CU News
News from the University of Colorado in Boulder.
CU begins counseling online Boulder
Oct 6th
CU EXPANDS MENTAL HEALTH SERVICES
WITH INTERACTIVE ONLINE SCREENINGS
The University of Colorado Boulder next week will become the first campus in the state to offer the Interactive Screening Program, allowing students to screen their mental health online and anonymously with support from a counselor.
The program rollout on Oct. 9 comes three days after National Depression Screening Day, and after a pilot of the initiative was held last spring on campus.
The Interactive Screening Program was developed specifically for college students by the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and will be administered at CU-Boulder by Counseling and Psychological Services.
“Some of our most distressed students aren’t necessarily coming in for support,” said CU-Boulder Suicide Prevention Coordinator Amy Robertson. “Part of what’s making it hard for them to seek treatment is a sense of hopelessness. This well-tested national program addresses that barrier and innovatively uses technology as a bridge for students to our services.”
Campus mental health professionals initiate the interactive screenings by identifying groups of potentially at-risk students and e-mailing them invitations to complete a 10-minute questionnaire. A counselor then sends the screening results to the respondent with a personalized message.
“When issues that are particularly distressing — like suicidal thoughts, substance abuse, eating disorders or relationship problems — emerge from the screening, we may inform the student about our services or offer an appointment,” said Robertson. “If they’re not ready, we continue a dialogue with them.”
During the CU-Boulder pilot of the Interactive Screening Program, Robertson targeted students who were on academic probation and e-mailed 225 invitations. More than 20 people, or about 10 percent of the group, filled out the survey — a response rate that is on par with national averages when it comes to depression screenings.
Robertson says CU-Boulder’s Counseling and Psychological Services will use what it learns over time from the program to expand its outreach to potentially at-risk students, including other groups that might feel isolated such as first-year, transfer and graduate students. The screening process will be initiated every two to four weeks.
The Interactive Screening Program is in place at 30 college and university campuses across the nation including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Cornell University.
Symptoms of depression can include:
— Persistent sad, anxious or empty mood
— Feelings of guilt, worthlessness or helplessness
— Loss of interest or pleasure in ordinary activities
— Difficulty concentrating or making decisions
— Restlessness or irritability
— Inability to sleep or sleeping too much
— Changes in appetite or weight
— Unexplained aches and pains
“If you are feeling suicidal, or need to get help for a friend who is feeling suicidal, contact CU-Boulder’s Counseling and Psychological Services,” said Robertson. Walk-in hours are held from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Monday through Friday. Support by phone also is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week and can be accessed by calling 303-492-6766. If it is after hours, dial “2” to be connected with a mental health professional.
CU-Boulder students are eligible for up to six free sessions per academic year through Counseling and Psychological Services.
For more information on CU-Boulder’s Counseling and Psychological Services visit https://counseling.colorado.edu/.
CU team discovers ancient road
Oct 5th
CU-BOULDER TEAM DISCOVERS ANCIENT ROAD AT MAYA
VILLAGE BURIED BY VOLCANIC ASH 1,400 YEARS AGO
A University of Colorado Boulder-led team excavating a Maya village in El Salvador buried by a volcanic eruption 1,400 years ago has unexpectedly hit an ancient white road that appears to lead to and from the town, which was frozen in time by a blanket of ash.
The road, known as a “sacbe,” is roughly 6 feet across and is made from white volcanic ash from a previous eruption that was packed down and shored up along its edges by residents living there in roughly A.D. 600, said CU-Boulder Professor Payson Sheets, who discovered the buried village known as Ceren near the city of San Salvador in 1978. In Yucatan Maya, the word “sacbe” (SOCK’-bay) literally means “white way” or “white road” and is used to describe elevated ancient roads typically lined with stone and paved with white lime plaster and that sometimes connected temples, plazas and towns.
The sacbe at the buried village of Ceren — which had canals of water running on each side — is the first ever discovered at a Maya archaeology site that was built without bordering paving stones, said Sheets. The road was serendipitously discovered by the team while digging a test pit through 17 feet of volcanic ash in July to analyze agricultural activity on the edges of Ceren, considered the best preserved Maya village in Central America.
“Until our discovery, these roads were only known from the Yucatan area in Mexico and all were built with stone linings, which generally preserved well,” said Sheets of CU’s anthropology department. “It took the unusual preservation at Ceren to tell us the Maya also made them without stone. I’d like to say we saw some anomaly in the ground-penetrating radar data that guided us to the Ceren sacbe, but that was not the case. This was a complete surprise.”
