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New evidence indicates Australia's interior cooled by more than 16 degrees Fahrenheit during the last ice age, hinting that dramatic temperature drops associated with glaciations at the poles and in the Northern Hemisphere reached around the globe.

A five-member team of researchers and graduate students at the University of Colorado and the National Institute of Standards and Technology will be honored for their scientific paper announcing the creation of a new state of matter at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science on Feb. 15.

Physicists Carl Wieman and Eric Cornell of the University of Colorado and the National Institute of Standards and Technology are the winners of the 1997 King Faisal International Prize in Science and will share a $200,000 award. The Boulder physicists were honored for their creation of the first Bose-Einstein condensate, a new form of matter predicted by Albert Einstein and expected to shed new light on the strange realm of quantum mechanics.

A newly established Center for Physical Activity, Disease Prevention and Aging at the University of Colorado at Boulder will focus on the role of physical activity in health and aging. The research center is located in the kinesiology department of the College of Arts and Sciences under the direction of Professor Douglas Seals. A faculty member since 1992, Seals is an expert in exercise physiology, aging and cardiovascular disease.

The University of Colorado at Boulder has contracted with MCI to provide a dial-in Internet service to be paid for by individual users who now routinely receive busy signals when they try to dial in to university servers. Demand by students, faculty and staff for modem service to access the Internet, World Wide Web and electronic mail far outpaces the system's capabilities.

EDITORS: A complete schedule of visiting executives is attached. Reporters can arrange to attend any lecture by calling (303) 492-4007. Lectures are from 3:30 p.m. to 5:15 p.m. in room 100 of the Mathematics Building. The chief executive officers of ConAgra, Vail Resorts and WMX Technologies are among 13 top executives scheduled to address a popular business class this spring at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

A popular new service for students has been suspended for the spring semester at the University of Colorado at Boulder Book Store, due to issues raised about possible unfair competitive advantage over outside book stores. Last fall, in response to student and parent requests, the CU Book Store arranged for textbook purchases to be included on the students' main university bill, along with tuition, fees and housing.

If a computer has ever given you fits, University of Colorado at Boulder psychology professor Thomas Landauer will probably cheer you up. He says it's not your fault. Everyday examples of how computers have actually made work more difficult abound, Landauer says. But rather than blaming the person who designed the computer people often blame themselves.

NEWS TIP SHEET University of Colorado at Boulder alumna Marsha Ivins is slated to make her fourth journey into space on Sunday, Jan. 12, when NASA's space shuttle Atlantis is scheduled to blast off from Cape Kennedy, Fla.

The University of Colorado at Boulder's department of aerospace engineering sciences and the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics have been jointly named one of five Programs of Excellence statewide by the Colorado Commission on Higher Education for 1997. The Programs of Excellence competition was founded in 1988 by the Colorado Legislature to reward colleges and universities with outstanding educational programs. The Legislature annually provides winners special state funding as part of the award to enhance existing programs.