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The confidence of Colorado business leaders has continued its strong upward trend, surging into the third quarter of 2013, according to the most recent Leeds Business Confidence Index, or LBCI, released today by the University of Colorado Boulder’s Leeds School of Business.

University of Colorado Boulder Provost Russell Moore today announced the appointment of James Austin as interim dean of the College of Music effective July 1. Austin, a professor of music education, joined ¶¶Òõ¶ÌÊÓƵ-Boulder’s College of Music in 1994. He has served as associate dean of undergraduate studies since 2006. He was the music education chair from 1997 to 2007. In 2004, the college awarded Austin the Richard Bern Trego faculty fellowship.

Waleed Abdalati has been named the new director of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, or CIRES, a joint institute of the University of Colorado Boulder and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Abdalati is a CIRES Fellow, a ¶¶Òõ¶ÌÊÓƵ-Boulder professor of geography and director of the CIRES Earth Science and Observation Center. He will take office on July 1.

Let’s all fist bump: Spiral galaxies like our own Milky Way appear to be much larger and more massive than previously believed, according to a new University of Colorado Boulder study by researchers using the Hubble Space Telescope.

The University of Colorado Boulder has become a full institutional member of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey-IV, an ambitious effort by some of the world’s top astronomers to map the celestial sky in three dimensions to learn more about the structure and evolution of the universe.

The University of Colorado Boulder has been chosen by the Association of American Universities to be one of eight campuses participating in a new initiative to improve undergraduate education in science, technology, engineering and math. Over the next three years, each of the eight project sites will receive $500,000 to undertake an innovative STEM education project.

CIRES news release The Colorado River provides water for more than 30 million people in the U.S. West, so water managers have been eager to understand how climate change will affect the river’s flow. But scientific studies have produced an unsettling range of estimates, from a modest decrease of 6 percent by 2050 to a steep drop of 45 percent by then.

Two University of Colorado Boulder faculty members have received prestigious CAREER Awards from the National Science Foundation. NSF Faculty Early Career Development, or CAREER, Awards recognize talented young faculty members with grants to support outstanding research projects and to encourage the integration of teaching and research.

The U.S. Supreme Court today announced its decision in Fisher v. University of Texas, a case that reconsidered affirmative action in university admissions. The following University of Colorado Boulder professors are available to comment on the court’s decision:

A Colorado student space research consortium led by the University of Colorado Boulder teamed up with a Virginia space consortium led by the University of Virginia this week to help aspiring rocket scientists from around the country learn how to design, build and fly payloads.