The latest news from the UW

All kidding aside, Web sites that make fun of the presidential contenders do an effective job of educating ? as well as amusing ? a growing segment of the electorate, according to a new University of Washington study.

The greatest mass extinction in Earth history eliminated 85 percent to 90 percent of all marine and land vertebrate species 250 million years ago, at the end of the Permian Period and the beginning of the Triassic. New evidence from researchers at the University of Washington and the South African Museum shows the extinction was accompanied by a massive loss of vegetation, causing major changes in river systems.

A statewide program designed to involve elementary through high school students in math, science and engineering has won a presidential award for mentoring, White House officials announced today.

Key environmental health concerns for Washington will be aired at a town meeting Sept. 29 and 30 in Seattle.

The Institute for K-12 Leadership at the University of Washington announced today that it has received $5,760,000 from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to create small model secondary schools in eight urban school districts across the nation.

The University of Washington School of Medicine is opening a state-of-the-art laboratory to explore the cutting edge of medicine’s future: gene and cell therapy.

Professor David Notkin, an internationally recognized expert in software engineering, will become the new chairman of the University of Washington’s nationally ranked Department of Computer Science & Engineering tomorrow when current chairman Ed Lazowska steps down after leading the department for eight years.

Scientists have completed mapping the genome of Pseudomonas aeruginosa, the largest bacterium sequenced so far, which may lead to potential new treatments for patients with cystic fibrosis (CF), patients with severe burns and others who develop this type of infection.

The family environment that children grow up in can have long-lasting effects on whether they smoke, according to a new study by University of Washington researchers who used data collected over a 35-year time span.

Up to 85,000 unnecessary heart attacks and cases of heart failure may occur worldwide every year among the estimated 28 million users of longer-acting calcium channel blockers (CCBs), a class of drugs used to treat high blood pressure, according to the results of a study reported Monday at the European Society of Cardiology meeting in Amsterdam.

Teachers Beverly Mowrer of Sedro-Woolley High School, Cynthia Maldonado of Kelso’s Cornerstone Christian Community School, Robert Mize of Steilacoom Historical School and Misty Nikula-Ohlsen of Bellingham’s Whatcom Day Academy will sail Sept. 1 to 19 with scientists who are seeking information about the rugged, volcanically active areas on the seafloor 200 miles off the Washington coast.

Transcontinental business travelers could be singing in the shower rather than enduring the weary griminess that marks the end of globe-hopping flights if Dan Brunton has his way.

Computer professionals at the University of Washington will get hands-on training in Internet security on Thursday when a couple of teen-age cyber aficionados attempt to hack digital safeguards set up by the university.

Despite contemporary Russia’s serious troubles, its founding father, Boris Yeltsin, will be portrayed in an unexpectedly sympathetic light when public television profiles the former Russian president in a 90-minute nationwide special on Aug. 28.

The Washington Research Foundation has made a $250,000 grant to the University of Washington School of Medicine’s Cell Systems Initiative (CSI).

Computer scientists, mathematicians and architects will join artists, musicians, writers and poets on the University of Washington campus next week to explore the junctures where their disciplines overlap – zones that have helped revolutionize art in the past and promise to take creative endeavors in new directions in the future.

A researcher at the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture at the University of Washington and a Japanese colleague have found similarities in bone structure suggesting that birds did, in fact, evolve from a group of dinosaurs.

About 1,000 seventh- through 12th-grade students will spend a week on the University of Washington campus Aug. 14-18 as part of an innovative program to increase the number of low-income students who go to college.

Teachers Diane Nielsen of Mercer Island High School, Tom Lee of Battleground’s Columbia Adventist Academy, Evan Justin of Vashon Island Middle School and Melissa Cohen of Seattle’s Meany Middle School are among the teachers sailing Aug. 3 to 21 aboard the University of Washington’s vessel the Thomas G. Thompson seeking information about the rugged, volcanically active areas on the seafloor 200 miles off the Washington coast.

