and will either thank the doctor or encourage him or her to prescribe drug B instead.”

Beginning in August 2013, as part of the Affordable Care Act of 2013, a national web site will contain information for patients on the monetary value of what individual physicians accept from pharmaceutical firms.  The Physician Payment Sunshine Act will require manufacturers of drugs, devices and biologics to report all payments to physicians and teaching hospitals to a public web database.

What else can patients do to mitigate undesirable effects of drug marketing?  Evans advises asking their physicians about the issue. He suggests refusing drug samples if they are offered. Patients can also become aware of the effects of drug advertising on their own treatment choices.

The authors of the paper, “Breaking Up is Hard to Do: Lessons Learned from a Pharma-Free Practice Transformation,” wrote that they hope their description of how a clinic changed its practice “contributes to the ongoing discussion of the potential clinical influences and the ethics of the relationship between practicing physicians and pharmaceutical marketing.”

The other authors were Daniel M. Hartung and Denise Beasley of the Department of Pharmacy Practice, Oregon State University College of Pharmacy in Portland. The senior author was Lyle J. Fagnan, a physician in the Oregon Rural Practice-based Research Network in the Department of Family Practice, Oregon Health & Science University School of Medicine.

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The externally peer-reviewed analysis of the clinic transformation received no funding and the researchers declared no conflicts of interest.

The latest version, made public April 9, was developed by a national team with input from thousands of teachers, scientists and other stakeholders, including Philip Bell, director of the University of Washington’s Institute for Science and Math Education and the College of Education, and Andrew Shouse, associate director of the institute.

Bell and Shouse are now advising schools, districts and states about how to implement the standards. They will host two public events May 22 to talk about the vision and the new standards with teachers, scientists, school administrators, parents and others interested in science education.

Bell answered questions about the new K-12 science education standards for UW Today.

Q: Why are science learning standards important?

A: Scientific literacy helps us all make better life choices and decisions. The learning standards set the baseline of what we should all know about science. We were very careful to make sure the learning goals help all youth become scientifically literate and college-ready, so they can transition more seamlessly to college and have more choices about majors they can pursue.

Q: What do the standards look like?

A: There are three dimensions that help define the performances for each standard: disciplinary practices, core ideas of science and cross-cutting concepts that apply to multiple fields of science. The standards describe ways a student integrates these dimensions, but we didn’t lay out specific ways to meet these learning goals, so there’s still a lot of work to do in developing innovative curricula and instruction.

Q: What is different about the latest standards?

A: There are several major changes from the last incarnation of documents that have laid out standards for science education in the mid-1990s:

1. More emphasis on specific disciplinary practices used by scientists and engineers, such as developing and using a model, writing an argument from evidence, engaging in computational thinking and developing causal explanations about the natural world. The eight practices for science and engineering help focus what has previously been described as “inquiry” or “hands-on” instruction.
2. Greater focus on engineering and design. This is particularly important now that there’s an increased emphasis on science, technology, mathematics and engineering and thinking about how to integrate those subjects to solve complex problems. And a greater emphasis on engineering in K-12 is especially important because of the technology industries in the state of Washington and the lack of qualified people for jobs in those fields.
3. More challenging goals for preschoolers and kindergarten students. Research studies show that our youngest learners are capable of thinking that’s more complex than we previously believed, so the new standards have more ambitious learning goals for this age group.

Q: Won’t this just be more work for teachers?

A: I have known many elementary school teachers who feel like they haven’t had as much opportunity to teach science over the last decade because of the increased attention being given to reading, writing and mathematics. The new science standards have greater overlap with the existing standards for mathematics and English language arts so that teachers can teach science in ways that accomplish multiple goals. We hope this will make the lives of classroom teachers more manageable while allowing all students to meaningfully learn about science.

Q: Why should people who don’t want a science career have to meet these standards?

A: The science standards help people develop core knowledge and ways of thinking that can be used in a broad variety of everyday situations and other careers, including the ability to skeptically critique information, build an argument based on evidence and design a solution to fit an everyday need.

Q: How are the standards put into action?

A: Each state will decide whether they’ll try to adopt them and on what timeline. Washington state is working toward adoption, and my sense is there’s a lot of excitement around embracing these standards. The state’s Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction is coordinating the process of figuring out what the new science standards would mean for the state.

Q: Why are you excited about the new science learning goals?

A: It’s an exciting time for helping the public think more deeply about how science and technology relate to their lives and how they can leverage it for their own interests, such as solving problems their communities may be facing. This compels us in a lot of the work that we do.

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For more information, contact Bell at 206-221-3642 or pbell@uw.edu or Shouse at 206-897-1461 or awshouse@uw.edu.

Sascha Vaughn

Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo, an all-male ballet company, will perform in Meany Hall May 16-18.

Dance and drama talents combine for the annual MFA Dance Concert, which leads a busy week of UW arts events. The week also features exhibits, visiting performers and the 50^th annual Theodore Roethke Poetry Reading.

Also, the Ethnomusicology Program winds up its own half-century celebration with a visiting artists concert and the Henry Art Gallery offers the alluringly titled presentation “Off with the Corset!”

All this, and dudes who look like ladies in Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo, described by the New York Times as “pancaked, bewigged ladies” trying and failing “mightily — to sustain poses, falling on their rumps, showboating and knocking into one another.”

Roethke Memorial Poetry Reading: Kay Ryan, 8 p.m., May 16. This 50^th annual Roethke reading will be in 130 Kane Hall, the Roethke Auditorium. Ryan has written several poetry collections, including “The Best of It: New and Selected Poems,” which won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for poetry. Her poems and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Yale Review and many other journals and anthologies. Free. Doors open at 7 p.m.

Tim Summers

The 2013 MFA Dance Concert will be through May 19 in the Meany Studio Theater.

MFA Dance Concert 2013, 7:30 p.m., through May 19. The UW Dance Program’s annual event includes choreography by seven master’s of fine arts candidates, in collaboration with masters students from the School of Drama and professional artists from the community. Advanced undergraduate dancers perform. In the Meany Studio Theater. Learn more online. Tickets are $10-$16, $2 more if purchased at the door. 206-543-4880.

Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo, 8 p.m., May 16-18. This popular all-male professional dance troupe performs the full range of the ballet and modern dance repertoire, but for laughs. Advance notes state, “The fact that men dance all the parts — heavy bodies delicately balancing on toes as swans, sylphs, water sprites, romantic princesses or angst-ridden Victorian ladies — enhances, rather than mocks, the spirit of dance as an art form.” In Meany Hall. Tickets are $51-$55 ($20 for students). Presented by the UW World Series. 206-543-4880.

Symposium: “The Mechanics of Beauty: A Question of Representation,” 10 a.m.-8 p.m., May 17. This year’s art history symposium theme springs from a Henry Art Gallery exhibition and carries it to other media and perspectives. There will be morning and afternoon sessions at the gallery, each with multiple presentations. Reception 6-8 p.m. in Molly’s Café. Free and open to the public.

The Brink Bash, 6-9 p.m., May 17. The Henry Art Gallery celebrates the six finalists for its 2013 Brink Award at the Hilliard’s Beer Taproom, 1550 NW 49^th St., Seattle. The winner will be announced on June 7. Tickets are $15.

Voice Division Recital, 7:30 p.m., May 20. UW voice students perform their spring quarter recital, including songs and arias by Handel, Mozart, Bernstein, Brahms, Schubert, Donizetti, Wolf, Debussy and others. Tickets are $5, cash or check at the door. Brechemin Auditorium. 206-685-8384.

Srivani Jade will perform in Meany Hall on May 21.

Ethnomusicology visiting artists recital, 7:30 p.m., May 21. The Ethnomusicology program wraps up its 50^th anniversary celebration with this concert in Meany Hall featuring performances by Srivani Jade, a Hindustani singer who specializes in the North Indian classical form of Khayal; and Thione Diope, a percussionist from Senegal, West Africa. Jade will be accompanied by Aarshin Karande (harmonium), Ravi Albright (tabla) and Priya Bondre (tanpura). Tickets are $20 ($12 for students). 206-543-4880.

