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The latest news from the UW

August 29, 1997

UW sensors take chemical analysis out of lab and into the field

Doctors needing chemical analyses such as blood tests to make life-saving diagnosis and treatment decisions soon won’t have to lose precious time waiting for results to come back from the lab. New hand-held sensor technology developed at the University of Washington will allow physicians to bring a sophisticated “laboratory” directly to their patients for instant, on-site chemical analysis.

August 18, 1997

Is same-sex marriage the death-knell for matrimony?

Reports of the death of American marriage, like the famous pronouncement of Mark Twain’s early demise, may be premature. But exactly where the state of matrimony is headed in the wake of the Hawaiian same-sex marriage case is a question a University of Washington sociologist and commentator on mores will explore when she participates in a symposium at noon today (Aug. 18) in the Sheraton Chicago Hotel and Towers.

August 1, 1997

UW smogmobile is cleaner, safer alternative to gas or electric cars

When engineers at the University of Washington set out to create a vehicle that is cleaner and safer to operate than gas or electric cars, they jokingly named it the smogmobile after a L’il Abner cartoon depicting a car fueled by air pollution. But the vehicle developed by the UW team almost lives up to its name. Running on liquid nitrogen, the smogmobile generates no harmful emissions and actually creates an opportunity for pollutants to be removed from the air as its fuel is produced.

July 31, 1997

Orcas Island Medical Center becomes a family medicine teaching site for the University of Washington School of Medicine.

What’s it like to practice family medicine on a small, rural island in Puget Sound,where the nearest hospital, on the mainland, can be reached only by sea or sky? Some University of Washington (UW) third-year medical students now have the opportunity to find out.

July 1, 1997

UW materials technology institute gives teachers new ways to turn students on to science and engineering

and recyclable.

Materials science and engineering, a fundamental but often low-profile part of manufacturing, is the subject of a new summer institute at the University of Washington that aims to give high school and community college teachers new tools for designing laboratory projects that turn their students on to science and engineering.

Rural physicians talk about the importance of evaluating the Internet’s potential in health care

Although the actual sites and test protocols for the “From Bench to Bedside and Beyond” project have not yet been chosen, two rural physicians participating in a separate but related University of Washington project, the WWAMI Rural Telemedicine Network, explained the importance of systematically evaluating the Internet as a clinical tool.

A professor’s lost butterfly collection is replaced with young children’s gift of words, color and caring

Joel Kingsolver thought he had lost his butterflies: 10,000 carefully preserved wings, representing nearly two decades of work, all apparently destroyed in a disastrous fire at the University of Washington’s zoology department last March. But within weeks his butterflies had “returned” — the heartfelt gift of a host of young children who had set about replacing the lost wings with colorful, imaginative and sometimes poignant butterfly pictures.

June 10, 1997

Families with two autistic children sought for new study that hopes to discover genetic, neurobiological causes of disorder

In a major effort to discover the genetic causes of autism and develop intervention programs to assist children with the severe developmental disorder, an interdisciplinary team of University of Washington researchers has begun a nationwide effort to recruit at least 200 families with two or more autistic children for a new $5.6 million study.