Science & Technology

<p>How did insects get their hearing? A new study of 50-million-year-old cricket and katydid fossils sporting some of the best preserved fossil insect ears described to date are helping to trace the evolution of the insect ear.</p>
<p>According to paleontologist Dena Smith of the University of Colorado Boulder's Museum of Natural History and University of Illinois Professor Roy Plotnick, who collaborated on the new study at the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center, or NESCent, in Durham, N.C., insects hear with help from some very unusual ears.</p>

<p>A new study led by the University of Colorado Boulder could be a wake-up call for parents of toddlers: Daytime naps for your kids may be more important than you think.</p>

<p>A team of researchers led by the University of Colorado Boulder recently discovered the first prehistoric bronze artifact made from a cast ever found in Alaska, a small, buckle-like object found in an ancient Eskimo dwelling and which likely originated in East Asia.</p>

<p>When considering giving money to humanitarian crises people often donate in response to events that grab their immediate emotions, according to a recent study by CU-Boulder psychology professor Leaf Van Boven.</p>
<p>"The question we wanted to answer with our study is what is the impact of people's emotions on their decisions to make charitable donations," Van Boven said. "We demonstrated that people act on what is immediately emotionally arousing to them. In other words, they respond to what makes them upset in the here and now."</p>

<p>University of Colorado Boulder Provost Russell L. Moore today named Robert Boswell as CU-Boulder vice chancellor for diversity, equity and community engagement effective Jan. 1, 2012.</p>

<p>In 1977, Jimmy Carter was sworn in as president, Elvis died, Virginia park ranger Roy Sullivan was hit by lightning a record seventh time and two NASA space probes destined to turn planetary science on its head launched from Cape Canaveral, Fla.</p>

<p>After two years of working in a University of Colorado Boulder laboratory that recently gained international media attention for its work with snakes and heart disease, graduating senior Ryan Doptis has set his sights on becoming a research scientist.</p>
<p>Doptis, a molecular, cellular and developmental biology major from Las Vegas, will graduate on Dec. 16. He has worked the past two years in the laboratory of CU-Boulder Professor Leslie Leinwand, the chief scientific officer of CU’s Biofrontiers Institute.</p>

<p>A University of Colorado Boulder team is partnering with the United States Agency for International Development to assess snow and glacier contributions to water resources originating in the high mountains of Asia that straddle 10 countries.</p>

<p>Two University of Colorado Boulder researchers who have adapted a three-dimensional, general circulation model of Earth's climate to a time some 2.8 billion years ago when the sun was significantly fainter than present think the planet may have been more prone to catastrophic glaciation than previously believed.</p>

<p>University of Colorado Boulder students will demonstrate innovative ideas and projects ranging from a safer climbing helmet to robot butlers at three expos over the next week. All of the events are free and open to the public.</p>