Travel To Go Reveals Travel Attractions to Explore in 2015

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San Diego, CA (PRWEB) March 04, 2015

Travel To Go knows that vacations are long anticipated experiences. Many travelers plan and save for a long time before they can take a long awaited dream vacation. However, many travelers also want to make sure that they can enjoy their vacations without over spending. To help travelers save, here are some free attractions and activities in amazing destinations that travelers can take advantage of when they visit.

When vacations are filled with amazing activities, it is easy for travelers to create memories with their friends and families, and these fun activities and attractions will help do just that. For more information on visiting any of these destinations with Travel To Go visit http://www.traveltogo.com/.

Travel To Go 7964 B Arjons Drive San Diego, CA 92126, USA Phone: (800) 477-6331

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Travel To Go Reveals Travel Attractions to Explore in 2015

Germans shrug off global crises to remain world travel champions

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Berlin (dpa) - Germans wanderlust shows no sign of abating with the nations tourism sector expecting a record year, despite the series of crises gripping parts of the world.

"Everything indicates that 2015 will be an excellent travel year," the president of the Federation of the German Tourism Industry, Michael Frenzel, said on Tuesday ahead of the opening of the annual travel fair ITB in Berlin.

The association is expecting revenue to grow by between 1.5 and 2 per cent in the coming months as a solid jobs market, rising wages, low interest rates and a high propensity to spend allows Germans to lay aside worries about crises such as in Greece and Ukraine.

"The Germans already have their bags packed for the new travel season," said Norbert Fiebig, the president of Germanys Travel Associations. "They are ready to spend more on vacation."

Often considered the worlds travel champions, German bookings for the all-important summer holiday period are already 5 per cent up on last year, in particular for destinations such North Africa, the Caribbean, Sri Lanka and Greece, where bookings have surged by 17.2 per cent.

This is good news for cash-strapped Greece, which needs a robust summer travel season to help its economy get back on its feet and to ward off the threat of a major crisis that could ultimately force it to exit the eurozone.

More than 10,000 exhibitors from 186 nations are expected to attend this years ITB, which opens its doors on Wednesday for industry representatives. The travel fair, the worlds biggest and now in its 49th year, is open to the general public on March 7 and 8.

The ITBs partner country this year is Mongolia, whose president Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj travelled to Berlin for the fairs opening.

At a press conference in Berlin, Elbegdorj joined Chancellor Angela Merkel in calling for Germanys flag carrier Lufthansa and Mongolian Airlines to step up their relationship to boost economic as well as travel ties between their two nations.

"The Mongolian airline connection to Europe is very important because Mongolia does not have direct access to sea," Elbegdorj said. "We wish to keep working with Lufthansa."

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Germans shrug off global crises to remain world travel champions

Computer Science Looks Beyond Nerds

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Durham, NC - Sarah Walker, a freshman from Fullerton, California, had no interest in computer science when she came to Duke last fall. But when another class didnt fit into her schedule, she signed up for Dukes introductory computer science course, Compsci 101.

I thought I would be surrounded by tech geeks who sat alone at their computers all day, Walker said. But I came to realize that computer science lets you do things that are applicable to all sorts of fields.

Now shes using her new computational savvy to expand a nonprofit she founded in high school to raise money for an elephant sanctuary in Thailand.

You wouldnt think that running a nonprofit requires a lot of technical skills, but it does, she said. You get a problem and you think, I could solve this on paper and it would take me 25 hours, or I can write one line of code and all of a sudden theres my answer. The efficiency of it is super cool.

Long viewed as the entry point for a field dominated by male coders and computer whizzes, Compsci 101 is undergoing a transformation at Duke. Women undergraduates now comprise 45 percent of the students. (Nationally, women make up only 14 percent of those who go on to major in computer science.) The numbers of Hispanic and African American students have also risen.

Overall enrollment in the class this academic year swelled to 318 students in the fall and 297 this spring, the most ever.

Since 2010, computer science professors have been revamping the course to place more emphasis on real-world applications and solving problems in small groups with peer tutors. Many lectures include discussions about Duke alumni who took the course, or professionals doing creative work in the field.

Most important, class lessons are now more fun and appeal to a broader range of students.

Breanna Polascik, a freshman from Chapel Hill, enrolled in the course because she thought it would be a helpful skill set to have if she pursued a graduate degree in business. What I like about computer science is its a really good blend of creativity and logic, she said.

