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EDITORS: Volunteers will be at the park on Saturday, July 17, from 10 a.m. to about 3 p.m. to build play structures, install art works and plant trees and flowers. Lafayette Gardens is at 11700 So. Â鶹ӰԺ Road. The best way to enter the Peace Park area is by going east on South Â鶹ӰԺ Road and take a right (south) on Avalon (which is 2 blocks east of Public Road). The very first right (which has no name) is the entrance into Lafayette Gardens. The Peace Park is immediately on the left.

Attention Westerners: the Center of the American West at the University of Colorado at Â鶹ӰԺ has a question for you. What, as a recent transplant or a longtime resident, is the information that every Westerner needs to know? In preparation for a new publication, history Professor Patricia Nelson Limerick and geography Professor William Riebsame are investigating what Westerners think about their region, using an interactive survey on the Internet and a series of community meetings.

The University of Colorado at Â鶹ӰԺ-based BioServe Space Technologies Center will be flying experiments ranging from ladybugs and butterflies to biomedicine and water purification on a space shuttle slated for launch July 20.

MEDIA ADVISORY Ken Rutherford will appear at a July 15 news conference at the University of Colorado at Â鶹ӰԺ as part of the Adopt-A-Minefield initiative within Colorado. Rutherford, who grew up in Â鶹ӰԺ and attended the University of Colorado, lost both his legs when a vehicle he was driving in Somalia ran over a landmine.

Faculty, staff and students at the University of Colorado at Â鶹ӰԺ have been selected to design and build a major instrument that will launch on a NASA spacecraft bound for Mercury in the year 2004. Known as the Mercury Space Environment Geochemistry and Ranging mission, or MESSENGER, the spacecraft will carry seven miniaturized instruments, said Daniel Baker, director of CU-Â鶹ӰԺ's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics. As part of NASAÂ’s new Discovery Program missions, MESSENGER will be the first spacecraft to visit Mercury in more than 30 years.

As people grow older, many worry that if they exercise they may do more harm than good and perhaps even injure themselves. But that fear is simply not true even in the case of the very old, says Robert Mazzeo, a professor in the department of kinesiology and applied physiology at the University of Colorado at Â鶹ӰԺ. "Remaining sedentary is more dangerous than any physical activity," says Mazzeo, who also is chairman of the American College of Sports Medicine committee, which recently reported on the issue.

Editors: On Aug. 26, from 7:30 p.m. to 9 p.m., Levitt will be at the Troubadour Bookstore, on Pearl Street, Â鶹ӰԺ, reading excerpts from his book on Joe Frisco, signing copies and talking about vaudeville. Joe Frisco, a vaudeville comic and jazz dancer, was probably as famous in the 1920s and ‘30s as television comedian Jerry Seinfeld is in the ‘90s. But soon after he died in 1958, Frisco slipped into obscurity.

Migrant and seasonal workers who earned general education diplomas through the University of Colorado at Â鶹ӰԺ’s High School Equivalency Program at La Junta will graduate July 17. Â鶹ӰԺ 500 people are expected to attend the 10 a.m. ceremony in the Humanities Center at Otero Junior College and a reception afterwards in the college gym.

University of Colorado at Â鶹ӰԺ Professor Thomas Johnson was one of 14 researchers nationwide selected as an Ellison Medical Foundation Senior Scholar in 1998. The honor includes $200,000 annually for up to four years, which Johnson has begun receiving this year. A fellow at the Institute for Behavioral Genetics, Johnson plans to use the money for a new research program to study aging genes in mice.

More than 30 Denver minority middle school students and their parents will take part in a number of engineering tasks during the Success Institute at the University of Colorado at Â鶹ӰԺ July 8 and July 9.