Max Boykoff, an assistant professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado Boulder

Five questions for Maxwell T. Boykoff

When Hurricane Mitch stuck Honduras in 1998, Max Boykoff was a member of the Peace Corps, working with farmers on crop diversification and integrated pest management practices. The Category 5 event left thousands of people dead and millions homeless. Struck by the power of nature, Boykoff felt motivated to pursue questions of the environment, including those surrounding land management.

After earning a Ph.D. in environmental studies at the University of California-Santa Cruz, he became a research fellow at the Environmental Change Institute and lecturer in geography at the University of Oxford. He came to the University of Colorado Boulder four years ago, and he quips, is now a “senior.” He teaches environmental studies and geography and also maintains a collaborative relationship with Oxford University.

As an assistant professor in the Center for Science and Technology Policy in the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES), his research interests include the cultural politics of climate change and carbon-based economies and societies. In addition, he’s looked at how “outlier” perspectives (particularly climate contrarians and countermovement groups) gain traction in public discourses. (See article a thttp://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/admin/publication_files/2013.05.pdf)

His books include “Who Speaks for the Climate? Making Sense of Media Reporting on Climate Change” (2011) and another that will be released in June titled “Successful Adaptation to Climate Change.”

Boykoff has worked with researchers around the world, from studying water issues in the lower Jordan River Valley to collaborating with the Red Cross in East Africa. He says he has been fortunate to be able to “expose myself to a lot of different cultures, perspectives and ideas. I’m continuing to learn from them, and some of it is simmering, and I believe my best work and most important contributions are yet to come.”

1. What have your studies on climate change and the media found and what types of improvements need to be made to offer accurate assessments of what’s happening to Earth’s environment?

There’s a lot of nuance and texture so that’s why I ended up writing a book about it, pulling together a number of different studies I had done. Some were quantitative, looking at content and how the media had been covering certain elements of climate change; for instance, the degree to which humans contribute to the climate change we detect now. Some were qualitative treatments, where I interviewed journalists, policy actors, and research academic scientists to understand barriers to — and levers for — change.

My findings have pointed to a range of opportunities for improvement, from the practices of individual journalists — such as more effective contextualization through labeling – to actions of individual scientists or research academics who must work hard to smarten up their language so they can translate complex work to the general public. Both cases seem straightforward, but institutional architectures often haven’t been conducive to supporting those efforts. Scientists still often consider their work with media and the public as an extension or sometimes even an annoyance to the laboratory research. But it’s a different time and it has to be part of our responsibility in doing this work. It’s not about dumbing down for the public; it’s really about smartening it up.

There are also larger institutional practices – ongoing media consolidation and drive for profit – that have worked to the detriment of covering complex and abstract issues. Climate change is certainly an example; it’s a difficult story to cover.

2. Can individuals make a difference when it comes to climate change, and if so, how?

I teach an introduction to environmental studies class, and this is one of the questions that comes up a lot. While it’s important to think about our role in this larger trend on the plant, I tend to favor working in the international and national arena where significant advances can be made. Of course everything we do matters. But we need to recognize that large-scale decisions that are informed by the best science available have the possibility to most effectively improve how we’re dealing with issues like climate change. When I do my work, it’s not to prescribe which policy tool is right or wrong but to make us more aware of what can be gained from certain policy decisions. For example, when you flip on the lights or use your computer, you don’t know offhand what mix of coal-fired power has gone into the electricity generation that you’re benefitting from or what percentage is due to wind. Yet decision-making and systems change will enable us to continue to prosper and do better much more efficiently and effectively.

3.  Some of your students are working on “social acceptability of renewable energy development in the American West.” Explain what they are doing and the results they have found.

My advisee Shawn Olson just defended her master’s thesis, which looks at Converse County, Wyo., and the social acceptability of turbine placements along with questions around resistance to where the projects are sited. One of my current advisees Xi Wang is looking at renewable portfolio standards and how different states are adopting these standards and changing profiles of their energy generation. Xi just received the Albert E. Smith Emerging Scholar Award from The Center to Advance Research and Teaching in the Social Sciences (CARTSS) at CU which is good acknowledgement and support for her path-breaking research.

One of the things I love about my role is being able to work with students and create the conditions where they can do their best work. I’m excited about all of their projects. (Visit http://www.icecaps.org/ for more information about Boykoff’s lab and research work.)

4. What other projects or research are you working on?

I have a co-edited book coming out next month titled “Successful Adaptation to Climate Change.” We’ve been able to pull together top scholars and look at questions around climate adaptation in a variety of cases. They comment on different case studies and how we can measure what’s working. We already are committed to a certain level of climate change, and adaptation is a necessity that’s become more and more acceptable and needed. My co-editor is Susie Moser (Stanford University), who has worked on this for a few decades, and I’ve jumped into these considerations around climate adaptation  more recently.

Another project I’m happy to be working on is “Inside the Greenhouse” with two other professors, Beth Osnes in the Theatre Department and Rebecca Safran, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology. We’re working with students to foster their development of creative ways to communicate about climate change and other issues in the environment. Students present multi-modal forms of communications – performance art, film, dance, public art and so on. The overall project combines courses we’ve developed along with public-facing events. For instance, we sit down with celebrities and talk about the climate and environmental issues and try to draw out their motivations. We had an April event, attended by about 1,500 people, where James Balog talked about the motivations behind his awarding-winning documentary “Chasing Ice.” We’re taking the students’ work and interviews and turning it into a TV program that will launch this summer or fall.

5. What’s the most important thing you keep on your desk?

My grandfather Alvin passed away a few years ago. He worked in the stock room for theMilwaukee Journal Sentinel for more than 50 years and when he reached 25 years of service with them, he got a paperweight. I inherited it and now keep it on my desk. His motto was, “Live, work, study, play, relax.”