Henry Art Gallery, “Off with the Corset!” 7-8:30 p.m., May 23. One of the museum’s periodic “Collection in Focus” events, a presentation by art history doctoral candidate Kimberly Hereford, who will discuss Victorian-era aesthetic dress using garments and historic photographs from the Henry’s collections. At the Henry’s Reed Collection Study Center. Free but RSVP is requested.

School of Art graduation exhibits:

• Several School of Art students will participate in the 2013 Undergraduate Research Symposium, 11 a.m.-5:45 p.m. May 17, in Mary Gates Hall. Free and open to the public.
• Painting and drawing students receiving master’s of fine arts degrees exhibit work in the Sand Point Gallery May 21-25. Reception 6-8 p.m., May 20.
• Three Dimensional Forum master’s of fine arts student Lacy Draper exhibits at the Ceramic and Metal Arts Building May 21-25. Reception 6 p.m., May 21.

• Coming next week: Tennessee Williams one-act plays from the School of Drama.

In the podcasts, Janes, professor in the UW Information School, explores the origin and evolving meaning of historical documents both famous and less known. UW Today presents these periodically, and all of the podcasts are available online.

In this installment, Janes discusses a political

Wikimedia Commons

“Qu’est-ce que le Tiers-État?” or What is the Third Estate? A pamphlet by Abbé Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès.

pamphlet written and published in Paris in 1789 by Abbé Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès, a “little-known and less-regarded provincial French priest.” Its title was “Qu’est-ce que le Tiers-État?” — or in English, “What is the Third Estate?” More elaborate by far than the trifold brochure we think of as pamphlets today, it was put out in three versions growing from 86 pages finally to 180.

Janes said he chose this as an installment in his series because of a long-held fascination with the French Revolution and wondering if there was any particular document “that lit the flame, so to speak.”

He said, “I came across this pamphlet (all 180 pages of it), which didn’t provoke the revolution so much as crystallize the political situation and help to lay out the structures that emerged from it.”

As Janes said in the podcast, the pamphlet presented widely discussed ideas in a compelling way at the right time and place — that the Third Estate was us all. “His central argument was that sovereignty should come from those who produce, who generate services and goods for the benefit of society.”

Janes grew interested, too, in the personal story of Sieyès — “his meandering and generally ineffectual career, with one towering moment in the writing and reception of the pamphlet,” he said. “And how could you not be struck by his careful calculation that 95 percent of the population was doing all the work and getting no representation?

Janes continues to research and record new installments. The podcasts also are available at the iSchool website and on iTunes, where the series has passed its 32,000th download. His presentation at Town Hall Seattle is available for viewing at UWTV.

Getty Images

Illustration of the Bull-leaping Fresco from the Great Palace at Knossos, Crete

DNA analysis is unearthing the origins of the Minoans, who some 5,000 years ago established the first advanced Bronze Age civilization in present-day Crete. The findings suggest they arose from an ancestral Neolithic population that had arrived in the region about 4,000 years earlier.

The British archeologist Sir Arthur Evans in the early 1900’s named the Minoans after a legendary Greek king, Minos. Based on similarities between Minoan artifacts and those from Egypt and Libya, Evans proposed that the Minoan civilization founders migrated into the area from North Africa. Since then, other archaeologists have suggested that the Minoans may have come from other regions, possibly Turkey, the Balkans, or the Middle East.

Now, a team of researchers in the United States and Greece has used mitochondrial DNA analysis of Minoan skeletal remains to determine the likely ancestors of these ancient people.

Mitochondria, the energy powerhouses of cells, contain their own DNA, or genetic code. Because mitochondrial DNA is passed down from mothers to their children via the human egg, it contains information about maternal ancestry.

Getty Images

One of the buildings in Knossos restored by British archeologist Sir Arthur Evans. Knossos was the major civil center of the Minoans.

Results published May 14 in Nature Communications suggest that the Minoan civilization arose from the population already living in Bronze Age Crete. The findings indicate that these people probably were descendents of the first humans to reach Crete about 9,000 years ago, and that they have the greatest genetic similarity with modern European populations.

Read the scientific paper.

Dr. George Stamatoyannopoulos, University of Washington professor of medicine and genome sciences, is the paper’s senior author. He believes that the data highlight the importance of DNA analysis as a tool for understanding human history.

“About 9,000 years ago,” he noted, “there was an extensive migration of Neolithic humans from the regions of Anatolia that today comprise parts of Turkey and the Middle East. At the same time, the first Neolithic inhabitants reached Crete.”

“Our mitochondrial DNA analysis shows that the Minoan’s strongest genetic relationships are with these Neolithic humans, as well as with ancient and modern Europeans,” he explained.

“These results suggest the Minoan civilization arose 5,000 years ago in Crete from an ancestral Neolithic population that had arrived in the region about 4,000 years earlier,” he said. “Our data suggest that the Neolithic population that gave rise to the Minoans also migrated into Europe and gave rise to modern European peoples.”

Stamatoyannopoulos, who directs the UW Markey Molecular Medicine Center and who formerly headed the UW Division of Medical Genetics in the Department of Medicine, added, “Genetic analyses are playing in increasingly important role and predicting and protecting human health. Our study underscores the importance of DNA not only in helping us to have healthier futures, but also to understand our past.”

Stamatoyannopoulos and his research team analyzed samples from 37 skeletons found in a cave in Crete’s Lassithi plateau and compared them with mitochondrial DNA sequences from 135 modern and ancient human populations. The Minoan samples revealed 21 distinct mitochondrial DNA variations, of which six were unique to the Minoans and 15 were shared with modern and ancient populations. None of the Minoans carried mitochondrial DNA variations characteristic of African populations.

Further analysis showed that the Minoans were only distantly related to Egyptian, Libyan, and other North African populations. The Minoan shared the greatest percentage of their mitochondrial DNA variation with European populations, especially those in Northern and Western Europe.

When plotted geographically, shared Minoan mitochondrial DNA variation was lowest in North Africa and increased progressively across the Middle East, Caucasus, Mediterranean islands, Southern Europe, and mainland Europe. The highest percentage of shared Minoan mitochondrial DNA variation was found with Neolithic populations from Southern Europe.

The analysis also showed a high degree of sharing with the current population of the Lassithi plateau and Greece. In fact, the maternal genetic information passed down through many generations of mitochondria is still present in modern-day residents of the Lassithi plateau.

Co-authors of the study are Jeffery R. Hughey of Hartnell College; Peristera Paschou of Democritus University of Thrace; Petros Drineas of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; Manolis Michalodimitrakis of the University of Crete; and Donald Mastropaolo, Dimitra M. Lotakis, Patrick A. Navas, and John A. Stamatoyannopoulos of the University of Washington. The study was partially supported by a grant from the National Institutes of Health (5T32 GM007454), as well as from private funding.

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Patrick Robinson

Boaters paddle on the Duwamish River while their dog wades in the mudflats.

In February, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed a plan to clean up the Duwamish. The new Health Impact Assessment details changes in health that may result from the cleanup. The report also makes recommendations about how to minimize health impacts, maximize health benefits, and reduce health disparities.

“Our findings demonstrate that EPA’s cleanup plan will significantly impact particular communities,” said Dr. William Daniell, an environmental and occupational epidemiologist and associate professor in the University of Washington School of Public Health.

More than a century of industrial and urban waste has contaminated the river with a mix of 41 toxic chemicals. In 2001, the EPA placed it on the Superfund National Priorities List.  Of the chemicals most concerning to human health, polychlorinated biphenyls, more commonly known as PCBs,  carcinogenic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, arsenic, dioxins and furans top the list. Exposure to these toxins comes from eating resident fish or shellfish and coming into contact with contaminated sediment.

