Ruth Ellen Kocher

CU-Boulder English professor wins prestigious PEN Award

July 30, 2014

Ruth Ellen Kocher, professor of English and director of the creative writing program at the University of Colorado Boulder, has won a prestigious PEN Literary Award. Kocher was a co-winner of the PEN Open Book Award for her book of poems titled domina Un/blued. The award recognizes an exceptional book-length work of literature by an author of color. Also winning the award was Nina McConigley for Cowboys and East Indians .

Kids enjoying game design

NYC schools to use video games to teach computer coding

July 29, 2014

A program designed at the University of Colorado Boulder to teach kids to code using video games is being introduced into New York City public schools as part of an initiative to give every student access to computer science education. Scalable Game Design is a program developed over two decades by CU-Boulder computer science Professor Alexander Repenning to spark an interest in coding among kids by allowing them to design and build their own video games. The idea behind the program, which uses drag-and-drop programming tools, is to combat the widely held notion that computer programming is hard and boring.

CU-Boulder and NCAR ozone gardens reveal harmful effects of pollution

July 23, 2014

Everyone has heard about the harmful effects of pollution on human and plant health, but until recently, visualizing such effects took some imagination.

Children explore pond.

Natural-terrain schoolyards reduce childrenā€™s stress, says CU Boulder study

July 22, 2014

Playing in schoolyards that feature natural habitats and trees and not just asphalt and recreation equipment reduces childrenā€™s stress and inattention, according to a University of Colorado Boulder study.

A novel venue enables a novel's presentation

July 17, 2014

Coming up in the CU-Boulderā€™s ATLAS Black Box Theater is square product theatreā€™s production of "SLAB," an adaptation of Denver writer Selah Saterstromā€™s forthcoming novel. The story is about a womanā€™s life in the American South told through her memories and from the slab of her post-Katrina home.

Borg Field Example courtesy NASA

International team involving CU-Boulder to use Hubble Space Telescope for early galaxy hunt

July 15, 2014

An international team led by the Kavli Institute for Cosmology at the University of Cambridge and involving the University of Colorado Boulder has a new tool to look for the oldest galaxies in the universe: 32 days of observing time with the Hubble Space Telescope.

CU-Boulder instrument onboard Hubble reveals the universe is ā€˜missingā€™ light

July 9, 2014

Something is amiss in the universe. There appears to be an enormous deficit of ultraviolet light in the cosmic budget. Observations made by the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph, a $70 million instrument designed by the University of Colorado Boulder and installed on the Hubble Space Telescope, have revealed that the universe is ā€œmissingā€ a large amount of light.

Jin awarded Isaac Newton Medal of the Institute of Physics

July 8, 2014

Deborah Jin has won the 2014 Isaac Newton Medal, the highest accolade given by the Institute of Physics. She was cited for her experimental work in laser cooling atoms. This work has led to the practical demonstration of universal laws that upderpin fundamental quantum behavior.

Tapir-Hedgehog

CU-Boulder-led team identifies fossils of tiny, unknown hedgehog

July 8, 2014

Meet perhaps the tiniest hedgehog species ever: Silvacola acares. Its roughly 52-million-year-old fossil remains were recently identified by a University of Colorado Boulder-led team working in British Columbia. The hedgehogā€™s scientific name means ā€œtiny forest dweller,ā€ said CU-Boulder Associate Professor Jaelyn Eberle of the geological sciences department, lead author on the study. The creature -- a new genus and species to science -- was only about 2 inches long, roughly the length of an adult thumb.

Oklahoma earthquake swarm linked to wastewater injection wells, says study involving CU-Boulder

July 2, 2014

The massive increase in earthquakes in central Oklahoma is likely being caused by the injection of vast amounts of wastewater from oil and gas operations into underground layers of rock, according to a new study led by Cornell University and involving the University of Colorado Boulder.

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