Research

Scholar dissects voter perceptions of transnational politics

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 14 Aug 2025 21:24:57 +0000

Scholar dissects voter perceptions of transnational politics Rachel Sauer Thu, 08/14/2025 - 15:24

Bradley Worrell

CU Boulder political scientist Jeffrey Nonnemacher asserts that Western European national political parties use their affiliations with party families to signal their own political viewpoints

In the 2013 German national elections, the upstart political party Alternative for Germany (AfD) failed to gain a single seat in parliament. Just four years later, the AfD won 97 seats and became the third-largest political party in Germany.

The AfD made its historic inroads in the 2017 German elections at the same time it transformed itself from a Euroskeptic but relatively moderate party into a political movement that became much more closely aligned with radical right parties in the rest of Western Europe, says Jeffrey Nonnemacher, an assistant teaching professor with the �� International Affairs Program, whose research focus is political parties and elections.

In particular, Nonnemacher points to a decision by AfD’s party leader, Frauke Petry, in 2017 to host radical right leaders from across Europe, including Marine Le Pen with the French National Rally, Geert Wilders of the Dutch Party for Freedom and Matteo Salvini of Italy’s Northern League. That decision effectively telegraphed to voters the party’s shift to the right and signaled its embrace of the transnational radical right party label, says Nonnemacher, who recently published a paper in the British Journal of Political Science about voter perceptions of transnational politics.

CU Boulder scholar Jeffrey Nonnemacher is an assistant teaching professor in the International Affairs Program and the Arts and Sciences Honors Program and a lecturer in the Department of Political Science.

“My goal with this paper is to tackle the question of: Do voters care if the AfD’s leadership is spending a lot of time with France’s Marine Le Pen and the National Rally? Are voters getting some sort of information from the party family label attached to a party and the party’s relationship with that label?” he explains. In his paper, Nonnemacher contends that political parties in Western Europe are responsive to politics outside their home country—and that strategic choices to embrace a larger party family label, such as radical right in the case of AfD, do influence how parties are perceived by a country’s voters.

In a recent conversation with Colorado Arts and Sciences Magazine, Nonnemacher emphasized that a political party that embraces the party family signifies its commitment to the larger ideological goals associated with the party family, while parties that push back and work to distance themselves from their sister parties from other countries signal that they may not be credible champions for core issues. His answers have been lightly edited for style and clarity.

Question: Can you define what constitutes a transnational party family?

Nonnemacher: In political science—especially in comparative politics—one of the goals is to think about the ways we can compare political outcomes. One of the ways we do this is by looking at these so-called party families. These are basically categorizations of parties based upon shared histories, shared ideology and common networks of activists and leaders.

There are a whole host of party families. The largest families in Europe are the Social Democrats, which is your center-left, working-class parties, and the Conservatives, which are your traditional center-right parties. You’ve also got your Green parties, which are your environmental parties, among many other families.

These party families are now much more useful than what academics created them for, which was tools for comparisons. Today, parties within similar party families tend to behave the same, learn from each other and form groups that transcend national boundaries based upon shared ideologies.

Question: What motivated you to explore the topic of transnational parties as a source of voter perceptions?

Nonnemacher: The academic answer is that I felt there was a gap there. We know a lot about how voters in Europe today are concerned about integration and thinking about politics beyond their own borders. But we had not yet, as academics, come to terms with the consequences of this, for how they view their parties and the links between what information they’re getting and their political parties. That was the academic motivation.

The more topical answer was the rise of the radical right parties in these various countries and how these parties seemed to be learning from each other, copying each other and celebrating each other’s victories in a way that we hadn’t really seen before. You have Hungary’s Victor Orbán hosting CPAC (the U.S.-based Conservative Political Action Conference), and you have Marine Le Pen in France having these big rallies with other radical right leaders.

Hungary’s Victor Orbán hosts CPAC (the U.S.-based Conservative Political Action Conference). (Photo: Elkes Andor/Wikimedia Commons)

My motivation was trying to understand the consequences of this seeminginternationalization of right party politics especially, but also party politics more generally.

Question: What are some specific reasons why parties might choose to embrace a transnational party?

