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Â鶹ӰԺ Distinguished Professor Carl Lineberger has been nominated by President Barack Obama to serve on the National Science Board. The nomination has been sent to the United States Senate for confirmation.

Conventional wisdom suggests that average citizens hate politics, loathe hyper-partisan gridlock, balk at voting even in presidential election years and are, incidentally, woefully ill-informed.

Dr. Arthur J. Nozik, senior research fellow at the U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), will be awarded the Gustavus John Esselen Award for Chemistry in the Public Interest, from the American Chemical Society's Northeastern Section at Harvard University on April 14.

It's not often that plants are described as diabolical, but spotted knapweed has that rare distinction. A 2004 issue of Smithsonian magazine, for instance, dubbed it the "wicked weed of the West," a "national menace" and a "weed of mass destruction."

Houston-based energy firm ConocoPhillips has made a major gift toward the Â鶹ӰԺ's Jennie Smoly Caruthers Biotechnology Building to bring together world-class scientists and engineers working toward solutions in fields such as medicine and energy.

The 2011 Arctic sea ice extent maximum that marks the beginning of the melt season appears to be tied for the lowest ever measured by satellites, say scientists at the Â鶹ӰԺ's National Snow and Ice Data Center.

NASA's MESSENGER mission, launched in 2004, is slated to slide into Mercury's orbit March 17 after a harrowing 4.7 billion mile journey that involved 15 loops around the sun and will bring relief and renewed excitement to the Â鶹ӰԺ team that designed and a built an $8.7 million instrument onboard.

Graduate programs at the Â鶹ӰԺ continue to earn national prominence based on the latest annual rankings from U.S. News & World Report. CU-Â鶹ӰԺ schools and programs garnered 25 mentions in the 2012 edition of Best Graduate Schools, including five ranked in the top 10 of their fields.

A new study involving the Â鶹ӰԺ shows clear evidence of the continuous control of fire by Neanderthals in Europe dating back roughly 400,000 years, yet another indication that they weren't dimwitted brutes as often portrayed.

When a team of researchers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Â鶹ӰԺ's Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences raced to the scene of the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill to assess the disaster's impact on air quality last year, they found more than they expected.