This interview was conducted by Cynthia Pasquale for CU Connections, where it first appeared and from which it is reprinted with permission.

May 2013

Melt from Alaska’s Columbia Glacier and other glaciers around the world contributed as much to global sea rise as the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets combined from 2003 and 2009. Photo courtesy Tad Pfeffer, University of Colorado

By Jim Scott

While 99 percent of Earth’s land ice is locked up in the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, the remaining ice in the world’s glaciers contributed just as much to sea rise as the two ice sheets combined from 2003 to 2009, says a new study led by Clark University and involving the University Colorado Boulder.

The new research found that all glacial regions lost mass from 2003 to 2009, with the biggest ice losses occurring in Arctic Canada, Alaska, coastal Greenland, the southern Andes and the Himalayas. The glaciers outside of the Greenland and Antarctic sheets lost an average of roughly 260 billion metric tons of ice annually during the study period, causing the oceans to rise 0.03 inches, or about 0.7 millimeters per year.

The study compared traditional ground measurements to satellite data from NASA’s Ice, Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite, or ICESat, and the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment, or GRACE, missions to estimate ice loss for glaciers in all regions of the planet.

“For the first time, we’ve been able to very precisely constrain how much these glaciers as a whole are contributing to sea rise,” said geography Assistant Professor Alex Gardner of Clark University in Worcester, Mass., lead study author. “These smaller ice bodies are currently losing about as much mass as the ice sheets.”

A paper on the subject is being published in the May 17 issue of the journal Science.

“Because the global glacier ice mass is relatively small in comparison with the huge ice sheets covering Greenland and Antarctica, people tend to not worry about it,” said CU-Boulder Professor Tad Pfeffer, a study co-author.  “But it’s like a little bucket with a huge hole in the bottom: it may not last for very long, just a century or two, but while there’s ice in those glaciers, it’s a major contributor to sea level rise,” said Pfeffer, a glaciologist at CU-Boulder’s Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research

ICESat, which ceased operations in 2009, measured glacier changes using laser altimetry, which bounces laser pulses off the ice surface to determine changes in the height of ice cover. The GRACE satellite system, still operational, detects variations in Earth’s gravity field resulting from changes in the planet’s mass distribution, including ice displacements.

GRACE does not have a fine enough resolution and ICESat does not have sufficient sampling density to study small glaciers, but mass change estimates by the two satellite systems for large glaciated regions agree well, the scientists concluded.

“Because the two satellite techniques, ICESat and GRACE, are subject to completely different types of errors, the fact that their results are in such good agreement gives us increased confidence in those results,” said CU-Boulder physics Professor John Wahr, a study co-author and fellow at the university’s Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences.

Ground-based estimates of glacier mass changes include measurements along a line from a glacier’s summit to its edge, which are extrapolated over a glacier’s entire area.  Such measurements, while fairly accurate for individual glaciers, tend to cause scientists to overestimate ice loss when extrapolated over larger regions, including individual mountain ranges, according to the team.

Current estimates predict if all the glaciers in the world were to melt, they would raise sea level by about two feet. In contrast, an entire Greenland ice sheet melt would raise sea levels by about 20 feet, while if Antarctica lost its ice cover, sea levels would rise nearly 200 feet.

The study involved 16 researchers from 10 countries. In addition to Clark University and CU-Boulder, major research contributions came from the University of Michigan, the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, Trent University in Ontario, Canada, and the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

Built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies in Boulder, NASA’s ICESat satellite was successfully operated from the CU-Boulder campus by a team made up primarily of undergraduates from its launch in 2003 to its demise in 2009 when the science payload failed. The students participated in the unusual decommissioning of a functioning satellite in 2010, bringing the craft into Earth re-entry to burn up. ICESat’s successor, ICESat-2, is slated for launch in 2016 by NASA.

Jim Scott is senior science editor for the CU Office of News Services.

May 2013

Amy Collier, director for technology and teaching in the office of the Vice Provost for Online Learning at Stanford University, speaks to a group of CU faculty and staff as part of the Teaching with Technology seminar.

By Kaleena Kovach

Online-learning initiatives can complement but not replace traditional face-to-face learning, an expert from Stanford University told a University of Colorado Boulder Audience recently.

On April 24, CU-Boulder’s Arts and Sciences Support of Education Through Technology (ASSETT) sponsored a talk by Amy Collier, director for technology and teaching in the office of the Vice Provost for Online Learning at Stanford University. She works with Stanford faculty to develop online and blended courses, including flipped courses and Massive Open Online Courses—or MOOCs.

She leads a team of instructional designers and doctoral students who develop and iterate on designs for online and blended learning. Collier also provides outreach for the Stanford Online initiative, speaking with individuals, departments and external groups about Stanford’s work.

Collier’s lecture was part of a community-building event, Teaching with Technology Symposium, which also included demonstrations from former fellows of the Teaching with Technology seminar. The following CU-Boulder faculty members shared their experiences in experimenting with teaching with technology:

• Matt Koschmann, communication, “Digital Animations for Organizational Communication”
• Ed Rivers, English, “Creative Podcasting and Randomness + Algorithm = Genius? Creating Aleatory Music”
• Cecilia Pang, theatre and dance, “Teaching with Technology to Foster Creativity in Performing and Directing”
• Petger Schabert, Program for Writing and Rhetoric, “Using Technology to Teach Multimodal Persuasive Writing”
• Kira Hall, Linguistics, “Video Essays in Undergraduate Linguistics Education”
• Jeff Knutsen, chemical and biological engineering, “Screencasts for a Flipped Classroom”

More than 50 members of the faculty and staff attended Collier’s talk, “A Balancing Act: Leveraging Digital Learning Initiatives to Improve the Academy.” The attendees, from a wide range of departments and colleges, hoped to learn more about integration of technology in and out of the classroom. Collier described how she takes a balanced view to digital learning by using technology tools to discover and amplify what we most value in education.

