University Of Washington

SEATTLE -- The University of Washington football team faces a ban on television appearances this year after the NCAA Committee on Infractions cited the school for "lack of institutional control" over its program.The proposed penalty comes on top of sanctions already meted out by the Pacific-10 Conference, and it drew a strong reaction from Washington President William Gerberding, who vowed to fight any added punishment.The school estimates that it would be stripped of about $1.6 million in television revenue, the same amount it lost last year as a result of Pac-10 sanctions.

COLLEGE PARK -- For about four minutes last night against the University of Washington, the Loyola women's basketball team looked a lot less like a team without a win and more like a squad with a decent chance at an upset.For those four minutes of the first half, the Greyhounds ran out to a 10-0 lead, and did a terrific job forgetting their relative lack of quickness and size and played the Huskies with guts and heart.Eventually, however, those four minutes ended, the 10-point lead disappeared and the Greyhounds were swamped, 82-57, in the opening round of the Dial Soap Classic at the University of Maryland.

It has been said that 90 percent of the schools in big-time college sports abide by the rules -- and the other 10 percent go to bowl games.That cynically humorous axiom has been decried by a range of reform groups in recent years. And it is being challenged again by the Pacific-10 Conference which declared last Sunday that one of its perennial bowl contenders, the University of Washington, broke the rules big time.In an arena so large, so clotted with rules and so distorted by the pressure to make money, the Pac-10 may hope that home-based enforcement will have an immediacy and sting that is missing when punishment comes from a distant National Collegiate Athletic Association.

COLLEGE PARK -- Before he became the Maryland defensive coordinator, Larry Slade spent six years as the secondary coach the University of Washington. He was among those criticizing the Pacific-10 Conference for the penalties it placed on the Huskies earlier this week.Washington, which admitted to violating NCAA rules, was banned from postseason play for two years, forced to forfeit about $1.4 million in television money and had its scholarships reduced for two years. Coach Don James resigned in the wake of the sanctions.

WASHINGTON -- The National Institutes of Health announced yesterday that it was ready to begin tests of AIDS vaccines in people at high risk to get the disease.The trials will take place at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Immunization in Baltimore, the St. Louis University School of Medicine, the University of Rochester (N.Y.) Medical Center, Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, and the University of Washington in Seattle.The experiment will be on a small scale, with two vaccines being given to 320 patients at the five sites.

LAS VEGAS -- In a city abuzz with buzz words during the annual Comdex computer trade show this week, the term "virtual" is far and away the most popular.At Bally's Hotel on the strip, a Canadian company called QSound Ltd. is showing "virtual sound" for games, training and education.Using a common set of stereo speakers and a proprietary technique, it "fools the brain" into thinking sounds are coming from each side and even from behind the listener, said consultant Brian Schmidt.At Piero's Restaurant across from the Las Vegas Convention Center, Virtual Reality Laboratories Inc. of San Luis Obispo, Calif.

Fred Schmidt, 75, a physicist on the Manhattan Project and an expert on energy policy and nuclear power, died Jan. 17 of cancer in Seattle. Mr. Schmidt wrote "The Energy Controversy: The Fight Over Nuclear Power." Recently, he specialized in the use of nuclear accelerators to date archaeological materials. He was a professor emeritus of physics at the University of Washington.