The Health Impact Assessment report was produced by researchers at the UW School of Public Health in collaboration with community health researchers from Just Health Action and the Duwamish River Cleanup Coalition/Technical Advisory Group.

In reference to prior assessments done by the agency, Daniell said: “EPA studies focused on disease outcomes and generally fail to identify and evaluate broader health implications. We hope that they will incorporate our findings and recommendations.”

EPA’s proposed plan will reduce health risks, but it will not succeed in meeting the levels obtained in Puget Sound. Nor will resident seafood be safe to eat for subsistence fishers or for Native American tribal members.

The UW report outlines recommendations to protect the health of the Duwamish, Muckleshoot and Suquamish Tribes, who are affected by the cleanup. In particular, the researchers suggest EPA collaborate with these tribes to address their health concerns and restore their safe access to natural resources and fish.

Sarah Fish

William Daniell, a UW environmental and occupation health epidemiologist, helped develop the report on the health impact of the Duwamish waterway cleanup.

In terms of the impact on local residents, construction-related activities and rail and truck traffic could increase air and noise pollution if not properly managed.  In addition, the cleanup may cause gentrification and displacement of local residents. If done correctly, cleanup may generate new jobs and revitalize the South Park and Georgetown neighborhoods.

“Disadvantaged people who have more life stress, such as poverty, exposure to crime, and less leisure time, are more vulnerable to contamination, which can explain some health disparities” said Linn Gould, executive director of Just Health Action. Gould  was the primary author of the Duwamish Valley Cumulative Health Impacts Analysis. It showed that, compared to King County residents, people who live in the Duwamish Valley have a shorter life expectancy, higher mortality from lung cancer, more hospitalizations for children with asthma, higher rates of diabetes and cardiovascular disease. In addition, more Duwamish Vally residents lack health insurance.

“Residents and other people who use the river have real and valid concerns about how to best protect their health during and after cleanup,” said BJ Cummings, community health projects manager for the Duwamish River Cleanup Coalition/Technical Advisory Group, which serves as EPA’s Community Advisory Group for the Superfund site cleanup.

“This study helps identify ways we can improve the result, especially for those who are most affected,” Cummings said

A final version of the report, with findings and recommendations for mitigation measures, will be provided to the EPA in June.

Support for the health impact assessment was provided by a grant from the Health Impact Project, a collaboration of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and The Pew Charitable Trusts.

Read the full report.

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Pearce, who died April 20, had been with the Book Store since 1990.

His successor, Louise Little, previously the store’s director of human resources, said, “Bryan lived this last year with an incredible amount of focus and determination, not to mention courage. He was a teacher, mentor, friend, and colleague who inspired those of us who worked with him to be the best that we could be. To say he will be missed does not come close to describing the extreme sense of loss we are feeling.”

Pearce served on the boards of the UW Alumni Association, PCC Natural Markets, and University District Parking Associates. He also served on the board of the Independent College Bookstore Association and provided industry and business education throughout the college store industry.

Contributions in his memory may be made to the UW Foundation, Box 359505, Seattle Wa 98195-9505.  Checks should be made payable to the UW Foundation, with notation indicating the Bryan D. Pearce UBS Endowment.

Please RSVP for the event by May 14 to lgroom@uw.edu.

UW underwater robot team competes Saturday

This year’s challenges involve installing, operating and maintaining a cabled ocean observing system, similar to the one being installed by the UW this summer off the Washington and Oregon coasts.

The UW team will attempt to qualify for the international contest, as will Western Washington University and Skagit Valley’s 4H club. Middle- and high-school teams from Seattle, Tacoma, the Kitsap Peninsula and the San Juan Islands will compete and see who will advance to the next round.

The weekend event is one of 22 regional contests held in the U.S., Canada, Japan, China, Egypt and Scotland. Winners of the regional contests will advance to the 12^th annual international competition, which will take place June 20-22 in Federal Way.

Cecilia Bitz recognized for decade’s worth of work
Cecilia Bitz, a UW associate professor of atmospheric sciences, was awarded the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel Award. The $10,000 award honors early- to mid-career ocean scientists who have made significant and growing impacts during the previous decade.

Bitz’s research focuses on modeling climate change in snow- and ice-covered regions. She is an author on the last three assessments of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and in March she briefed U.S. Congress members on Arctic sea-ice loss. Bitz, a UW graduate with a master’s in physics and doctorate in atmospheric sciences, currently chairs the advisory board of the National Science Foundation’s Office of Polar Programs.

Greenwald, Kuhl among 25 honored as part of 25^th anniversary

As part of Association for Psychological Science ‘s 25th anniversary celebration, the board of directors has named 25 distinguished scientists – including UW’s Anthony Greenwald and Patricia Kuhl – who have had a profound impact on the field of psychological science over the past quarter century.

Greenwald is a psychology professor and Kuhl is co-director of UW’s Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences and a UW professor of speech and hearing sciences.

In announcing the awards, the association noted that Greenwald’s work with unconscious and automatic thought processes has changed “what had once been a pariah of psychological science — subliminal perception — and turned it into a respectable area of research and even a gold mine for others to excavate.”

The association wrote that Kuhl is “widely known” for research showing how babies’ ability to discriminate speech sounds becomes increasingly specific to their native language as they age and that social skills play a critical role in language learning.

Tim Summers

The 2013 MFA Dance Concert will be May 15-19 in the Meany Studio Theater.

The arts are everywhere you look on campus this week. There’s experimental music, a string quartet, photos about food, a health-minded art walk, student exhibits and the combined talents of the Dance Program and School of Drama present the annual MFA Dance Concert.

Also, the English department welcomes Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Kay Ryan for the 50th annual Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Reading. Over the years, this series has featured such greats as Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Penn Warren, Carolyn Kizer, Gary Snyder, W.S. Merwin, Seamus Heaney and Archibald MacLeish, plus the UW’s own Heather McHugh and Colleen McElroy. As one staff member aptly put it, “I’m sure Roethke’s ghost is grinning somewhere.”

“Dreamlogs: Artists’ Books by Genie Shenk,” through Sept. 27. Shenk records her dreams in visual form, from circular prints and collaged paper to adaptations of illustrations found in antique atlases and dictionaries. This exhibit, highlights Shenk’s extensive career. Allen Library south basement and north first floor bacony.

Photography: “Foodland Security,” through June 3. An exhibit by Ottawa-based photographer Barry Pottle about the challenge of Inuit in urban settings gaining access to “country food,” or food from the land. In the Allen Library’s north lobby. Presented by the Jackson School’s Canadian Studies Center.

Music of Today, 7:30 p.m., May 9. An evening of improvised experimental music in Meany Hall by School of Music faculty members Luke Bergman (bass), Richard Karpen (piano), Juan Pampin (electronics) and Cuong Vu (trumpet), with special guests Matt Ingalls (clarinet) and Greg Sinibaldi (saxophone). Presented by the Center for Digital Arts and Experimental Media. Tickets are $20 ($12 for students and seniors). 206-543-4880.

Joanne DePue

The Oceana Quartet will perform May 11 in Brechemin Auditorium.

Oceana Quartet, 7:30 p.m., May 11. Members of the School of Music’s scholarship string quartet for 2012-13 are Emily Choi and Rochelle Nguyen (violins), Romaric Pokorny (viola) and Sonja Myklebust (cello). The quartet will perform works by Joseph Haydn, Ludwig van Beethoven and Greg Sinibaldi, UW graduate student in jazz studies. Tickets are $5, cash or check at the door. 206-543-4880.

Faculty Recital: Carole Terry, organ, 2 p.m., May 12. The UW organ professor will perform works by Bach, Mendelssohn, Sweelinck, Franck, and Widor in a concert on the Flentrop Organ at St. Mark’s Cathedral, 1245 10^th Avenue E., in Seattle. The Flentrop Organ, as perhaps you know, contains 3,944 pipes ranging in size from less than 1 inch to 32 feet.Tickets are $15, cash or check at the door.