Amy Collier, director for technology and teaching in the office of the Vice Provost for Online Learning at Stanford University

Collier’s true passion is learning. It’s her favorite thing to talk about. She believes that utilizing technology can help achieve a balance in learning on each side of the equation, both digital and in-person time. If done right, this balance can actually make face-to-face time more meaningful, she said.

Effective use of technology is the most important thing. Collier engaged the audience, explaining that the use of technology in the classroom should start with a “what if” question. She described scenarios in which technology had helped to realize a “what if” and asked those in the room to share some of their own.

Some questions, like “What if students came to class prepared?” were met with laughter. Others, such as “What if we could use digital learning to help students gain an inter-cultural understanding?” piqued Collier’s interest.

Cautioning against hyperbole, Collier emphasized balance. It is not the goal of digital learning to transition everything into technology, she said. Instead, it is important to value what happens in the classroom and bring it to the fore with technology.

She also warned against those who claim that education is broken and try to fix it with technology alone. This discourse removes the meaningful dialogue from education and is not productive, she said, adding that  it is much more helpful to use technology as an enhancement, not a “quick fix.”

Collier told several stories, such as a lost roll of film being returned to its owner by someone posting it online and asking for help, to highlight what an incredible time of connections we live in. Technology doesn’t make these connections for us, but it makes them much easier and more accessible.

Later the discussion turned to MOOCs and new research aimed at making MOOCs more successful for all students. It is important to understand who the students in a MOOC are and how to support them so they can get what they want out of a course.

Collier said this curiosity about who students are and how to support them can be applied to traditional classrooms as well. Listening to what students need and providing accordingly is a difficult task, but an important one.

Further, staying true to her mantra, Collier rounded out her visit to Boulder by being available for small group discussions. Informal question-and-answer opportunities gave several faculty and staff the chance to ask questions and converse on a personal level.

Overall, the lecture and other events sparked many conversations for building a campus community about the role of technology in the future of higher education.

U-Boulder doctoral student Joseph Knelman is pictured hiking Hardangervidda, a mountain plateau in Norway, during his Fulbright stint in 2011-12. Knelman studied plant-soil-microbe interactions in two subarctic crops. Photo courtesy Joseph Knelman.

By Elizabeth Lock

Twelve University of Colorado Boulder students have been offered Fulbright grants to pursue teaching, research and graduate studies abroad during the 2013-14 academic year, an all-time record for CU-Boulder.

Their proposed subjects range from studying robotic colonoscopy equipment to determining the accuracy of wind measurements near wind turbines. Other proposals include research on the changing state of Himalayan glacial lakes, tourism between China and Taiwan after decades of tension, clean energy development in Chile and whether the Royle’s pika in India is a climate change indicator.

Three of the students have been offered grants to teach English through the Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship program.

“The long legacy of participation by our students and alumni in Fulbright and other international research and teaching programs is a significant source of pride for CU-Boulder,” said CU-Boulder Chancellor Philip P. DiStefano. “Not only do our fine participants bring prestige to CU-Boulder, but they also bring social, scholarly and scientific advancement to the world.”

The 2013 CU-Boulder students who have received Fulbright offers and their destination countries are: Ulyana Horodyskyj, Nepal; Renee Payne, Brazil; Elise Pizzi, China; Sean Planchard, Spain; Ian Rowen, Taiwan; Amelia Schubert, China; Eric Simley, Denmark; Levin Sliker, Italy; Marin Toscano, China; Andrea Watson, Chile; Claire Waugh, Spain; and Jennifer Wilkening, India.

Also, five CU-Boulder students were selected to be alternate candidates and could have an opportunity to be awarded a grant if any of the principal candidates decline, or if additional Fulbright funds become available.

A total of 141 CU-Boulder students have received Fulbright grant notifications since 1978, including this year’s recipients, according to CU-Boulder’s Office of International Education.

“The Fulbright program was founded to increase mutual understanding and enhance cross-cultural relations,” said Larry Bell, executive director of CU-Boulder’s Office of International Education. “This year’s group will continue the outstanding tradition of CU-Boulder students fostering international development as fine representatives of our campus, state and country among communities across the globe.”

Fulbright students are selected on the basis of academic and professional achievement, as well as demonstrated leadership potential in their fields. The 67-year-old program, sponsored by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, operates in more than 155 countries and currently awards about 8,000 grants annually to U.S. students, foreign students, U.S. scholars, visiting scholars, teachers and professionals.

Two of this year’s students also have been offered Whitaker International Program grants. The prestigious Whitaker program awards emerging leaders in biomedical engineering with funding for overseas research.

One of this year’s students also has been offered the highly competitive David L. Boren Fellowship. The Boren scholarship supports undergraduate and graduate students who are focused on languages, academic fields and geographic areas that are critical to U.S. interests and underrepresented in international study.

Recipients of multiple offers from the Fulbright, Whitaker or Boren programs are required to choose one.

Students interested in applying for the Fulbright program should visit http://www.colorado.edu/oie/finances-scholarships-and-fellowships/us-student-fulbright-opportunities. The CU-Boulder Fulbright application deadline for 2014-15 grants is Sept. 9, 2013. For more information on graduate student opportunities abroad including the Fulbright program visit http://www.colorado.edu/oie/global-cu/graduate-student-opportunities-abroad.

Elizabeth Lock is an editor at CU-Boulder’s Office of News Services.

May 2013

Michelle Ellsworth, an assistant professor of theatre and dance at CU, is a performance artist and dancer who will spend the next year in intensive study of art.

