Science & Technology

<p>From compostable heat to a custom-built, sensory playhouse, CU freshmen at this year’s Engineering Projects Expo on Saturday, Dec. 7, had a lot to show off.</p>

<p>Average smartphone users are willing to pay up to $5 extra for a typical application—or “app”—that won’t monitor their locations, contact lists and other personal information, a study conducted by two economists at the University of Colorado Boulder has found.</p>

<p>Scientists recently recorded the lowest temperatures on Earth at a desolate and remote ice plateau in East Antarctica, trumping a record set in 1983 and uncovering a new puzzle about the ice-covered continent.</p>
<p>Glaciologist Ted Scambos and his team found temperatures from −92 to −94 degrees Celsius (−134 to −137 degrees Fahrenheit) in a 1,000-kilometer long swath on the highest section of the East Antarctic ice divide. Scambos is lead scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center, which is a part of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder.</p>

<p>A massive ejection of material from the sun initially traveling at over 7 million miles per hour that narrowly missed Earth last year is an event solar scientists hope will open the eyes of policymakers regarding the impacts and mitigation of severe space weather, says a University of Colorado Boulder professor.</p>

<p>NIST news release</p>
<p>JILA researchers have developed a method of spinning electric and magnetic fields around trapped molecular ions to measure whether the ions’ tiny electrons are truly round—research with major implications for future scientific understanding of the universe. </p>

<p>In just one hour, school kids, teachers and any code-curious member of the public with an Internet connection can now create their own 3-D video game using a tutorial built by a team at the University of Colorado Boulder in preparation for the global “Hour of Code” event happening the second week of December.</p>

<p>Scientists have discovered that some ring-tailed lemurs in Madagascar regularly retire to limestone chambers for their nightly snoozes, the first evidence of the consistent, daily use of the same caves and crevices for sleeping among the world’s wild primates.</p>

<p>More than 350 engineering students at the University of Colorado Boulder will demonstrate their innovations and inventions to the community at the annual fall Engineering Design Expo on Saturday, Dec. 7.</p>

<p>A new National Research Council report calls for the development of an early warning system that could help society better anticipate sudden changes resulting from climate change and their impacts on society, says a University of Colorado Boulder faculty member who chaired the committee that produced the report.</p>

<p>It’s hard to imagine, but 50 years ago it wasn’t TV, the Internet, Twitter or a myriad of social media that alerted people to breaking news, instead they probably heard it on the radio. But that all changed one afternoon in Dallas, Nov. 22, 1963, when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. That’s when people discovered the power of live TV, says Rick Stevens, a professor of journalism at CU-Boulder.</p>