Nonnemacher: The argument I make in the paper is very much an electoral argument. Parties win elections when voters know what they stand for. That’s one of the big theories that we have about party competition, is that parties need to distinguish themselves from their competitors and be able to communicate to voters what they believe.

If a voter can’t tell the difference between one party and another, they’re unlikely to support them. And if a voter doesn’t know where the party stands, then they don’t know if they’re going to get what they want out of the party. So, parties need to distinguish themselves. They need to signal to voters what their positions are.

One of the motivations here for parties is: This label tells voters where I stand. If I’m seen alongside other Social Democrats, I can kind of bolster my credentials on being a Social Democratic Party.

The other electoral motivation is parties want to win elections, and they look to who won and say, ‘We should copy that.’ In 2021, when the Social Democrats won in Germany, Social Democratic parties across Europe all immediatelylooked to Germany and said, ‘What did they do? How did they win this election? What can we do to kind of copy that?’

Question: So, it’s not just radical right parties learning from radical right parties in other countries, but also leftist and centrist parties learning from their transnational sister parties?

Nonnemacher: Yes. One of the things I wanted to do in this paper was to make the case that it’s not just the radical right that’s doing this and benefitting from it. It’s the British Labour Party taking lessons from Germany’s Social Democrats, for example.

Green parties are an especially interesting transnational group, because inherently, they see fighting for the environment as a global issue. They view international cooperation and international learning as core to solving the problems that they are running on. Notably, almost all of them have ‘green’ in their name and almost all of them have the sunflower as their logo.

Question: What makes Germany’s AfD party a particularly noteworthy example of a national party forming associations with like-minded parties in Western Europe?

Nonnemacher: There’s probably two reasons for that. One is they exploded in Germany in terms of growing support from 2013 to 2017; the other is that by 2017, the radical right in Europe had exploded. There’s just a lot more attention on the far right, and it’s Germany, so whenever the far right does anything in Germany, people notice.

The AfD is an interesting case, because in 2013 they were not the far-right party that they are today. They have had a big transformation in the last 10 to 12 years. In 2013, they were really just angry about the European Union and the Euro crisis, and with Germany having to bail out the rest of the European Union. They were a Euroskeptic party first and foremost. They were anti-immigrant, but it wasn’t their main focus.

France's Marine Le Pen of the French National Rally has helped lead a far-right shift, particularly on immigration, in Europen politics. (Photo: Jérémy-Günther-Heinz Jähnick/Wikimedia Commons)

They had a disappointing election in 2013, where they barely missed out on getting seats in the parliament.Then by 2017, they shifted dramatically to the right on immigration. They really started to copy France’s Le Pen and other prominent, far-right leaders in Europe tobe this anti-immigrant party, just like the rest of these radical right parties, and that worked out really well for them. In 2017, they became the third-largest party in parliament, so it was a quite successful strategy for them.

By the elections in 2021, they plateaued a little bit, and then in February this year they became the second largest party in the Bundestag (the German parliament), and they’ve come to be embraced by the broader far-right movement.

Question: Why might a national party choose to distance itself from a sister party?

Nonnemacher: There are two family labels where this generally applies. The first is the radical right—or at least that was the case in the past—where if you were seen as too close to the radical right you were punished, because there was a lot of stigmas around being affiliated with that ideology.

With the AfD example, when they made the transition to embrace more radical right principals from other countries and hosted the rally with Le Pen, Wilders and Salvini to signal the AfD’s embrace of transnational radical right parties, this was incredibly controversial, both inside and outside of the party. It was a delicate balance, because there were some in the party who were very nervous that if they embraced the radical right movement they could face a backlash, because Germans are very conscious of their history. So, 10 years ago there was more hesitation about embracing their fellow party members abroad.

We see similar patterns on the left, especially when it comes to communism. Parties on the radical left are generally hesitant to embrace communists or things that look like communism because of the similar kinds of stigmas around that that exist in western and especially eastern Europe.

Question: Do you think voters are consciously recognizing these European family party associations and how their own parties are relating to sister transnational parties, or is it happening at a subconscious level?

Nonnemacher: We know from political psychology that voters rely on heuristics for a lot of things. So, just hearing the label—that a particular party is a radical right party, for instance, triggers for voters a set of assumptions about what a party stands for and what it’s leaders believe and what they are advocating for.

