2022-23

Boosting NASA's flagship mission to Europa

Wendy Turnbull — Thu, 19 Oct 2023 21:00:00 +0000

Boosting NASA's flagship mission to Europa Wendy Turnbull Thu, 10/19/2023 - 15:00

Daniel Strain

The Europa SUrface Dust Analyzer, developed at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, will investigate Jupiter’s icy moon

Next year, technology developed at CU ��«��Ƶ will begin a journey to Jupiter’s moon Europa—a cold moon where a thick crust of ice at the surface covers a potentially vast ocean of saltwater below.

The more than $50 million instrument, called the Europa SUrface Dust Analyzer (SUDA), was designed and built by a team of scientists and engineers at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP). It’s part of NASA’s larger Europa Clipper mission, which will investigate the icy moon to determine if it has conditions that could support life.

Over seven years, roughly 150 scientists and engineers at LASP worked on the instrument, including about 40 undergraduate and graduate students. In September 2022, the team shipped SUDA to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which leads the mission. SUDA and eight other scientific instruments are set to launch in October 2024 aboard the Europa Clipper spacecraft, beginning a nearly five-and-a-half-year journey to Jupiter.

“SUDA is a remarkable instrument designed and constructed by remarkable people,” said LASP Director Dan Baker. “It builds on our lab’s rich heritage of dust instrumentation while incorporating new technologies and techniques developed just for this mission. We can hardly wait to see SUDA’s first results.”

The instrument’s sensor head, which is coated with an extremely thin layer of 99.99% gold, is about the size of a marching band drum and weighs nearly 35 pounds. As Europa Clipper flies past the moon, SUDA will collect and analyze particles ejected from the moon’s surface by tiny meteorites.

“We will collect material from the surface, and we will do that without ever landing on the surface,” said Sascha Kempf, principal investigator for SUDA and an associate professor at LASP and the Department of Physics.

An engineer ground tests Europa Clipper’s dust analyzer. Photo by NASA/CU ��«��Ƶ/Glenn Asakawa.

Voyage to Europa

Scientists have long had their eyes on Europa as an important target in the search for life beyond Earth.

This ice-covered sphere is slightly smaller than Earth’s own moon. Underneath its miles-thick layer of ice, researchers suspect that Europa could hold more than twice the saltwater of all of Earth’s oceans combined—an ocean that might also carry ingredients necessary to sustain living organisms, including organic molecules like amino acids.

Europa Clipper is not a life-finding mission. But it will conduct a detailed investigation of the moon and determine if those key ingredients for life are present.

SUDA wouldn’t have been possible without collaboration across CU ��«��Ƶ. To make sure the instrument’s target could withstand impacts from dust, the LASP team partnered with researchers at JILA to coat this disk in a thin layer of iridium— one of the hardest and densest naturally-occurring metals on Earth.&

The hard work will pay off once SUDA and Europa Clipper make it to the icy moon in 2031. When they do, the instrument will bring a symbol of Colorado with it—an image of Ralphie, CU ��«��Ƶ’s buffalo mascot, which the SUDA team etched onto one of the instrument’s gold-plated panels using a laser.

“The chance to be a part of the discovery of an environment capable of supporting life beyond Earth is what has kept us going through COVID and everything else,” said Scott Tucker, the SUDA project manager at LASP. “There’s no immediate gratification with this mission, but it’s worth it knowing that we’re going to be part of something really amazing.”

Managed by Caltech in Pasadena, California, JPL leads the development of the Europa Clipper mission in partnership with the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington, D.C. The Planetary Missions Program Office at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, executes program management of the Europa Clipper mission.

Principal investigator
Sascha Kempf

Funding
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)

Collaboration + support
JILA; Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP)

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New Colorado space instrument part of flagship mission to Europa

The Europa SUrface Dust Analyzer, developed at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, will investigate Jupiter’s icy moon.

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Solving solar mysteries with students

Wendy Turnbull — Thu, 19 Oct 2023 20:45:00 +0000

Solving solar mysteries with students Wendy Turnbull Thu, 10/19/2023 - 14:45

Daniel Strain

How 1,000 CU ��«��Ƶ undergraduate students helped answer one of the most enduring questions about the sun

For a new study, a team of physicists recruited more than 1,000 CU ��«��Ƶ undergraduates to help answer one of the most enduring questions about the sun: How does the star’s outermost atmosphere, or “corona,” get so hot?

The research represents a nearly-unprecedented feat of data analysis: From 2020 to 2022, the small army of mostly first- and second-year students examined the physics of more than 600 real solar flares— gigantic eruptions of energy from the sun’s roiling corona.

