Ethane tanks

On the rise: ethane concentrations climbing again

June 14, 2016

Global emissions of ethane, an air pollutant and greenhouse gas, are on the uptick again. A team led by CU-Boulder found that a steady decline of global ethane emissions following a peak in about 1970 ended between 2005 and 2010 in most of the Northern Hemisphere and has since reversed. Between 2009 and 2014, ethane emissions in the Northern Hemisphere increased by about 400,000 tons annually, the bulk of it from North American oil and gas activity.

 Image of earth from space

Milky Way now hidden from one-third of humanity

June 10, 2016

The Milky Way, the brilliant river of stars that has dominated the night sky and human imaginations since time immemorial, is but a faded memory to one third of humanity and 80 percent of Americans, according to a new global atlas of light pollution produced by Italian and American scientists.

Some comets are like couples: They break up, then make up

June 1, 2016

For some comets, breaking up is not that hard to do. A new study led by Purdue University and CU-Boulder indicates the bodies of some periodic comets – objects that orbit the sun in less than 200 years – may regularly split in two, then reunite down the road.

A new window on energy savings

May 26, 2016

A CU-Boulder research team thinks the same type of liquid crystals you see in the display panel of your smart phone may be the key component in a new window coating that could lower energy costs in buildings across the nation.

Map graphic of comparison of net domestic migration in 2006 and 2014

CU-Boulder becomes Rocky Mountain region’s first federal social science data research hub

May 24, 2016

Social scientists and health researchers from across Colorado and neighboring states will soon have abundant U.S. Census and other federal statistical data available to them in a secure setting at the University of Colorado Boulder. The National Science Foundation this month awarded $300,000 over three years to CU-Boulder to create the Rocky Mountain Research Data Center (RMRDC), which will be housed in the Institute of Behavioral Science (IBS).

A prescribed fire at the Joseph W. Jones Ecological Research Center in Georgia.

Global data shows inverse relationship, shift in human use of fire

May 22, 2016

Humans use fire for heating, cooking, managing lands and, more recently, fueling industrial processes. Now, research from the University of Colorado has found that these various means of using fire are inversely related to one another, providing new insight into how people are changing the face of fire.

Christopher Lowry

Immunization with bacteria promotes stress resilience, coping behaviors in mice, CU-Boulder study finds

May 16, 2016

Injections of the soil bacterium "Mycobacterium vaccae" ("M. vaccae" NCTC 11659) promote stress resilience and improve coping behaviors in mice, according to a new study led by the University of Colorado Boulder.

Miniature X-Ray Solar Spectrometer

CU-Boulder-led MinXSS CubeSat to deploy from ISS, study sun’s soft X-rays

May 13, 2016

The bread loaf-sized Miniature X-Ray Solar Spectrometer, or MinXSS, CubeSat will be deployed from an airlock on the International Space Station (ISS) at 4 a.m. MDT on Monday, May 16, beginning its journey into space where it will study emissions from the sun that can affect ground-based communications systems.

“soft†robotic hand

Octopus-inspired ‘soft’ robot wins international challenge

May 11, 2016

An octopus tentacle can perform tasks as complex as opening a jar and can continue to function after being severed from its body, thanks to a concentration of neurons in the tentacle itself. Researchers in the Correll Lab at CU-Boulder created a robotic hand nearly as dexterous and self-contained, winning the RoboSoft Grand Challenge manipulation competition in Livorno, Italy, April 29-30.

A 3-D animation created by NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio using data from the MAVEN mission to Mars

MAVEN data used for award-winning NASA Scientific Visualization Studio video

May 11, 2016

A 3-D animation created by NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio using data from the MAVEN mission to Mars is the corporate winner of the inaugural Data Stories video contest sponsored by Science magazine for videos that tell stories about data. The video explains how the solar wind is driving particles from the upper atmosphere of Mars into space, which may have caused the planet to dry out and cool over the eons.

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