The latest news from the UW

Kevin Zatloukal, a senior in the University of Washington’s Department of Computer Science & Engineering, is one of two winners of the Computing Research Association’s 2001 “Outstanding Undergraduate” award. Zatloukal, whose work as an undergraduate has resulted in three publications and one patent, will be honored this Sunday at an awards banquet in San Jose, Calif.

The Puget Sound region is being plagued by rumors that another major earthquake is imminent, but University of Washington scientists say the rumors are being fueled by people who have no scientific basis for their far-fetched claims.

Long before dot-com millionaires and wealthy Californians rediscovered the San Juan Islands as an ideal place to build fancy summer homes, the Coast Salish people inhabited the area for more than 11,000 years. But little visible evidence remains of their long occupation of the land.

Children who see the same doctor repeatedly are likely to stay healthier than children who see different doctors, according to a University of Washington study. Children with a regular doctor are considerably less likely than their peers to find themselves in an emergency room or admitted to a hospital.

A committee of leading physicists today advocated the renovation of the 125-year-old Homestake Gold Mine in the Black Hills of South Dakota as a unique underground science laboratory.

The rolling 6.8 earthquake that hit the Puget Sound region the morning of February 28, 2001 knocked tens of thousands of books off the shelves, damaged stack ranges, and impacted service in a number of University of Washington Libraries units. A student in the Odegaard Undergraduate Library was hit by a piece of falling ceiling tile but was not seriously hurt. We are extremely fortunate that more people were not injured and that the Libraries did not suffer greater physical damage to its facilities and collections.

Seismologists, geologists and engineers from the University of Washington, the United States Geological Survey and the private sector discuss specific information about Wednesday’s magnitude 6.8 Nisqually earthquake, including results from the strong-motion network; after-effects such as landslides and liquefaction; potential economic impact; current damage; and hazards that might lie ahead

W.H. “Joe” Knight Jr., a professor at the University of Iowa, has been selected to be dean of the University of Washington School of Law

University of Washington scientists today were finding evidence of liquefaction in areas south of downtown Seattle, some of them heavily damaged in Wednesday’s major earthquake.

Today’s ceremony posthumously admitting Takuji Yamashita as an honorary member of the state Bar will proceed, but the venue has been moved to the U.S. Courthouse in Tacoma (the old Union Station), at 1717 Pacific Ave. The ceremony was moved because of earthquake damage at the Temple of Justice in Olympia. The ceremony will begin at 4 p.m. as originally planned.

University of Washington researchers are expected to receive $3.6 million over three years as part of a national consortium of institutions studying space medicine in hopes of someday sending men and women to Mars.

Retiring Microsoft Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Robert Herbold will speak at the University of Washington Business School Dean’s Breakfast Lecture Series at 8 a.m. tomorrow in the Douglas Forum Seminar Room on the fourth floor of the Seafirst Executive Education Center on the northeast side of campus. His topic will be “The Wild Information Technology Industry: What Next?”

Ed Lazowska, Bill & Melinda Gates Chair in Computer Science and chairman of the Department of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington, has been elected to the National Academy of Engineering.

With the completion of a study by researchers at the University of Washington, the relationship between hormone replacement therapy and myocardial infarction (heart attacks) is a little clearer. The study, published in the Feb. 21 edition of the Journa of the American Medical Association, shows a possible link between the presence of a genetic variant associated with blood clotting and the risk of non-fatal myocardial infarction (MI) in hypertensive women taking hormone replacement therapy (HRT).

Efforts to help humans live longer will face big challenges: a genetic evolutionary system that has no particular interest in helping people live past their peak productive years, and thousands of genes that can go wrong in different ways in different people.

The same basic process used by the popular pharmaceutical Viagra may someday help people suffering from a variety of conditions, from allergies to diabetes. Viagra’s success has raised interest in the growing study of phosphodiesterase (PDE) inhibitors, says Joseph Beavo, Ph.D., a professor of pharmacology at the University of Washington School of Medicine.

University of Washington engineering students and students from Tacoma’s Bellarmine Preparatory School, and three other area high school teams have built robots for a national competition.

The Washington Department of Natural Resources is in the process of re-calculating the amount of timber that might be sold from state timber lands and is expected to revise the 650 million board feet per year that has been used as a target since 1996. The environmental, economic and technical considerations when calculating a sustainable harvest level will be considered by five regional experts in Seattle Feb. 28, from 1 to 5 p.m., as part of the Denman Forestry Issues Series offered by the University of Washington’s College of Forest Resources.

Recent layoffs and talk of a continued downturn in the nation’s economy appear to be sending many people to school for an advanced business degree.

Art collections and healing gardens will grow out of the conference being presented April 19-21 by the Society for the Arts in Healthcare and coordinated by University of Washington Medical Center Art Program. Artists, art students and health-care facility staff, as well as architects and designers are invited to the three-day event, titled “Tools for the 21st Century: Building the Arts,” to be held at the Crown Plaza Hotel in downtown Seattle.

Division of household chores long has been a source of friction for married couples, but less is known about how large a problem it is for gay, lesbian and unmarried heterosexual couples.

A University of Washington Law School graduate will soon be admitted to the practice of law — 99 years after passing his bar exam.

University of Washington Business School Dean Yash Gupta this month begins a “Dean’s Business Breakfast Lecture Series” featuring the Puget Sound’s leading business executives and the school’s faculty.

The Accreditation Association for Ambulatory Health Care (AAAHC) has accredited the University of Washington’s Hall Health Primary Care Center for three years. In the letter of notification, AAAHC President William H. Beeson said, “The dedication and effort necessary to achieve accreditation is substantial. UW Hall Health Primary Care Center is to be commended for this accomplishment.”

The Paul G. Allen Foundation for Medical Research has given a $1 million grant to support the University of Washington’s Medical Scientist Training Program.

Technology may hold the key to helping physicians and other medical professionals stay on top of the rapidly growing literature in the health-care field — and thus provide better care for their patients.

Imagine a world in which the borders between medical practice and virtual reality begin to blur: physicians hone their surgical skills by suturing a virtual wound, feeling the resistance when needle meets skin and the give when it punches through. They practice removing a gall bladder using laparoscopic instruments — and repeat the procedure until they get it just right.It’s already happening in The University of Washington’s Human Interface Technology Laboratory, which has received an international award for its work using virtual reality for medical applications.

Knowing that extreme sensitivity to some bitter tastes is genetically-driven, researchers in the University of Washington School of Public Health and Community Medicine tried to find out if genetic taste markers might prevent some women from enjoying bitter chocolate or bitter espresso coffee. Dr. Adam Drewnowski, director of the school’s Nutritional Sciences Program, says the study by graduate student Agnes Ly and himself showed that any aversion to bitter taste, genetic or not, was easily overcome by the addition of a little sugar or a lot of fat. The study was published in the January issue of Chemical Senses, an Oxford University Press journal.

The University of Washington plans today to announce a gift from a California businessman and his wife of $10 million to support the school’s endeavors in both academics and athletics.