Skip to content

If you are like many Americans, somewhere in the next week you’ll draw up a list of New Year’s resolutions. You’ll pledge to start on a diet, vow to exercise three times a week, promise to stop smoking or maybe try to cut back on your alcohol consumption. Then you’ll spend hours wondering how you can keep your resolutions and why you made them in the first place. But those resolutions aren’t necessarily doomed to fail.

Two University of Washington astronomy professors and two UW graduate students were among dozens of scientists on two teams who this year showed that the expansion of the universe is actually accelerating, a discovery lauded by the journal “Science” in its Dec. 18 edition as the most important science advance of the year.

Recent satellite measurements by University of Washington seismologists indicate the “locked zone” between the Juan de Fuca and North America plates is wider in the Seattle area than previously believed. That means the Puget Sound lowlands are likely to experience significantly greater motion during a subduction-zone earthquake than scientists earlier thought.

Science is still a long way from understanding why some people are more prone to alcoholism and alcohol abuse than others, but University of Washington researchers have discovered that concentrations of a neurotransmitter in the brains of mice are directly related to alcohol consumption and resistance to the sedative effects of alcohol.

Adopting a child can bring special joys as well as special challenges. Unique medical, social and developmental issues arise in both domestic and international adoptions. To help parents prepare and care for the special needs of adopted children, University of Washington Medical Center has established the Center for Adoption Medicine at the Pediatric Care Center.

The University of Washington has received notification from the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research that it will receive $3.5 million for a Multiple Sclerosis (MS) Research and Training Center, renewable every five years.

A team of American and British researchers studying 2-year-old twins has found that genetics, not the environment, plays the major role in the delayed acquisition of language among children who are having the most difficulty learning to speak.

David Salesin’s resume keeps getting longer as he makes room for his ever-expanding list of honors and awards. The latest addition comes from the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education, which has named Salesin the 1998-99 Washington Professor of the Year.

Educational institutions must work more closely with government and industry if they are to succeed in the increasingly competitive global environment. That is the motivation behind the Pacific Northwest Regional Roundtable for Enhancing Engineering and Technology Education, which will hold its first meeting from 1 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday, Oct. 19, at the University of Washington Husky Union Building.

Grateful for the excellent care he received in 1994 at Harborview Medical Center after a serious foot injury, a California man has donated $500,000 to the University of Washington School of Medicine to create an endowed professorship in the Department of Orthopaedics.

Derek Bok, former president of Harvard University and the co-author of a book that is the most comprehensive analysis of the effects of racial preferences in higher education, will be a guest speaker at the University of Washington Board of Regents Academic and Student Affairs Committee meeting, 8:30 a.m. Friday, Oct. 16 in the Walker-Ames Room.