But I also believe that there is something much more active going on here, where voters start to make those kinds of connections between the party and the label and where voters deliberate what those labels mean in relation to their own politics.

Question: If a national party is not in alignment with its transnational party family on foundational ideological issues, does it cause voter distrust or just confusion?

Nonnemacher: I think it’s a bit of both. Definitely it causes confusion, because if you’re watching the news and you’re being told that Marine Le Pen is a radical right politician, but then let’s say you hear she is endorsing letting more immigrants into (Europe), you’re going to say, ‘Wait a minute; that doesn’t make any sense. How is she radical right, then?’

It also probably leads to distrust. If you see yourself as a Social Democratic voter and you believe in this center-left Social Democratic vision for Europe, but your Social Democratic politician is talking about de-regulating markets and shrinking the state, that’s probably going to make you say, ‘He’s not a Social Democrat. I don’t trust him to be an advocate for my goals.’

Question: Your paper focused a transnational politics in Western Europe. Do you think the paper’s findings have any relevance for the United States?

"Understanding how voters perceive their parties is a huge part of what makes democracies work. If voters don’t know what their parties are fighting for and don’t know where their parties stand, they check out."

Nonnemacher: I don’t know how well the paper’s findings travel to the United States. We have a very strong two-party system that doesn’t map as neatly to the multi-party competition in European elections. That being said, I think if we look at parties in the United States as factions of various ideological groups, we can see green factions of the Democratic Party, radical right and center-right Christian democratic factions of the Republican Party. I think for activists and people inside these parties, it matters a lot what kind of broader ideological movements that they are associated with are doing.

I’m skeptical that voters will derive the same utility, just because the labels don’t fit as neatly, and (American voters) tend to think we’re unique in our politics as voters, so we don’t tend to look abroad for political inspiration.

Question: Anything else relating to Western European voters and their perceptions of their political parties and transnational parties that you think is important to share?

Nonnemacher: I think understanding how voters perceive their parties is a huge part of what makes democracies work. If voters don’t know what their parties are fighting for and don’t know where their parties stand, they check out; they disengage, and we’ve seen that they become less satisfied with democracy.

I think anything that parties can do to really communicate their positions to voters and reaffirm for voters that they areserious about accomplishing their goals is important, because parties across Europe and the United States are having a credibility crisis right now.

What my paper does is highlight one such way that parties can go about communicating to voters what they stand for, which has a whole host of implications to address some of the big problems facing Western democracies today.

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CU Boulder political scientist Jeffrey Nonnemacher asserts that Western European national political parties use their affiliations with party families to signal their own political viewpoints.

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Is drought the new normal?

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 14 Aug 2025 17:56:36 +0000

Is drought the new normal? Rachel Sauer Thu, 08/14/2025 - 11:56

Pedro DiNezio and Timothy Shanahan

Climate models reveal how human activity may be locking the Southwest into permanent drought

A new wave of climate research is sounding a stark warning: Human activity may be driving drought more intensely—and more directly—than previously understood.

The southwestern United States has been in a historic megadrought for much of the past two decades, with its reservoirs including lakes Mead and Powell dipping to record lows and legal disputes erupting over rights to use water from the Colorado River.

This drought has been linked to the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, a climate pattern that swings between wet and dry phases every few decades. Since a phase change in the early 2000s, the region has endured a dry spell of epic proportions.

CU Boulder scientist Pedro DiNezio, along with climate researchers around the world, assert that human activity may be driving drought more intensely—and more directly—than previously understood.

The PDO was thought to be a natural phenomenon, governed by unpredictable natural ocean and atmosphere fluctuations. But new research published in the journal Nature suggests that’s no longer the case.

Working with hundreds of climate model simulations, our team of atmosphere, earth and ocean scientists found that the PDO is now being strongly influenced by human factors and has been since the 1950s. It should have oscillated to a wetter phase by now, but instead it has been stuck. Our results suggest that drought could become the new normal for the region unless human-driven warming is halted.

The science of a drying world

For decades, scientists have relied on a basic physical principle to predict rainfall trends: Warmer air holds more moisture. In a warming world, this means wet areas are likely to get wetter, while dry regions become drier. In dry areas, as temperatures rise, more moisture is pulled from soils and transported away from these arid regions, intensifying droughts.