One of Polasciks first assignments was to write a program that moves and turns a virtual pen across the screen to draw a picture. The lesson challenged her and others to learn about loops, a programming concept that instructs a computer to do something over and over again.

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Behind the scenes of the world's first commercial stem-cell therapy

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Contrasto/eyevine

Biologist Graziella Pellegrini has worked on stem-cell therapy at four different Italian institutions, including a hospital run by priests.

Last month saw a major landmark for regenerative medicine: the first time that a stem-cell therapy beside the use of cells extracted from bone marrow or umbilical cord blood had been cleared for sale by any regulatory agency in the world. The European Commission approved Holoclar for use in cases of blindness caused by burning. The achievement is all the more remarkable because Holoclar was developed by a small laboratory in Italy, a country better known for its lack of support for life sciences and for its recent tolerance of an unproven stem-cell concoction, marketed by the Stamina Foundation, that claimed to be a panacea for many diseases. Nature talked to Graziella Pellegrini from the University of Modena about how she and her colleagues overcame the many obstacles to take the therapy from bench to bedside.

The surface of the cornea the transparent tissue that sits in front of the iris is constantly renewed in a healthy eye, to keep it smooth and clear. New corneal cells are generated from a niche of stem cells in the limbus, an area between the cornea and the white of the eye. But if the limbus is destroyed by burning, then the white of the eye grows over the cornea and becomes criss-crossed with blood vessels. This causes chronic pain and inflammation, as well as blindness.

I had seen patients who had starting seeing again after 20 years of blindness: how could I stop?

Holoclar treatment can help to reverse these symptoms by adding new stem cells to seed the regrowth of a transparent cornea. But there must be enough surviving limbus in one eye to allow 1 or 2 square millimetres of tissue to be extracted. This tissue is then cultivated on a support made from modified human fibrin (a biodegradable blood protein) under stringent clinical conditions until at least 3,000 stem cells have been generated. The culture, still on its fibrin scaffold, is transplanted into the injured eye, which has been scraped clear of the invading white, and from there stem cells seed the regrowth of a transparent cornea, free of blood vessels, within a year.

Only around 1,000 people annually in the whole of Europe will be eligible: burns victims who have become blind but whose eyes have not been too extensively destroyed.

It is always very hard to find research money in Italy. We had to uproot many times. I first started working on the concept of the therapy, with my colleague Michele De Luca, in 1990 when we were post-docs at the University of Genova studying the fundamental biology of epithelial cells the cells that form the sheets lining organs, and also the skin. In 1996, we moved to Rome to the Institute Dermopatico Immaculate, a hospital run by priests who were highly committed to research and who offered us wonderful facilities and access to patients. But in the end they did not want to support our eye work through to the clinic. So in 2002, we moved to the Veneto Eye Bank Foundation in Venice, which had an epithelial stem-cell laboratory. Then in 2008 we moved again, to the Centre for Regenerative Medicine Stefano Ferrari, which had been newly created at the University of Modena specifically to incubate such types of advanced therapy.

Italy is not supportive of biomedical research. Things might have been easier if we had not had to struggle so much. But I am Italian, and the best way to stimulate me to find a solution is to tell me I cant do something. And despite the problems, research into advanced therapies does have a history here. One of the worlds first gene-therapy trials on children with an immunodeficiency disorder was carried out in Milan.

We published the results of our first two patients both successes in 19971. That was proof of principle that the therapy could work. Our major clinical paper, on 112 patients, was published in 20102. Around 77% of the transplants were fully successful, and a further 13% partially successful.

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Behind the scenes of the world's first commercial stem-cell therapy

Wheelchair-equipped dog is candidate for stem cell therapy, adoption

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WALKER, MI -- Bolt, a two-year-old terrier mix, behaves just like any other dog at Kelley's Animal Clinic.

When called or tempted with a treat, he rears his head, ears perked in interest.

Unlike other dogs, however, Bolt needs a bit of mechanical help to get around.

Equipped with a set of wheels mounted to his hind quarters, the small white and brown dog continues to thrive even after suffering an accident that left him without control of his lower half.

Jan Denny, an administrator at the Walker-based clinic, said after finding Bolt at a nearby shelter, she knew she wanted to get him any help she could.

"He stole my heart," Denny said.

After picking up Bolt from Pound Buddies Animal Shelter in Muskegon, the terrier mix was examined by veterinarian James Kelley.