Hall Health Art Walk, 5:30-7 p.m., May 13. A public art walk showing 100-some works by UW students, alumni, faculty and staff. Some artists will be on hand to discuss  their work. “It’s much more than just making our newly remodeled building look nice,” said Mark Shaw, director of health promotion. “It has been shown that art in a clinic can promote patient healing.” In fact, he’ll speak on that subject at 6 p.m. in the center’s ground floor conference room. To learn more, contact Shaw at 206-616-8476 or mshaw@uw.edu.

• Hall Health call for art: Any size and media of work by UW students or employees will be considered with a limit of two digital submissions per artist to hhpccweb@uw.edu by June 14. $100 cash prizes for the top three juried works, to be hung in the 2013-14 school year.

Art by Jacob Johns, May 13 – July 12. Paintings, drawings and sculptures by Johns, a Native American artist, will be exhibited in the first floor gallery at the School of Social Work. There will be a reception from 12:30 to 2 p.m. May 15, in the gallery. Both show and reception are open to the public.

School of Art graduation exhibits, through May 23.

• Center for Digital Arts and Experimental Media students receiving bachelor of fine arts degrees exhibit in the Jacob Lawrence Gallery May 14-23. Reception 4-7 p.m., May 14.
• Three Dimensional Forum master’s of fine arts student Stephanie Klausing exhibit at the Ceramic and Metal Arts Building May 14-18. Reception 6 p.m., May 14.
• Several School of Art students will participate in the 2013 Undergraduate Research Symposium, 11 a.m.-5:45 p.m. May 17, in Mary Gates Hall. Free and open to the public.

MFA Dance Concert 2013, 7:30 p.m., May 15-19. The UW Dance Program’s annual event, in the Meany Studio Theater with choreography by seven master’s of fine arts candidates, in collaboration with masters students from the School of Drama and professional artists from the community. Advanced undergraduate dancers peform. Learn more online. Tickets are $10-$16, $2 more if purchased at the door. 206-543-4880.

Kay Ryan

Roethke Memorial Poetry Reading: Kay Ryan, 8 p.m., May 16. This 50^th annual Roethke reading will be in 130 Kane Hall, the Roethke Auditorium. Ryan has written several poetry collections, including “The Best of It: New and Selected Poems,” which won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for poetry. Her poems and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Yale Review and many other journals and anthologies. Yale Review editor J.D. McClatchy called her poems “compact, exhilarating affairs” and Ryan “an anomaly in today’s literary culture: as intense and elliptical as Dickinson, as buoyant and rueful as Frost.” Free. Doors open at 7 p.m.

“Washington’s housing market is clearly recovering,” said Glenn Crellin, the center’s associate director for research. “However, the pace of sales activity is being held back somewhat by the limited inventory of homes available for sale.”

Crellin said this shortage of listings brings “classic supply and demand pressure on prices, consistent with the observed price increases.”

Existing home sales during the opening quarter of 2013 increased 5.6 percent from the fourth quarter of 2012 and 14.7 percent from a year ago, reaching a seasonally adjusted annual sale rate of 88,440 homes, meaning that if the sales rate for the quarter continued for a year, that number of homes would be sold.

Quarter-to-quarter home sales increased in 28 of Washington’s 39 counties at seasonally adjusted annual rates. Some counties with a slower sales pace were urban markets such as King County, which entered recovery mode earlier than some smaller communities.

Crellin said he has revised the statistics for seasonally adjusted sales retroactively to 2004 to make the numbers consistent with other data sources such as the 2010 American Community Survey and recent data from county assessors. Given that recalibration, he said, the first quarter of 2013 actually saw the highest seasonally adjusted sales rate since the third quarter of 2007.

The statewide median home price was $237,600, which is 14.1 percent higher than this time in 2012. Despite the steep single-year price gain, this median was seasonally lower than the final two quarters of 2012. County-level medians ranged from a high of $412,500 in San Juan County to a low of $65,000 in rural Lincoln County.

Despite the increased median prices, continued declines in mortgage interest rates allowed improvement in the Housing Affordability Index. This measures the ability of median-income families to buy median-price homes, assuming a 20 percent down payment and 30-year mortgage at prevailing rates.

Crellin said the index shows that middle-income families, at an annual income of $73,150, could qualify for a home priced well above the statewide median. Only San Juan County had an all-buyer index below 100, meaning that a typical middle-income family there could not quite afford a median-priced home in the county. King County had the second-lowest affordability at 134.6, meaning the typical family could afford a home priced about 35 percent above the local median.

Meanwhile, the statewide first-time buyer index reached a record high of 104.4 during the first quarter, meaning a household earning 70 percent of the median household income could just afford a typical starter home.

Regionally, housing affordability varied widely. Statewide, the most affordable community was Lincoln County where the index stood at 481.5 (where 100 means the median income family can barely qualify for the median price home) to a low of 92.1 in San Juan County. For first-time buyers in metropolitan areas, Benton County was again the most affordable and King County the least affordable.

“The biggest current impediment to the housing market remains a shortage of homes available for sale,” Crellin said. “Construction activity is improving, but builders cannot improve availability overnight. Lenders need to release properties which have been foreclosed, but are still owned by the lender to allow the market to stabilize and prevent renewed bubble conditions.”

Mark Kitabayshi, president of Washington Realtors, which produces home sales statistics in partnership with the Runstad Center, said, “If prices continue to rise the expectation of higher mortgage rates by late 2014 will result in greater challenges to first-time buyers who wait.”

Each of the Runstad Center’s quarterly releases coincides with information from the National Association of Realtors regarding median home prices by metropolitan area. Sales, median home prices and affordability data for each of Washington’s 39 counties are available at the center’s website.

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For more information, contact Crellin at 206-685-8020 or crellin@uw.edu.

UW outcompetes PAC-12 schools

Among all the 270 colleges and universities competing in the grand champion category, UW ranked 83. In the category for food services organics, which considers the weight of food waste composted per person on campus, UW was 38^th. Considering the total weight of paper and mixed containers recycled on campus, the UW was 35^th. And considering the weight of paper and mixed containers recycle per person on campus, UW was 183^rd.

In addition to the national competition, UW Housing and Food Services sponsored a competition between UW residence halls. During the two month period, McMahon had the highest waste diversion of all residence halls (highest recycling and compost combined, lowest garbage). Poplar came in second for the highest diversion rate even though it has no dining facility.  McMahon also had the highest compost rate of all the residence halls, followed by Terry/Lander. Hansee had the highest recycling rate of all residence halls.

MIT engineering professor to speak on research, career journey
Many seasoned academics can point to circuitous paths and serendipitous events that led to a successful, perhaps unexpected career in research. One professor’s take on this journey is the topic of this year’s annual Dean Lytle Electrical Engineering Endowed Lecture Series.

Alan S. Willsky, professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will speak twice for the UW community. His first talk at 10:30 a.m. Tuesday, May 14, in the Electrical Engineering Building (room 105) will be a more technical lecture titled “Learning and Inference for Graphical and Hierarchical Models: A Personal Journey.”

Then on Wednesday, May 15, Willsky will address a general audience with his lecture “Building a Career on the Kindness of Others” at 3:30 p.m. in the Paul G. Allen Center‘s Microsoft Atrium.

Both talks are free and open to the public.

Willsky’s work on large-scale data fusion has been applied in areas such as object recognition, oil exploration, remote sensing in the ocean and groundwater hydrology.

The Dean Lytle lecture series is the electrical engineering department’s largest annual event, usually featuring speakers in the field of communications and signal processing. Lytle came to the UW in 1958 and served for 40 years as a professor of electrical engineering.

Pharmaceutical science association recognizes Rodney Ho
Rodney Ho, professor of pharmacy, will receive the Research Achievement Award in Biotechnology from the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists at its annual May meeting. The award, among the highest the association confers, recognizes the quality of his work and its impact. Ho studies the relationship between drug localization in tissues and cells and the links to disease progression. His nanotechnology and device innovations have helped make anti-infective agents, such as anti-HIV drugs, pain medications and cancer drugs, more potent with fewer side effects.

