This award provides funds to the Department of Zoology at the University of Washington for the purchase of 8 nearly identical computer stations for physiological data acquisition and processing. These units will be used in a variety of courses from elementary to advanced, as well as in undergraduate research. The principal pedagogical goal is to enhance the technological sophistication of students, and to inculcate an appreciation for a facility with quantitative approaches both to original data and to its conceptual interpretation. The Department appreciates the use of computers in a tutorial context, in modelling, and in providing partial substitutes for experimental work on live tissues. The programs available for these applications are growing in number, variety and quality and the PI plans to make increasing use of them. However, the main use of the instruments would be directly in the laboratory, interfaced to a variety of recording devices and transducers for measuring electrical activity of nerve and muscle, mechanical properties of muscle, gas concentrations, temperature, etc.. Students would acquire the data, write them to disk, and perform analyses that far exceed anything that can be taught with present instrumentation. Students would thereby acquire a far richer appreciation of the dynamic workings of living organisms as well as become sophisticated in methodologies that have wide application in science generally. The grantee is matching this award with non- Federal sources.