The only information anyone had on Bolt was that it appeared he was hit by a car and someone had turned him into the Muskegon shelter a few days later.

During Kelley's examination, he discovered Bolt's spinal cord wasn't completely severed, as was previously thought. If treated using stem cells, Kelley believes Bolt could see restored use of his hind quarters.

"Maybe we can regenerate some of that (feeling) back, and maybe we can't, but it's certainly worth a try," Kelley said.

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Wheelchair-equipped dog is candidate for stem cell therapy, adoption

NCD 'tried to roll back anonymous donor fertilization'

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Wanted to put 'cell traders' in prison for up to six years

(ANSA) - Rome, March 4 - The New Center Right (NCD) party tried to roll back anonymous donor fertilization and stem cell therapy - both of which are legal in Italy but opposed by the Catholic Church - by tacking an amendment onto an organ transplant bill now being voted on the Senate floor, Left Ecology Freedom (SEL) whip Loredana De Petris said Wednesday. "(NCD Senate whip Renato) Schifani asked for a suspension of debate on the bill to give MPs more time to consider their amendment," De Petris said. "It would have made trading in stem cells punishable with up to six years in prison,and trading in cells and tissues from a living donor" punishable with 1-6 years in prison and a 25-250,000 euro fine. "It's shameful how they tried to insert anonymous donor fertilization into a bill on organ trafficking," De Petris said.

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NCD 'tried to roll back anonymous donor fertilization'

WORK LIFE | Promoting spirituality in the workplace nurtures bonds, builds values

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Text by Elyse Go | Photo by Bernard Testa | InterAksyon Lifestyle Section Wednesday, March 4, 2015 8:15 am

Corporate retreats help strengthen the bond of the team and help individuals review the values important in their personal and work life. Photo by Bernard Testa, InterAksyon.com.

Spirituality is the way we relate to God and the Divine, defines Fr. Aristotle Dy SJ, Ph.D.,a member of the Society of Jesus and currently the School President of Xavier School.

The workplace and business world can be very competitive, profit and results driven, as if these are the most essential things in the world. But there are times when focusing on work alone leads one to ask about the meaning and purpose of life. People bring their entire self to worknot just the body, but mind and spirit as well. It is normal for people to seek a sense of security in their work, not only in terms of their job but perhaps in their level of happiness, morale, and connection with their team and the other individuals they face at work.

It is apparent, he adds, that promoting spirituality in the workplace has a lot of positive effects on the individual and as a team, including building a sense of community, cultivating compassion for others, strengthening values, providing a support system especially for those coping with personal trials such as grieving or those who have to care for sick members of the family.

Staying connected with our spiritual life will keep us grounded and always be reminded of the value of life and important values such as honesty, loving our neighbors, and many other important traits that will make the workplace a positive environment.

Fr. Ari gives some suggestions on how to incorporate spirituality in the workplace through activities that are spiritual in nature and can benefit all but goes beyond particular religion.Though these are faith-based, it should also encourage diversity and respect for others.

These activities need not follow particular religious traditions, but can be more generic so that those who belong to the minority do not feel left out, Fr. Ari shared.

1. Organize special talks or activities. As an example, Fr. Ari suggests organizing talks and activities on the last day before the Holy Week break. Organizing special talks may actually be done at any time for a particular topic or perhaps before any special religious commemoration. The talk may not necessarily be an elaborate gathering, it could be an intimate lunch or after-work meeting of like-minded people who are willing to share their faith beliefs, reflections, and practices.

2. Investment in a place for worship or meditation. Fr. Ari shares that some companies have invested in building Catholic chapels within the company premise and hold regular Masses. Though people are not required to attend the rites, attendance is actually quite high and shows that it addresses a particular need and desire among employees.It may not necessarily even have to be a chapel but a prayer or meditation room wherepeople can go for refuge and for praying.

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WORK LIFE | Promoting spirituality in the workplace nurtures bonds, builds values

Teen girls joining Isis jihadis

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Psychologists, sociologists, political analysts and experts on religion and spirituality should be outdoing one another to find reasons why female teenagers barely out of their childhood years are leaving home and country to join Isis (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria). This group is considered to be a terrorist threat with intent to rule the world by creating a global caliphate.

