Matthew Reed didn’t feel ready for college right out of high school. But after five years of military service, he felt more prepared to pursue a college degree. “Being in the military made me disciplined,” said Reed. “I’m much better prepared and in a much better situation to be in college now.” Reed, from Broken Arrow, Okla., is a sophomore majoring in geology and anthropology. Because he is an Iraq veteran, his tuition is covered by the Post 9/11 G.I. Bill.

A new University of Colorado Boulder study shows for the first time that episodes of reduced precipitation in the southern Rocky Mountains, especially during the 2001-02 drought, greatly accelerated development of the mountain pine beetle epidemic.

Veronica Vaida, a professor of chemistry and biochemistry and a fellow of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder, was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences this month. She was elected to the academy in recognition of her exceptional achievements in scientific research. Among the other 218 new members elected this year were U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, actor and director Clint Eastwood, journalist Judy Woodruff and Amazon.com founder and chairman Jeff Bezos.

While a new study led by the University of Colorado Boulder shows the risk of human conflict in East Africa increases somewhat with hotter temperatures and drops a bit with higher precipitation, it concludes that socioeconomic, political and geographic factors play a much more substantial role than climate change.

The University of Colorado at Boulder has been awarded $1.4 million for a new study on how changes in land use, forest management and climate may affect trans-basin water diversions in Colorado and other semi-arid regions in the western United States.

Engineering faculty and students at the University of Colorado Boulder have produced the first experimental results showing that atomically thin graphene membranes with tiny pores can effectively and efficiently separate gas molecules through size-selective sieving. The findings are a significant step toward the realization of more energy-efficient membranes for natural gas production and for reducing carbon dioxide emissions from power plant exhaust pipes.

Engineering faculty and students at the University of Colorado Boulder have produced the first experimental results showing that atomically thin graphene membranes with tiny pores can effectively and efficiently separate gas molecules through size-selective sieving. The findings are a significant step toward the realization of more energy-efficient membranes for natural gas production and for reducing carbon dioxide emissions from power plant exhaust pipes.

The University of Colorado Boulder has hired its first Colorado Chair in Environmental Studies, an endowed chair awarded to Daniel Doak, a conservation biologist known for his quantitative analysis of how different government policies could affect the populations of species ranging from sea otters, California condors, corals and rare plants. The endowed chair in environmental studies was made possible by $4 million in gifts made anonymously in 2009 and 2010 toward the chair.

A University of Colorado Boulder-led mission to explore and understand how the loss of atmospheric gas has changed the climate of Mars over the eons has been authorized by NASA to proceed to system delivery, spacecraft integration, testing and launch, which is slated for November 2013.

A new University of Colorado Boulder-led study that ties forest “greenness” in the western United States to fluctuating year-to-year snowpack indicates mid-elevation mountain ecosystems are most sensitive to rising temperatures and changes in precipitation and snowmelt.