By Clay Evans

From the deep woods of New Hampshire to the sunny Mediterranean island of Kalymnos, Michelle Ellsworth of the CU-Boulder Department of Theatre & Dance is going to be on the move over the next year.

In June, Ellsworth will head back to the woods of New Hampshire for a second month-long residence at the prestigious MacDowell Colony for artists, where Michael Chabon worked on his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, “The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay,” Leonard Bernstein penned part of his famous “Requiem” and DuBose and Dorothy Hayward tuned up “Porgy and Bess” — just a few among dozens of lofty examples.

“It feels historic and humbling to work in a place where so many great artists have created. I wrote my last piece there (in 2011),” says Ellsworth, associate professor and director of dance. “It’s an amazing experience. I have my own studio, a kind of free-standing cottage that’s big enough for dancing.”

Lunch is brought to artists — whose work spans the creative fields, from film to visual arts to poetry — in baskets but they often come together for breakfast and dinner.

“Being a professor, it’s really nice to be singular for awhile. There is no internet in the studio; you’re definitely out there,” Ellsworth says. “But you can also come together with a bunch of different artists from all over the place. It’s really inspiring to hear about all their projects.”

She will be working on a new dance piece, “Clytigation,” supported by a $90,000 grant from New York-based Creative Capital, which “supports innovative and adventurous artists across the country through funding, counsel and career development services.”

As part of the grant, Ellsworth will attend a workshop in Williamstown, Mass. this summer, where she will work with a mentor and meet with administrators and experts from the dance field.

“It’s kind of like adult supervision for artists,” she says, laughing. “They want to help you be more ambitious and connected so you can succeed.”

Later in the year she’ll spend six months on the Greek island of Kalymnos — “Where Clytemnestra hung back in the day,” she notes — to work on the new piece, which will explore “the impact war can have on legal protocols,” from the “Oresteia” of Aeschylus to post-9/11 America.

The piece is scheduled to premiere at Seattle’s On the Boards in the fall of 2014.

Ellsworth says the sabbatical will give her the opportunity to engage in pure creativity without distraction.

“I’m excited to see what it’s like to make a piece while not also working at a university,” she says.

May 2013

This summer of Shakespeare under the stars promises to be particularly special.

By Clay Evans

The 56^th annual season of the Colorado Shakespeare Festival will feature a classic lineup — a comedy, a tragedy, a history — alongside a hilarious Shakespeare sendup and a return engagement of an Off-Broadway hit.

But if anything, expect the unexpected, as two veterans and two of CSF’s favorite comic actors take the helm and offer their own visions, from the exotic to the traditional.

On deck for the season are the beloved comedy “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” the hilarious 37-plays-within-a-play, “The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged),” the dark tragedy of “Macbeth” and “Richard II,” cited by many actors and directors as their favorite play in the canon.

There also will be two very special performances of Tina Packer’s “Women of Will: The Overview,” fresh off its successful runs Off-Broadway and in Prague.

“This season is fantastic because it’s so well balanced,” says Timothy Orr, interim producing artistic director. “And we’ve got some fresh, brand-new directors who are making their CSF debuts.”

Directors Geoffrey Kent (“A Midsummer Night’s Dream”) and Gary Wright (“The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged)”) step into directors’ roles for the first time at CSF following many seasons as favorite comic actors.

“These are two of the funniest actors I’ve ever worked with,” Orr says. “We are thrilled to see what they will do when they’re in charge.”

Kent — who won raves for his work in “Noises Off” at CSF in 2012 — says this year’s Midsummer will remind audiences of both “Downton Abbey” and “The Great Gatsby.”

“Set in the 1920s British countryside, you’ll find your toes tapping to a jazz soundscape people with rude mechanical clowns, a new take on Shakespeare’s famous lovers and fairies chock full of magic and attended by puppets,” he says. “Fun, fast and great for the family and newcomers to Shakespeare.”

Wright’s job is to wrangle three actors (“These guys are painfully funny,” Orr says) in a semi-free-form take on all 37 of Shakespeare’s plays crammed into a couple of hours.

“If you can imagine Shakespeare’s plays as innocent pedestrians, our show is a speeding, out-of-control clown car, running them over, sometimes individually — “Titus Andronicus,” “Othello,” “Macbeth” — sometimes in wholesale groups — the comedies, the histories,” Wright says. “In certain cases, we’ll run ‘em down and then back over ‘em a couple of times for good measure — can you say ‘Hamlet’?”

For a walk on the darker side, Jane Page returns to CSF for the first time since her smash-hit 2009 production of “To Kill a Mockingbird” for a brooding “Macbeth” set amid the harsh landscapes — both literal and political — of Soviet-occupied Afghanistan.

“I decided to reference this production to pre-Taliban Afghanistan because it evokes a world that is at once exotic, dangerous, familiar and unknown,” Page says. “But it’s also a world with which we have a modern connection.”

“’Macbeth’ is a story about recurring violence, the cycle of violence, something that CSF is exploring with its anti-violence school tours of ‘Twelfth Night’ and ‘The Tempest,’” Orr says. “We’re excited to see this in a context so relevant to our own time.”

James Symons will direct his 11^th CSF play — more than any other director — with a spare and traditional rendering of “Richard II.”

“Willful. Wasteful. Arrogant. Young King Richard II was all of these; but he was also the smartest fellow in any room. “Richard II” is the story of a young king’s determined but doomed efforts to hold on to his crown — and his life,” Symons says.

And in a very special engagement, Tina Packer and Nigel Gore return to CSF after their hit 2012 run of “Women of Will: The Full Cycle” for just two performances of  “The Overview,” which has been playing Off-Broadway and has become an international sensation. The Denver Post says, “The pair have an … astonishing chemistry as they inhabit Shakespeare’s creations.”

