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May 27, 2016 Matt Benjamin Come Memorial Day our neighbor planet Mars will only be 47 million miles from Earth - the closest it’s been to our planet in 11 years. Granted, that’s still far away but sometimes Mars is almost 250 million miles from Earth. Being this close to Earth is due to a unique set of circumstances, says Matt Benjamin, education programs manager at CU-Â鶹ӰԺ’s Fiske Planetarium.

May 30, 2016 Peter Grace As paradoxical as this may sound, a new CU-Â鶹ӰԺ study reveals that opioids like morphine have now been shown to cause an increase in chronic pain in lab rats, findings that could have far-reaching implications for humans, says researcher Peter Grace. He says that just a few days of morphine treatment caused chronic pain that went on for several months by exacerbating the release of pain signals from specific immune cells in the spinal cord.

Construction on the new Center for Academic Success and Engagement (or CASE building), which will be built atop the Euclid Autopark, will begin this August. This new building, which will initially house key components of the Office of Admissions and eventually various other important student and academic services, has been designed to serve as a gateway to campus for visitors and prospective students and families.

After five years and the hard work of nearly 200 students, faculty and community members, Geometry Point at Romero Park in Lafayette is now open. Filled with colorful geometric shapes, math equations and artful displays of arithmetic, the park was designed to make math fun.

A CU-Â鶹ӰԺ research team thinks the same type of liquid crystals you see in the display panel of your smart phone may be the key component in a new window coating that could lower energy costs in buildings across the nation.

Hugh Lobel, a 2015 Doctor of Musical Arts graduate, is making it easier for anyone to compose their own music using his new platform, Music_SDP.

For Professor Sarah Krakoff and students from CU-Â鶹ӰԺ, spring marks a transition from the halls of the Wolf Law Building to the fields of the San Luis Valley. Since 2012, Krakoff and her law students have regularly trekked to one of the largest high altitude deserts in the world, where they clear debris from irrigation ditches or acequias and provide free legal assistance to farmers whose water rights are in question.

Social scientists and health researchers from across Colorado and neighboring states will soon have abundant U.S. Census and other federal statistical data available to them in a secure setting at the Â鶹ӰԺ. The National Science Foundation this month awarded $300,000 over three years to CU-Â鶹ӰԺ to create the Rocky Mountain Research Data Center (RMRDC), which will be housed in the Institute of Behavioral Science (IBS).

For those of you staying in beautiful Â鶹ӰԺ this summer, here are some of my favorite things to do during the warm months. I am Sarah Ellsworth: IPHY major, Â鶹ӰԺ native and event connoisseur, and I hope you all have a fantastic summer.

Humans use fire for heating, cooking, managing lands and, more recently, fueling industrial processes. Now, research from the University of Colorado has found that these various means of using fire are inversely related to one another, providing new insight into how people are changing the face of fire.