The sacbe was struck almost dead-on by the excavators of the 3-meter by 3-meter test pit, said Sheets, with the full width of road visible. In order to follow the sacbe, two subsequent test pits were excavated to the north and confirmed the sacbe had a minimum length of at least 148 feet long — about half the length of a football field.
The sacbe appears to be headed toward two Ceren ceremonial structures less than 100 feet away — buildings that were unearthed in Ceren by Sheets and his team in 1991. One structure is believed to have been used by a female shaman. The adjacent community ceremonial structure contained evidence — including the bones of butchered deer, a deer headdress painted red and blue and a large alligator-shaped pot — that large quantities of food and drink were being prepared and dispensed to villagers in the town plaza during what Sheets believes was a crop-harvesting ceremony.
“We know there was a celebration going on when the eruption hit,” said Sheets. “And we’ve found no evidence of anyone going back to their houses, gathering up valuables, and fleeing, because all the household doors were tied shut. We think people may have left the plaza and run south, possibly on the sacbe, because the danger was to the north.”
Radiocarbon dates from Ceren indicate the eruption occurred in roughly A.D. 630, and CU researchers have even pinpointed the month and time of day the fiery mass of ash and debris from the Loma Caldera volcano rained down on the town from less than a third of a mile away. Sheets believes the eruption hit at roughly 7 p.m. on an August evening because of the mature corn stalks preserved in ash casts, the fact that the farming implements had been brought inside, the sleeping mats had not yet been rolled out, meals had been served but the dishes were not yet washed, and corn was set into pots to soak in water overnight.
Sheets said it is logical that the villagers in the plaza might have used the white sacbe as an emergency route to flee the destruction of the volcano in the dark of night. “How far they might have gotten, I don’t know,” said Sheets. “It would have been a footrace. I think it is very likely we will find bodies as we follow the sacbe southward in future excavations.” To date, no human remains have been found at the village.
Sacbeob, the plural of sacbe, had strong practical, political and spiritual connotations in the Pre-Columbian Yucatan, said Sheets. Some were fairly long — up to 40 miles — while others stretched less than 50 feet. Because of the high level of preservation at Ceren, the researchers can see hand marks of farmers who were repairing the edges of the sacbe.
While there is speculation the Ceren sacbe may have led to the Maya center of San Andres roughly three miles to the south, there is no evidence of that yet, Sheets said.
While some refer to Ceren as “The New World Pompeii,” Sheets is quick to point out the differences. Pompeii was an affluent Roman resort community with multi-story concrete houses, stone streets and marble statues, while Ceren was a modest farming community. Because tiny particles of hot, moist ash blanketed Ceren and packed the thatch-roofed structures, gardens and agricultural fields, the preservation of organic materials is greater than at Pompeii, where dry, pea-sized particles rained down in the Mount Vesuvius eruption of A.D. 79.
Sheets has visited Pompeii, and researchers from Pompeii have visited Ceren, analyzing the similarities and differences at the sites. “When they tell me they wish they had this kind of preservation level at Pompeii, I tell them I wouldn’t mind finding a marble statue or two at Ceren,” said Sheets.
The Ceren preservation is so great that researchers have found marks of finger swipes in ceramic bowls, human footprints in gardens hosting ash casts of plants like corn and manioc, thatched roofs, woven baskets and pots filled with beans. Researchers have found the remains of mice that lived in the thatched roofs of kitchen areas, and entomologists have even been able to discern that two species of ants inhabited the village, Sheets said.
While much of the Maya archaeological record points to rigid, top-down societies where the elite made most political and economic decisions, there is evidence of some autonomy at Ceren, including divergent choices by farmers regarding crop cultivation techniques that were discovered this summer, said Sheets. He believes a community building with two large benches in the front room may have hosted village elders when it came time to make community decisions at Ceren.
In addition to Sheets, the 2011 team included CU-Boulder graduate students Christine Dixon, Alexandria Halmbacher and Theresa Heindel, University of Cincinnati Professor David Lentz, University of Cincinnati graduate student Christine Hoffer, Celine Lamb from the Sorbonne in Paris and 23 local Salvadoran workers. The 2011 field season was funded by the National Science Foundation.