Herbert Blau

Blau’s six-decade theater and academic career was extraordinary for a Brooklyn-born plumber’s son who studied engineering as an undergraduate and attended not a single play while growing up.

He earned both a master’s degree in speech and drama and a doctorate in English and American literature from Stanford University. Though a longtime professional theater practitioner, Blau was ambivalent at best about academic theater departments.

A stage experimenter, Blau co-founded and co-directed the Actor’s Workshop of San Francisco from 1952 until 1965 with partner Julius Irving, overseeing a famous production of Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot” at California’s San Quentin State Prison.

He co-directed the Repertory Theater of Lincoln Center in New York until 1967. After a brief stint as provost of the then-new California Institute for the Arts, Blau founded another experimental theater group called Kraken, borrowing the name from a letter Herman Melville wrote to Nathanial Hawthorne.

At the UW, Blau was the Byron W. and Alice L. Lockwood Professor of the Humanities and professor emeritus of English and comparative literature, with an adjunct appointment in the School of Drama.

Blau was the author of dozens of articles and many books, notable among them being “The Impossible Theater: A Manifesto” in 1964, and “As If: An Autobiography (Volume 1),” in 2011.

He was annoyed by productions that played “Godot” for laughs, and preferred it when the audience didn’t know what to expect.

Interviewed by A&S Perspectives in 2011, Blau said, “I often say to my students, ‘When I know what I think, I couldn’t care less. It’s when I don’t know what I think, when I’m utterly baffled, that I really like it, because that’s when I have to keep thinking. It keeps the mind going.”

A memorial is being planned, possibly for June 22. Memorial contributions may be made to the Joseph and Yetta Blau Fund for Graduate Fellowships at the UW.

• Listen to a Katz Lecture Blau gave for the Simpson Center in 2004.
• Read Blau’s obituary in The New York Times.

The University of Washington in collaboration with Washington State University is developing an “academic redshirt” program that will bring dozens of low-income Washington state high school graduates to the two universities to study engineering in a five-year bachelor’s program.

The first year will help incoming freshmen acclimate to university-level courses and workload and prepare to major in an engineering discipline. The students will receive extra advising and a detailed course plan to help lay a strong foundation in engineering. At the UW, they will earn a spot in one of the school’s 10 engineering departments starting their second year.

Dawn Wiggin

Math Academy students from 2012 are shown after a workshop. The summer program at UW could be a feeder program for the new “academic redshirt” initiative.

“Engineering education needs to adapt to the tortoises, not just the hares,” said Eve Riskin, UW associate dean of engineering and program lead for the UW. “We’re talking about investing an extra year in what will hopefully be a 30-year engineering career.”

The initiative, called the Washington State Academic RedShirt in Engineering Program –STARS, for short – is funded by a National Science Foundation grant awarded May 8. Eight other colleges and universities also will receive grants to help increase retention of undergraduates in engineering and computer sciences.

Under the five-year grant, the UW and WSU will enroll 32 freshmen from Washington high schools each year for a total of 320 students after five years. Both universities will hire a person to oversee the program, and they hope to keep it running indefinitely. The first 64 students will begin this fall.

“More and more, we’re seeing students who are bright, but they’ve gone to a high school where the college preparation isn’t good,” said Bob Olsen, a WSU associate dean of engineering and lead of the redshirt program at WSU.

The program specifically targets low-income, motivated high school students in Washington state who are eligible for federal Pell Grants – financial aid based on family income and the cost of attending a university – or go to high schools where a high percentage of the students are on free or reduced-price lunches. Such students usually have a lower retention rate at the university level and are more likely to struggle in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

“Pell Grant students receive engineering degrees at significantly lower rates than non-Pell Grant students,” Riskin said. “This is unfortunate, because low-income students could most benefit from a lucrative engineering career.”

The Mathematics Academy, a summertime month-long intensive at the UW for high school students, could be a feeder for this new program in the state.

The UW will receive $970,000 over five years from the National Science Foundation to offer this program to incoming freshmen, and WSU will receive $700,000. Students in the UW cohort will get at least $2,000 in additional assistance from the College of Engineering as well as funding from traditional scholarship sources. These students will live in an engineering residential community.

The National Science Foundation partnered with Intel Corp. and General Electric Co. to fund the nine institutions for a total of $10 million in a grant called Graduate 10K+. Other funded schools include Cornell University, Syracuse University and California State University Monterey Bay. The Washington program is modeled after the Engineering GoldShirt Program at University of Colorado Boulder, now headed into its fifth year.

The UW will hire a full-time staff member to work with students in the five-year program. Dawn Wiggin and Scott Winter, associate directors in engineering’s student academic services, are collaborators.

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For more information, contact Riskin at riskin@uw.edu or 206-685-2313. She is traveling on Wednesday, May 8, but will be reachable by email.

Clare McLean

Family physician Dr. Alisa Hideg is checked by a UW Medical Center nurse after receiving her shots in a UW tumor vaccine trial. Hideg was diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer in 2011.

In June 2011 Dr. Alisa Hideg was a 42-year-old mother and family physician in the prime of her career practicing at Group Health in Spokane when she was diagnosed with estrogen and progesterone receptor negative/HER 2 positive breast cancer.

Breast cancer in young, premenopausal women is usually aggressive. So even after chemotherapy, a double mastectomy, and radiation, with her cancer in remission, Hideg wasn’t ready to take it easy. Both the type of breast cancer and the fact that it happened at a young age made her chances of relapse higher. This knowledge led her to experimental trials, and to the UW’s Tumor Vaccine Group.

Hideg found the UW Tumor Vaccine Group on the National Institutes of Health clinical trials website, ClinicalTrials.gov. She had heard about a trial at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelmen School of Medicine, where the use of gene-transfer therapy converted the patients’ own immune cells into weapons aimed at cancerous tumors. All 12 patients had advanced stage leukemia; nine of the 12 responded positively to the treatment, and two of the first three patients treated have been in remission for two full years.  The Perlelmen results encouraged her to seek out a UW study to see if she qualified.

The UW Tumor Vaccine Group currently offers clinical trials for patients with breast, ovarian or colon cancer. Hideg is in a very desirable trial with very specific criteria, and being approved to participate wasn’t easy. The goal of the clinical trial is to allow the patient to make and keep enough antibodies to quash any future HER-2 expressing breast cancer.

Dr. Nora Disis, UW professor of medicine and principal investigator of the study, explains how the vaccine may work.

“The vaccine is designed to stimulate a particular cell of the immune system, the T cell, to recognize the HER2 protein (that causes cancer),” Disis said. “If effective immunity is generated, the T cell activated by the vaccine should be able to hunt out tumor cells wherever they may be and destroy them.  This particular study is testing the use of an immune stimulator, ampligen, which may be able to activate the T cells more effectively than other agents we have used before.“

Clare McLean

The injection site for the tumor vaccine being tested raises four small dots on Dr. Hideg’s forearm.

Last month, Hideg received a vaccine dose at UW Medical Center. The process is gentle — a series of four small injections that make a little grid of dots on the upper arm — but the body’s response can be angry. Hideg experienced flu-like symptoms after the first visit. The reaction  may actually be a promising sign that her body is responding to the vaccine.

She’s positive and funny in the face of serious medicine. She tweets pictures of her experience to a network of fans and writes about her cancer in Spokane’s daily newspaper, the Spokesman-Review. In addition to being a doctor, patient and full-time mother, Hideg recently went through a series of intense interviews to add “teacher” to her resume. She has become a clinical faculty member to teach second-year UW medical students at the Spokane WWAMI site.  WWAMI is a regionalized medical education program that covers Washington, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana and Idaho.

