Senior NASA leaders with CU President Todd Saliman and other university officials in front of the Mariner spacecraft displayed in LASP

CU Boulder, LASP welcome NASA leaders to campus

April 21, 2023

A group of senior NASA leaders visited the CU Boulder campus where they met with CU President Todd Saliman and other university officials, and toured the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics.

Enacting Climate Solutions Through Human Rights Climate Commitments panel

Panel explores human rights impacts of climate change, ways to collectively move forward

April 21, 2023

A Conference on World Affairs panel April 14 on a rights-based approach to addressing climate change vacillated between optimism at momentum around potential solutions and the grim truth that emissions keep rising and the Earth—and all of humanity—face dire consequences.

a person wearing AI glasses

Artificial intelligence has social consequences, but who pays the price?

April 21, 2023

Generative artificial intelligence is designed to produce the unforeseen, but that doesn’t mean developers can’t predict the types of social consequences it may cause. CU expert Casey Fiesler shares on The Conversation.

A biodegradable "artificial muscle" made with material stamped with an image of a carrot

Grad student helps design ‘artificial muscles’ you can toss in the compost bin

April 20, 2023

Mechanical engineering student Ellen Rumley was part of a robotics club in high school, but she could never get over the clunkiness of rigid, metal machines. Now, she's designing soft robotic actuators that work like animal muscles. They're also completely biodegradable.

Abel Campos, majoring in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, examines a fossil in the Invertebrate Paleontology department at the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History. (Photo by Casey A. Cass/University of Colorado)

Chili peppers more deeply rooted in Colorado than previously thought

April 20, 2023

Recently identified chili pepper fossils from Boulder and Denver museums challenge 50 million years of global evolutionary history. Now, that’s some spicy science!

Researcher holding the UV device used in the study

Study shows personal disinfection device safe for use in public spaces

April 19, 2023

Imagine carrying a UV device in your backpack and pulling it out to disinfect your bus seat or restaurant table. A new CU Boulder study shows that using a technology called Far UV-C kills almost 100% of pathogens within a few seconds, without risk to human bystanders.

Globe map with push pins

World’s largest grammar database reveals accelerating loss of language diversity

April 19, 2023

A new grammatical database documents the enormous diversity of current languages on the planet, which ones are at risk and why they're worth saving.

Illustration of a human painting a robot, while the robot draws the human with pencil

5 essential reads on the new era of generative artificial intelligence

April 19, 2023

Creativity, job anxiety, misinformation, bias and plagiarism—scholars are helping society come to grips with the potential benefits and harms of generative AI. Look back on The Conversation archives, featuring CU experts Daniel Acuña and Casey Greene.

Scene from This Is Their Land

Tribal language in film speaks history out loud

April 14, 2023

Joseph Dupris, a visiting assistant professor at CU Boulder, is a linguist and “maqlaqsyals” user who helped integrate the Modoc language into the short film This Is Their Land. It was recently screened on campus, and a 150th anniversary remembrance is set to be held in Tulelake, California.

Sprinklers watering a lettuce field in Holtville, California, with Colorado River water.

The Colorado River drought crisis: 5 essential reads

April 13, 2023

A 23-year western drought has drastically shrunk the Colorado River, leading the Biden administration to consider mandatory cuts to water allocations in some states. Look back on The Conversation archives to better understand what’s happening and what’s at stake.

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