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Boulder Public Library cuts, retirements, resignations, book cuts, hours cut No end in site
Oct 21st
HAMMER DROPS ON BOULDER PUBLIC LIBRARY
October 21, 2010 ,Boulder, Colorado is considered one of the country’s most intelligent cities. but, with severe budget cuts looming, it’s the Boulder Public Library which is suffering. According to several sources at the Library, under the previous library director, Tony Talbott, books were culled from the stacks if they weren’t used for a number of years and magazines, too.
That started the ball rolling but his resignation brought Donna Gaertman into the picture as Library Director Pro Tem. She’s retiring on December 31, 2010 along with long-standing management personnel, Assistant Library Director Lyn Reed, whose husband Judge Tom Reed is retiring, and finance director James Marshall. There’s no continuity!
According to a city source, a $100,000 budget increase was to go toward 2% bonuses for those management personnel. But, since they are leaving, where is that money going? And, according to the City and library personnel, when several full time employees took retirement, they were not being replaced. Instead, City management decided to bring in temp employees who wouldn’t require benefits. Anyone can see the stress on the faces of those long-term librarians and other library personnel wondering what will happen next.
While there is no confirmation from the City to this statement, Jennifer Miles is looking for a possible move to become Library Director. She came up in the ranks after being put into place at the library by former library Director Marcelee Graalap.
As one member of the library management recently said, “Time will tell if we will even have a library here any more considering the cuts!”
TWO CU-BOULDER FACULY MEMBERS WIN NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION CAREER AWARDS
Oct 20th
Oct. 20, 2010
Two University of Colorado faculty members have received prestigious National Science Foundation Early Career Development, or CAREER awards.
Assistant Professor Nils Halverson, who holds faculty appointments in both the astrophysical and planetary sciences department and the physics department, was awarded $875,415 over five years from NSF to support detector development and data analysis for cosmic microwave background studies with the South Pole Telescope.
Cosmic microwave background is relic heat from the Big Bang that scientists can detect with microwave-wavelength telescopes. The light is slightly polarized, much in the way sunlight is polarized when it is reflected off the surface of a pond. The polarization signal is expected to contain tiny ripples from gravitational waves set in motion a small fraction of a second after the Big Bang, said Halverson.
By measuring the signal, astrophysicists can begin to understand the physics of the universe during its birth. As part of the NSF award, Halverson and astrophysical and planetary sciences instructor Seth Horenstein will provide a graduate class focused on observations, data analysis and statistics with conceptual assessment tools, peer-instruction exercises and course notes.
Assistant Professor Amy Palmer of the chemistry and biochemistry department received $831,720 from the NSF over five years to support her research to provide a powerful new approach to illuminate disease-causing bacteria like salmonella that invade host organisms and can produce harmful and sometimes lethal effects.
Many bacterial pathogens use a set of proteins called “effectors” to invade and infect host cells, cooperatively working to hijack cellular signaling and to reprogram the host cell to enable bacterial survival. Palmer and her team are developing a new method that will directly tag a broad spectrum of effector proteins with fluorescent molecules in order to visualize their movements during infection of a host cell.
Palmer’s project also will contribute to a campuswide effort to reform undergraduate science education by developing and validating interdisciplinary, hands-on tutorials that will promote student engagement and transform student learning. She has worked with the Science Education Initiative on campus, which is part of the university’s STEM efforts, to integrate learning assistants into upper division physical chemistry classes, develop pre/post concept tests to measure learning gains and to promote active engagement in the classroom. Palmer also is a faculty member in CU’s Colorado Initiative in Molecular Biotechnology, or CIMB.
SOURCE: CU MEDIA RELEASE
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Ned forestry dump to close
Oct 20th
Boulder County, Colo. – The community forestry sort yard on Ridge Road near Nederland will close for the winter on Saturday, Oct. 30.
Residents may drop off logs, branches and slash, including “hot” beetle-infested wood Tuesday-Saturday during the hours of 9 a.m.-5 p.m. through Oct. 30.
The site is located at 286 Ridge Road, north of Nederland off of the Peak-to-Peak Highway.
Due to the ongoing fire ban, Boulder County has been unable to burn slash at the sort yard and has accumulated a large pile of branches that will need to be chipped. Residents living close to the sort yard should expect to hear grinding operations at some point during the first two weeks of November and are thanked for their patience during the end-of-season sort yard cleanup. Grinding is anticipated to take one or two days, but may take longer.
The Nederland site had a successful first year of operation, taking in more than 600 individual loads of biomass. The yard has seen a noticeable increase in the number of people creating better defensible space around their homes since the Fourmile Canyon wildfire.
Despite recent wetter weather, forests remain extremely dry and the chance of wildfire remains high. Long-term weather forecasts are predicting a windier-than-average winter and residents are advised to remain vigilant about creating better defensible space around their homes.
“The Chinook winds that are predicted this winter combined with our extremely dry forests means that fire danger will remain high,” said Ryan Ludlow, Outreach Forester with the Boulder County Land Use Department. “Right now is the best time of year to create better defensible space and protect your home against future fires.”
The community forestry sort yard program was established to give residents a free-of-charge place to dispose of wood cut on private lands, to remove hazardous beetle-killed trees, to improve defensible space around homes, and to create a healthier forest ecosystem. The Nederland sort yard is anticipated to reopen in the spring.
For more information, visit www.bouldercounty.org/foresthealth, call Ryan Ludlow at 720-564-2641, or email pinebeetle@bouldercounty.org.
SOURCE: Boulder County news release
