Channel 1 Networks
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City of Boulder launches new website
Jul 29th
The City of Boulder has launched a new website at bouldercolorado.gov. The site includes a new layout and design as well as several features aimed at making it easier for users to access government services and information. The last time the city launched a new site design was in 2006. View the City of Boulder Website Infographic to see a visual progression of the city’s website since 1999.
Key to the new site is its responsive design, which means the site is resizable for any screen, including any mobile device.
“It’s a new era in website design,” said City of Boulder Director of Information Technology Don Ingle. “We knew going into this effort that not only did our website need to have an updated look, it also needed to accommodate mobile web users. More and more people are accessing Internet content from mobile devices, leaving designs based on desktop screen widths a thing of the past.”
The city’s site also features more photos and videos throughout its pages. Navigational options featured on the new home page were selected based on hit and search data as well as topic timeliness.
Inside Boulder News – New City Website (Select the image below to watch the video)
New website services include:
- A new Constituent Relationship Management (CRM) tool called Inquire Boulder (www.inquireboulder.com) that serves as a customer service portal.
Users can go to Inquire Boulder to ask the city questions, look up FAQs and submit requests for services like pothole repair, graffiti response, park shelter rentals, park and trail maintenance, code enforcement, damaged city trees and much more. An Inquire Boulder app is also available for iPhone and Android mobile devices.
- Online access to public records for City Council and boards and commissions.
The city is launching a public portal to documents that are on file for council, boards and commissions from the last three years, where available. This can be accessed at bouldercolorado.gov/central-records, from the scrolling buttons on the city’s homepage, or from individual council, boards and commissions pages. By providing online access to these materials, users can search key words to find meeting documents, rather than having to know the date the meeting occurred. Additional documents will be added to the public portal in a phased approach.
- Open data resources in a central place.
The city previously provided open data files like GIS data and other land use resources, but they were scattered throughout the website, buried in multiple locations. By combining and featuring the city’s open data sets, Boulder joins the ranks of many other municipal governments providing open data services.
“Perhaps the most unique feature of the new website is something our users can’t see, and that’s our partnership with the City of Arvada,” said Ingle.
As part of the redesign effort, the city chose to switch to a new content management system, the database-driven application that houses webpage content and provides a user interface for the staff that posts the content to the site. Rather than purchasing a new system from an outside vendor, Boulder entered into a unique partnership with the City of Arvada to share and mutually enhance the customized content management system that Arvada had developed. As a result, the city acquired the system at no cost. As part of the partnership, both cities have agreed to share enhancements to the system as they develop new features that meet their needs.
“Partnering with Arvada was definitely an ‘outside of the box’ decision, but it made a lot of sense for several reasons,” said Ingle. “We were able to get a system that was developed specifically with local government needs in mind, from the perspective of the staff that use it to communicate with the public, rather than from a vendor. It also allows us to make specific enhancements to it in the future. The partnership will save both municipalities and taxpayers money while mutually supporting our online communication goals.”
The cities were jointly awarded second place in the 2012 Best of the Web (BOW) City Portal Category from the e.Republic’s Center for Digital Government for this collaborative approach to share and jointly pursue innovation for a specialized website content management system.
The city spent approximately $25,000 on the new site design by Vision Internet, a company that specializes in designing websites for local government entities. The Inquire Boulder CRM system provided by Government Outreach, which specializes in CRM systems for local governments, amounted to $19,000 for implementation and annual costs thereafter for system hosting and support.
During the redesign effort, the city also endeavored to clean up its content from the old site. As a result, the city eliminated approximately 8,000 pages of outdated and inaccurate or duplicate information and now hosts a trimmed up site of approximately 4,000 pages.
–CITY–
A week in the life of OSMP Rangers, dogs, dogs, dogs and other news
Jul 28th
• A report of a potential assault on Gregory Canyon Trail. A woman was kneed in the leg while trying to pass a couple of hikers who thought she was being rude. Suspects have not be found.
• A report of a campfire west of NCAR. Boulder Fire could see three foot flames close to Mallory Cave. Suspect/s was never found.
• A report of a dog bite on the Gregory Canyon trail. The dog bit the hiker while they were passing by on the trail.
• A report of a nine year old bit by a dog on the hand at the Bluebell Shelter.
• A visitor in the closure at Boulder Falls who had a warrant for his arrest. Rangers worked with Sheriff’s Officers on this person’s arrest.
• A report of an overdue hiker in the Mt. Sanitas area. Rangers worked with Sheriff’s Officers and RMR to locate the missing party.
• An injured hiker on the East Ridge trail of Mt. Sanitas who had sprained their ankle. Rangers worked with AMR on this call.
• A report of a grass fire on the Reynolds property. The fire was started by a vehicle and was quickly extinguished. The fire was about 30’X30’.
• A report of a party passed out at the Halfway House. The patient was there for a wedding, became overheated and passed out. Rangers helped AMR with this call.
