Sat. begins expanded drop-off of hard to recycle materials
Sep 26th
Beginning on Saturday, Sept. 28, the Center for Hard to Recycle Materials (CHaRM) will offer an expanded drop-off site at 5030 “Old” Pearl St. This enhanced recycling service will be provided in an effort to address the unprecedented volume of electronic waste generated by recent flooding in Boulder.
The additional site is being made possible by a partnership between the City of Boulder and Eco-Cycle and will be available through Saturday, Oct. 5. All processing fees for flood-damaged materials from Boulder residents will be waived. Saturday volumes are expected to be high, so organizers recommend that residents plan to come on weekdays, if possible.
“We are streamlining our system as much as we can to get people in and out,” said Dan Matsch, manager of Eco-Cycle and CHaRM. “Our top priority is to provide the community with a way to easily and properly dispose of flood-damaged items that should not go in the landfill or could be recycled, such as electronics, appliances with Freon and scrap metal.”
CHaRM will be open during its regular hours, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., Monday through Saturday. All residents are directed to the main CHaRM site at 5030 “Old” Pearl St., one block north of Pearl Parkway off 49th Street.
CHaRM specializes in the recycling of “hard-to-recycle” materials such as:
· electronics, including small appliances;
· appliances containing Freon, such as refrigerators, freezers and air conditioners;
· scrap metal;
· large durable plastics; and
· white block Styrofoam.
To be accepted for recycling, these items must be rinsed free of mud and cannot contain excess water. Wet paper and books cannot be recycled and must be composted or taken to a landfill. CHaRM cannot accept wet or moldy clothing or plastic bags. Visit www.ecocycle.org/charm for recycling guidelines and a more detailed list of items that CHaRM can accept.
Hazardous waste cannot be recycled at CHaRM and must be recycled at the Boulder County Hazardous Waste Management Facility at 1901 63rd St. Visit www.bouldercounty.org/env/hazwaste for information on hours and acceptable items.
–CITY–
County officials want mountain driving restraint
Sep 25th
Visitors and plains residents are requested to curtail recreation in the mountains this fall
Clarification:
Mountain residents are asked to minimize trips into and out of damaged areas, and visitors and plains residents are requested to curtail recreation in the mountain area between U.S. 36 and SH 72 this fall (travel is allowed along P2P Highway north to south)
Visitors can access the Town of Estes Park in Larimer County along Peak to Peak Highway (SH 72) – we’re just asking that visitors not try to venture east or west of P2P in Boulder County along roads that are closed to public access
Boulder County, Colo. – Boulder County officials have made it an immediate priority to repair and reconstruct county roads and bridges damaged in the flood. The county sustained an enormous amount of damage to its roadway infrastructure, and in some places, experienced complete destruction of critical routes in the foothills and mountains. Initial estimates for repairs top $100 million.
Boulder County road maintenance crews have been working on clearing, evaluating structural integrity and public safety, and repairing county roads since the beginning of the historic flooding event. Utility companies have also been active since the start working to restore electric, gas, phone, water and other basic services. Given the current status of the roads, county public safety and transportation officials are urging residents to minimize – and visitors to curtail completely – their use of mountain roads within Boulder County.
(Video: Boulder County “Be a Good Neighbor” Public Safety & Road Infrastructure message)
“We kindly ask that people stay out of the foothills and mountain areas from Foothills Highway to Peak to Peak this fall for recreational purposes while our county, state and federal partners work to restore access to all of our valued mountain communities,” said Boulder County Commissioner Cindy Domenico. “Right now we need our residents and visitors to access our central mountain communities only for essential purposes and to give room to our road crews and law enforcement officials to do their jobs.”
“We want residents and visitors to recognize that Boulder County is hard at work to reestablish our infrastructure and reconnect residents to their communities and their homes,” said Boulder County Transportation Director George Gerstle. “The county has teamed with cities and towns, the state, other nearby counties and private contractors to help with this massive undertaking. Crews are working as quickly as we can to put in place at least temporary fixes by winter, knowing that cold weather and snow will only compound problems with damaged roads.”
The Sheriff’s Office is requesting that all recreation and unnecessary trips into the foothills and mountains of Boulder County be curtailed until critical roads, including Boulder Canyon and U.S. 36 west of Lyons, can be opened to the general public. (View video)
“The road issues are more than a mere inconvenience,” said Boulder County Sheriff Joe Pelle. “Everyone working at the county understands that the lack of access and the lengthy process to restore it will change lives, and we are focused on returning a sense of normalcy to lives that have been changed forever in some cases.”
County officials have asked that vehicles, bikes and pedestrians stay out of the damaged areas while road and emergency crews, utilities and local residents work to restore basic infrastructure and access to their homes.
“People who want to recreate in the mountains or go see the destruction will actually hamper access for emergency responders, utility workers, and mountain residents who absolutely need the access,” Pelle said. “For that reason we’re asking people who don’t have to go to the mountains to stay away and to understand that this is a very long term problem.”
“It is incredibly difficult to rebuild roads with people on them, so please avoid the mountain roads unless absolutely necessary, and minimize even residential trips to keep roads clear for heavy equipment and emergency vehicles,” Gerstle added. “It is difficult and takes much longer for the crews to fix a road with traffic on it. The fewer people using the road, the faster we can get the work done.”