“They perfected this at CSF last summer for their Off-Broadway opening, and after CSF this season ‘Women of Will’ goes to The Hague. You don’t want to miss this,” Orr says.

Colorado Shakespeare Festival 2013 summer schedule

“A Midsummer Night’s Dream” (Mary Rippon Theatre)

Performances begin at 8 p.m. or 6:30 p.m. (*): June: 7 (preview), 8 (opening night), 15, 22. July: 6, 21*, 23*, 24*, 28*. August: 3, 4*, 6*, 7*, 8, 11*.

“The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged)” (University Theatre) Performances begin at 7:30 p.m. or 1 p.m. (*): June: 13 (preview), 14 (opening night), 19*, 21, 23*, 30 (both 1 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.). July: 5, 13, 20, 27, 31. August: 10.

“Macbeth” (Mary Rippon Theatre)

Performances begin at 8 p.m. or 6:30 p.m. (*): June: 28 (preview), 29 (opening). July: 13, 20, 25, 26, 27, 31*. August: 1, 10.

“Richard II” (University Theatre)

Performances begin at 7:30 p.m. or 1 p.m. (*): July: 18 (preview), 19 (opening night), 28*, 30. August: 2, 4*, 7*, 9, 11*.

“Women of Will: The Overview” (University Theatre): 7:30 p.m. July 12; 1 p.m. July 13.

A particular tumor suppressor gene that fights cancer cells does more than clamp down on unabated cell division — the hallmark of the disease — it also can help make cells more fit by allowing them to fend off stress, says a University of Colorado Boulder study.

CU-Boulder Professor Min Han said the research team was interested in how a common tumor suppressor gene known as Retinoblastoma 1, or Rb, behaved under conditions of starvation. The question is important, said Han, because it may help researchers understand why many cancer cells are more susceptible to starvation or fasting than ordinary cells.

Han and his team studied a popular lab organism called C. elegans, a translucent nematode smaller than an eyelash. Many of the C. elegans genes have similar, corresponding human genes called homologs, and almost all cellular mechanisms found in the nematodes also are found in mammals, including humans, he said.  The team charted changes in the physiology of newly hatched C. elegans in the absence of food to look at the corresponding stress response.

“We found the tumor suppressor Rb is a critical regulator of the starvation response,” said Han, who also is a Howard Hughes Medical Investigator. “Rb is known for doing more than just suppressing cell division associated with cancer — it carries out a host of other cellular tasks including regulating development.  The new findings by our group and research by other groups suggest organisms survive longer when they encounter starvation by regulating the expression of a large number of genes.”

A paper on the subject was published online May 9 in Current Biology, a publication of Cell Press. The co-authors on the study, Mingxue Cui, Max Cohen and Cindy Teng, are all researchers associated with both CU-Boulder and HHMI. The study was funded by HHMI and the National Institutes of Health.

As part of the study, the researchers monitored the two- to three-week survival time of hundreds of C. elegans hatchlings in an environment with no food, which caused immediate “developmental arrest,” said Han, a professor in CU-Boulder’s molecular, cellular and developmental biology department. “The survival time of the young nematodes is dramatically shorter when the Rb gene is mutated, which causes changes in the activities of multiple cell signaling pathways.”

The study suggests that Rb plays a critical role in maintaining a starvation-induced “transcriptome,” which is the transcription of DNA to corresponding bits of RNA that allow researchers to pinpoint when and where each gene is turned on or off in the cells, he said. Under starved conditions, for example, Rb represses some responses induced by other physical stressors like pathogens and toxins.

Han said the Rb gene is mutated in a large percentage of human cancers. Hundreds of mutations in the RB gene have been identified in people with retinoblastoma, a rare type of eye cancer that usually strikes young children.

“Altogether, these findings identify Rb as a critical regulator of the starvation response and suggest a link between functions of tumor suppressors and starvation survival,” the team wrote in Current Biology. “These results may provide mechanistic insights into why cancer cells are often hypersensitive to starvation treatment.”

There are about 330 HHMI Investigators in the nation, including 15 Nobel laureates and 157 members of the National Academy of Sciences.  Other HHMI Investigators at CU-Boulder include Natalie Ahn, Kristi Anseth, Tom Cech (also a Nobel laureate) and Roy Parker. In addition, HHMI Investigator Lee Niswander is at the University of Colorado Denver School of Medicine.

Founded in 1953 by aviator and industrialist Howard R. Hughes, HHMI is a nonprofit medical research organization that ranks as one of the nation’s largest philanthropies.  In 2012 HHMI spent $800 million for research and $119 million for science education.

A particular tumor suppressor gene that fights cancer cells does more than clamp down on unabated cell division — the hallmark of the disease — it also can help make cells more fit by allowing them to fend off stress, says a University of Colorado Boulder study.

CU-Boulder Professor Min Han said the research team was interested in how a common tumor suppressor gene known as Retinoblastoma 1, or Rb, behaved under conditions of starvation. The question is important, said Han, because it may help researchers understand why many cancer cells are more susceptible to starvation or fasting than ordinary cells.

Han and his team studied a popular lab organism called C. elegans, a translucent nematode smaller than an eyelash. Many of the C. elegans genes have similar, corresponding human genes called homologs, and almost all cellular mechanisms found in the nematodes also are found in mammals, including humans, he said.  The team charted changes in the physiology of newly hatched C. elegans in the absence of food to look at the corresponding stress response.

“We found the tumor suppressor Rb is a critical regulator of the starvation response,” said Han, who also is a Howard Hughes Medical Investigator. “Rb is known for doing more than just suppressing cell division associated with cancer — it carries out a host of other cellular tasks including regulating development.  The new findings by our group and research by other groups suggest organisms survive longer when they encounter starvation by regulating the expression of a large number of genes.”

