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Scientists have discovered that some ring-tailed lemurs in Madagascar regularly retire to limestone chambers for their nightly snoozes, the first evidence of the consistent, daily use of the same caves and crevices for sleeping among the world’s wild primates.

More than 350 engineering students at the Â鶹ӰԺ will demonstrate their innovations and inventions to the community at the annual fall Engineering Design Expo on Saturday, Dec. 7.

A new National Research Council report calls for the development of an early warning system that could help society better anticipate sudden changes resulting from climate change and their impacts on society, says a Â鶹ӰԺ faculty member who chaired the committee that produced the report.

Some of the Â鶹ӰԺ’s most promising musicians will receive scholarships thanks to Anna and John J. Sie, who have committed $2 million to establish the Daniel and Boyce Sher Distinguished Musicians Endowment. Beginning in fall 2014, these Sher Distinguished Scholars (either undergraduate or graduate students) will be awarded full-ride scholarships to the College of Music based on their demonstrated exceptional ability and potential to excel at a national and international level.

It’s hard to imagine, but 50 years ago it wasn’t TV, the Internet, Twitter or a myriad of social media that alerted people to breaking news, instead they probably heard it on the radio. But that all changed one afternoon in Dallas, Nov. 22, 1963, when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. That’s when people discovered the power of live TV, says Rick Stevens, a professor of journalism at CU-Â鶹ӰԺ.

While young children sleep, connections between the left and the right hemispheres of their brain strengthen, which may help brain functions mature, according to a new study by the Â鶹ӰԺ. The research team—led by Salome Kurth, a postdoctoral researcher, and Monique LeBourgeois, assistant professor in integrative physiology—used electroencephalograms, or EEGs, to measure the brain activity of eight sleeping children multiple times at the ages of 2, 3 and 5 years.

The Â鶹ӰԺ Leeds School of Business will present its 49th annual Colorado Business Economic Outlook Forum on Monday, Dec. 9, at 1 p.m. at the Denver Marriott City Center. The event is free and open to the public but reservations are required for those planning to attend. Leeds School economist Richard Wobbekind will present the forecast and Doug Suttles, president and CEO of Encana, will deliver the keynote address.

A $671 million NASA mission to Mars led by the Â鶹ӰԺ thundered into the sky today from Cape Canaveral, Fla., at 1:28 p.m. EST, the first step on its 10-month journey to Mars. Known as the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN mission, the MAVEN spacecraft was launched aboard an Atlas V rocket provided by United Launch Alliance of Centennial, Colo. The mission will target the role the loss of atmospheric gases played in changing Mars from a warm, wet and possibly habitable planet for life to the cold dry and inhospitable planet it appears to be today.

A $5 million instrument designed and built by the Â鶹ӰԺ to study the sun’s natural variability in order to better discern human-caused climate effects will be launched Nov. 19 from NASA’s Wallops Island Flight Facility in Virginia. The instrument, known as the Total Irradiance Monitor, or TIM, will fly on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Total Solar Irradiance Calibration Transfer Experiment, or TCTE. The principal investigator for the TIM instrument is Greg Kopp of CU-Â鶹ӰԺ’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics.

A $671 million NASA mission to Mars being led by the Â鶹ӰԺ is approaching its official countdown toward a planned Nov. 18 launch after a decade of rigorous work by faculty, professionals, staff and students.