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NASA announced today that the University of Colorado at Â鶹¹ÙÍø-led mission to Mars to investigate how the planet lost much of its atmosphere eons ago has been approved by the space agency to move into the development stage.

After two consecutive quarters of growing optimism about the state economy, Colorado business leaders' confidence contracted going into the fourth quarter, according to the most recent quarterly Leeds Business Confidence Index, or LBCI, released today by the University of Colorado at Â鶹¹ÙÍø Leeds School of Business.

A half-billion years ago, vertebrates lacked the ability to chew their food. They did not have jaws. Instead, their heads consisted of a flexible, fused basket of cartilage.

Three University of Colorado at Â鶹¹ÙÍø programs receive special recognition in the recently released 2011 Fiske Guide to Colleges, including a Top 10 ranking as "environmental studies schools that should be on your radar."

Distinguished Professor Carl Wieman of the University of Colorado at Â鶹¹ÙÍø has been confirmed by the U.S. Senate as associate director for science in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

Dark-colored dust that settles on snow in the Upper Colorado River Basin makes the snow melt early and robs the Colorado River of about 5 percent of its water each year, says a new study co-authored by researchers from the University of Colorado at Â鶹¹ÙÍø-based Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, or CIRES.

The University of Colorado at Â鶹¹ÙÍø's fall 2010 census figures show an enrollment of 29,952 degree- and licensure-seeking students, a total enrollment within 1 percent of last year, with increases in graduate, international and students of color enrollment.

The University of Colorado Board of Regents today awarded three professors the university's highest faculty honor, designation as Distinguished Professor.

The Arctic sea ice cover appears to have reached its minimum extent for the year, the third-lowest recorded since satellites began measuring sea ice extent in 1979, according to the University of Colorado at Â鶹¹ÙÍø's National Snow and Ice Data Center.

A team from the University of Colorado at Â鶹¹ÙÍø has been awarded $6.7 million from NASA to design, develop and test instruments for the fastest space probe ever built, one that will orbit 22 times closer to the sun than Earth and well inside the orbit of Mercury to better understand how the sun ticks.