“Students on the project are essential,” said Sheets. “They put up with less than ideal living conditions and they do valuable work, sometimes pursuing their own research paths based on discoveries they make at the site.” Since 1978, more than 30 undergraduate and graduate students have worked under Sheets at Ceren, including 14 who have received or are pursuing master’s or doctoral degrees.
“When I first heard about Ceren, I immediately wanted to know more,” said master’s degree candidate Theresa Heindel, who came to CU-Boulder after graduating from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and who spent the 2011 field season assessing crop cultivation in Ceren’s agricultural fields that were frozen in time by ash. “We don’t see this type of cultivation anywhere in Central America, and we don’t see this level of preservation anywhere in the world.”
In 2009 Sheets and his team discovered a previously unknown Maya agriculture system at Ceren — intensively cultivated manioc fields that yielded at least 10 tons of manioc shortly before the eruption 1,400 years ago. It was the first and only evidence of intense manioc cultivation at any New World archaeology site and Sheets and others believe such large manioc crops could have played a vital role in feeding indigenous societies living throughout tropical Latin America, he said.
Sheets has collaborated with the National Science Foundation, the National Geographic Society, the Smithsonian Institution, the Getty Conservation Institute and a number of universities since 1978. The 10-acre Joya de Ceren Archaeological Park was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1993.
“When the radiocarbon dates on the thatched roofs came back in 1978, I saw the rest of my professional life. I knew I did not need to look for any more new archaeological sites,” said Sheets. “There is well over a century of research still to be done at Ceren — in some ways we’ve only scratched the surface.”
A video news story on Ceren is available by going to http://www.colorado.edu/news/ and clicking on the story headline.
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CU wins solar observatory HQ
Sep 30th
CU-BOULDER WINS BID TO HOST NATIONAL
SOLAR OBSERVATORY HEADQUARTERS
SOLAR OBSERVATORY HEADQUARTERS
The University of Colorado Boulder was selected today to host the headquarters for the National Solar Observatory, the nation’s leading scientific research program in ground-based solar astronomy.
The National Solar Observatory, or NSO, provides scientists access to the world’s largest collection of optical and infrared solar telescopes and auxiliary instruments to observe the sun in detail. NSO scientists conduct theoretical and observational research focused on understanding the underlying causes of solar variability and its impact on the Earth and the Earth’s space environment.
NSO is operated under the auspices of the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, or AURA, on behalf of the National Science Foundation, with key observing facilities in New Mexico and Arizona, and is currently leading the effort to build the 4-meter Advanced Technology Solar Telescope, a technological innovation scheduled to begin observations from Haleakala on Hawaii’s Maui island in 2016.
In April 2011, CU-Boulder was selected as one of two finalists along with the University of Alabama in Huntsville. CU-Boulder partnered with the New Jersey Institute of Technology and the University of Hawaii on the winning bid and will implement a collaborative graduate education program that will enhance the role of NSO in research and education on a national level.
“We are delighted to be named host of the National Solar Observatory, which is of great importance to the nation and world in terms of better understanding solar physics and space weather,” said CU-Boulder Provost Russell Moore, who submitted the proposal on behalf of the university. “Landing this vital research center is a testimony to the strength of CU-Boulder’s world-class faculty in space science and solar research, the support of the city of Boulder’s leadership, and the vital assistance and support of Congressmen Ed Perlmutter and Jared Polis and U.S. Senators Mark Udall and Michael Bennett.”
Stein Sture, vice chancellor for research at CU-Boulder, echoed Moore, saying that the NSO’s presence will benefit CU’s research and teaching mission in dynamic ways.
“As one of the world’s leading institutions in solar research, we now will have even greater access to ground-based observing facilities and will be able to continue to provide unrivaled opportunities for our students and research scientists alike,” said Sture.
The NSO’s mission is to advance knowledge of the sun both as an astronomical object and as the dominant external influence on Earth by providing forefront observational opportunities to the research community. The mission includes the operation of cutting-edge facilities and the continued development of advanced instrumentation both in-house and through partnerships, as well as conducting solar research and educational and public outreach, said Moore.
NSO currently has offices and ground-based observing facilities at Kitt Peak, Ariz., and Sacramento Peak, N.M., which will cease operations when the new Advanced Technology Solar Telescope is completed. The new CU-Boulder headquarters for NSO will be the primary science, instrument development and data analysis site for the new solar telescope.
