CU News
News from the University of Colorado in Boulder.
Boulder police look for suspect in Hill assault
Nov 17th
Police search for suspect in assault of young woman
Police in Boulder are releasing this sketch of a suspect wanted in connection with an assault that reportedly took place in the 1100 block of College Avenue around 2:37 a.m. on Sunday, Nov. 13.
A young woman was walking with a male friend when an unknown male ran up to them, punched the female in the face and then knocked her to the ground. The suspect punched the woman in the face several times while she may have been unconscious. The suspect was seen yelling at people along 10th Street before the incident..
The woman was taken to the hospital to be treated for her injuries. She was treated and released.
Police searched the area for the suspect, but were not able to locate him. A composite sketch is attached. He is described as:
- White male
- 22 to 23 years old
- 6’1” tall
- 180 pounds
- Brown hair
- Last seen wearing an unbuttoned flannel shirt with jeans, with a black shirt underneath
The case number for this incident is 11-14880.
Police are asking the public for assistance in identifying the suspect. Suspect information can be provided to Detective Kurt Foster at 303-441-4329. Those who have information but who wish to remain anonymous may contact the Northern Colorado Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-TIPS (8477) or 1-800-444-3776. Tips can also be submitted through the Crime Stoppers website at www.crimeshurt.com. Those submitting tips through Crime Stoppers that lead to the arrest of charges on a suspect(s) may be eligible for a cash reward of up to $1,000 from Crime Stoppers
CU Boulder –Nature, not nurture, behind hard-core smoking
Nov 16th
Well, duh
A new study of twins led by the University of Colorado Boulder shows that today’s smokers are more strongly influenced by genetic factors than in the past and that the influence makes it more difficult for them to quit.
“In the past, when smoking rates were higher, people smoked for a variety of reasons,” said sociology Professor Fred Pampel, a study co-author. “Today the composition of the smoking population has changed. Smokers are more likely to be hard-core users who are most strongly influenced by genetic factors.”
The study showed that adult identical twins sharing a common genetic structure are significantly more likely to quit smoking at the same time compared with fraternal twins who do not share identical genes. This genetic influence has increased in importance among smokers following the initial restrictive legislation on smoking enacted in the United States in the 1970s, Pampel said.
“These days people don’t smoke as much for social reasons,” Pampel said. “They in fact face criticism for the habit but tend to smoke because of their dependence on nicotine.”
The study, to be published in this month’s edition of the journal! Demography, was led by Associate Professor Jason Boardman and doctoral student Casey Blalock of CU-Boulder’s sociology department and Institute of Behavioral Science, and co-authored with Pampel, also of IBS, Peter Hatemi of Pennsylvania State University, Andrew Heath of Washington University in St. Louis and Lindon Eaves of the Medical College of Virginia in Richmond.
Using a database of twins who responded to an extensive health questionnaire, the researchers examined the smoking patterns of 596 pairs of twins, 363 of them identical and 233 of them fraternal. The researchers looked at their smoking patterns from 1960 to 1980 because they wanted to focus on a period of changing views about smoking.
Among identical twins, 65 percent of both twins quit during a two-year timeframe if one twin quit, but among fraternal twins, the percentage dropped to 55 percent, a statistically significant difference that indicates a genetic component at work, Pampel said.
While a specific genetic marker has been hard to identify among those who smoke, certain genetic similarities can be inferred. “If one identical twin quits the other is likely to quit,” he said. “And if one twin continues so is the other twin.”
The study has implications for current public policies aimed at reducing smoking, which may be becoming less effective, Pampel said.
Since the early and mid 1970s when restrictive anti-smoking legislation began to be enacted in the United States, many smokers have quit. “Prior to 1975 this (potentially genetic) pattern wasn’t clear because there were so many smokers.”
Two of today’s main anti-smoking policies include heavy taxes on cigarettes and vast reductions in the number of public spaces where smoking is allowed, particularly in bars and restaurants, Pampel said.
But with indications that the genetic component is growing, it may be time to treat smoking more like an addiction than a choice, Pampel said. Such a policy shift might include more emphasis on nicotine-replacement therapy and counseling.
Boardman, Blalock and Pampel are affiliated with the CU Population Center in CU-Boulder’s Institute of Behavioral Science.
–
CU Boulder scientists uncover molded brass artifact from Asia in Alaska
Nov 14th
UNEARTHED AT ALASKA ARCHAEOLOGY SITE
A team of researchers led by the University of Colorado Boulder has discovered the first prehistoric bronze artifact made from a cast ever found in Alaska, a small, buckle-like object found in an ancient Eskimo dwelling and which likely originated in East Asia.
The artifact consists of two parts — a rectangular bar, connected to an apparently broken circular ring, said CU-Boulder Research Associate John Hoffecker, who is leading the excavation project. The object, about 2 inches by 1 inch and less than 1 inch thick, was found in August by a team excavating a roughly 1,000-year-old house that had been dug into the side of a beach ridge by early Inupiat Eskimos at Cape Espenberg on the Seward Peninsula, which lies within the Bering Land Bridge National Preserve.
