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From robots battling to scoop up the most ping-pong balls to a variety of machines built from recycled materials, K-12 students interested in building things will enjoy the Integrated Teaching and Learning Laboratory's Fall Design Expo on Saturday, Dec. 8.

TO CU's DENNIS SMALL CENTER Interactive Theatre will be back at the University of Colorado at Â鶹ӰԺ on Tuesday, Dec. 4, to bring its unique brand of theatrical education to students, staff, faculty and local residents. The production, titled, "So, How Much Did You Get," will start at 6 p.m. in the Dennis Small Cultural Center in room 305 of the University Memorial Center on campus.

Scientists are unraveling the mystery of how lobsters "untangle" underwater odors in their search for prey, predators and mates, findings that may have applications for robots to someday follow chemical trails to locate explosives or dangerous chemicals underwater or on land.

A University of Colorado at Â鶹ӰԺ experiment designed to gather precise data on the sun's ultraviolet output and the response of Earth's upper atmosphere to solar radiation is slated to be launched aboard a NASA spacecraft on Dec. 7. The Solar Extreme Ultraviolet Experiment, or SEE, is one of four instruments on NASA's Thermosphere-Ionosphere-Mesosphere-Energetics-Dynamics, or TIMED, spacecraft. TIMED is scheduled to be launched aboard a Delta vehicle from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., for a planned two-year mission.

Two University of Colorado at Â鶹ӰԺ professors have been nominated to receive the prestigious designation of distinguished professor, pending approval by the Board of Regents on Dec. 13. The nominees are Jane Menken, professor of sociology and director of the Institute of Behavioral Science, and Steven Maier, professor of psychology and director of the Center for Neuroscience. They would join only 18 other CU-Â鶹ӰԺ faculty members who currently hold the title of distinguished professor.

New research from the University of Colorado at Â鶹ӰԺ reveals that areas of the surface of Mars may be protected from the full force of solar radiation by areas of intensely magnetized crust. The startling vision of Mars' magnetosphere is being explored by David Brain, a doctoral student at CU-Â鶹ӰԺ's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics and his research advisor, Professor Fran Bagenal, using magnetometer data from NASA's Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft.

Kathy King, a senior from Pittsford, N.Y., majoring in philosophy at the University of Colorado at Â鶹ӰԺ, has been awarded the Marshall Scholarship, a British grant that finances young Americans of high academic ability to study toward a degree in the United Kingdom. "It is a great honor for one of our students to win such a prestigious award," said CU-Â鶹ӰԺ Chancellor Richard Byyny. "This is further evidence of the high quality of the university and its students."

The myths, astronomical phenomena and constellations of the sky in the Southern Hemisphere will be explored in the live astronomy show "Southern Skies" at the University of Colorado at Â鶹ӰԺ's Fiske Planetarium on Friday, Dec. 7, and Tuesday, Dec. 11, at 7:30 p.m.

The University of Colorado at Â鶹ӰԺ honor code has met with the approval of several of its member schools and colleges and voting on the code will continue through December. While faculty in all schools within the university have not yet ratified the honor code, initial responses from those who have has been positive, according to Ron Stump, CU's vice chancellor for student affairs.

As the West faces an economic slowdown, the CU-Â鶹ӰԺ Center of the American West is assembling a group of experts to examine the region's historical pattern of a boom and bust economy and talk about what the future might hold. Eight experts from a variety of disciplines will issue the results of a two-day discussion from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. on Saturday, Dec. 1, in Hale Science room 270.