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Tree removals to impact traffic the week of Aug. 29
Aug 27th
Traffic impacts include:
● Tuesday, Aug. 30, between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m.: Intermittent lane closures on Pearl Street between 18th and 20th streets due to the removal of a large Siberian elm tree in poor health.
● Wednesday, Aug. 31, between 6 and 9 a.m.: Intermittent delays to bike and pedestrian traffic along the Boulder Creek Path during tree pruning operations west of the Boulder Public Library Main Branch.
● Wednesday, Aug. 31, between 9 a.m. and 2 p.m.: The northbound, outside lane of Broadway Avenue between Arapahoe Avenue and Canyon Boulevard will be closed so crews can remove a honeylocust tree in poor health. The tree was struck by lightning in July 2010 and its health has significantly declined since that time. The transit stop at Central Park will be moved south to the bridge over Boulder Creek during the removal operation.
● Thursday, Sept.1, between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m.: The southbound, outside lane of Broadway Avenue between College and Euclid avenues will be closed so crews can remove a silver maple tree that is a safety concern due to a large trunk cavity and advanced decay.
Most of the wood from the trees being removed will be recycled into mulch and used in City of Boulder parks. Trees that are being removed will be replaced where possible next spring.
Boulder County awarded Family Unification Program vouchers HUD program helps stabilize families and move them toward self-sufficiency
Jun 22nd
Boulder County, Colo. – In recognition of its effective, integrated approach to human services delivery, where children and families are offered a full continuum of early and preventative support services that increase their safety and their chances to be self-sufficient, the Boulder County Department of Housing and Human Services was recently awarded 50 Family Unification Program Housing Choice Vouchers by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Only 150 vouchers were awarded in Colorado and less than 2,000 nationwide.
By providing access to stable housing and supportive services, the Family Unification Program enables Boulder County to reunite children in foster care with their parents or to prevent children from entering the foster care system. Research consistently shows that children who are able to safely stay with their families have much better long-term outcomes than children who are removed from their homes.
FUP vouchers will be available for families whose inadequate housing is the primary factor in the separation or near separation from their children. Families and youths are permitted to rent housing from private landlords and generally pay 30 percent of their monthly income toward rent and utilities. County staff will refer eligible clients to the voucher program.
“We feel strongly that a lack of affordable housing is not a valid reason to separate children from their families,” said Frank Alexander, Director of the county’s Department of Housing and Human Services. “With these vouchers, we can ensure that families have a safe and affordable place to live and thereby remove one obstacle from parents who want to take care of their children but do not have the financial resources to do so. Providing short-term supportive services to at-risk families on the front end can make the difference for kids and families over the long term.”
According to the National Center for Housing and Child Welfare, it costs the federal government approximately $56,892 annually per family to place children into foster care. Yet the cost to provide housing and supportive services to one family averages less than $14,000 annually. Through this investment in FUP to reunify families who are separated due to a lack of affordable housing options, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, known as HUD, will reunite nearly 3,500 children with their parents, thus saving $74 million in annual foster care expenditures.
Cost savings are also considerable for young people aging out of foster care. The average annual cost of a FUP voucher for young adults is $5,600 – a 10th of the estimated costs associated with undesirable outcomes such as homelessness, incarceration, and residential treatment.
“Boulder County is proud to be leading the way in providing a highly integrated, locally delivered housing and human services system and appreciates HUD’s recognition of this innovative approach to service delivery,” Alexander said.
ANCIENT BIPEDAL HOMINID DUBBED ‘NUTCRACKER MAN’ PREFERRED GRASS TO NUTS, NEW STUDY FINDS
May 2nd
The hominid, known as Paranthropus boisei, ranged across the African landscape more than 1 million years ago and lived side-by-side with direct ancestors of humans, said University of Colorado Boulder anthropology Professor Matt Sponheimer, a study co-author. It was long assumed Paranthropus boisei favored nuts, seeds and hard fruit because of its huge jaws, powerful jaw muscles and the biggest and flattest molars of any known hominid in the anthropological record, he said.
In the last several years, research on the wear marks of teeth from Paranthropus boisei by other research teams has indicated it likely was eating items like soft fruit and grasses, said Sponheimer. That evidence, combined with the new study that measured the carbon isotopes embedded in fossil teeth to infer diet, indicates the rugged jaw and large, flat tooth structure may have been just the ticket for Paranthropus boisei to mow down and swallow huge amounts of grasses or sedges at a single sitting, he said.
“Frankly, we didn’t expect to find the primate equivalent of a cow dangling from a remote twig of our family tree,” said Sponheimer.
Published in the May 2 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the study was led by University of Utah Professor Thure Cerling. Other authors included Emma Mbua, Frances Kirera, Fredrick Manthi and Meave Leakey from the National Museums of Kenya, Fredrick Grine from Stony Brook University in New York and Kevin Uno from the University of Utah.
“Fortunately for us, the work of several research groups over the last several years has begun to soften prevailing notions of early hominid diets,” said Sponheimer. “If we had presented our new results at a scientific meeting 20 years ago, we would have been laughed out of the room.”
For the new study, the researchers removed tiny amounts of enamel from 22 Paranthropus boisei teeth collected in central and northern Kenya, each of which contained carbon isotopes absorbed from the types of food eaten during the lifetime of each individual. In tropical environments, virtually all trees and bushes — including fruits and leaves — use the so-called C3 photosynthetic pathway to convert sunlight into energy, while savannah grasses and some sedges use the C4 photosynthetic pathway.
The isotope analysis indicated Paranthropus boisei individuals were much bigger fans of C4 grasses and sedges than C3 trees, shrubs and bushes. The results indicated the collective diet of the 22 individuals averaged about 77 percent grasses and sedges for a period lasting at least 500,000 years, said Sponheimer.
The research team also compared the carbon isotope ratios of Paranthropus teeth with the teeth of other grazing mammals living at the same time and in the same area, including ancestral zebras, hippos, warthogs and pigs. The results indicated those mammals were eating primarily C4 grasses, virtually identical to Paranthropus boisei. “They were eating at the same table,” said Cerling.
Paranthropus was part of a line of close human relatives known as australopithecines that includes the famous 3-million-year-old Ethiopian fossil Lucy, seen by some as the matriarch of modern humans. Roughly 2.5 million years ago, the australopithecines are thought to have split into the genus Homo — which produced modern Homo sapiens — and the genus Paranthropus, that dead-ended, said Sponheimer.
“One key result is that this hominid had a diet fundamentally different from that of all living apes, and, by extension, favored very different environments,” he said. “And having a good idea of where these ancient creatures lived and what they ate helps us understand why some early hominids left descendants and others did not.”
The first skull of a Paranthropus boisei individual was discovered by co-author Meave Leakey’s in-laws, Mary and Louis Leaky, in 1959 in Tanzania.
In 2006, a team led by Sponheimer found that a cousin of Paranthropus boisei known as Paranthropus robustus had a far more diverse diet than once believed, clouding the notion that it was driven to extinction by its picky eating habits. Published in Science magazine, the study showed that Paranthropus robustus had a diverse diet ranging from fruits and nuts to sedges, grasses, seeds and perhaps even animals.
So what led to the end of the line for Paranthropus? It could well have been direct competition with Homo — which was becoming skilled in extensive bone and stone technology — or it could have been a variety of other issues, including a slower reproductive rate for Paranthropus than for Homo, he said.
The new study was funded by the National Science Foundation and the CU-Boulder Dean’s Fund for Excellence.
-CU-