How Fast Is CUs Saarel?
May 2nd
Saarel, of Park City, Utah, arrived in Boulder already in the passing lane.
An engineering physics major with an interest (bet on it not being mild) in chemistry, he earned a 4.0 GPA in his first semester. And that, said Wetmore, was because “you can’t get a 5.0 . . . he finishes practices, takes his shoes off and goes to the library.”
When the Buffs leave the state for meets, as some will do this weekend for competitions in Austin, Texas and Stanford, Calif., Wetmore says Saarel “studies on the bus to the airport, studies at the airport and studies on the airplane. He’s a willing worker when he gets to practice and will do anything we ask of him. If he’s ever tired he doesn’t show it. He’s intense in practice, intense about his school work. I’d like to find a way for him to get a 3.999 (GPA) and relax a little, gear it down a little more.”
Saarel didn’t start running until he was a high school freshman, and that came at the urging of his sister, Emma, now a runner at Swarthmore (Pa.) College. After starting in cross country, he branched out to track, and in a short time reached a comfort level in both.
After winning the Utah State Class 3A cross country championship in the second-fastest time (14:56.7) ever run on the course, he was named the 2012 Gatorade Utah Cross Country Runner of the Year. Other accomplishments that year included first place at the Foot Locker West Regional and a second-place finish at the Nike Cross Nationals Southwest Regional championship. In track as a senior, he also won Utah state titles, with record times in the 800 (1:51.13) and the 1,600 meters (4:07.95).
Like all else he attempts, Saarel is into it in a big, big way at CU. Last fall, in his first cross country season for the Buffs, his finishes earned All-Pac-12 First Team, All-Mountain Region and All-America honors. In his first race for the Buffs – the NCAA Pre-Nationals – he was CU’s No. 2 scorer with a ninth-place finish. In the NCAA Championships, he finished eighth as the Buffs won their fourth NCAA team title since 2001. He became CU’s first true freshman since Billy Nelson to earn All-America recognition. Nelson, who finished 42nd that year (2002), now is one of Wetmore’s assistants.
Saarel is among 14 CU student-athletes who will compete on Sunday in the Payton Jordan Invitational at Stanford, while a pair of CU sprinters will run at the Longhorn Invitational on Saturday in Austin. Saarel is scheduled to run in the 5,000 meters on Sunday night.
Source: CU Buffs
CU Boulder – Neanderthals Not Inferior To Modern Humans
May 1st
The widely held notion that Neanderthals were dimwitted and that their inferior intelligence allowed them to be driven to extinction by the much brighter ancestors of modern humans is not supported by scientific evidence, according to a researcher at the University of Colorado Boulder.
Neanderthals thrived in a large swath of Europe and Asia between about 350,000 and 40,000 years ago. They disappeared after our ancestors, a group referred to as “anatomically modern humans,” crossed into Europe from Africa.
In the past, some researchers have tried to explain the demise of the Neanderthals by suggesting that the newcomers were superior to Neanderthals in key ways, including their ability to hunt, communicate, innovate and adapt to different environments.
But in an extensive review of recent Neanderthal research, CU-Boulder researcher Paola Villa and co-author Wil Roebroeks, an archaeologist at Leiden University in the Netherlands, make the case that the available evidence does not support the opinion that Neanderthals were less advanced than anatomically modern humans. Their paper was published today in the journal PLOS ONE.
Villa and Roebroeks scrutinized nearly a dozen common explanations for Neanderthal extinction that rely largely on the notion that the Neanderthals were inferior to anatomically modern humans. These include the hypotheses that Neanderthals did not use complex, symbolic communication; that they were less efficient hunters who had inferior weapons; and that they had a narrow diet that put them at a competitive disadvantage to anatomically modern humans, who ate a broad range of things.
The researchers found that none of the hypotheses were supported by the available research. For example, evidence from multiple archaeological sites in Europe suggests that Neanderthals hunted as a group, using the landscape to aid them.
Researchers have shown that Neanderthals likely herded hundreds of bison to their death by steering them into a sinkhole in southwestern France. At another site used by Neanderthals, this one in the Channel Islands, fossilized remains of 18 mammoths and five woolly rhinoceroses were discovered at the base of a deep ravine. These findings imply that Neanderthals could plan ahead, communicate as a group and make efficient use of their surroundings, the authors said.
Other archaeological evidence unearthed at Neanderthal sites provides reason to believe that Neanderthals did in fact have a diverse diet. Microfossils found in Neanderthal teeth and food remains left behind at cooking sites indicate that they may have eaten wild peas, acorns, pistachios, grass seeds, wild olives, pine nuts and date palms depending on what was locally available.
Additionally, researchers have found ochre, a kind of earth pigment, at sites inhabited by Neanderthals, which may have been used for body painting. Ornaments have also been collected at Neanderthal sites. Taken together, these findings suggest that Neanderthals had cultural rituals and symbolic communication.
Source: CU Boulder
OSMP Implements Closures Thursday
May 1st
City of Boulder’s Open Space and Mountain Parks (OSMP) Department will begin seasonal area closures to protect grassland ground-nesting birds beginning Thursday, May 1.
These closures will be in effect until July 31.
No designated trails will be closed as part of this protective measure.
The areas closed for grassland ground-nesting birds are:
Both sides of the Greenbelt Plateau Trail from Community Ditch Trail to the Greenbelt Plateau Trailhead on state Highway 128. Dogs will be allowed on the Greenbelt Plateau only if they are on leash (the trail is normally voice-and-sight control);
The area north of Community Ditch Trail and west of state Highway 93;
The area north of the Flatirons Vista North Trail and west of Highway 93 on top of the mesa;
The area north of the South Boulder Creek West Trail, east of the Bluestem Connector and south of Shanahan Ridge (dogs are prohibited in this area year-round).
Dog regulations on both the Community Ditch and Doudy Draw trails will remain voice-and-sight control.
For a variety of reasons, grassland bird populations in North America have declined sharply in the last several decades. Three species that OSMP monitors – Grasshopper Sparrows, Horned Larks and Lark Sparrows – have suffered at least a 50-percent population decline in the last 40 years, according to the National Audubon Society. The closures OSMP will implement Thursday are important in protecting these species’ habitats by keeping people and their pets away as the birds attempt to nest.
Please help OSMP protect these species and other ground-nesting birds by respecting the closures. Trespass violations can result in a summons with penalties up to 90 days in jail and/or a $1,000 fine.
Source: City of Boulder
