The latest news from the UW

With the Census Bureau reporting two-thirds growth in the number of Hispanic-owned business in Washington state, a University of Washington and Heritage College student project plans to provide such businesses in the Yakima Valley with desperately needed support.

Dr. Paul G. Ramsey, vice president for medical affairs and dean of the University of Washington School of Medicine, announced today the appointment of Kathleen Sellick as executive director of University of Washington Medical Center.

Sarah Bernhardt strides across the pages of Susan Glenn’s book like a colossus.

The Fourth Annual Undergraduate Research Symposium, to be held noon to 5 p.m. Friday, May 4 in Mary Gates Hall, features the work of 260 undergraduates, in fields ranging from art to zoology.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is providing a $393,435 grant to the Tribal Connections project co-sponsored by the University of Washington and the National Library of Medicine. The collaboration will open access to electronic health information resources for Southwest Native American tribes.

Aided by a 56-foot-long photo montage, the energy of adolescents and the expertise of volunteer architects, the University of Washington this week will try to find a better way to help a neighborhood envision its future.

University of Washington researchers are on a scientific genealogical hunt and are looking for 500 first- through ninth-grade boys and girls in the Puget Sound area who are having problems reading or with spelling and handwriting.

This is the third of a series of releases about Comet Hale-Bopp, which is now at its brightest.

Dr. Roy C. Page of the University of Washington School of Dentistry has been named recipient of the AADR Distinguished Scientist Award, presented every three to six years by the American Association for Dental Research (AADR).

The University of Washington’s fourth Distinguished Professor in Dentistry Symposium, “Dentistry’s Future: Broadening the Impact on Patient Health and Dental Practice,” will be held Thursday and Friday, May 24 and 25, at the Four Seasons Olympic Hotel in Seattle.

Tour one of the nation’s most sophisticated oceanographic vessels, learn more about deep-sea vents where superheated water billows out of the seafloor feeding whole communities of unusual microorganisms and learn about the latest University of Washington efforts to explore the world’s oceans at an open house the last weekend of March.

Older adults are invited to a half-day seminar, “Exercise, Health and Aging,” that will offer plenty of practical tips about exercise. The seminar will take place from 8:30 a.m. to noon on Tuesday, April 3, at the Shoreline Center. Speakers will include Mary Ann Wilson, whose exercise program “Sit and Be Fit” is a fixture on public television.

The University of Washington’s research into understanding and finding life in the universe received a major boost today with a multimillion-dollar grant from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and membership in NASA’s Astrobiology Institute.

The creation of a new transgenic mouse that makes a mysterious brain chemical may lead to better understanding of why people with Alzheimer’s disease lose their memory.

The crashing stock market. The Northwest’s impending recession. An increase in mortgage-loan and credit-card delinquencies. All vital issues facing businesses in the slowing economy. Phyllis Campbell, president of U.S. Bank, Washington, will speak about a business leader’s role in the midst of such a fast-changing economy at the University of Washington Business School Dean’s Breakfast Lecture Series talk at 8 a.m., Wednesday, March 21 in the Husky Union Building’s West Ballroom on the UW campus. A continental breakfast will be served at 7:30 a.m.

This morning’s state revenue forecast – which normally guides lawmakers through key spending decisions – may not fully account for an impending economic slowdown, according to a University of Washington analysis.

The ground in the Puget Sound region didn’t just shake during the magnitude 6.8 Nisqually earthquake, it moved — literally.

University of Washington President Richard L. McCormick has selected Nancy “Rusty” Barceló to be the next vice president for minority affairs, effective July 1. She also will have an affiliate faculty appointment in the Department of American Ethnic Studies.

Several brief office visits along with continuing telephone calls or even e-mailed notes can help prevent relapse into depression among patients known to be at risk. A University of Washington study showed that interventions spaced throughout a 12-month follow-up period after an acute episode helped patients at risk of a relapse into major depression, also known as dysthymia, show a significant improvement in their adherence to an anti-depressant medication program.

Washington is one of five states selected to be a pioneer in developing and bringing the next generation of Internet materials, applications, and tools to K-12 schools and colleges.

At a time when new technology is continually increasing the need to understand international commerce, students from 15 countries will join together to learn about each other and to compete during the University of Washington Business School’s third annual Global Business Challenge case competition, April 1 – 7.

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.