Isis, through mainstream media, continues to show the world the cruelty and barbarity it inflicts on those it considers antipathetic to its cause, especially Christians who, simply because they were Christians, were beheaded for the world to see. These Coptic Christians were not even armed fighters against Isis.

But social media is where recruitment happens. Vulnerable, impressionable and disaffected teens can get fascinated by the idea of joining and fighting for a bloody cause that attaches a religious value to it, an eternal one at that. (Twitter recently removed Isis accounts and, as a result, received threats from Isis.)

I found a recruitment video on the Internet, one that showed armed jihadists with gentle faces and modulated voices repeatedly invoking the name of God and speaking persuasively about why joining Isis would give meaning to ones life (lush greenery and soft chanting in the background). The gist of the message is this: Jihad does not need you, you need jihad, and God does not need you, you need God. The recruiters also mention the countries where their recent recruits are from.

Compared to Isis beheading videos, the recruitment video is not blood-curdling but a soft-sell. But listen to the words.

There are many opposing and overlapping views on what Isis is, how it came to be, or what spawned it. In his controversial article What ISIS really wants in The Atlantic, Graeme Wood said: The Islamic State is no mere collection of psychopaths. It is a religious group with carefully considered beliefs, among them that it is a key agent of the coming apocalypse.

Haroon Moghul hit back with his The Atlantics big Islam lie: What Muslims really believe about ISIS: But for every deluded soul ISIS ensnares, or who seeks them out, countless more condemn them, oppose them, reject them or fight them. Its beyond a stretch to argue that ISIS represents Islam, is grounded in Islam, or justified by Islam. Thats not to say they dont claim religious mandates, or exploit religion to enable their savagery. Its that no ones buying it.

Whatever Isis is in ones Islamic spectrum, the grim reality is that it has succeeded in luring young people to join them, like the three British school girls who, it was discovered too late, were on their way to the Middle East. How and why they made that step, their parents have no clue. Then there was this pregnant Austrian teen who left all to join Isis.

Read The Guardians Schoolgirl jihadis: Female Islamists leaving home to join Isis fighters, which is about hundreds of girls and women going missing in the west, reappearing in Iraq and Syria to bear children for the caliphate.

But in the Vox website, lawyer Amada Taub says that The Guardian doesnt explain why a surprising number of women in the West have been leaving their homes to join ISIS in Iraq and Syria. She cites Dr. Erin Saltman, who researches processes of political radicalization, and who estimates that one in 10 of Isis foreign recruits from the United Kingdom are women.

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Seven days: 27 February5 March 2015

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Research | Policy | People | Funding | Trend watch | Coming up

Ebola trial result Scientists reported the first positive results from a human clinical trial of a drug to treat Ebola on 25February. A team led by researchers at the French Institute of Health and Medical Research announced that an antiviral drug, favipiravir, halved the mortality rate among people with low amounts of the Ebola virus in their blood. The death rate in the 40-person trial group was 15%, compared with 30% in the historical control group. But the trial leaders caution that the study numbers are small, among other caveats. The results were announced at the annual Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in Seattle, Washington.

Minnesota review An external review commissioned by the University of Minnesota has found that substantial change is necessary in the way in which the university monitors clinical trials. The report, dated 26 February, states that the universitys ethical review committees are not sufficiently staffed or trained, and do not adequately consider the needs of vulnerable research subjects, such as children or people with mental illnesses. The report was intended to address faculty concerns that human-research oversight at the university may not be sufficient after a clinical-trial participant with a psychiatric disorder took his own life in 2004.

Will Burrard-Lucas/naturepl.com

Chinese pandas increasingly isolated Chinas wild pandas have seen an increase in living space, and there are now 1,864of them compared with 1,596 a decade ago all of which sounds like good news. But the results of a four-year survey announced on 28 February are not necessarily cause for celebration, and some experts are still concerned. Although living area has grown, panda populations are increasingly isolated, their habitats fragmented by roads, railways, dams and mines. Climate change threatens their food source, bamboo. And it is not clear that numbers from the latest survey can be directly compared to the previous search around ten years ago. See go.nature.com/h93hle for more.

Placenta project A mysterious but crucial organ, the placenta, is getting its day in the sun thanks to a US$41.5-million investment by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH). On 26 February, the agency announced that the Human Placenta Project will fund eight or nine research teams to develop tools to monitor the placenta in real time as a proxy for tracking the developing fetuss health. This could include imaging technologies and ways to detect fetal biomarkers in the mothers blood. Much of the programmes budget is redirected from the NIHs $150-million National Childrens Study, which was cancelled in December. See go.nature.com/ohtjm5 formore.

