Science & Technology

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<p>With the flip of a switch, a pair of instruments designed and built by the University of Colorado Boulder and flying onboard twin NASA space probes have forced the revision of a 50-year-old theory about the structure of the radiation belts that wrap around the Earth just a few thousand miles above our heads.</p>

<p>Early next month, researchers from the University of Colorado Boulder will begin the painstaking process of interviewing hundreds of undergraduates in an effort to understand why the rates of students switching out of science, technology, engineering and math majors has remained troublingly high over the last couple of decades despite widespread efforts to address the problem.</p>

When life’s complications get in the way of graduation, the University of Colorado Boulder offers CU Complete, an academic service designed to assist former CU-Boulder students in completing their bachelor’s degrees. To date, more than 400 former CU-Boulder students have worked with Continuing Education advisers and 78 students have graduated with assistance from CU Complete.

<p>University of Colorado Boulder Provost Russell L. Moore today announced the four finalists selected for the position of dean of the College of Music.</p>
<p>The finalists for the position are: Wayne Bailey, professor of conducting and instrumental ensembles, School of Music, Arizona State University; David Myers, director, School of Music, University of Minnesota; Jamal Rossi, executive associate dean, Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester; and John Schaffer, director emeritus, School of Music, University of Wisconsin-Madison.</p>

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<p align="left">The Colorado Shakespeare Festival’s highly praised school anti-violence tour continues in spring 2013 with a new program based on “The Tempest” that focuses on themes of vengeance and forgiveness.</p>
<p>Created in conjunction with the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence at the University of Colorado Boulder, CSF’s “Twelfth Night” anti-bullying tour has now been seen by more than 22,000 Colorado schoolchildren. That inaugural program examined the problem of bullying through the character Malvolio.</p>

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<p>Creeping climate change in the Southwest appears to be having a negative effect on pinyon pine reproduction, a finding with implications for wildlife species sharing the same woodland ecosystems, says a University of Colorado Boulder-led study.</p>

<p>The University of Colorado Boulder today announced three finalists for the inaugural Visiting Scholar in Conservative Thought and Policy. This month, the finalists will make one-day campus visits, during which they will hold public forums.</p>
<p>Since last summer, an advisory committee has been working to identify finalists. The committee has sought a “highly visible” scholar who is “deeply engaged in either the analytical scholarship or practice of conservative thinking and policymaking or both.”</p>

<p>NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) spacecraft is assembled and is undergoing environmental testing at Lockheed Martin Space Systems facilities, near Denver, Colo. MAVEN is the next mission to Mars and will be the first mission devoted to understanding the Martian upper atmosphere.</p>

<p>I speak frequently about how CU-Boulder discovery and innovation leads to economic development, company creation and advancements for society. Here’s a bit of proof.  A <a href="http://www.brookings.edu/research/reports/2013/02/patenting-prosperity-rothwell">new study from the Brookings Institution</a> released a week ago finds Boulder among the top five patent-producing metropolitan areas in the nation.</p>

<p>In hopes of better understanding nutrition and health, the University of Colorado Boulder is playing the leading science role in a “crowdfunding” effort that has raised more than $340,000 for a project designed to sequence the gut bacteria of thousands of people around the world.</p>