A paper on the subject was published online May 9 in Current Biology, a publication of Cell Press. The co-authors on the study, Mingxue Cui, Max Cohen and Cindy Teng, are all researchers associated with both CU-Boulder and HHMI. The study was funded by HHMI and the National Institutes of Health.

As part of the study, the researchers monitored the two- to three-week survival time of hundreds of C. elegans hatchlings in an environment with no food, which caused immediate “developmental arrest,” said Han, a professor in CU-Boulder’s molecular, cellular and developmental biology department. “The survival time of the young nematodes is dramatically shorter when the Rb gene is mutated, which causes changes in the activities of multiple cell signaling pathways.”

The study suggests that Rb plays a critical role in maintaining a starvation-induced “transcriptome,” which is the transcription of DNA to corresponding bits of RNA that allow researchers to pinpoint when and where each gene is turned on or off in the cells, he said. Under starved conditions, for example, Rb represses some responses induced by other physical stressors like pathogens and toxins.

Han said the Rb gene is mutated in a large percentage of human cancers. Hundreds of mutations in the RB gene have been identified in people with retinoblastoma, a rare type of eye cancer that usually strikes young children.

“Altogether, these findings identify Rb as a critical regulator of the starvation response and suggest a link between functions of tumor suppressors and starvation survival,” the team wrote in Current Biology. “These results may provide mechanistic insights into why cancer cells are often hypersensitive to starvation treatment.”

There are about 330 HHMI Investigators in the nation, including 15 Nobel laureates and 157 members of the National Academy of Sciences.  Other HHMI Investigators at CU-Boulder include Natalie Ahn, Kristi Anseth, Tom Cech (also a Nobel laureate) and Roy Parker. In addition, HHMI Investigator Lee Niswander is at the University of Colorado Denver School of Medicine.

Founded in 1953 by aviator and industrialist Howard R. Hughes, HHMI is a nonprofit medical research organization that ranks as one of the nation’s largest philanthropies.  In 2012 HHMI spent $800 million for research and $119 million for science education.

Jim Scott is senior science editor for the CU Office of News Services.

This YouTube video from Fiske Planetarium highlights a message the facility’s leaders want to emphasize: that both educational and entertainment options for students and the public will improve when the planetarium’s renovation is complete.

By Clint Talbott

Since 1975, Fiske Planetarium has been the Johnny Appleseed of astronomy. Each year, 30,000 K-12 students and 4,000 University of Colorado Boulder students go there to take a front-row seat on the universe.

Soon, they’ll get a better, clearer and deeper view. And Fiske won’t be just for astronomy anymore. For now, however, Fiske is full of dust and darkness.

The campus is renovating the planetarium, retiring its analog star projector and upgrading to a powerful star plus video system paired with a high-definition screen capable of achieving nearly eight times more resolution than the standard HD television, completely surrounding the audience with a 360-degree view.

The improvements will allow students to see—and understand—more of the universe. With the naked eye, observers of the night sky see about 6,000 stars; with binoculars, about 20 million stars are visible. The new Fiske digital projector upgrades the planetarium sky by this same amount, allowing a significantly deeper view of the firmament.

Further, the new system will allow observers to “fly” through space, further enhancing their understanding of celestial bodies. Once installed, the state-of-the-art theater will be one of only five of its kind in the world (the other four are in New York, Chicago, China and Germany).

One of the biggest changes is that Fiske will be open to the public Saturdays and Sundays, playing a variety of “big screen” videos similar to what can be seen at IMAX theaters in Denver.

While Fiske is closed now, students shouldn’t be deterred from taking astronomy courses. Classes will meet in the planetarium in the beginning of fall semester, before the public opening.

“We intend to be fully operational sometime in the fall—and will be offering all of these various educational and public performances,” said John Stocke, professor of astrophysical and planetary sciences.

While the date of public openings aren’t yet certain, the planetarium staff should have opening dates announced by August, Stocke said.

Introductory-level astronomy classes typically have between two and seven planetarium visits during the term. These classes are generally for non-majors, and they are classes on both solar system and stars and galaxies.

Stocke teaches a class on ancient astronomies that meets every Thursday in Fiske. “It’s basically naked-eye astronomy,” plus related anthropology and archaeology such as calendars, eclipse predictions, ethnic cosmologies.

While the Fiske team learns the ropes on the new star projector this fall, Stocke plans to begin teaching his courses simple celestial motions, eclipses and the like. As the semester goes on, that class will see more-elaborate presentations.

Other classes, which tend to be taken by non-majors, visit Fiske two or three times a semester. These presentations use “dramatic visuals to introduce students to the solar system, with, for instance, “fly-throughs” visually similar to those seen by K-12 students but with more-advanced material.

“It’s very difficult to grasp celestial mechanics from a book,” said Tom Muncy, Fiske planetarium systems engineer. “My first year here, I didn’t understand celestial mechanics.”

The visualizations at Fiske allowed him to “go” anywhere on the Earth and see the stars. “The lights just came on—wow.”

Although Fiske is a university facility, it puts on educational star shows for 30,000 K-12 students a year.

“They come from as far as Grand Junction and all corners of Colorado,” said Francisco Salas, operations and program manager at Fiske. Programs for K-12 students are also produced in Spanish.

The new system will yield other educational advantages, Salas and Stocke said. It will enable the Fiske crew to display how planets looked from Earth in the past. The retiring system could not adequately show how the sky looked at a particular point in history, “particularly the positions of the planets at earlier times,” Stocke said.