An international team including scientists from the University of Washington has mapped the first crystal structure of a G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR), one of a family of proteins that are crucial to everything from vision to the development of the human embryo, according to a paper published in the Aug. 4 issue of Science.

Nancy L. Wells, currently associate vice president and director of university development at Stanford University, has been named vice president for development and alumni relations at the University of Washington by UW President Richard L. McCormick.

More than 40 high school students with disabilities from Washington and Oregon will gather at the UW campus in Seattle for the summer study sessions of the Disabilities, Opportunities, Internetworking and Technology (DO-IT) Program. DO-IT is an award-winning program intended to show the students how to develop the skills needed to enter a college and succeed in a university setting.

The University of Washington is launching the nation’s first doctoral degree program in nanotechnology, an undertaking designed to prepare students as leaders in a world in which engineering the very small will soon become big business.

Where art and technology meet, you’ll find David Salesin. The University of Washington associate professor of Computer Science & Engineering and senior researcher at Microsoft Corp. has been expanding what’s possible at that juncture for more than a decade, bringing techniques from the fine arts to the computer screen.

University of Washington researchers trying to come up with more effective treatments for depression, America’s most common mental health problem, are looking for 200 Puget Sound residents to volunteer for a new study

Sharon Nelson, chairwoman of the state Utilities and Transportation Commission from 1985 to 1997, has been named the first director of the University of Washington Law School’s Center for Law, Commerce and Technology.

There’s new evidence that parents can prevent or delay their children from using alcohol and marijuana if they set clear rules and expectations – even if the relationships between parents and children seem strained during the teen years.

A state-of-the-art University of Washington research aircraft will be a key element in the Southern Africa Regional Science Initiative (SAFARI 2000) campaign, taking low-altitude readings that will be correlated to data from a high-flying NASA aircraft and from a satellite that is part of NASA’s Earth Observing System.

Climbers who conquer the world’s highest peak are about one-third as likely to die during descent if they use supplemental oxygen during the journey than if they rely only on the limited oxygen in thin mountain air, a University of Washington researcher has found.

In one of the largest and most comprehensive studies to date of the care received by elderly patients suffering an acute myocardial infarction, University of Washington researchers have revealed gender-based differences in early, in-hospital management.

The University of Washington has named Professor Ed Lazowska to the first Bill & Melinda Gates Endowed Chair in Computer Science.

Intriguing archaeological sites that may go back 15,000 years and a mountain lake pierced by a volcanic cone that has been isolated for at least 30,000 years are among the primary targets for an international team of researchers heading for the North Pacific in the sixth year of the International Kuril Island Project.

Don’t even try to think of a joke, a jibe or a bad pun.

The first major political-attitude survey of people with disabilities ? 54 million Americans who could be viewed as the nation’s largest minority group ? reveals distinctive opinions and potential clout largely untapped by parties and candidates.

Robert Mugerauer, Sid Richardson Centennial Professor at the University of Texas at Austin’s School of Architecture, has been selected to be the next dean of the University of Washington College of Architecture and Urban Planning, effective Sept. 1.

At the turn of the 20th century it was common for museums in the Western world to have broad collections including mummies.

Dr. Alan M. Weiner, currently a professor of molecular biophysics and biochemistry and of genetics at Yale University School of Medicine, has been named chair of the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Washington (UW) School of Medicine.

One of the most generous scholarship gifts ever received by the University of Washington will help women in Washington wishing to pursue careers in science and technology.

Students in the University of Washington’s civil and environmental engineering department hope to paddle their way to national acclaim later this month in a canoe made of concrete.

University of Washington researchers in collaboration with the Seattle-based biotechnology company, Corixa Corp., have determined that the HER-2/neu protein, which is over-produced, or “expressed,” by some breast and ovarian cancer cells, can stimulate an immune response in cancer patients.