“Teaching has always been a part of my clinical practice,” Hideg said. “I have taught medical students, residents and others in my clinic since I finished my own training. This experience has reminded me how important teaching can be and how much I enjoy passing on what I have learned as a physician, a parent, and as a patient. Whether the vaccine is effective for me or not, I am grateful for the opportunity to participate in the trial and help move the science forward. I believe in the potential of vaccine therapy for cancer and perhaps for other diseases also and I want a future with more options for my daughter and for others.”

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The UW team’s exploits in eight-oar rowing are the stirring centerpiece of “The Boys in the Boat,” a new book (to be published June 4) that’s equal parts sports saga and history.

Author Daniel James Brown largely tells the story through the eyes of Joe Rantz, a Western Washington neighbor who was dying of congestive heart failure when he related the amazing tale to Brown.

In just getting to the UW, Rantz had to overcome obstacles in life – both physical and emotional – that few could even imagine, let alone survive. At the age of 15, at the dawn of the Great Depression, he stood alone in the rain and watched his father, stepmother and younger siblings drive away, abandoning their farm – and him – on the Olympic Peninsula.

For Rantz, rowing was yet another challenge, but one that let him find a place in the world that was all his.

The story of how he came together with eight other students – Gordon Adam, Chuck Day, Donald Hume, George “Shorty” Hunt, Jim “Stub” McMillan, Roger Morris, John White Jr. and coxswain Robert Moch – reflects a deep camaraderie, born of strong trust and determination.

University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections, UWC0599

This photo from the 1936 Olympic Games shows the University of Washington eight-oar boat (top) crossing the finish line just ahead of second-place Italy and third-place Germany.

Brown draws on the boys’ diaries, scrapbooks, journals, photographs and personal memories to weave the tale of how these sons of farmers, loggers, fishermen and shipyard workers found themselves rowing together. They were no strangers to hard physical labor themselves – a few of them, including Rantz, spent summer weeks helping build the mammoth Grand Coulee Dam on the Columbia River in eastern Washington.

During the school year, led by stoic coach Al Ulbrickson, they trained for long hours on Lake Washington in a shell dubbed “Husky Clipper,” designed and built by the legendary George Pocock.

Vince Stricherz

The Husky Clipper, which the UW eight-oar team rowed to the 1936 national championship and Olympic gold medal, hangs in the Conibear Shellhouse on Lake Washington.

In the dramatic events of 1936, the team faced down archrival California and formidable challengers such as Cornell, Navy and Penn to claim the national title on the Hudson River in Poughkeepsie, N.Y.

Two weeks later the team rowed to victory over Cal, Penn and the New York Athletic Club to secure the Olympic berth. Or so it seemed.

But it turned out that the U.S. Olympic Committee could not afford to pay for the team’s trip to Germany and demanded that the UW crew raise $5,000 in a week or else the second-place Penn team would go to the Olympics. Within two days the folks back home had raised the cash to truly lock down the Olympic berth.

Brown seamlessly sets the events in the historic context of the people and places of the Depression and the rise of the Third Reich. There are samples of the sometimes-tense relationship between Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda minister, and renowned German filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl, who went to great lengths to document the Olympic Games as a Nazi showcase.

Riefenstahl captured exciting footage as the Husky Clipper, in the far outside lane, came from behind to defeat Italy and Germany – barely five years before the United States would be at war with those two nations.

German filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl recorded the eight-oar race in which the UW team won the Olympic gold medal. It begins at about 1:10 of this video, following the four-oar competition.

The taut narrative in the book’s last 50 pages describes the tension of the eight-oar gold medal race, yet another example of unexpected hardship for the UW team to overcome.

The book, which has been likened to “Seabiscuit” and “Chariots of Fire,” will be launched officially at 6:30 p.m. June 4 at University Book Store, 4326 University Way. The Weinstein Co. has also begun development of a script for a film adaptation.

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Braester is a scholar of modern literary and visual culture, with a special interest in China from 1949 to the present. During his tenure as a Guggenheim fellow, Braester will work on three book projects. “Cinephilia Besieged: Film, National History, and Global Consciousness in the People’s Republic of China” traces the development of debates on film in the republic since 1949. “Screen City: Beijing and the Culture of Emergence” explores how cities, and Beijing in particular, are fashioned in new media as emerging environments. “Zhang Yimou: The Director and His Films” will offer the first book-length introduction in English to the now-famous director.

Daniel, holder of the Joan and Richard Komen Endowed Chair, studies the control and dynamics of movement in biology using concepts from neuroscience, engineering and mathematics. He’s previously been named a MacArthur Fellow and received the UW awards of excellence for teaching and graduate mentor. During his tenure as a Guggenheim fellow he will be working on three projects. One will be an online laboratory manual for “animal engineering,” which will complement his educational and research interests in biomechanics.  The other is the development of open source computational codes for understanding the molecular basis of force generation in muscle.

Each year UW undergraduates dedicate many hours in the community. In the 2011-12 school year, for example, more than 5,900 UW students devoted 556,340 hours participating in university-sponsored activities. At the celebration, students will share their experiences on behalf of environmental sustainability, unemployment law, addiction treatment methods, early literacy, healthcare and more.

Jumpstart

UW undergraduate Masooda Zarifi leads preschoolers in a science activity using flashlights, shadows and reflections.

Ric Robinson, a professor of biological structure, said such student involvement advances critical-thinking skills. Robinson mentors UW undergraduate Kayla Ritchie who publishes a quarterly student-run neuroscience journal “Grey Matters.”

“Kayla is already exhibiting and learning the day-to-day leadership and problem-solving skills necessary to make ambitious real world projects succeed,” he said.

The spring celebration is sponsored by the Carlson Leadership and Public Service Center, Jumpstart, the Pipeline Project and the Mary Gates Endowment for Students. This year marks the 15^th and 10^th anniversaries respectively of the Pipeline Project and Jumpstart. The two have connected more than 12,000 undergraduates with programs for preschool and K-12 youngsters.

UW alum Gloria Johnston was one such student. As an undergraduate she devoted hundreds of hours to Jumpstart, an early literacy program that connects college students as tutors and mentors with preschool children from low-income communities.

“My Jumpstart experience was the foundation for my interest in direct service and community involvement,” she says.

The celebration will include student posters, a talk by author, educator, and civic entrepreneur Eric Liu about  the impact of student service on our community and recognition of  this year’s Edward E. Carlson Leadership Awardee, Yuriana Garcia, for her efforts to educate undocumented students about options to pay for college.

After the program, and for the first time, more than 40 student presenters will share their stories in small “breakout sessions.”

May is bike to campus month

Math at top speed: Exploding drag racing myths
Elementary mathematical frameworks for studying old and new drag racing beliefs – validating some and debunking others – is the subject of this quarter’s MathAcrossCampus lecture, 3:30-4:30 p.m. Friday, May 3, in 220 Kane Hall. Richard Tapia, mathematician at Rice University, will include a historical account of the development of drag racing with videos and pictures depicting his involvement in the early days of the sport. A reception follows the talk.

UW recognized for campus tree management
For the third year in a row, the UW is on the Tree Campus USA list in recognition of excellence in campus tree management by the Arbor Day Foundation, a nonprofit with more than a million members. The university achieved the title by maintaining a tree advisory committee, a campus tree-care plan, dedicated annual expenditures toward trees, an Arbor Day observance and student service-learning projects.

UW Facilities Services

Draining the fountain gives workers a chance to patch the liner.

UW Facilities Services workers began erecting fencing Thursday (May 2) around Drumheller Fountain, half of the photogenic “the fountain and the mountain” view down Rainier Vista. Work is scheduled to be completed May 31 so Drumheller should be back in operation in plenty of time for graduation picture taking.

Every two years the UW drains away the algae-laden water revealing cell phones, sunglasses, cameras and other debris at the bottom. Once the pond has been fully drained and cleaned, the pond liner will be inspected to ensure its integrity and the mechanical parts of the fountain and lights will be examined, according to information from Facilities Services.

