NIST physicist David Wineland adjusts an ultraviolet laser beam used to manipulate ions in a high-vacuum apparatus containing an “ion trap.” These devices have been used to demonstrate the basic operations required for a quantum computer. Such computers, by relying on quantum mechanics rather than transistors to perform calculations or store information, could someday solve problems in seconds that would take months on today’s best supercomputers. Photo by Geoffrey Wheeler/NIST.

NIST physicist, CU-Boulder lecturer wins Nobel

Oct. 9, 2012

David J. Wineland, a lecturer in the University of Colorado Boulder physics department, has won the 2012 Nobel Prize in physics. Wineland is a physicist with the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder and internationally recognized for developing the technique of using lasers to cool ions to near...

Associate Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience Tor Wager, director of CU Boulder’s Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Lab. Photo: Stephen Collector/The New York Times/Redux

Expecting less pain can lead to less pain

Oct. 1, 2012

What you don’t know won’t hurt you, goes the old canard, but what you believe can make a difference when it comes to pain relief, and not just in a subjective way. When you expect that a drug or placebo will relieve pain, and it does, it’s not simply a matter of fooling your brain.

Cover of book by Keith Maskus

Patent, copyright protection picture changing in globalized economy

Oct. 1, 2012

It seems, at first blush, to be something of a no-brainer: strengthening protections on American intellectual property rights (or IPRs) — on everything from drugs to music to technology — would be a boon to the national economy. After all, we hardly want unscrupulous governments and businesses in Brazil, China,...

Brian Talbot

A strategy to deal with moral relativism in students

Oct. 1, 2012

In certain political and religious circles, the notion of moral relativism — that there is no objective “right” or wrong, only individual opinions — is not just anathema, not merely abhorrent. It is the very root of decadence and the collapse of civilization. “What’s right for you may not be...

When biomass burns, including during wildfires, it releases a pollutant that can cause health problems at high concentrations. Photo credit: NOAA.

CU helps to smoke out an air pollutant’s hot spots

May 1, 2012

When biomass burns, including during wildfires, it releases a pollutant that can cause health problems at high concentrations. Photo credit: NOAA. A smoke-related chemical may be a significant air pollutant in some parts of the world, especially in places where forest fires and other forms of biomass burning are common,...

15-year-old Zach Huey, in black shirt, and his twin brother, Nate, have been studied since the age of 4 by researchers at the Institute for Behavioral Genetics at the University of Colorado Boulder. CU photo by Glenn Asakawa.

AVĂűĘŞers do double-take on childhood learning

March 1, 2012

Nate and Zach Huey are identical, 15-year-old twins, who, like most twins, are somewhat dissimilar. But the twins but have much in common. Both like Japanese comic books called Manga. Both read voraciously and have a vocabulary that shows it. And both have been studied since the age of 4 by researchers at the Institute for Behavioral Genetics at the University of Colorado Boulder.

Stefan Leyk

With clear uncertainty, prof maps disease through space and time

March 1, 2012

When most people think of maps, they think National Geographic, Rand McNally or — more likely these days — Google. Maps show us where places and objects are and sometimes, what they look like. They can be two-dimensional or three-dimensional, and whether they represent the inside of a human brain,...

Former CU-Boulder postdoctoral researchers Amy Miller ( blue coat) and Katie Suding (black coat) are shown here with other members of a research team conducting a study involving nitrogen deposition on the tundra of the Niwot Ridge Long-Term Ecological AVĂűĘŞ site west of Boulder. (Photo courtesy William Bowman, INSTAAR)

High alpine ecology threatened by climate change

March 1, 2012

Former CU-Boulder postdoctoral researchers Amy Miller ( blue coat) and Katie Suding (black coat) are shown here with other members of a research team conducting a study involving nitrogen deposition on the tundra of the Niwot Ridge Long-Term Ecological AVĂűĘŞ site west of Boulder. (Photo courtesy William Bowman, INSTAAR) A...

Leaf Van Boven

Boys don’t cry, at least as far as they recall

March 1, 2012

When former U.S. Rep. Patricia Schroeder tearfully announced in 1987 that she would not seek the nomination for president, many analysts suggested that such a display of emotion made her unqualified. But what if all our tightly held stereotypes about “emotional” females and stoic males are wrong?

Elizabeth Fenn

Former auto mechanic makes splash in history

Dec. 1, 2011

If the world ever takes a swift, downward trip in a hand basket, historian Elizabeth “Lil” Fenn feels pretty good about her chances. Compared to many–let’s be honest, most–modern academics, Fenn has led a very hands-on life. Noting tradition of scholars trained in trade skills, she joins CU history faculty.

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