Both sections of the artifact are beveled on one side and concave on the other side, indicating it was manufactured in a mold, said Hoffecker, a fellow at CU-Boulder’s Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research. A small piece of leather found wrapped around the rectangular bar by the research team yielded a radiocarbon date of roughly A.D. 600, which does not necessarily indicate the age of the object, he said.
“I was totally astonished,” said Hoffecker. “The object appears to be older than the house we were excavating by at least a few hundred years.”.
Hoffecker and his CU-Boulder colleague Owen Mason said the bronze object resembles a belt buckle and may have been used as part of a harness or horse ornament prior to its arrival in Alaska. While they speculated the Inupiat Eskimos could have used the artifact as a clasp for human clothing or perhaps as part of a shaman’s regalia, its function on both continents still remains a puzzle, they said.
Since bronze metallurgy from Alaska is unknown, the artifact likely was produced in East Asia and reflects long-distance trade from production centers in either Korea, China, Manchuria or southern Siberia, according to Mason. It conceivably could have been traded from the steppe region of southern Siberia, said Hoffecker, where people began casting bronze several thousand years ago.
Alternatively, some of the earliest Inupiat Eskimos in northwest Alaska — the direct ancestors of modern Eskimos thought to have migrated into Alaska from adjacent Siberia some 1,500 years ago — might have brought the object with them from the other side of the Bering Strait. “It was possibly valuable enough so that people hung onto it for generations, passing it down through families,” said Mason, an INSTAAR affiliate and co-investigator on the Cape Espenberg excavations.
The Seward Peninsula is a prominent, arrowhead-shaped land mass that abuts the Bering Strait separating Alaska from Siberia. The peninsula was part of the Bering Land Bridge linking Asia and North America during the last ice age when sea level had dropped dramatically, and may have been used by early peoples as a corridor to migrate from Asia into the New World some 14,000 years ago.
The artifact was discovered in August by University of California, Davis, doctoral student Jeremy Foin under 3 feet of sediment near an entryway to a house at Cape Espenberg. Other project members included Chris Darwent of UC Davis, Claire Alix of the University of Paris, Nancy Bigelow of the University of Alaska Fairbanks, Max Friesen of the University of Toronto and Gina Hernandez of the National Park Service.
“The shape of the object immediately caught my eye,” said Foin, who spotted the soil-covered artifact in an archaeological sifting screen. “After I saw that it clearly had been cast in a mold, my first thought was disbelief, quickly followed by the realization that I had found something of potentially great significance.”
The CU-led excavations are part of a National Science Foundation-funded project designed to study human response to climate change at Cape Espenberg from A.D. 800 to A.D. 1400, a critical period of cultural change in the western Arctic, said Mason. Of particular interest are temperature and environmental changes that may be related to Earth’s Medieval Warm Period that lasted from about A.D. 950 to 1250.
“That particular time period is thought by some to be an analog of what is happening to our environment now as Earth’s temperatures are rising,” said Mason. “One of our goals is to find out how these people adapted to a changing climate through their subsistence activities.”
The Cape Espenberg beach ridges, wave-swept deposits made of sand and sediment running parallel to the shoreline that were deposited over centuries, often are capped by blowing sand to form high dunes. The Cape Espenberg dwellings were dug into the dunes and shored up with driftwood and occasional whale bones.
The team is examining the timing and formation of the beach ridges as well as the contents of peat and pond sediment cores to help them reconstruct the sea-level history and the changing environment faced by Cape Espenberg’s settlers. Information on past climates also is contained in driftwood tree rings, and the team is working with INSTAAR affiliate Scott Elias, a University of London professor and expert on beetle fossils, who is helping the team reconstruct past temperatures at Cape Espenberg.
While the hunting of bowhead whales was a way of life for Inupiat Eskimos at Barrow and Point Hope in northwestern Alaska 1,000 years ago, it is still not clear if the Cape Espenberg people were whaling, said Mason. While whale baleen — a strong, flexible material found in the mouths of whales that acts as a food filter — and a variety of whale bones have been found during excavations there, the sea offshore is extremely shallow and some distance from modern whale migration routes. However, there is evidence of fishing and seal and caribou hunting by the group, he said.
The Inupiat Eskimos are believed to have occupied Cape Espenberg from about A.D. 1000 until the mid-1800s, said Hoffecker. They are part of the indigenous Eskimo culture that lives in Earth’s circumpolar regions like Alaska, Siberia and Canada.
The Cape Espenberg site has yielded a treasure trove of several thousand artifacts, including sealing harpoons, fishing spears and lures, a copper needle, slate knives, antler arrow points, a shovel made from a walrus scapula, a beaver incisor pendant, ceramics, and even toy bows and toy harpoons. The bronze artifact unearthed in August is currently under study by prehistoric metallurgical expert and Purdue University Assistant Professor H. Kory Cooper.
A video news story on the discovery is available by going to http://www.colorado.edu/news/ and clicking on the story headline. A podcast on the find can be found at http://www.colorado.edu/news/podcasts/