The latest news from the UW

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.

Paleontologists from the South African Museum and the University of Washington have discovered what appears to be the first complete fossil of a gorgonopsid, a ferocious predator with both reptilian and mammalian characteristics that became extinct 250 million years ago.

Atmospheric pollution from eastern Asia is beginning to have measurable, though still small, effects on air quality in western North America, a researcher from the University of Washington, Bothell, said today.

Forest resources experts at the University of Washington suspect that Asian air pollution has contributed to dramatic increases of nitrate, sulfate and acidity in precipitation during four of the last six years at their research site on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula.

Statement from UW President Richard L. McCormick regarding Initiative 200

Dr. William J. Bremner has been named chair of the Department of Medicine at the University of Washington School of Medicine.

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.

One hundred legislators and other public officials from eight states across the country are closing out 1998 by learning first-hand more about one of the nation’s most vexing problems, the welfare system.

Responding to a pressing need for more health care providers on the Olympic Peninsula, the University of Washington School of Nursing is launching a pilot project to offer nurses on the peninsula easier access to courses that prepare them to become adult acute care nurse practitioners.

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.

University of Washington Professor Bruce Finlayson has been elected vice president of the 58,000-member American Institute of Chemical Engineers and will take over as president next year.

WHAT: The Leonid meteor shower and the Stardust Comet Sample Return Mission.

The annual Leonid meteor shower will appear Monday and Tuesday, Nov. 17 and 18. This year the event will include a meteor “storm,” as the Earth plows through a small and very dense clump of particles trailing from Comet 55P/Tempel-Tuttle.

A unique opportunity to map and test the human brain has yielded new insights into two areas involved in producing and processing of language.

More parking stalls should be available for patients and their visitors in the Triangle Parking Garage. The daily rate without a validation sticker will be raised from $6 to $18, to deter others from parking there.

Armed with a ‘new’ tool, a 40-year-old Convair 580 turboprop plane stuffed with research equipment, University of Washington atmospheric scientists are ready to fly higher and farther to gain a greater understanding of climate and weather patterns, regionally and globally.

A University of Washington professor researching ways to build computers with the intelligence and adaptability of living creatures has been awarded a highly competitive fellowship from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.

The University of Washington’s main campus 1998 Autumn Quarter enrollment is 35,108, including 1,013 students in the Evening Degree Program instituted in autumn 1990.

University of Washington President Richard L. McCormick will be leading a delegation of UW faculty and administrators to visit China, with stops in Beijing and Hong Kong in China and Taipei in Taiwan, November 1-9.

Registration is now open for a conference – Solving the Puzzle ’98 – designed to find solutions to the problems posed by so many homeless and street youth in Seattle’s University District.

The University of Washington has been selected as one of six new National Centers of Excellence in Women’s Health by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office on Women’s Health.

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.

A three-lecture series that explores life around hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor off the Washington-British Columbia coast and the possibility of life on Jupiter’s moons will be held on three consecutive Thursdays in November.

The University of Washington’s College of Forest Resources and Jay Gruenfeld Associates will co-sponsor a conference Dec. 7 and 8 focusing on international markets and trade for forest products with an emphasis on Pacific Rim countries.

The 9,300-year-old skeletal remains known as Kennewick Man will be transferred to the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture on the University of Washington campus in Seattle on Thursday, Oct. 29, from Battelle’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Wash.

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.

Dr. Steven G. Gabbe, professor and chair of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Washington School of Medicine and an international authority on high-risk pregnancy, has been elected to the Institute of Medicine.

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.

Emergency preparedness, ecological contamination, worker health and groundwater quality in and around the Hanford Nuclear Reservation are among topics to be addressed during a two-day conference Nov. 3 and 4 in Richland, Wash.

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.

The University of Washington School of Medicine has established the Ray and Grace Hill Endowed Chair in Ophthalmology, funded through contributions of $1.5 million from Grace E. Hill and her late husband, Ray Hill, who graduated from the UW in economics in 1924.

People have taken more than 33,000 tests that measure unconscious components of prejudice and stereotyping in the first week since twin Web sites were opened to the public by psychologists from the University of Washington and Yale University.

Everyone in the Northwest talks about the weather. Now a University of Washington atmospheric scientist and the state Department of Transportation plan to do something about it.

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.

Recent rumors that Western Washington is in for its severest winter in 50 years are nothing more than unsupported hype that goes well beyond current forecast abilities, according to University of Washington atmospheric scientists.

Two new studies of avalanches in Snoqualmie Pass in the Washington Cascades near Seattle could bring about more accurate predictions that will safeguard travelers in quickly changing conditions.

Two Wyoming towns, Powell and Buffalo, have been chosen as family practice training sites for third-year University of Washington (UW) medical students. Beginning in July of 1999, selected medical students will take their required, six-week clerkship in family medicine in these towns.

The University of Washington is poised to become the first institution anywhere to launch a doctoral program specifically geared to train scientists to search for life on celestial bodies such as Mars or Europa, an icy moon of Jupiter.