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Editors: Doug Duncan is available for interviews. For visuals, Fiske Planetarium has a large meteorite on display and Duncan also has a portable, baseball-sized meteorite. Call Duncan at (303) 492-5003 or Mike Liguori at (303) 492-3117 to arrange an interview. University of Colorado at Boulder astrophysicist Doug Duncan says this year's annual Perseid meteor shower and its natural nighttime light show will be particularly good as the display becomes visible over Colorado Aug. 10-13.

Editors: Contents embargoed until July 29 at 2 p.m. EDT. A new study of California's southern Sierra Nevada range by a University of Colorado at Boulder research team has located a massive body of rock that sank into Earth's mantle some 3.5 million years ago, allowing the mountains to pop up. Undertaken with a high-tech suite of instruments designed to probe the geology to roughly 125 miles below Earth's surface, the study illustrated the mountain building process in the southern Sierras with unprecedented detail.

An internal investigation of financial transactions in the linguistics department at the University of Colorado at Boulder has led to the arrest of a staff member on charges related to alleged misappropriation of university funds. Ruth Ann Cameron, an administrative staff member in the department since 1995, was arrested by the University of Colorado Police Department Tuesday, July 27, on the Boulder campus. She was arrested under a warrant following a meeting at the university internal auditor's office.

A satellite designed, built and controlled at the University of Colorado at Boulder for NASA has returned data indicating both Venus and sunspots have something in common -- they block some of the sun's energy going to Earth. Data from The Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment, or SORCE, satellite show when the shadow of Venus tracked across the face of the sun June 8 as the planet passed between Earth and the sun, the amount of sunlight reaching Earth decreased by 0.1 percent, said CU-Boulder's Gary Rottman.

Kyle Reinholt, a senior at Horizon High School in Thornton, is the 2004 recipient of the University of Colorado at Boulder Parents Association CU-LEAD Scholarship. The CU Leadership, Excellence, Achievement and Diversity scholarship consists of $10,000 divided into four annual supplements of $2,500. The award was presented to Reinholt at a July 23 banquet for high school students who successfully completed the CU-Boulder Pre-Collegiate Development Summer Residential Program.

Professor Jim Symons of the University of Colorado at Boulder department of theater and dance will receive a national award from the Association for Theater in Higher Education on July 29 in Toronto, Canada. Symons is the winner of the association's "Outstanding Teacher of Theater in Higher Education" award, given once a year. With a membership of 2,000, the ATHE is the principal professional organization for theater professors in American colleges and universities.

The University of Colorado at Boulder announced today it has received a donation of $250,000 worth of advanced equipment and five $30,000 graduate student fellowships from Agilent Technologies. The gift supports education and research in several engineering departments and programs related to Agilent's strategic interest areas of communications, electronics and life sciences, and further establishes the company as one of the College of Engineering and Applied Science's key corporate partners.

Associate Law Professor Sarah Krakoff has been named interim director of the University of Colorado at Boulder School of Law's Natural Resources Law Center. Krakoff replaces Jim Martin, who left the center to become executive director of Western Resource Advocates, a Boulder-based environmental law and policy group focused on the Interior West. Martin had served as NRLC director since 2002.

University of Colorado Nobel laureate Thomas Cech will speak at the July 29-30 public grand opening of a teaching laboratory on the Boulder campus to train CU students, faculty and K-12 students and teachers on the latest genetic research techniques.

A small, powerful University of Colorado at Boulder instrument will fly on NASA's MESSENGER mission, slated for launch Aug. 2 from Cape Kennedy, Fla., to probe Mercury's searing surface, oddball atmosphere and bizarre magnetic field.