The researchers included roughly 1,400 undergrads who contributed an estimated 56,000 hours of work to the project. Their results suggest that solar flares may not be responsible for superheating the sun’s corona, as a popular theory in astrophysics suggests.

“It was a massive effort from everyone involved,” said Heather Lewandowski, study co-author and fellow of JILA, a joint research institute between CU ��«��Ƶ and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

The project began in summer 2020 at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Lewandowski was teaching a class on hands-on research called “Experimental Physics I” that fall, and she had nothing for her students to do. She decided to join forces with James Mason, the lead author of the study, who was then a researcher at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP).

Mason, an astrophysicist, had long wanted to dig into a mystery that has puzzled even senior scientists.

Telescope observations suggest that the sun’s corona sizzles at temperatures of millions of degrees Fahrenheit. The surface of the sun, in contrast, is much cooler, registering only in the thousands of degrees.

“That’s like standing right in front of a campfire, and as you back away, it gets a lot hotter,” said Mason, now at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. “It makes no sense.”

Some scientists suspect that especially tiny flares, or “nanoflares,” which are too small for even the most advanced telescopes to spot, may be responsible. If such events exist, they may pop up across the sun on a nearly constant basis. And, the theory goes, they could add up to make the corona toasty. Think of boiling a pot of water using thousands of individual matches.

To find out what role, if any, such nanoflares play in making the corona so hot, the scientists turned to the undergrads for help. Mason explained that you can infer details about the behavior of nanoflares by studying the physics of larger flares, which scientists have observed directly for decades.

Over three semesters, students in Lewandowski’s class split into groups of three or four and picked a flare to investigate from a large dataset. The flares occurred between 2011 and 2018 and had been spotted by instruments in space. Through a series of lengthy calculations, the students quantified how much heat each of these explosive events might have poured into the sun’s corona.

Their findings painted a clear picture: The sum of the sun’s nanoflares likely wouldn’t be powerful enough to heat up its corona to millions of degrees Fahrenheit.

“We really wanted to emphasize to these students that they were doing actual scientific research,” Mason said.

What is making the corona so hot still isn’t clear.

The study’s scientific findings, however, aren’t its only important results, Lewandowski said.

“We still hear students talking about this course in the halls,” she said. “Our students were able to build a community and support each other at a time that was really tough.”

Principal investigators
Heather Lewandowski; James Mason

Funding
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA); National Science Foundation (NSF)

Collaboration + support
Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES); JILA; Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP); Physics; Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory; NASA Goddard Space Flight Center; National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST); National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)

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How 1,000 undergraduates helped solve an enduring mystery about the sun

How 1,000 CU ��«��Ƶ undergraduate students helped answer one of the most enduring questions about the sun.

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An active region on the sun emits a solar flare—a powerful burst of radiation. Image by NASA/Solar Dynamics Observatory.

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An active region on the sun emits a solar flare—a powerful burst of radiation. Image by NASA/Solar Dynamics Observatory.

Solar and space scientists to guide Heliophysics into the future

Wendy Turnbull — Thu, 19 Oct 2023 20:30:30 +0000

Solar and space scientists to guide Heliophysics into the future Wendy Turnbull Thu, 10/19/2023 - 14:30

Sara Pratt

Six CU ��«��Ƶ scientists have been selected to contribute their expertise on committees and panels of the Decadal Survey for Solar and Space Physics (Heliophysics) 2024-2033.

Heliophysics encompasses research on the Sun, Sun-Earth connections, the origins of space weather, the Sun’s interactions with other bodies in the solar system, the interplanetary medium and the interstellar medium.

Decadal surveys assess the performance of NASA programs, as well as set priorities and plan for future research to advance scientific understanding of the field, including in-depth assessments of potential missions.

Additionally, for the first time, a team from CU ��«��Ƶ’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) has led a large mission concept study, PILOT, which will be reviewed during the survey.

Principals
Frances Bagenal; Hazel Bain; Thomas Berger; Lauren Blum; Katelynn Greer; Adam Kowalski; David Malaspina

Funding
National Academies; National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA); National Science Foundation (NSF); Department of the Air Force (USAF); Department of Commerce (DOC)

Collaboration + support
Ann and H. J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences; Colorado Center for Astrodynamics Research (CCAR); Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES); Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP); Space Weather Technology, Research and Education Center (SWx TREC)

Learn more about this topic:
Solar and space scientists tapped to guide heliophysics into the next decade

Six CU ��«��Ƶ scientists have been selected to contribute their expertise on committees and panels of the Decadal Survey for Solar and Space Physics (Heliophysics) 2024-2033.