Fiske Planetarium’s analog star projector—called “Fritz” after its West German installer—is being retired after being in service since 1975. As part of the planetarium’s renovation, a new and more-powerful digital projector is being installed, along with a high-definition screen. The improvements will allow the planetarium to improve the material shown to students and to add a new line of entertainment options at the theater.

The reason is that the old star projector system—called “Fritz” after the West German technician who installed it—moves via an elaborate system of gears. To show a particular point in history, Fiske would have to run “Fritz” backwards.

That task has been done, for instance, to illustrate the “Star of Bethlehem,” which Stocke discusses in the ancient astronomy class.

“I use a laptop computer planetarium program to show that a potential candidate for the Star of Bethlehem is a very close conjunction of Venus and Jupiter, so close that they overlapped as a single image.”

“We couldn’t do that with Fritz,” Stocke said. “In fact, to set things up to do an approximation of that, we had to take the system off-line after a certain date in November so that the staff could run the projector back to a position that was relatively close (about 1962).”

“But this then meant that every presentation I made after that time in the semester, I could not show the planets, because they would not be in the right place. The new system will be able to do this trivially.”

Now, Fiske hires about 25 students to help run the planetarium. With the new system, that number will rise by a dozen or more because of increased video production and larger expected audiences.

“We have the best jobs on campus for film students and future science teachers,” said Fiske Director Doug Duncan. “The film students may make the next ‘Avatar’ or a future documentary, but right now, they are designing shows for Fiske, building images of what newly discovered planets would look like if you could see them up close.”

The planetarium’s staff is eager to host K-12 students. “These are the students who might become CU students in the future.”

Fiske will be offering Saturday and Sunday shows as a movie-theater style venue, and presentations, largely movies, will be shown to students and the general public.

“We expect Fiske to become a weekend destination for families and individuals, like the Denver museum but closer,” said Duncan. “We are forming a film board, kind of like a film festival, to choose what programs to bring to Boulder.”

Stocke added: “I’m not saying we want to compete with Twenty Ninth Street, but we may want to run movies that are a little more affordable and … look good on a big screen and in a wonderful sound environment.”

The popular weekend-night laser shows—like “Laser Floyd”—will continue to be shown, but on an upgraded laser system. Fiske is the only venue in Colorado that does laser shows. “There’s something about seeing Pink Floyd with lasers,” Salas said.

Meanwhile, “Fritz” the star-projector will neither be gone nor forgotten. “Fritz” will remain on display in the planetarium.

The use of geared mechanisms to represent the movements of planets and stars dates back to about 200 B.C.E. “So it has this huge, long tradition,” Stocke said. And “Fritz” is the penultimate geared analog device for replicating the motions and positions of things in the sky.

Though the new Fiske Planetarium has multiple public uses, private funds are needed. Hewlett Packard donated the powerful computers that enable video production. Naming rights to the star theater are up for grabs.

For more information on Fiske and its renovation, see http://fiske.colorado.edu.

May 2013

John Black

A love of mathematics and the knowledge that there aren’t many jobs that allow someone “to just do math” propelled John Black toward a career in cryptography – the study and practice of secure communications.

“I’ve always loved math; it’s a way to explore nature but is not obscured by subjectivity. It’s very pure,” Black says. “Cryptology is a way that I can do math that’s applied to something that people care about.”

He grew up in Oakland but slowly began “migrating east.” He earned his Ph.D. at the University of California, Davis, and then worked as an assistant professor at the University of Nevada, Reno. He came to the University of Colorado Boulder in 2002 and is an associate professor of computer science. “I can’t go any farther east or I’d run out of mountains. And that’s non-negotiable.”

Teaching and research give him the flexibility to choose his interests and to work with bright, young people. If he could, he’d skip the grade-giving duty. When he’s not in front of a computer, you might find him hiking – “like everyone else in Boulder, it’s probably my favorite thing to do” – reading or rock climbing.

1. There have been a lot of “hacking” incidents in the news lately, including accusations that China hacked into some U.S. sites. First, explain how encryption (encoded messaging) works, and second, are there degrees of “secure”?

There are a lot of options when it comes to how you encrypt things. Most of the world uses the same set of algorithms, although some use bigger numbers to get added security. Cryptography is only one ingredient in the overall formula for security, and usually it is one of the stronger ones so people don’t normally focus on that piece. The analogy that’s often made is: Trying to hack into a secure system is like trying to break into a grass hut that has an iron door. You wouldn’t go through the iron door; you’d go through the grass wall instead. So if you want to break into a computer system and steal information, attacking the cryptography is probably not a good idea. It’s a very difficult way to succeed and there are other, easier ways to get in. The most effective way to defeat a security system is through social engineering, which is where you exploit the human element. We don’t know how to effectively combat those attacks.

One of the most famous social engineering attacks occurred when someone mapped out a company’s organizational chart and figured out the relationships between employees. Then they crafted emails that looked like they came from another person in the company. The human response was to trust the email because it looked legitimate, and someone gave up an internal password. Everything crumbled after that.

Passwords aren’t very effective, but in the commercial sector, companies are motivated by what consumers are willing to adopt. If they make it too onerous, then people won’t use their product or service, so we’re still stuck with passwords, which are a terrible way to authenticate somebody. There are risks with using passwords, so companies have to be able to absorb the resulting costs from fraud and theft. In other words, they pass the costs back to you. Of course, if the problem gets so severe it becomes impractical to continue this way, we’re going to have to do something else for authentication. You can use biometrics, which identifies humans by certain characteristics such as fingerprints, to strengthen security. In high security contexts, they already do these kinds of things.

2. What are some of your current research interests?

We’ve looked at hacking into certain Internet services and at breaking encryption protocols and creating new encryption protocols. Lately, I’ve been looking at how to teach security and cryptology to students using a game-like approach where the whole class is a game. It’s really fun for me and the students and has been very popular. The more motivated and excited you are, the better you learn, so this is an exciting thing to do on the education side.

