Buff briefs | Drive benefits Fourmile Fire victims

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Drive benefits Fourmile Fire victims

Ball Corporation and University of Colorado at Boulder Recycling Services have teamed up to collect and recycle aluminum beverage cans to benefit victims of the Fourmile Canyon fire.

The “Cash for Cans” can drive, which began on Oct. 23 at the Buffs’ home game against Texas Tech, will run through CU’s home game against Iowa State on Nov. 13. During the games, volunteers from Ball and CU collect empty cans at Franklin Field during pre-game tailgating and during half time.

CU is also providing special canonly collection stations during this time at the recycling center next to the Dal Ward Athletic Center and in the University Memorial Center. Ball Corporation will match the money raised by recycling the cans, and the combined funds will be donated to the Fourmile Canyon fire relief effort.

For more information, contact the Environmental Center at 303-492- 8308.

Diversity summit on tap

The University of Colorado at Boulder’s annual campus diversity summit, “Expanding Our Minds: Encompassing Diversity and Practicing Inclusion,” will be held Nov. 2-3.

All events are free and open to the public.

The keynote speaker, Luoluo Hong, is vice chancellor for student affairs at the University of Hawaii and a nationally recognized expert on violence prevention. She will speak on Tuesday, Nov. 2, at 9 a.m. in the University Memorial Center Glenn Miller Ballroom about gender and gender violence and its intersection with race, class and other social identities, and how to prevent gender violence on college campuses.

Also, on Nov. 2, Philip Piket, professor emeritus of sociology, will present a plenary session titled “Viewing Religion Using Sociological ‘Lenses’: Beyond Us vs. Them,” from 1:30 to 3 p.m. in the UMC center ballroom.

On Nov. 3, plenary sessions include “Privilege and Activism” by sociology Professor Joanne Belknap and “Conflict Transformation in the Inclusive Environment” by communication Professor Stan Deetz. Belknap will speak from 9 to 10:30 a.m. and Deetz from 1:30 to 3 p.m., both in the center ballroom.

A performance by the Interactive Theater Project titled “Rise up!” will be held on Nov. 3 from 12:20 to 1:20 p.m. in the UMC center ballroom and will address how to respond to hate when it occurs in one’s presence.

A complete schedule of diversity summit events is available in the Events Calendar at http://tinyurl. com/DiversitySummit2010.

Faculty land CAREER awards

Two CU 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.

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 to visualize their movements during infection of a host cell.