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The University of Colorado at Boulder in early 2007 will open a $180,000 exhibit featuring a floating sphere that can display animated images of Earth's atmosphere, oceans and continents, as well as other planets. Known as "Science on a Sphere," the exhibit will be located in CU-Boulder's Fiske Planetarium and will be open to the public, according to Douglas Duncan, director of the planetarium and the Sommers-Bausch Observatory.

A daylong open house featuring theater performances, a film premiere, panel discussions, an improvisational jazz performance and a broadcast studio demonstration, among other events, is set for Friday, Oct. 13, from 10 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. in the newly opened ATLAS building at the University of Colorado at Boulder. The open house is free and open to the campus and the public.

CU-Boulder's 2006 Homecoming festivities begin Friday, Oct. 6, with a 2 p.m. coaches' autograph session at the University Memorial Center, a 4 p.m. CU-Texas A&M soccer game at Prentup Field and the annual Homecoming Parade on University Hill at 4:30 p.m. The Homecoming parade will feature a number of floats from CU residence halls, student groups, Greeks and the community at large. It will be led by Grand Marshall Professor Dennis Van Gerven and Honorary Grand Marshall Kordell Stewart.

CU-Boulder's 2006 Homecoming festivities begin Friday, Oct. 6, with a 2 p.m. coaches' autograph session at the University Memorial Center, a 4 p.m. CU-Texas A&M soccer game at Prentup Field and the annual Homecoming Parade on University Hill at 4:30 p.m. The Homecoming parade will feature a number of floats from CU residence halls, student groups, Greeks and the community at large. It will be led by Grand Marshall Professor Dennis Van Gerven and Honorary Grand Marshall Kordell Stewart.

While cool August temperatures prevented sea ice in the Arctic from reaching its lowest summer extent on record, 2006 continued a pattern of sharp annual decreases due to rising temperatures probably caused by greenhouse warming, according to University of Colorado at Boulder researchers.

Dancers performing with digital audio and video technology in a "black box" studio will be one of several high-tech live performances Oct. 13 at a free public open house for the University of Colorado at Boulder's new ATLAS Building. The yet-to-be-titled interdisciplinary performance will include eight student dancers, a computer-enhanced acoustic grand piano and four live video feeds to be projected as part of the performance. The performers will control and interact with the piano, video and studio lighting using voice- and motion-analysis technology.

Gone are the days of smelly broken lights, rickety broadcast sets and decades-old equipment stuffed into a small room with low ceilings and obtrusive metal beams that were always in the way. These days, students in the University of Colorado at Boulder's School of Journalism and Mass Communication television news and production classes are seeing the future of broadcast television from under the bright lights of a state-of-the-art production studio in the new $31 million ATLAS Building.

Former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt will celebrate the centennial of the Antiquities Act -- used by U.S. presidents to declare national monuments and thereby protect millions of acres of land -- in a talk at the University of Colorado at Boulder Oct. 9. Babbitt will speak at 7 p.m. in the courtroom of the Wolf Law Building. His talk is free and open to the public and is sponsored by CU-Boulder's Natural Resources Law Center and the Center of the American West.

The University of Colorado at Boulder will host an international conference on "Fundamentalism and the Media" on Oct. 10-12 that will include two free public events. The conference is expected to bring together nearly 80 religious scholars, members of the news media and members of the religious community.

Two public programs on digital imaging and technology and their uses in surveillance and contemporary animation will be presented at the University of Colorado at Boulder on Friday, Oct. 6, as part of the ATLAS Speaker Series.