The latest news from the UW

Dr. William M. M. Kirby, one of the longest-serving faculty members of the University of Washington School of Medicine and a pioneer in the field of infectious diseases, died at his home in Seattle on Sunday, Aug. 31, of natural causes.

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.

At least two thousand freshmen, their parents and guests are expected to attend the 1997 UW Freshman Convocation, to be held at noon, Sunday, Sept. 28 in Meany Hall for the Performing Arts.

While there is never a good time to acquire a herpes infection, contracting the virus late in pregnancy can prove catastrophic for the newborn child, with a high risk of severe brain damage or death from neonatal herpes.

University of Washington researchers have made the first detailed study of the possible trigger for a devastating eruption.

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.

Reports of the death of American marriage, like the famous pronouncement of Mark Twain’s early demise, may be premature.

Where Chicago belongs on a list of the continent’s best places to live is a matter of statistics and how they are compiled, according to Geoff Loftus, a University of Washington psychology professor and co-author of the 1996 edition of “Places Rated Almanac.”

The University of Washington will receive $5.9 million in state-of-the-art computer equipment and service from Intel Corp. as part of the company’s $85 million Technology for Education 2000 Program.

Medical News from the University of Washington

Learning self-defense skills benefits women in ways that extend beyond discovering how to protect themselves. It also boosts their self- esteem and positively affects their personality, according to a new University of Washington study.

Learning self-defense skills benefits women in ways that extend beyond discovering how to protect themselves. It also boosts their self- esteem and positively affects their personality, according to a new University of Washington study.

The return of sockeye salmon to Alaska’s Bristol Bay fell 15 to 20 million fish short of expectations, leading to significant economic and social hardship for fishermen, processors and local communities.

A one-week intensive workshop, designed to help teachers interpret and implement new state and national standards in science education, will be held at the Olympic Natural Resources Center in Forks Aug. 18-22.

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.

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.

Parentese, the exaggerated, drawn-out form of speech that people use to communicate with babies, apparently is universal and plays a vital role in helping infants to analyze and absorb the phonetic elements of their parents’ language.

Medical News from the University of Washington

Bringing together the most advanced medical, surgical and research resources available to fight the most virulent form of skin cancer, University of Washington Medical Center has established a multidisciplinary Melanoma Center.

University of Washington Medical Center is again ranked among the top 10 hospitals in the country, according to U.S. News & World Report’s 1997 annual guide to “America’s Best Hospitals,” available on newsstands July 21.

Seven physicians at University of Washington Medical Center were named among The Best Doctors For Women in a new poll commissioned by Good Housekeeping magazine and published in the August 1997 issue, currently on newsstands.

International programs offer UW nursing students health care experience around the world

Montana will open its first training site for teaching University of Washington medical students about women’s health care.

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.

A promising new drug called Hu23F2G that may save the lives of severely injured patients is now being tested by University of Washington (UW) physicians based at Harborview Medical Center.

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.

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.

Knowledge of how the brain responds to weight loss and weight gain is advancing research toward the development of effective treatments for obesity, anorexia and other weight disorders

Interpretive walks to look at the 22-story Wind River canopy crane will be conducted most Saturdays this summer at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. The tours, which are free and open to everyone, start from the Whistlepunk Trailhead in the Wind River Ranger District, a part of the Gifford Pinchot National Forest.

Dr. Fredric M. Wolf has been named chair of the Department of Medical Education at the University of Washington School of Medicine.

New method of tracing metastatic breast cancer to the lymph nodes decreases the need for extensive surgery

Do you have a child aged 4 to 7 who is overly aggressive and non-compliant? You and your child may qualify for a program at the University of Washington School of Nursing’s Parenting Clinic.

In the first such instance in the Seattle area, a Puyallup man is being kept alive at University of Washington Medical Center with the help of a new type of implanted heart pump, until a donor heart becomes available for transplant.

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.

Marc Lindenberg, a senior vice president with CARE USA, has been selected as the new dean of the University of Washington Graduate School of Public Affairs.

Father’s Day just may be the loneliest day of the year for that much-maligned group of males — divorced dads

Frustrated Internet shoppers who are unable or unwilling to wade through a flood of World Wide Web sites to find what they’re looking for soon can call on a computer software robot named Jango to help with their on-line shopping.

From the Wind River canopy crane’s gondola, scientists can gather samples, install instruments and conduct experiments in the canopies of trees as tall as 220 feet.

Canopy research could lead to better forest management

Dr. Paul G. Ramsey, chair of the Department of Medicine at the University of Washington medical school, has been named vice president for medical affairs and dean of the School of Medicine.