While most climate models simulate this general pattern, they often underestimate its full extent, particularly over land areas.

Yet countries are already experiencing drought emerging as one of the most immediate and severe consequences of climate change. Understanding what’s ahead is essential, to know how long these droughts will last and because severe droughts can have sweeping affects on ecosystems, economies and global food security.

Human fingerprints on megadroughts

Simulating rainfall is one of the greatest challenges in climate science. It depends on a complex interplay between large-scale wind patterns and small-scale processes such as cloud formation.

Until recently, climate models have not offered a clear picture of how rainfall patterns are likely to change in the near future as greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles, power plants and industries continue to heat up the planet. The models can diverge sharply in where, when and how precipitation will change. Even forecasts that average the results of several models differ when it comes to changes in rainfall patterns.

The techniques we deployed are helping to sharpen that picture for North America and across the tropics.

We looked back at the pattern of PDO phase changes over the past century using an exceptionally large ensemble of climate simulations. The massive number of simulations, more than 500, allowed us to isolate the human influences. This showed that the shifts in the PDO were driven by an interplay of increasing warming from greenhouse gas emissions and cooling from sun-blocking particles called aerosols that are associated with industrial pollution.

From the 1950s through the 1980s, we found that increasing aerosol emissions from rapid industrialization following World War II drove a positive trend in the PDO, making the Southwest rainier and less parched.

After the 1980s, we found that the combination of a sharp rise in greenhouse gas emissions from industries, power plants and vehicles and a reduction in aerosols as countries cleaned up their air pollution shifted the PDO into the negative, drought-generating trend that continues today.

This finding represents a paradigm shift in our scientific understanding of the PDO and a warning for the future. The current negative phase can no longer be seen as just a roll of the climate dice—it has been loaded by humans.

Our conclusion that global warming can drive the PDO into its negative, drought-inducing phase is also supported by geological records of past megadroughts. Around 6,000 years ago, during a period of high temperatures, evidence shows the emergence of a similar temperature pattern in the North Pacific and widespread drought across the Southwest.

Tropical drought risks underestimated

The past is also providing clues to future rainfall changes in the tropics and the risk of droughts in locations such as the Amazon.

One particularly instructive example comes from approximately 17,000 years ago. Geological evidence shows that there was a period of widespread rainfall shifts across the tropics coinciding with a major slowdown of ocean currents in the Atlantic.

These ocean currents, which play a crucial role in regulating global climate, naturally weakened or partially collapsed then, and they are expected to slow further this century at the current pace of global warming.

A recent study of that period, using computer models to analyze geologic evidence of earth’s climate history, found much stronger drying in the Amazon basin than previously understood. It also shows similar patterns of aridification in Central America, West Africa and Indonesia.

The results suggest that rainfall could decline precipitously again. Even a modest slowdown of a major Atlantic Ocean current could dry out rainforests, threaten vulnerable ecosystems and upend livelihoods across the tropics.

What comes next

Drought is a growing problem, increasingly driven by human influence. Confronting it will require rethinking water management, agricultural policy and adaptation strategies. Doing that well depends on predicting drought with far greater confidence.

Climate research shows that better predictions are possible by using computer models in new ways and rigorously validating their performance against evidence from past climate shifts. The picture that emerges is sobering, revealing a much higher risk of drought across the world.

Pedro DiNezio is an associate professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences at the ��. Timothy Shanahan is an associate professor of geological science at the University of Texas at Austin

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Climate models reveal how human activity may be locking the Southwest into permanent drought.

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Moose are on the loose

Rachel Sauer — Wed, 13 Aug 2025 22:43:40 +0000

Moose are on the loose Rachel Sauer Wed, 08/13/2025 - 16:43

William Taylor , John Wendt and Joshua Miller

Moose have lived in Colorado for centuries—unpacking evidence from history, archaeology, oral traditions

Moose are on the loose in the southern Rockies.

In July 2025, a young wandering bull was captured roaming a city park in Greeley, Colorado. A spate of similar urban sightings alongside some aggressive moose encounters has elevated moose management and conservation into a matter of public debate, especially across metro Denver and the Colorado Front Range.

