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Cell phone camera captures “mugshot” of assault suspect
May 30th
Boulder police ask for public help to identify assault suspect
Boulder police are investigating an assault which took place on May 11, 2013, at 12:53 a.m. The incident occurred in the area of Broadway and Walnut as a group of four females and one male were walking together on Broadway. One of the females was injured during the altercation.
This goofball allegedly sent a young to the hospital after attacking her on the corner of Walnut and B’way. He may have been drinking.
Witnesses say an unknown male, who was smoking in front of the Walnut Brewery, made inappropriate remarks about the women and began following the group as he continued to yell obscenities at them. The male in the group told police that he told the suspect to walk away and leave them alone.
The 21-year-old female victim says the suspect then flicked a lit cigarette towards her, hitting her in the face. The suspect then grabbed the victim by her shirt collar and threw her into a cement business sign at the corner of Broadway and Walnut. The victim suffered facial injuries and was taken to the hospital for treatment.
The male friend and the male suspect then began fighting with each other. One of the other women in the group was able to take a photo of the suspect with her cell phone before the suspect fled the scene.
Police have been working to identify the suspect through various leads, but have been unable to establish a positive identification. A photo of the suspect is attached, and investigators ask anyone with information about him to contact the Boulder Police Department.
The case number is 13-6128.
Anyone with information is asked to contact Detective Ruth Christopher at 303-441-1850. Those who have information but 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 and filing of charges on a suspect(s) may be eligible for a cash reward of up to $1,000 from Crime Stoppers.
— CITY–
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Missing elderly woman, dog and car found in Wyoming; are safe with state troopers
May 30th
A 74-year-old woman who had been reported missing by her family has been found this afternoon just outside of Laramie, WY. She is safe and is with Wyoming Highway Patrol troopers. Her family is en route to Laramie to pick her up.
Betty Begin didn’t show up for a family dinner on Tuesday, May 28, 2013, and her family became concerned and contacted Boulder police. Earlier today, the Boulder Police Department issued a news release asking the public for help in locating Begin, who was last seen yesterday afternoon. Begin suffers from some memory issues, and family members told police that she sometimes becomes disoriented.
This afternoon, May 29, 2013, Begin apparently ran out of gas on Interstate 80, just outside of Laramie, WY. Begin had been driving in the fast lane, and was reportedly nearly hit by another driver when she ran out of gas. The Wyoming Highway Patrol was notified, and a check of Begin’s record showed that she had been reported missing in Colorado.
Begin was with her dog, Buddy, and both are safe. Family members are on their way to Laramie to pick them up.
At this time, police have no further information about Begin’s activities between the time she was reported missing and the time she was found.
The Boulder Police Department would like to thank the Wyoming Highway Patrol, the public and the media for their help in publicizing this case and ultimately locating Betty Begin.
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CU study hints conditions on Mars may support energy for life forms
May 30th
A chemical reaction between iron-containing minerals and water may produce enough hydrogen “food” to sustain microbial communities living in pores and cracks within the enormous volume of rock below the ocean floor and parts of the continents, according to a new study led by the University of Colorado Boulder.
The findings, published in the journal Nature Geoscience, also hint at the possibility that hydrogen-dependent life could have existed where iron-rich igneous rocks on Mars were once in contact with water.
Scientists have thoroughly investigated how rock-water reactions can produce hydrogen in places where the temperatures are far too hot for living things to survive, such as in the rocks that underlie hydrothermal vent systems on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean. The hydrogen gases produced in those rocks do eventually feed microbial life, but the communities are located only in small, cooler oases where the vent fluids mix with seawater.
The new study, led by CU-Boulder Research Associate Lisa Mayhew, set out to investigate whether hydrogen-producing reactions also could take place in the much more abundant rocks that are infiltrated with water at temperatures cool enough for life to survive.
“Water-rock reactions that produce hydrogen gas are thought to have been one of the earliest sources of energy for life on Earth,” said Mayhew, who worked on the study as a doctoral student in CU-Boulder Associate Professor Alexis Templeton’s lab in the Department of Geological Sciences.
“However, we know very little about the possibility that hydrogen will be produced from these reactions when the temperatures are low enough that life can survive. If these reactions could make enough hydrogen at these low temperatures, then microorganisms might be able to live in the rocks where this reaction occurs, which could potentially be a huge subsurface microbial habitat for hydrogen-utilizing life.”
When igneous rocks, which form when magma slowly cools deep within the Earth, are infiltrated by ocean water, some of the minerals release unstable atoms of iron into the water. At high temperatures — warmer than 392 degrees Fahrenheit — scientists know that the unstable atoms, known as reduced iron, can rapidly split water molecules and produce hydrogen gas, as well as new minerals containing iron in the more stable, oxidized form.
Mayhew and her co-authors, including Templeton, submerged rocks in water in the absence of oxygen to determine if a similar reaction would take place at much lower temperatures, between 122 and 212 degrees Fahrenheit. The researchers found that the rocks did create hydrogen — potentially enough hydrogen to support life.
To understand in more detail the chemical reactions that produced the hydrogen in the lab experiments, the researchers used “synchrotron radiation” — which is created by electrons orbiting in a manmade storage ring — to determine the type and location of iron in the rocks on a microscale.
The researchers expected to find that the reduced iron in minerals like olivine had converted to the more stable oxidized state, just as occurs at higher temperatures. But when they conducted their analyses at the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource at Stanford University, they were surprised to find newly formed oxidized iron on “spinel” minerals found in the rocks. Spinels are minerals with a cubic structure that are highly conductive.
Finding oxidized iron on the spinels led the team to hypothesize that, at low temperatures, the conductive spinels were helping facilitate the exchange of electrons between reduced iron and water, a process that is necessary for the iron to split the water molecules and create the hydrogen gas.
“After observing the formation of oxidized iron on spinels, we realized there was a strong correlation between the amount of hydrogen produced and the volume percent of spinel phases in the reaction materials,” Mayhew said. “Generally, the more spinels, the more hydrogen.”
Not only is there a potentially large volume of rock on Earth that may undergo these low temperature reactions, but the same types of rocks also are prevalent on Mars, Mayhew said. Minerals that form as a result of the water-rock reactions on Earth have been detected on Mars as well, which means that the process described in the new study may have implications for potential Martian microbial habitats.
Mayhew and Templeton are already building on this study with their co-authors, including Thomas McCollom at CU-Boulder’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, to see if the hydrogen-producing reactions can actually sustain microbes in the lab.
This study was funded by the David and Lucille Packard Foundation and with a U.S. Department of Energy Early Career grant to Templeton.
-CU-
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