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A simulation snapshot revealing high-speed jets of plasma forming in Earth’s magnetosphere. Image: NASA.

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A simulation snapshot revealing high-speed jets of plasma forming in Earth’s magnetosphere. Image: NASA.

Quantum sensors in space

Wendy Turnbull — Thu, 19 Oct 2023 20:15:00 +0000

Quantum sensors in space Wendy Turnbull Thu, 10/19/2023 - 14:15

Josh Rhoten

CU ��«��Ƶ engineers and physicists are working with NASA as part of a multi-university institute seeking to advance quantum sensing technology for next-generation Earth science applications.

The $15 million Quantum Pathways Institute is focused on quantum sensing, which involves observing how atoms react to small changes in their environment and then using that information to infer the time-variations in the gravity field of the Earth. This will enable scientists to improve accuracy in measuring important climate processes such as sea level rise and ice melt.

The institute, led by the University of Texas Austin, includes researchers from across CU ��«��Ƶ. The Colorado-based team will help develop new quantum sensors drawing on JILA’s decades of experience with atomic clocks—devices that measure the incredibly-fast oscillations of atoms cooled down to just a fraction of a degree above absolute zero.

Principal investigators
Dana Anderson; Penina Axelrad; Murray Holland; Marco Nicotra

Funding
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)

Collaboration + support
Ann and H. J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences; Electrical, Computer and Engineering; JILA; Physics; University of Texas Austin; University of California, Santa Barbara; California Institute of Technology; National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)

Learn more about this topic:
New NASA grant to support quantum sensors in space

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CU ��«��Ƶ commercialization drives $8 billion in impact nationwide

Wendy Turnbull — Thu, 19 Oct 2023 20:00:00 +0000

CU ��«��Ƶ commercialization drives $8 billion in impact nationwide Wendy Turnbull Thu, 10/19/2023 - 14:00

Daniel Leonard

Activities led by Venture Partners at CU ��«��Ƶ, the university’s commercialization arm, generated an economic impact of $8 billion nationally and $5.2 billion in the state of Colorado over the last five years, according to a report from the Leeds School of Business, reflecting a four-fold increase in impact since the previous report published in 2019.

Notable findings from the report on fiscal years 2018-2022 include:
The economic impact on the national economy included an estimated 39,000 jobs.
Commercialization of licenses and startups spanned 36 states and 26 countries.
Agreements generated $20.1 million in revenue for CU ��«��Ƶ in licensing technology.
CU ��«��Ƶ inventors and researchers received $45.4 million in commercialization-specific grants.
Startups founded on CU ��«��Ƶ technology generated $3 billion in capital funding.

Collaboration + support
Venture Partners at CU ��«��Ƶ

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CU ��«��Ƶ commercialization drives $8 billion impact nationwide

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Inscripta, Inc., a CU ��«��Ƶ spinout company, is a global leader in automated, CRISPR-based gene editing.

Sniffing out diseases in real time

Wendy Turnbull — Thu, 19 Oct 2023 19:45:00 +0000

Sniffing out diseases in real time Wendy Turnbull Thu, 10/19/2023 - 13:45

Lisa Marshall

Breathalyzer based on frequency comb spectroscopy quantum tech shows promise as a non-invasive diagnostic test for an array of diseases

With each breath, humans exhale more than 1,000 distinct molecules, producing a unique chemical “breathprint” rich with clues about what’s happening inside the body.

For decades, scientists have sought to harness that information, even turning to dogs to literally sniff out cancer, diabetes, tuberculosis and more.

Now, scientists have developed a new laser-based “nose” powered by quantum technology and artificial intelligence (AI) that could someday diagnose an array of diseases swiftly and cheaply.

Already, research shows, the high-tech breathalyzer can detect COVID-19 in minutes with excellent accuracy.

“There is a real, foreseeable future in which you could go to the doctor and have your breath measured along with your height and weight . . . or you could blow into a mouthpiece integrated into your phone and get information about your health in real-time,” said senior author Jun Ye, a JILA fellow and adjoint professor of physics at CU ��«��Ƶ.

As far back as 2008, Ye’s lab reported that a technique called frequency comb spectroscopy—essentially using laser light to distinguish one molecule from another—could potentially identify biomarkers of disease in human breath.

Ye’s team has since improved the sensitivity more than a thousandfold, enabling detection of trace molecules at the parts-per-trillion level. They’ve also increased the number of colors the laser emits, enabling them to detect more species of molecule. And they’ve harnessed the power of AI.