“The educational and collaborative opportunities that will be enabled by the relocation of the NSO headquarters in Boulder are exceptional,” said Associate Professor Mark Rast of CU-Boulder’s Department of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences and leader of the team that wrote the proposal to AURA. “The sun is the only star close enough to allow detailed observations of magnetic and dynamical processes central to many phenomena in the universe. The NSO’s unique capabilities will add to and augment ongoing efforts in Boulder, ranging from stellar astrophysics and the space environments of extra-solar planets to space weather prediction here at Earth. We are very excited by the possibilities, and thrilled that Boulder was chosen as host.”
Several CU-Boulder departments were involved in the NSO headquarters bid: the Department of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences, the Department of Physics and the Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences. The quality of students in these departments was likely a significant consideration in the decision to bring the NSO headquarters to Boulder, and major research opportunities for both graduate and undergraduate students will accompany the NSO move, particularly once the Advanced Technology Solar Telescope comes on line, Rast said.
“Students will have the opportunity to participate in discovery science using a telescope with about 10 times better spatial resolution than the best current space-borne solar imagers,” Rast said.
In addition to the university, Colorado and Boulder offer a host of national laboratories as potential collaborators with the NSO. Other laboratories and centers in Colorado expected to participate and benefit include the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the National Institute for Standards and Technology.
“This is extremely exciting for the university, the state of Colorado and solar scientists around the world,” said LASP Director Dan Baker, an internationally known expert in space physics and space weather. “CU-Boulder researchers have been studying the sun for more than 50 years. Our continued leadership in this area is a tremendous asset for our students. Solar research represents a branch of science that is crucial for our nation’s future. The sun is a driver of Earth’s weather and climate and its extreme behavior can have immense economic and societal consequences through its impact on the space environment.”
The consolidation of NSO into a single site located on CU-Boulder’s East Campus is expected to result in jobs for up to 70 scientists, engineers and staff with an annual payroll of roughly $20 million. The new facility will bolster an already formidable high-tech and aerospace industry in the state. Colorado is third behind California and Washington, D.C., in aerospace industry presence.
“The NSO is an excellent addition to the dynamic research and entrepreneurial activity in Boulder,” said Boulder City Manager Jane Brautigam. “The federal labs and nationally recognized CU-Boulder, combined with an aggressive environment for financing high-tech startups, have made Boulder a hot spot nationally for its intellectual capital and business environment. We are delighted to welcome the NSO to our vibrant community.”
FACT SHEET
NATIONAL SOLAR OBSERVATORY
• The National Solar Observatory is the primary provider of key ground-based facilities to the United States solar science community to probe all aspects of the sun. The NSO is operated by the Associated Universities for Research in Astronomy, or AURA, under a cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation for the benefit of the astronomical community.
• NSO’s mission is to advance the understanding of the sun both as an astronomical object and the dominant external influence on Earth. The mission includes the operation of cutting-edge facilities and the continued development of advanced instrumentation to conduct solar research, education and outreach.
• NSO goals include understanding the mechanisms generating solar cycles, the relationships between the sun’s interior, surface and outer envelope, and events like coronal heating, solar flares and coronal mass ejections.
• NSO currently has offices and observatories in Sunspot and at Sacramento Peak (the Dunn Solar Telescope) in New Mexico and in Tucson and at Kitt Peak (the McMath-Pierce Solar Telescope) in Arizona.
• NSO also oversees a community-based research effort called the Global Oscillation Network Group, or GONG, a six-station network that uses helioseismology to continuously observe the sun’s five-minute oscillations from California, Hawaii, Chile, the Canary Islands, India and Australia.
• NSO has begun work on the 4-meter Advanced Technology Solar Telescope that will be placed on the summit of Haleakala on Maui, Hawaii, taking the place of the two primary observing facilities in New Mexico and Arizona. The summit of Haleakala is 10,000 feet in altitude — which is above one-third of Earth’s atmosphere — providing great clarity, dryness and air stillness for precise solar observations.
• AURA is a consortium of universities and other research institutions that operates world-class astronomical observatories. There are 38 U.S. institutions and seven international affiliates. In addition to NSO, AURA manages three other centers – the National Optical Astronomy Observatory at Kitt Peak, Ariz., and Cerra Tololo, Chile; the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore; and the AURA Observatory, a complex of Chilean observing facilities.
• The relocation of the NSO headquarters from New Mexico and Arizona to CU-Boulder is not expected to begin until 2016.
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