Community Outreach
Reminder: Art Inspired by the Land – Art Show Opening Reception
Fri. July 26, 5 –7 pm
Boulder’s Open Space and Mountain Parks Department is excited to announce that we will host an art show in late summer at the Boulder Public Library Canyon Gallery (1001 Arapahoe Avenue, Boulder). This show will celebrate art created by the community and inspired by OSMP lands. Please join us for appetizers, quartet music from the Boulder Philharmonic, and beautifully inspiring community art celebrating your protected lands and wildlife. This reception is free and open to the public. The art show will run from July 20 – August 28 during normal library hours.
This year to date we have offered 184 educational programs with 8,600 people attending! (Requested hikes plus Natural Selections.)
Mountain Bike Patrol: Trail work last week on Spring Brook was a success. Thanks for everyone who came–Joel, John S, Dan, Jeremy W, Allison, Jeremy, John P, Paul, Steve, and Kyle.
NASA-CU Boulder mission discovers particle accelerator in heart of Van Allen radiation
Jul 26th
The new results from NASA’s Van Allen Probes mission show the acceleration energy is in the belts themselves. Local bumps of energy kick particles inside the belts to ever-faster speeds, much like a well-timed push on a moving swing. Knowing the location of the acceleration within the radiation belts will help scientists improve predictions of space weather, which can be hazardous to satellites near Earth. The results were published July 25 in the journal Science.
“Until the 1990s, we thought the Van Allen belts were pretty well-behaved and changed slowly,” says Geoff Reeves, lead author on the paper and a radiation belt scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory in Los Alamos, N.M. “With more and more measurements, however, we realized how quickly and unpredictably the radiation belts change. They are basically never in equilibrium, but in a constant state of change.”
In order for scientists to understand such changes better, the twin Van Allen Probes fly straight through this intense area of space. One of the top priorities for the mission, launched last August, is to understand how particles in the belts are accelerated to ultra-high energies.
“We see case after case where the very high energy electrons appear suddenly right in the heart of the outer belt,” said CU-Boulder Professor Daniel Baker, director of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics and a study co-author. “But now we can prove where the electrons originate from and we can see the waves — and the lower energy ‘seed’ particles — from which the relativistic electrons grow. We can essentially peer into the inner workings of our local cosmic accelerator with unprecedented clarity.”
By taking simultaneous measurements with advanced technology instruments, the Van Allen Probes were able to distinguish between two broad possibilities on what accelerates the particles to such amazing speeds. The possibilities are radial acceleration or local acceleration. In radial acceleration, particles are transported perpendicular to the magnetic fields that surround Earth, from areas of low magnetic strength far from Earth to areas of high magnetic strength closer to Earth.
Physics dictates particle speeds in this scenario will increase as the magnetic field strength increases. The speed of the particles would increase as they move toward Earth, much the way a rock rolling down a hill gathers speed due to gravity. The local acceleration theory proposes the particles gain energy from a local energy source, similar to the way warm ocean water can fuel a hurricane above it.
Reeves and his team found they could distinguish between these two theories when they observed a rapid energy increase in the radiation belts Oct. 9, 2012. The observations did not show an intensification in particle energy starting at high altitude and moving gradually toward Earth, as would be expected in a radial acceleration scenario. Instead, the data showed an increase in energy that started right in the middle of the radiation belts and gradually spread both inward and outward, implying a local acceleration source. The research shows this local energy comes from electromagnetic waves coursing through the belts, tapping energy from other particles residing in the same region of space.
“These new results go a long way toward answering the questions of where and how particles are accelerated to high energy,” said Mona Kessel, Van Allen Probes program scientist in Washington. “One mission goal has been substantially addressed.”
The challenge for scientists now is to determine which waves are at work, according to the science team. The Van Allen Probes, which are designed to measure and distinguish between many types of electromagnetic waves, will tackle this task, too.
Baker said the new findings would not have been possible without the Relativistic Electric Proton Telescope, or REPT, developed by a team at CU-Boulder’s LASP and which is riding on the Van Allen Probes. CU-Boulder will receive more than $18 million from NASA over the Van Allen Probes mission lifetime for REPT and an electronics package known as the Digital Fields Board, said Baker, who led the LASP team that developed REPT.
“I think we are now getting a crash course in true radiation belt physics,” said Baker. “While before we were nibbling at the edges or looking through a cloudy screen, things are incredibly clear now. With our beautiful new sensors, we can see almost every ‘thumbprint’ of every large solar storm that has impressed itself on the Earth’s radiation belts.”
The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md., built and operates the twin Van Allen Probes for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. The Van Allen Probes are the second mission in NASA’s Living With a Star program, managed by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. The program explores aspects of the connected sun-Earth system that directly affect life and society.
For more information about the Van Allen Probes visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/vanallenprobes. For more information on LASP visit http://lasp.colorado.edu/home/.
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