Qizhong Liang, a PhD candidate in JILA and the Department of Physics, demonstrates how the laser-based breathalyzer works, in the Ye lab at JILA. Photo: Patrick Campbell/University of Colorado.

“Molecules increase or decrease in concentrations when associated with specific health conditions,” said first author Qizhong Liang, a PhD candidate in JILA and the Department of Physics. “Machine learning analyzes this information, identifies patterns and develops criteria we can use to predict a diagnosis.”

Mid-pandemic Liang and Ye collaborated with scientists at the BioFrontiers Institute, which headed up the campus COVID-19 testing program, to see how well the system did in detecting the virus.

Between May 2021 and January 2022, the team collected breath samples from 170 CU ��«��Ƶ students who had, in the previous 48 hours, taken a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test by submitting a saliva or a nasal sample. Half had tested positive, half negative. The breathalyzer process took less than one hour from collection to result.

When compared to PCR, the gold standard test, breathalyzer results matched 85% of the time. For medical diagnostics, accuracy of 80% or greater is considered “excellent.” The future health applications are huge, the authors said.

“What if you could find a signature in breath that could detect pancreatic cancer before you were even symptomatic? That would be the home run,” said collaborator Leslie Leinwand, chief scientific officer for the BioFrontiers Institute.

Unlike other diagnostic tests, the breathalyzer is non-invasive and doesn’t require costly chemicals to break down the sample. But there is still much to learn before it can be commercialized.

Today, the system consists of a complex array of lasers and mirrors about the size of a banquet table.

A breath sample is piped in through a tube as lasers fire invisible mid-infrared light at it at thousands of different frequencies. Dozens of tiny mirrors bounce the light back and forth through the molecules.

Because each kind of molecule absorbs light differently, breath samples with a different molecular makeup cast distinct shadows. The machine can distinguish between those different shadows, boiling millions of data points down to a simple positive or negative in seconds.

Efforts are now underway to miniaturize such systems, allowing for “real-time, self-health monitoring on the go.” And the team plans to soon collaborate with colleagues at the Anschutz Medical Campus to see if their system can detect other diseases.

“If you think about dogs, they evolved over thousands of years to smell many different things with remarkable sensitivity,” said Ye. “The more we teach our laser-based nose, the smarter it will become.”

Principal investigator
Jun Ye

Funding
Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR); National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST); National Science Foundation (NSF)

Collaboration + support
BioFrontiers Institute; Physics; Chemistry; Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology; JILA; Venture Partners at CU ��«��Ƶ; NIST; University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus

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New laser-based breathalyzer sniffs out COVID, other diseases in real-time

Breathalyzer based on frequency comb spectroscopy quantum tech shows promise as a non-invasive diagnostic test for an array of diseases.

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Prenatal pollution exposure may impact baby’s brain

Wendy Turnbull — Thu, 19 Oct 2023 19:30:00 +0000

Prenatal pollution exposure may impact baby’s brain Wendy Turnbull Thu, 10/19/2023 - 13:30

Lisa Marshall

When pregnant moms breathe dirty air, it may adversely impact their baby’s brain, CU ��«��Ƶ research suggests.

The study followed 161 healthy Latino mother-infant pairs, using government data to calculate mothers’ prenatal exposure to airborne pollutants. At age 2, toddlers who had been exposed prenatally to more inhalable particulate matter scored significantly lower on cognitive tests. Exposure in mid-to-late pregnancy, when key sensory and motor brain circuits form, proved particularly detrimental.

Previous research suggests inhaled pollutants may come into direct contact with the fetus, causing inflammation that can disrupt neurodevelopment.

Racial and ethnic minorities and low-income populations are more likely to be exposed to unhealthy air.

“Our findings highlight the importance of addressing the impact of pollution on disadvantaged communities,” said author Tanya Alderete, assistant professor in the Department of Integrative Physiology.

Principal investigator
Tanya Alderete

Funding
National Institutes of Health (NIH); The Gerber Foundation; Health Effects Institute

Collaboration + support
Integrative Physiology; Emory University; University of California, Los Angeles

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Prenatal pollution exposure linked to lower cognitive scores in early life

When pregnant moms breathe dirty air, it may adversely impact their baby’s brain, CU ��«��Ƶ research suggests.

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Is electrochemistry the future of carbon-capture technology?

Wendy Turnbull — Thu, 19 Oct 2023 19:15:00 +0000

Is electrochemistry the future of carbon-capture technology? Wendy Turnbull Thu, 10/19/2023 - 13:15

Sarah Kuta

There are new insights into one promising method for removing carbon from the atmosphere: using electricity to manipulate chemicals that then pull carbon out of the air.