Another important recovery aspect for many residents is the status of county open space parks and trails.
“Our staff has been assessing damage and working to repair trails as quickly as possible, but there are many parks and trails that may be closed for a significant duration as these areas have experienced extreme damage and the trails are unsafe,” said Boulder County Parks & Open Space Director Ron Stewart.
In addition, the U.S. Forest Service in Boulder County has closed its lands for all recreational purposes (i.e., camping, hiking, hunting, etc.) by executive order until further notice.
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Professor grabs 8th MacArthur award for CU faculty
Sep 25th
Ana Maria Rey, a theoretical physicist and a fellow of JILA, a joint institute of the University of Colorado Boulder and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, today was named a winner of a 2013 MacArthur Fellowship, commonly known as the “genius grant.”
Rey also is an assistant research professor in the CU-Boulder Department of Physics. She teaches undergraduate and graduate classes.
Ana Maria Rey, a CU professor, won the prestigious MacArthur award.
Rey is the eighth CU-Boulder faculty member to win the prestigious award from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation of Chicago as well as the fourth physics faculty member and third JILA fellow. Rey, 36, was one of 24 recipients of the 2013 “no-strings attached” funding. She will receive $625,000 paid out over five years.
“It is a great honor for me to be a MacArthur fellow and to receive such great recognition of my work,” Rey said. “I want to thank JILA, NIST, CU-Boulder and the outstanding group of colleagues, collaborators and students who have allowed and helped me to accomplish the research I have done.”
The MacArthur Foundation selection committee cited Rey as an “atomic physicist advancing our ability to simulate, manipulate, and control novel states of matter through fundamental conceptual research on ultra-cold atoms.”
“We congratulate Professor Rey on this exciting award, and, we also congratulate our faculty, whose ranks now include five Nobel laureates and eight MacArthur Fellowship winners,” said CU-Boulder Chancellor Philip P. DiStefano. “I believe Professor Rey’s work is emblematic of the research, innovation, and discovery at CU-Boulder, a body of work and a collection of great minds that is unmatched anywhere in the Rocky Mountain region and few places around the nation.”
Tom O’Brian, chief of the NIST Quantum Physics Division and Rey’s supervisor, said, “Ana Maria has rapidly established herself as one of the world’s top young theoretical physicists. She has a special ability to make very practical applications of theory to key experiments. Ana Maria has been crucial to the success of such world-leading NIST/JILA programs as ultracold molecules, dramatic improvements in optical lattice clocks, and use of cold atom systems and trapped ion systems for quantum simulations.”
At JILA, Rey works with ultracold atoms and molecules that are trapped in an “optical lattice,” a series of shallow wells constructed of laser light. Atoms that are loaded into an optical lattice behave similarly to electrons in a solid crystal structure. But while it’s difficult to change the properties of a solid crystal, the properties of an optical lattice—which essentially acts as a “light crystal”—are highly controllable, allowing Rey to explore a whole range of phenomena that would be nearly impossible to study in a solid crystal system.
Ultimately, Rey hopes her research will lead to the ability to engineer materials with unique characteristics such as superfluids—liquids that appear to move without regard for gravity or surface tension—and quantum magnets—individual atoms that act like tiny bar magnets.
Rey began studying physics at the Universidad de los Andes in Bogota, Colombia, where she received a Bachelor of Science degree in 1999. She came to the United States to continue her studies, earning a doctorate in physics from the University of Maryland, College Park in 2004.
Before coming to JILA in 2008, Rey was a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass., and a postdoctoral researcher at NIST in Gaithersburg, Md.
Previous CU-Boulder faculty members who have won a MacArthur Fellowship include David Hawkins of philosophy in 1981, Charles Archambeau of physics in 1988, Patricia Limerick of history in 1995, Margaret Murnane of physics and JILA in 2000, Norman Pace of molecular, cellular and developmental biology in 2001, Daniel Jurafsky of linguistics and the Institute of Cognitive Science in 2002 and Deborah Jin of JILA, NIST and physics in 2003.
“Everyone at JILA is extremely proud of Ana Maria Rey’s accomplishments and wholeheartedly congratulate her for this prestigious MacArthur Fellowship,” said JILA Chair Murray Holland. “She has an incredibly quick mind for physics and is one of the truly creative and ingenious scientists of her time, while also being a wonderful teacher and mentor to both undergraduate and graduate students. This is a great honor for Ana Maria, and a tremendous recognition of the important research programs in JILA and NIST.”
Rey is a highly effective mentor for an unusually large group of graduate students and postdoctoral fellows given the early stage of her career, O’Brian said. One of her recent graduate students, Michael Foss-Feig, won the prestigious 2013 Best Thesis Award of the American Physical Society’s Division of Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics. Rey herself won the same award in 2005 as a graduate student at the University of Maryland.
On Sept. 24, in another honor, the American Physical Society named Rey the winner of the 2014 Maria Goeppert Mayer Award, which recognizes outstanding achievements by a woman physicist in her early career:
Additional information on Rey is available on the Web at http://www.macfound.org/fellows/901 and http://jila-amo.colorado.edu/science/profiles/ana-maria-rey.
-CU-
