Education & Outreach

More than 100 students, faculty and professional engineers from a seven-state region are expected to gather in Boulder Oct. 5-7 to learn about sustainable engineering practices that can benefit the developing world. The University of Colorado Boulder will host the 2012 Mountain Region Conference for Engineers Without Borders-USA, a nonprofit organization founded by CU engineering Professor Bernard Amadei 10 years ago after he was asked to engineer a water pump for a village in Belize.

A novel genetic study led by the University of Colorado Boulder has helped to clarify the native diversity and distribution of cutthroat trout in Colorado, including the past and present haunts of the federally endangered greenback cutthroat trout.

With hundreds of student groups, clubs and organizations on campus, students at the University of Colorado Boulder have numerous opportunities to find their niche. Beginning Sept. 4, CU-Boulder will hold its annual Student Involvement Week, which includes a variety of events and fairs offering students information about different clubs and organizations on campus and in the greater Boulder community.

An interdisciplinary team of student and faculty engineers from the University of Colorado Boulder has won a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for its proposal to develop a solar-biochar toilet for use in developing countries throughout the world. The grant is part of the Reinvent the Toilet Challenge, or RTTC, initiated by the Gates Foundation to address a sanitation challenge affecting nearly 40 percent of the world’s population.

University of Adelaide news release In a major breakthrough, an international team of scientists from the University of Adelaide and University of Colorado Boulder has proven that addiction to morphine and heroin can be blocked, while at the same time increasing pain relief. The team has discovered the key mechanism in the body’s immune system that amplifies addiction to opioid drugs. Laboratory studies involving rats have shown that the drug (+)-naloxone will selectively block the immune-addiction response.

Presidential Election. Kenneth Bickers, professor of political science at the University of Colorado Boulder, can comment on the U.S. presidential race in Colorado and nationally, campaign issues and tactics, the youth vote and the 2012 election in general. He also can discuss whether a political party gains any advantage in the state where it holds its national convention. He can be reached at 303-492-2363 or bickers@colorado.edu .

An international research team led by the University of Colorado Boulder and the University of Helsinki has discovered a surprising new chemical compound in Earth’s atmosphere that reacts with sulfur dioxide to form sulfuric acid, which is known to have significant impacts on climate and health.

A variety of public health issues plague the refugees from Burma living on the Thai border, not the least of which is drinking water contaminated by bacteria and pesticides. Yet few low-cost, sustainable and appropriate treatment technologies are available to people in rural and developing communities to ensure water safety.

An international research team involving the University of Colorado Boulder announced this morning it has found the first direct evidence for a new particle that likely is the long sought-after Higgs boson, believed to endow the universe with mass.

When it came to eating, an upright, 2 million-year-old African hominid had a diet unlike virtually all other known human ancestors, says a study led by the Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany and involving the University of Colorado Boulder.