By using electrochemical techniques to change the molecular structures of compounds called quinones, CU ��«��Ƶ researchers discovered that quinones can bind with and capture carbon—a significant and novel finding that helps scientists understand which types of compounds might be better— or worse—at capturing atmospheric carbon.

“Electrochemical carbon capture materials that are considered to be good for CO2 capture from concentrated sources might not be as good when capturing CO2 from dilute sources such as air,” says Oana Luca, assistant professor of chemistry.

Principal investigator
Oana Luca

Collaboration + support
Chemistry; National Science Foundation (NSF)

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Is the future of carbon-capture technology electrochemistry?

There are new insights into one promising method for removing carbon from the atmosphere: using electricity to manipulate chemicals that then pull carbon out of the air.

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‘Magic beans’ produce ingredients for vaccines, cancer treatments and more

Wendy Turnbull — Thu, 19 Oct 2023 19:00:00 +0000

‘Magic beans’ produce ingredients for vaccines, cancer treatments and more Wendy Turnbull Thu, 10/19/2023 - 13:00

Lisa Marshall

CU ��«��Ƶ’s International Genetically Engineered Machine team has developed a “magic soybean” that can churn out scarce pharmaceutical compounds while going easy on the environment.

Soybeans are cheap and efficient to grow, restoring nitrogen to the soil rather than stripping it as many crops do. Using synthetic biology, Brian DeDecker, teaching associate professor of molecular, cellular and developmental biology, and his students devised a way to infuse the beans with genetic instructions to make ingredients like: squalene, an oil used in vaccines but typically harvested from shark livers; paclitaxel, a chemotherapy treatment normally extracted from old growth yew trees; and immune-boosting proteins accessible only through human breast milk.

DeDecker and former student Simon Kalmus spun off a company, Seedling Biosystems, to commercialize the idea. They envision a day when soybean fields across the Midwest are dedicated to, as they put it, “biopharming.”

Brian DeDecker with students in his lab. Photo by Casey A. Cass/University of Colorado.

Principal investigators
Brian DeDecker; Simon Kalmus

Funding
Venture Partners at CU ��«��Ƶ

Collaboration + support
Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology

Learn more about this topic:
New ‘magic beans’ produce ingredients for cancer treatments, vaccines and more

CU ��«��Ƶ’s International Genetically Engineered Machine team has developed a “magic soybean” that can churn out scarce pharmaceutical compounds while going easy on the environment.

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Brian DeDecker in a soybean field at his family farm in Illinois. Photo courtesy of Brian DeDecker.

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Brian DeDecker in a soybean field at his family farm in Illinois. Photo courtesy of Brian DeDecker.

Global farm decline threatens biodiversity, food supply

Wendy Turnbull — Thu, 19 Oct 2023 18:45:00 +0000

Global farm decline threatens biodiversity, food supply Wendy Turnbull Thu, 10/19/2023 - 12:45

Nicole Mueksch

The number of farms across the globe will be halved by the end of the century, posing significant risks to the world’s food systems, according to recent research by Zia Mehrabi, assistant professor of environmental studies.

The study, published in Nature Sustainability, found the number of farms globally would drop from 616 million in 2020 to 272 million in 2100. A key reason: Economic growth is attracting people to urban areas, leaving fewer people in rural areas to tend to the land.

“The size of the farm and the number of farms that exist are associated with key environmental and social outcomes,” said Mehrabi. His analysis showed the amount of farmland won’t decrease, but rather surviving farms will double in size, resulting in less biodiversity, crop diversity and, potentially, a smaller food supply.

Principal investigator
Zia Mehrabi

Collaboration + support
Environmental Studies; Mortenson Center for Global Engineering and Resilience

Learn more about this topic:
The number of farms in the world is declining, here’s why it matters to you

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2022-23

Boosting NASA's flagship mission to Europa

Voyage to Europa

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Solving solar mysteries with students

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Solar and space scientists to guide Heliophysics into the future

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Quantum sensors in space

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CU ��«����Ƶ commercialization drives $8 billion in impact nationwide

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Sniffing out diseases in real time

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Prenatal pollution exposure may impact baby’s brain

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Is electrochemistry the future of carbon-capture technology?

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‘Magic beans’ produce ingredients for vaccines, cancer treatments and more

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Global farm decline threatens biodiversity, food supply

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CU ��«��Ƶ commercialization drives $8 billion in impact nationwide