After the pond is refilled with fresh water the pumping systems will be tested and adjusted.

“Although this temporary situation may seem unsightly, this routine maintenance will ensure the longevity of this campus feature that so many enjoy visiting,” said Howard Nakase, manager of grounds operations.

Jones Sanchez

A passer-by beholds “Sanctum” as it beholds him. The work will remain at the Henry Art Gallery until November 2015.

You could walk by the new work of art at the Henry Art Gallery without really noticing it — but it may notice you. “Sanctum” by James Coupe and Juan Pampin leads a busy week in UW arts events as it begins a two-year-plus run. The piece uses Facebook information given with permission to challenge our ideas of privacy and public spaces.

Also, faculty from the Center for Digital and Experimental Media offer an evening of improvised music, the UW World Series brings visitors to campus and the School of Music holds a three-day celebration of the life and work of Charles Ives.

Painting and Drawing BFA Show, April 30 – May 10. A graduation exhibit for students receiving Bachelor of Fine Art degrees from the Painting and Drawing Program, in the Jacob Lawrence Gallery. Gallery hours are normally noon to 4 p.m., Wednesday through Saturday.

Lecture-recital, Stuart Isacoff: “The American Piano,” 7:30 p.m., May 2. Isacoff, a concert pianist, tells the story of the piano as it unfolded both in Europe and in a young America. In Brechemin Auditorium. Tickets are $15, cash or check at the door. 206-685-8384.

“A Festival of Ives,” School of Music, May 6-8. A three-day series of events honoring the life and music of Charles Ives with performances, lecture, talks and a master class, all open to the public. Advance notes state Ives has been called “a musical genius, an eccentric dreamer, the father of American music, a great Yankee maverick, fiercely democratic and a difficult crank,” inspiring musicians, listeners and scholars more than a half-century after his death. Ticket prices vary; see schedule online. Highlights include:

• Orchestral arrangements of Ives songs, as well as music by Aaron Copland, Samuel Barber and Jean Sibelius, by the UW Symphony with guest vocalist William Sharp, 7:30 p.m., May 6, in Meany Hall.
• Recital by pianist Christina Valdés with faculty artists Melia Watras (viola) and Donna Shin (flute) and readings from essays by Ives and others he inspired, 7:30 p.m., May 7, in Brechemin Auditorium.
• Concert: Songs and Chamber Music. A concert in two parts with songs by Ives and commentary, 7:30 p.m., May 8, in Brechemin Auditorium.

“Sanctum,” May 4 – Nov. 4, 2015. A new public art work installed on the façade of the Henry Art Gallery by James Coupe and Juan Pampin, associate professors in the Center for Digital Arts and Experimental Media. The two write, “As people approach, they are tracked, analyzed and recorded by surveillance cameras programmed to identify people according to their age and gender. As they get closer, the voices become clearer, telling a story composed from demographically-appropriate Facebook status updates.

“In an era of status updates, Tweets and check-ins, the geography of public, shared spaces needs to be reconsidered, along with our expectations of privacy in them. … ‘Sanctum’ seeks to investigate the narrative potential of social media while raising important and provocative questions about the conflicting imperatives emerging in our culture as we promote and embrace ever-more-intrusive electronic media, while still cherishing traditional notions of privacy.”

Coupe and Pampin invite people to donate their Facebook status updates to the work. Learn more and watch a video at the Sanctum website.

Three-D Forum student exhibit, May 7 – 11. Graduation exhibition by Master of Fine Arts student Meg Hartwig in the Ceramic Arts Building. Gallery hours are noon to 6 p.m. Wednesday through Friday and Saturday by appointment. Reception 6 p.m. May 7.

Film: “The Guardian of the Past,” 7 p.m., May 7. A documentary by Polish director Malgorzata Potocka telling the story of Borys Voznytsky, director of the Lviv National Art Gallery, who fought to preserve thousands of sacred art pieces hidden at a Ukranian monastery. The film will be shown in Room 120 of the Communications Building and introduced by Marek Wieczorek, UW associate professor of art history, with a reception to follow. Learn more online.

Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, 7:30 p.m., May 7. One of 11 resident arts organizations at New York’s Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, this group draws more people to chamber music than any other organization of its kind. Famed cellist David Finckel of the Emerson String Quartet and pianist Wu Han are the group’s artistic directors.Tickets are $32-$38 with up to two free youth tickets with the purchase of a regular price ticket. Presented by the UW World Series.

Tara McMullen

Jon Kimura Parker

Pianist Jon Kimura Parker, 7:30 p.m., May 8. Parker, among today’s most sought-after pianists, has performed for Queen Elizabeth II and the prime ministers of Canada and Japan. This program in Meany Hall will feature his own transcription of Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring.” Tickets are $40-$44 ($20 for students) with up to two free youth tickets with the purchase of a regular price ticket. Presented by the UW World Series. 206-543-4880.

Exhibit: “Artist’s Choice,” May 9 – June 8. School of Art staff member Kim Van Someren will join alumni in this show celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Seattle Art Museum Gallery, 1220 Third Ave. Reception is 5-7 p.m., May 9. 206-343-1101.

Music of Today: Digital Arts and Experimental Media, 7:30 p.m., May 9. An evening of improvised experimental music by School of Music faculty members Luke Bergman (bass), Richard Karpen (piano), Juan Pampin (electronics), and Cuong Vu (trumpet), with special guests Matt Ingalls (clarinet) and Greg Sinibaldi (saxophone). Tickets $10-$15, 206-543-4880.

The winners will be honored 3:30-4:30 p.m., June 13, at a ceremony in Meany Hall for the campus and general public.

Being awarded for the first time this year is the Distinguished Alumni Veteran Award in recognition of community service and civic engagement by a UW alum who is a veteran. The first recipient is Rear Adm. Herbert Bridge, U.S. Navy, retired, who graduated from the UW in ’47.

The other 2013 recipients are:

Distinguished Staff Award

• Sarah Jackins, exercise training center, UW Medical Center
• Carol Kummet, social work
• Robert Lubin, housing and food services
• Genome sciences tech team: James Cobb, Dale A. Hubler, Brian McNally, Roy Obenchain, Alexander Safir, Skylar Thompson, Charles Winston, Elizabeth Young, genome sciences
• Partners PrEP study team: Mira Emmanuel-Ogier, Harald Haugen, Ting Hong, Lara Kidoguchi, Meighan Krows, Susan Morrison, Dana Panteleeff, Katherine Thomas, global health

David B. Thorud Leadership Award

• Faculty award: Nancy Alarcon, speech and hearing sciences
• Staff award: Susan Terry, UW Career Center

Distinguished Librarian Award
Glenda Pearson, microforms and newspapers collection, University Libraries

Alumni Association Distinguished Service Award
Bryan Pearce (posthumous award)

Distinguished Retiree Excellence in Community Service Award
Richard Simkins, undergraduate academic advising

Distinguished Teaching Award

• Ronald Tilden, business, UW Bothell
• Carolyn West, interdisciplinary arts and sciences, UW Tacoma
• Holly Barker, anthropology
• John Manchak, philosophy
• Jim Pfaendtner, chemical engineering
• André Punt, aquatic and fishery sciences
• Phillip Thurtle, comparative history of ideas

Excellence in Teaching Award

• Deepa Bhandaru, political science
• Chi Hou Lei, mechanical engineering

Distinguished Contributions to Lifelong Learning Award
James DeLong, social work

S. Sterling Munro Public Service Teaching Award
Eleanor Bond, biobehavioral nursing and health systems

University Faculty Lecture Award
Stephen Gloyd, global health and health services

Marsha L. Landolt Distinguished Graduate Mentor Award
Fred Rieke, physiology and biophysics

Outstanding Public Service Award
Katherine Beckett, sociology, and law, societies and justice

Alumnus Summa Laude Dignatus
William H. Gates, ’50

President’s Medal
To be announced in mid-May

Lidstrom is vice provost for research and a professor of chemical engineering and microbiology. Her research focuses on developing environmentally friendly and economically viable alternatives to chemical fuels. Lidstrom was elected to the Washington State Academy of Sciences in 2011. She also is a fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Lidstrom has been at the UW twice, from 1978 to 1985 and again since 1996. She received her bachelor’s in microbiology from Oregon State University and her master’s and doctorate in bacteriology from the University of Wisconsin.

