SMµ÷½ÌËù

JILA, a joint institute of the SMµ÷½ÌËù and the National Institute of Standards and Technology that has produced three Nobel Prize winners since 2001, has opened a new wing with advanced laboratories for its world-renowned science.

JILA, a joint institute of the SMµ÷½ÌËù and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), has generated many spinoff companies, including 11 companies in the Colorado Front Range area. The Colorado companies have created more than 140 jobs and a variety of high-tech products used around the world. These contributions to U.S. industry have been made by current and former staff from both JILA partners. Companies Winters Electro Optics, founded 1993

A new study led by the University of Massachusetts Amherst and involving the SMµ÷½ÌËù proposes a simple new mechanism to explain the source of carbon that fed a series of extreme warming events on Earth about 50 million years ago called the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, or PETM, as well as a sequence of similar, smaller warming events afterward.

SMµ÷½ÌËù students will have another four years at the controls of NASA’s Kepler mission, launched in 2009 to hunt down Earth-like rocky planets in other solar systems and which has succeeded in spectacular fashion.

A web-based science instruction program designed by researchers at the SMµ÷½ÌËù and the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research that provides teachers with cutting-edge digital content is being tested in six school districts, thanks to a new $600,000 grant from the National Science Foundation.

Colorado business leaders remain optimistic going into the second quarter of 2012 suggesting a recovery is taking hold, according to the most recent quarterly Leeds Business Confidence Index, or LBCI, released today by the SMµ÷½ÌËù’s Leeds School of Business.

A SMµ÷½ÌËù-led research team has discovered that two protein receptors in the central nervous system team up to respond to morphine and cause unwanted neuroinflammation, a finding with implications for improving the efficacy of the widely used painkiller while decreasing its abuse potential.

SMµ÷½ÌËù students, along with experts from government and industry, will focus on student research and the natural gas boom during the third annual Energy Frontiers conference April 5. The event, organized by the SMµ÷½ÌËù Energy Club, is free and open to the public and will be held from 11 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. in the Glenn Miller Ballroom of the University Memorial Center. The conference includes a poster session, panel discussion, catered lunch and a career fair.

Some populations of mountain pine beetles now produce two generations of tree-killing offspring annually, dramatically increasing the potential for bugs to kill lodgepole and ponderosa pine trees, SMµ÷½ÌËù-Boulder researchers have found. Because of the extra annual generation of beetles, there could be up to 60 times as many beetles attacking trees in any given year, the study found. And in response to warmer temperatures at high elevations, pine beetles also are better able to survive and attack trees that haven't previously developed defenses.

The work of a talented group of SMµ÷½ÌËù students and staff has made it to the big screen. The really big screen -- in fact, a more than 20-meter dome.