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The popularity of Ecstasy (MDMA) with our nationÂ’s youth has health officials on the alert. It is becoming the staple of the ever-popular rave scene -- parties where teens and young adults "rave all night" because of the stimulating effects of the drug. "Ecstasy is a stimulant. It gives people a lot of energy so they can dance all night," said Judy Taub, a counselor in CU-BoulderÂ’s Substance Abuse Program at Wardenburg Health Center.

A group of astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope and Chandra X-ray Observatory, in concert with other telescopes, have directly detected for the first time a new type of stellar flare occurring in a narrow temperature range of gas on a star other than the sun. Rachel Osten, a graduate student at the University of Colorado at Boulder, said the flares were detected on a star, known as binary system HR 1099, in a very narrow temperature range of gas recorded in the ultraviolet portion of the light spectrum, but not in the higher energy X-ray region.

Seventeen undergraduate students in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Colorado at Boulder have received the prestigious Jacob Van Ek Award for outstanding academic achievement and contributions to the university and Boulder communities. The award includes a $200 prize. The recipients were honored May 11 along with faculty members they named as mentors. The award was established in 1973 to honor Jacob Van Ek, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at CU-Boulder from 1929 to 1959. Van Ek died in 1994 at the age of 97.

Physics Professor Martin Goldman of the University of Colorado at Boulder won second prize in the Pirelli INTERNETional Award of Italy for his creation of the Physics 2000 Web site. The award honored the Web site "for its interactive journey through modern physics, which succeeds in making the subject agreeable and understandable to the man on the street, without sacrificing scientific rigor."