Touching may reduce spider fear, study shows

A new study of the use of virtual reality to treat spider phobia that was released, appropriately enough, on Halloween, indicates that touching the fuzzy creepy-crawlers can make the therapy twice as effective.

Students help town control destiny

Thirty picket-wielding protesters shouted at the loggers cutting down a forest of mature spruce trees.

Let’s ‘Dance’: Staffer’s new CD offers healing messages

It’s as if Michael Stern listened to some of his own advice.

Health Sciences News Briefs

Genome ethics
“Understanding the Human Genome: Ethical Challenges for Public Health Policy” is a one-day continuing education course organized by the Northwest Center for Occupational Health & Safety and co-sponsored by several other UW programs.

UW Medicine Style Guide now online with logos

An online Style Guide is now available to assist with using the new UW Medicine brand and logos.

Project uses Internet as tool for diabetes management

Seeking to realize the full potential of the emerging field of e-health – the use of interactive technologies to improve health behavior and disease management –the UW School of Medicine is one of 18 sites to have been awarded a grant by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation through its Health e-Technologies Initiative national program.

Researchers join forces to develop HIV vaccine

A team of medical researchers from three Seattle research facilities recently received a grant of over $15 million from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) to continue the hunt for vaccines against human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), the causative agent of AIDS.

One of five centers for bariatric surgery research here

The UW has been designated as one of five centers nationwide to participate in the National Institutes of Health Bariatric Surgery Clinical Research Consortium.

Notices

Academic Opportunities

Grant Applications Available

The Institute for Ethnic Studies in the United States (IESUS) invites applications from University of Washington faculty members who are engaged in or are beginning projects on ethnic issues in the United States.

Vegas alumni seek campus speakers

Visiting Las Vegas anytime soon? If so, the UW Alumni Association in that city is interested in talking to you.

Etc.

DIET GURU: When Mother Earth News needed a dietitian to talk about good nutrition in their Guide to Real Health, they turned to Judy Simon, a staffer at UWMC Roosevelt.

Voting for health, safety posts now under way in campus units

Voting for elected representatives to the UW organizational Health and Safety Committees is now in progress.

Fall quarter enrollment up; minority count increases

The UW’s Seattle campus enrollment for autumn quarter 2003 is 39,136, including 1,652 non-matriculated students (those who are not seeking degrees) enrolled in credit courses through University Educational Outreach.

Scientists learn more about January 1700 quake, deadly tsunami

Evidence has mounted for nearly 20 years that a great earthquake ripped the seafloor off the Washington coast in 1700, long before there were any written records in the region.

First Walker-Ames Lecture in Tacoma Nov. 13

Noted historian and professor Robin Kelley of Columbia University will discuss black history at 7 p.

Quake affected most area businesses

Ninety percent of the businesses in the central Puget Sound region that responded to an online and telephone survey suffered damage or other adverse impacts from the 2001 Nisqually earthquake, according to a report prepared by UW researchers for the departments of emergency management in Pierce and King counties.

Flexing the schedule: Survey shows interest in alternative work hours

New survey shows high staff interest
in alternative forms of work hours

Three from UW earn AAAS honor

Meldrum, Jenekhe, Knopp celebrated for distinguished careers

November 5, 2003

UW architecture program gives youth a voice on Seattle waterfront

Seattle’s post-Viaduct waterfront should provide an outdoor educational environment for studying history, culture and ecology — as well as a skateboard park. So say high school students at Queen Anne’s Center School who were asked to inject the voice of youth into the future of the downtown waterfront.

November 3, 2003

Role in Type 1 diabetes provides clue for researchers who discovered ‘obesity gene.’

The discovery of a gene believed to be connected to morbid obesity has international origins and began as an exploration into the causes of Type I diabetes.

Nisqually quake damaged 90 percent of Puget Sound businesses surveyed

Ninety percent of the businesses in the central Puget Sound region that responded to an online and telephone survey suffered damage or other adverse impacts from the 2001 Nisqually earthquake, according to a report prepared by University of Washington researchers for the departments of emergency management in Pierce and King counties.

October 31, 2003

Japanese shipwreck adds to evidence of great Cascadia earthquake in 1700

Evidence has mounted for nearly 20 years that a great earthquake ripped the seafloor off the Washington coast in 1700, long before there were any written records in the region. Now, a newly authenticated record of a fatal shipwreck in Japan has added an intriguing clue.

Ultra-low oxygen could have triggered mass extinctions, spurred bird breathing system

A University of Washington paleontologist theorizes that low oxygen and repeated short but substantial temperature increases because of greenhouse warming sparked two major mass-extinction events, one of which eradicated 90 percent of all species on Earth.

October 30, 2003

CFD: Retired UW employee teaches English for area literacy council

Editor’s Note: Throughout the Combined Fund Drive campaign, which runs through Nov.

Scientists meeting in Seattle to consider all aspects of Arctic change

It was something polar veteran Jamie Morison hadn’t seen in that part of the Arctic Ocean before.

Mystery Photo