Kaplan is a professor of physics and the director of the UW’s Institute of Nuclear Theory. He did his undergraduate work at Stanford University and earned a doctorate in physics from Harvard University in 1985. He joined the UW faculty in 1994 and became director of the Institute for Nuclear Theory in 2006. Kaplan’s research focuses on the application of quantum field theory to the strong interaction, lattice field theory, cosmology and physics beyond the Standard Model of particle physics. The Standard Model is the well-tested theory of the strong, weak and electromagnetic interactions that predicted the existence of the Higgs boson, which was discovered last year at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland.

The researchers screened 35 veterans with blast injuries. They found that 42 percent had irregular hormone levels indicative of hypopituitarism, a condition that can often be controlled by replacing the deficient hormones.

“This could be a largely missed opportunity for successful treatment,” said Charles W. Wilkinson, study leader and a UW research associate professor in psychiatry and behavioral sciences.

John McCall/U.S. Marine Corps

Marines assigned to a route clearance platoon destroy IEDs discovered near Sangin, Afghanistan.

He said up to 20 percent of veterans returning from Afghanistan and Iraq have experienced at least one blast concussion. He said many of these veterans have a problem so under-recognized that even military physicians may fail to look for it.

Results from the study, “Prevalence of chronic hypopituitarism after blast concussion” by Wilkinson, Elizabeth A. Colasurdo, Kathleen F. Pagulayan, Jane B. Shofer, and Elaine R. Peskind, were presented at the Experimental Biology 2013 Meeting April 22 in Boston. The results were published in Frontiers in Neurotrauma last year, but the presentation included new data as well and the results be published again.

Wilkinson said studies in the past few years have suggested that 25 to 50 percent of people who suffer traumatic brain injuries later have low pituitary hormone levels — a decrease in the concentrations of at least one of eight hormones produced by the pituitary, a gland beneath the base of the brain.

Wilkinson said these studies focused on head injuries that civilians are more likely to receive, such as an automobile accident. He and his team decided to investigate whether veterans returning from Afghanistan and Iraq who suffer blast injuries show a similar frequency of hypopituitarism.

They collected blood samples from 35 veterans diagnosed with a blast concussion about a year prior — enough time for hormone changes to become evident. They then did a screen to compare blood concentrations of the eight hormones produced by the pituitary with the documented normal levels of these hormones.

The researchers found that about 42 percent of these veterans showed abnormally low levels of at least one of these hormones. The most common low hormone was human growth hormone, which can cause behavioral and cognitive symptoms similar to PTSD and depression. Low levels can also cause increases in blood lipids and changes in metabolism and blood pressure that can raise the risk of heart attack and stroke. The second most common problem was hypogonadism, changes in sexual hormones that can affect body composition and sexual function.

The tiny, pendulous gland shown in blue is the pituitary.

The researchers saw that some veterans had abnormal levels of vasopressin and oxytocin. Low levels of these hormones make it harder for people to bond with others and are linked to other mental health issues. Problems with these hormone levels, in addition to growth hormone, could contribute to difficulties with personal relationships, Wilkinson said.

He said the prevalence of hypopituitarism in the general population is estimated at 0.03 percent, a value far lower than that found in veterans with blast concussions. Therefore, more research is needed into victims of blast concussions.

“We’re screening hormone levels, not diagnosing definite disorders in this study,” he said. “These individuals would still need a clinical evaluation.” But, he said, if even 10 percent of these veterans have hypopituitarism, it’s a problem that physicians should be aware of.

The Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs supported the study.

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Eggers, UW professor emeritus of computer science and engineering, is co-inventor of a computer processing technology that makes more efficient use of a chip’s computing power. The technology changed industry standards and was adopted by Intel, IBM and others. Eggers is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a fellow with the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She has received a number of awards since joining the UW in 1989.

Moon, a professor of pharmacology, is a leader in regenerative medicine research. He began studying the cell signals that transform tadpoles into frogs, later concentrating on how alterations in these Wnt signaling networks, as they are called, lead to cancer, bone density disorders and other human diseases.   More recently, his lab has been enhancing this signaling to accelerate tissue repair and prod stem cells to turn into progenitors for various blood cell types.   He hopes to modulate Wnt signaling to design therapies against deadly cancers, such as melanoma, and to improve recovery from brain injuries and other neurological damage.

This year 198 people were elected to the academy including winners of the Nobel Prize, National Medal of Science, Lasker Award, Pulitzer Prize and MacArthur fellowships as well as  Grammy, Emmy, Academy and Tony awards.

Joanne DePue

The UW Wind Ensemble will perform with the UW Symphonic Band April 29 in Meany Hall.

There’s a lot to see and hear on campus as the weather warms up to resemble the season. Bachelor of Fine Arts students exhibit their art, School of Music students play jazz with famous guests and the Burke invites all for a celebration of Salish Coast art.

Also, the School of Music’s Wind Ensemble and Symphonic Band unite for an evening of music featuring a tuba concerto, of course.

Improvised Music Project’s IMPfest V, through April 27. This annual student-organized festival pairs local musicians with some of the world’s top performers in a series of concerts at the School of Music and the Chapel Performance Space in Seattle’s Wallingford neighborhood. Details, schedule online.

Play: “Once Upon a Time 6X in the West,” 7:30 p.m., through April 28.  Director Jeffrey Fracé views The Western through a series of theatrical lenses iconic in their own right, all created by the ensemble of actors. The play is divided into six sections, each devoted to a theater director. Presented by the School of Drama in the Floyd and Delores Jones Playhouse. 2 p.m. matinee April 28. Tickets are $10-$20.

Ethnomusicology Ensemble Concert, 7:30 p.m., April 26. A concert by members of the Ethnomusicology Students Association in Brechemin Auditorium. Tickets are $5 at the door.

Armstrong Creative

“First Woman,” by Luke Marston. Salish Coast art will be featured April 27 and 28 at the Burke Museum.

At the Burke: Salish Coast art is featured 11 a.m.-3 p.m. April 27-28. Burke Trivia Night is 8 p.m. May 2, at the College Inn Pub. Admission is free the first Thursday of each month at the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture.

Wind Ensemble and Symphonic Band, “Constructions,” 7:30 p.m., April 29. The two groups perform works by Alan Hovhaness, Percy Grainger, Vincent Persichetti and others. Seattle Symphony principal tuba and School of Music faculty artist Christopher Olka joins the Wind Ensemble for Anthony Plog’s tuba concerto, “Three Miniatures.” In Meany Hall. Tickets $10-$15. 206-543-4880.

Painting and Drawing BFA Show, April 30 – May 10. A graduation exhibit for students receiving Bachelor of Fine Art degrees from the Painting and Drawing Program, in the Jacob Lawrence Gallery. Reception 4-8 p.m. April 30, in the gallery. Gallery hours are normally noon to 4 p.m., Wednesday through Saturday.

Stuart Isacoff

Lecture-recital, Stuart Isacoff: “The American Piano,” 7:30 p.m., May 2. Isacoff, a concert pianist, tells the story of the piano as it unfolded both in Europe and in a young America. Musical examples will include the first extant pieces written for the piano as well as music by C.P.E. Bach, Beethoven, Jerry Lee Lewis, Couperin, Ravel, Debussy, Bill Evans, Duke Ellington, Prokofiev, Chopin, Gershwin and others. In Brechemin Auditorium. Tickets are $15, cash or check at the door. 206-685-8384.

• Coming next week: Juan Pampin, James Coupe and “Sanctum” at the Henry Art Gallery.