I’ve also been doing something called quantum computing, which is a way of looking at building a new kind of computer that uses quantum properties to perform computation. These computers don’t really exist yet, but if they did, they would break most of the cryptology that we use. I did a sabbatical last year at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and worked with a team involved in quantum computers. I still have some ongoing work with them.

For example, RSA cryptography is security that is based on the presumed difficulty of factoring a big number into two smaller prime numbers. The best-known algorithms slowly get better every few years and computers get faster every year. So there’s the constant pressure of progress pushing up against this problem. We’ve made the numbers bigger and bigger and that’s worked so far. But quantum computers will blow that out of the water. A lot of money is being poured into research, mostly by our government. Cryptographers will respond by coming up with new systems that don’t succumb to this attack so it’s a continuing evolution of technology.

3. You teach a class titled “Ethical Hacking.” What is ethical hacking and what do students learn in the class?

Hacking in the mainstream media means breaking into things, but to most computer scientists, it means you’re good at playing with computers. You understand them at a deep level; you enjoy tinkering, exploring and experimenting. The class really is about getting down into the details of computers and trying to solve problems in a security context. The main activity of the class is, in fact, breaking into things. Of course we don’t do this to real systems. We set up a sandbox environment that deliberately has computer services with weaknesses built in. We let students try to break in using all kinds of tools we provide, or sometimes, we don’t provide the tools and they have to figure it out. They have to build a set of skills that helps them penetrate security systems and break into machines.

It’s ethical because we only do this to certain machines, and we also talk about when it’s appropriate to use these skills. There have been some objections to this class. People ask, “Why are you teaching students to break into computers?” My response is that you can’t teach an FBI agent how to defend against terrorism without telling him or her how terrorists operate. So that’s sort of the object of the class. If you are going to defend against cyberattacks, you have to understand how cyberattacks are conducted. There also is something called penetration testing, which is a service offered by some companies. They will break into your computer system with an agreement not to do harm so you know where your vulnerabilities lie. It’s a very common service provided in the corporate world. So by teaching these attack techniques, we’re also preparing students for a career in penetration testing.

4. We rely more and more on cybersystems to run everything from power plants to hospitals, and the Obama administration has called for more efforts to strengthen cybersecurity to repel attacks. Is this the future?

Every day society is moving more toward automation and it’s not going to reverse. We’re already seeing warfare conducted in cyberspace. We saw Stuxnet, a computer virus that attacked Iran’s nuclear program and supposedly was created by the U.S. and Israel. If I wanted to try to predict the future, I would say that a lot of warfare will be converted from a physical modality to online, to computer-based warfare.  So you can imagine a future where warfare largely is conducted via cyberattack and cyberdefense.

5. You have won a variety of awards including teaching awards and a National Science Foundation Career Award. You also list on your CV this award: A Check for $2.56 from Don Knuth, 1996.

Don Knuth is one of the most highly regarded computer scientists in history. He published a series of beautiful books that are very well-known in computer science. He’s a perfectionist and would offer a monetary reward for anyone who could find an error in his books. The amount of the reward changed over time, but it settled at $2.56 because that’s one hexadecimal dollar. He’s issued some 2,000 of these checks over the last 30 or 40 years, and apparently almost none of them gets cashed. The check is kind of like a badge of honor because it’s really hard to find errors in the books. So people who get these things often frame them, and in fact, I did the same thing. He stopped issuing actual checks in 2008. It’s something you can’t get anymore, so it’s pretty cool. It’s a prized thing in computerdom.

This interview was conducted by Cynthia Pasquale for CU Connections, where it first appeared and from which it is reprinted with permission.

May 2013

Scheduled for launch in November, the DVD will be in NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft. The DVD is part of the mission’s Going to Mars Campaign coordinated at the University of Colorado Boulder’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics.

The DVD will carry every name submitted. The public also is encouraged to submit a message in the form of a three-line poem, or haiku. However, only three haikus will be selected. The deadline for all submissions is July 1. An online public vote to determine the top three messages to be placed on the DVD will begin July 15.

“The Going to Mars campaign offers people worldwide a way to make a personal connection to space, space exploration, and science in general, and share in our excitement about the MAVEN mission,” said Stephanie Renfrow, lead for the MAVEN Education and Public Outreach program at LASP.

Participants who submit their names to the Going to Mars campaign will be able to print a certificate of appreciation to document their involvement with the MAVEN mission.

“This new campaign is a great opportunity to reach the next generation of explorers and excite them about science, technology, engineering and math,” said Bruce Jakosky, MAVEN principal investigator at LASP. “I look forward to sharing our science with the worldwide community as MAVEN begins to piece together what happened to the Red Planet’s atmosphere.”

MAVEN is the first spacecraft devoted to exploring and understanding the Martian upper atmosphere. The spacecraft will investigate how the loss of Mars’ atmosphere to space determined the history of water on the surface.

“This mission will continue NASA’s rich history of inspiring and engaging the public in spaceflight in ongoing Mars exploration,” said David Mitchell, MAVEN project manager at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

MAVEN’s principal investigator is based at CU-Boulder’s LASP. The university will provide science operations, science instruments and lead the Education and Public Outreach program. Goddard manages the project and provides two of the science instruments for the mission.

Lockheed Martin of Littleton, Colo., built the spacecraft and is responsible for mission operations. The University of California at Berkeley Space Sciences Laboratory provides science instruments for the mission. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., provides navigation support, the Deep Space Network and the Electra telecommunications relay hardware and operations.

To participate in the Going to Mars campaign visit http://lasp.colorado.edu/maven/goingtomars. For more information on MAVEN visit http://www.nasa.gov/maven.