Russian ISS plan Russias space agency Roscosmos announced on 24February that it will continue its involvement in the International Space Station (ISS) until 2024 a timeline that the United States had committed to last year. Roscosmos also added that after 2024 it will consider taking the Russian-built ISS modules and assembling them into a separate space station. Last year, as USRussian tensions rose over the crisis in Ukraine, Russias deputy prime minister Dmitry Rogozin said that the country would pull out of the ISS by 2020.

UK embryo law Mitochondrial donation will become legal in the United Kingdom after the final vote in a debate on 24February that may set an international precedent. The House of Lords voted overwhelmingly to approve regulations on human fertilization that would allow the creation of embryos with DNA from three people. The technique aims to prevent disease passing from mother to child through the mitochondria the cells energy-producing structures, which have their own genes. Only 48 members of the Lords voted against the regulations, and 280 voted for them. The previous vote in the House of Commons was more closely contested (see go.nature.com/hyirxf).

Green-card spouses Spouses of highly skilled foreign workers will soon be allowed to work legally in the United States, the US government announced on 24 February. The measure, due to take effect on 26 May, will apply to those married to individuals who are in the process of obtaining permanent residency (or a green card) while on an H-1B visamany of whom are scientists or engineers. The US Citizenship and Immigration Services estimate that nearly 180,000 couples will benefit from the policy change in its first year and 55,000 per year after that.

Pipeline veto US President Barack Obama vetoed legislation on 24February that would have authorized the construction of a controversial pipeline intended to carry oil from Canadas tar sands in Alberta to the US Gulf Coast. Republican majorities in both houses of Congress passed the legislation earlier this year, arguing that the Keystone XL pipeline would boost economic development; environmentalists argue that it would increase greenhouse-gas emissions because it promotes a dirty source of energy. The fate of the project now rests with the White House pending an environmental review by the US Department of State, which is expected in the coming weeks.

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Seven days: 27 February5 March 2015

Millennium Space Systems Ships 4 of 52 Flight Reaction Wheels to SSL

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Millennium Space Systems today announced that it has shipped out their first set of RWA-1000 reaction wheels to commercial customer SSL inPalo Alto, CA.This first delivery under a contract from SSL which was inked just four months agoestablishes Millennium's entry into the commercial space component production market, further establishing their reputation as a go-to provider of credible alternatives for reliable, affordable, high performance components in the space industry. Commenting on the completion of the first shipset,Doug Nelson, Millennium's Manufacturing & Production Lead, "all the build and test went like clockwork we made a few design modifications, such as an additional aluminum lid for added radiation shielding, but even with the unplanned engineering changes, we still delivered on the originally advertised schedule, just as our customers should expect."

The RWA-1000 small satellite reaction wheel, under exclusive license from Sinclair Interplanetary ofCanada, provides key market near-term availability for small,USA-made satellite actuators, and further complements Millennium's larger DIRWA reaction wheel, being manufactured under a separate exclusive license from NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.

The SSL order for 52 reaction wheels is being manufactured over the next 16 months in Millennium's newEl Segundo, Californiasatellite factory, just minutes from LAX. The Company has additional inventory available for immediate sale, and for larger production orders, can readily support customers who know what they want, and who want to move fast. The RWA-1000 is a 1 Newton-meter second reaction wheel, used to precisely slew and point satellites. Each satellite carries four of the 1-kg units, which are fitted with precisely balanced flywheels and diamond-coated ball bearings. It is the largest reaction wheel in Sinclair Interplanetary's reaction wheel product line, which has wheels on 17 orbiting satellites.

About Millennium Space Systems

Millennium Space Systems is a privately held, employee-owned company founded inNovember 2001, providing alternative, relevant and affordable solutions to today's aerospace challenges. The company designs flight systems and develops mission and system solutions for the Intelligence Community, Department of Defense, National Aeronautics & Space Administration and commercial customers.

More about Millennium Space Systems:www.millennium-space.com More on SSL can be found at:www.sslmda.com More on Sinclair Interplanetary can be found at:www.sinclairinterplanetary.com

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Millennium Space Systems Ships 4 of 52 Flight Reaction Wheels to SSL

Sun May Blast Two Jets of Plasma into Interstellar Space

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As the sun travels through the galaxy, its extended magnetic bubble (known as the heliosphere), interacts with the gases and magnetism in the space between the stars a vast region known as the interstellar medium.

