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It looks like El NiÃ’o, it feels like El NiÃ’o, and if you are watching fish stocks or reservoir levels you would say it is El NiÃ’o. But it isn't. Researchers at the University of Washington are describing a decades-long climate shift, called the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, that seems to explain many of the changing environmental patterns seen across North America since the late 1970s, from disappearing salmon along the West Coast to wetter than average winters in the South.

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University of Washington researchers will play a leading role in a $20 million effort to identify and mitigate potential earthquake hazards in urban areas along the Pacific coast. The UW joins eight California universities in the Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center announced today by the National Science Foundation.

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The earliest existing mound complex built by humans in the new world has been identified in Louisiana by a team of archaeologists and researchers from around the United States. Details of the discovery appear in tomorrowís (Sept. 19) issue of the journal Science. The complex of 11 mounds was built between 5,000 and 5,400 years ago and predates other known existent mound complexes by 1,900 years.

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A new form of matter, clusters of atoms, has been found to have a previously unsuspected property: it can melt at different temperatures from "solid" matter. An experiment described in Science this week paints an exotic portrait of certain substances seemingly confounding nature by existing as a liquid, instead of a solid, at room temperature.

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Extinct sea creatures have provided evidence that about 80 million years ago the west began to wander. University of Washington paleontologist Peter Ward and his collaborators report in Science that the discovery of pearly fossil shells of ammonites on two islands off the coast of Vancouver Island indicate that British Columbia and southern Alaska were once where Baja California is today.

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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.

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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.