However, astronomers have assumed that the heliosphere gets dragged out into a comet-like tail (not too dissimilar to a stretched-out raindrop), shaped by the interstellar medium, but scientists now think the suns magnetic field strength has been underestimated, overturning our understanding as to how our solar system looks from afar.

VIDEO: Voyager 1 Not Even CLOSE to Leaving Solar System

The heliosphere reaches far beyond the orbit of Pluto and it is filled with the energetic particles ejected by the sun contained within the solar wind. The suns magnetic field pushes outward with the solar wind, creating a magnetic bubble separating solar plasma from the interstellar medium. A balance of pressure between the outward pressure of the solar wind and the inward pressure of the interstellar medium is reached at the heliospheres boundary, called the heliopause.

As the sun is moving, it was assumed that the heliopause is being shaped through its interaction with the interstellar magnetic field, but new models and observations suggest that the suns magnetic field is actually dominating its shape. Rather than producing a classical comet-like tail researchers now suggest two tails are formed from jets protruding from the suns north and south poles.

GALLERY: Voyager 2s Epic Outer Solar System Odyssey

Everyones assumption has been that the shape of the heliosphere was molded by the flow of interstellar material passing around it, said astronomer Merav Opher, of Boston University, lead author of a paper published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters in February. Scientists thought the solar wind flowing down the tail could easily pull the magnetic fields in the heliosphere along as it flowed by, creating this long tail. But it turns out the magnetic fields are strong enough to resist that pull so instead they squeeze the solar wind and create these two jets.

Interestingly, other stars in our galaxy have been observed with this two-jet heliosphere morphology, but now the mechanisms behind the two tails are being revealed inside our own solar system. For example, the star BZ Cam, below, exhibits a shortened heliosphere shaped by 2 jets:

ANALYSIS: Wheres the Edge of the Solar System? Its Complicated

The revelation that our basic comet-like model of the suns heliosphere was incomplete came when NASAs Voyager 1 probe exited the heliosphere. On measuring the direction of the interstellar magnetic field the first mission ever to do so astronomers were surprised to find it matched the direction of our suns magnetic field, contrary to predictions.

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Sun May Blast Two Jets of Plasma into Interstellar Space

Apollo astronaut Buzz Aldrin lays out plan for Mars colonization in talk at CU-Boulder

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Former Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin addresses the crowd at Macky Auditorium on Tuesday evening during his presentation, "A Unified Space Vision." (Jonathan Castner / Daily Camera)

Just like President John F. Kennedy challenged America to land on the moon before the end of the 1960s, so too can some new leader inspire the future of space exploration on Mars, Apollo astronaut Buzz Aldrin believes.

Aldrin, 85, spoke before a packed house Tuesday at Macky Auditorium on the University of Colorado's Boulder campus.

"America must be the world leader in human space flight," he said. "There is no other area that clearly demonstrates American innovation and enterprise than human space flight."

Aldrin made history with Neil Armstrong on July 20, 1969, when the two men became the first humans to step foot on the moon as part of the Apollo 11 mission. In total, they spent 21 hours on the lunar surface gathering 46 pounds of moon rocks. Some 600 million people watched the historic scene on television.

Former Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin told the crowd at Macky Auditorium on the University of Colorado campus that he would like a permanent residence on Mars by 2040. (Jonathan Castner / Daily Camera)

Though Aldrin isn't a CU-Boulder alumhe went to West Point and MIT the campus has ties to 18 astronauts and a long history of space research and exploration. CU-Boulder is the No. 1 NASA-funded public university with nearly $500 million in sponsored research awards, and is leading the space agency's MAVEN mission to Mars.

Aldrin's visit was organized by the Distinguished Speakers Board, a student-fee funded group that's brought Bill Nye, B.B. King, Soledad O'Brien, Madeleine Albright and other influential people to campus.

In a speech that was humorous, but also deeply technical, Aldrin outlined his "unified space vision" for American explorationand the colonizationof Mars.

He's hoping to draw on lunar landing nostalgia to get the world, especially young people, excited again about traveling into the great unknown, he said.

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Apollo astronaut Buzz Aldrin lays out plan for Mars colonization in talk at CU-Boulder