In Rocky Mountain National Park, a recent study found that moose and elk might be to blame for far-reaching changes to valley ecosystems, as their browsing reduces important plants like willows, depriving beavers of habitat and materials for their wetland engineering. Park wildlife are generally not managed through hunting, but the park has tried techniques like fencing moose away from wetland zones. Publicly, discussion has swirled around further mitigation measures to slow or eliminate moose populations.

CU Boulder archaeologist William Taylor is partnering with paleoecology and conservation paleobiology colleagues to study the ancient animals of the Rockies.

At the heart of this debate is a basic question – do moose belong in the southern Rockies at all?

During much of the last century, moose were apparently rare in Colorado. The animals are absent from some early 20th century official wildlife tallies. Then, in 1978, the Colorado Division of Wildlife – now Colorado Parks and Wildlife – released a group of moose into North Park in north-central Colorado. At the time, biologists understood their efforts to be a reintroduction, but in the years since, wildlife managers have shifted their thinking about the place of moose in local ecosystems.

In the decades that followed, the moose expanded their range and numbers. Today, informal estimates by Colorado Parks and Wildlife put the moose population at around 3,500 animals. Under increased moose browsing pressure and a shifting climate, some mountain wetland environments are changing.

Should these changes be thought of as human-made ecological wounds caused by releasing moose? The National Park Service seems to think so.

Statements from 2025 on the park service website, and other public messaging from wildlife officials, assert that Colorado has never supported a breeding population of moose – only the occasional transient visitor. The factual basis for this idea seems to hinge heavily on an unpublished internal report from 2015, which identified only a few archaeological or historical records of moose near the park.

We are a team of archaeologists, paleoecologists and conservation paleobiologists studying the ancient animals of the Rockies.

Understanding moose and their interactions with people centuries ago means carefully analyzing different traces that survive the passage of time. These can range from the bones of animals themselves to indirect clues preserved in everything from lake sediments to historical records.

Are moose actually native to Colorado?

As scientists studying the past, we know that reconstructing the ancient geographic ranges of animals is difficult. Archaeological sites with animal bones can be a great tool to understand the past, especially for tracing the food choices of ancient humans. But such sites can be rare, and even when they are well preserved and well studied, it can take lots of care and scientific research to identify the species of each bone.

Harder still is determining the intimate details of ancient animals’ lives, including how and where they lived, died or reproduced. Such key details can be especially opaque for moose, who are solitary and elusive. Because of this, moose may not end up in human diets, even where both species have established populations. A comprehensive review of archaeological sites from across Alaska and some areas of the Canadian Yukon, where moose are common today and have likely been present since the end of the last Ice Age, found that moose were nearly absent until the past few centuries. In fact, moose often comprised less than 0.1% of the total number of bones in very large collections, if they appeared at all. In some areas, cultural reasons like taboos against moose hunting can also prevent them from ending up in archaeological bone tallies.

In new research published as a preprint in advance of peer review, we took a closer look at the idea that moose were absent from Colorado before 1978. We combed through newspaper records, photo archives and early travel diaries and identified dozens of references to moose sightings in Colorado spanning the first records in 1860 through the decade of moose reintroduction in the 1970s.

Moose sightings appear in the very earliest written records of the area that would become Rocky Mountain National Park. In his 1863 diary, Milton Estes described happening upon a large moose alongside a band of elk while on a hunting trip.

“Since elk were common I picked out Mr. Moose for my game,” he wrote.

Milton thought he had bagged “the first and only moose that had ever been killed so far south.” He was wrong.

Our archival research turned up even earlier sightings of moose in the area, along with many more across the region in the decades that followed. Diaries, newspapers and photo records from the past two centuries show the presence of not only young bulls, which at times can range widely, but also cows and calves, a sign that local breeding was taking place in Colorado before reintroduction.

These sightings recorded in diaries and newspapers don’t have to stand on their own. Moose appear in older placenames around the state, like the area once known as Moose Park along the road from Lyons to Estes Park. Written accounts from the late 19th and early 20th centuries among Ute, Shoshone and Arapaho peoples describe moose stories, hunts and songs. And though historical records don’t go too much further back than the mid-19th century in Colorado, archaeological records do.

Our survey of Colorado sites turned up ancient moose at Jurgens, near Greeley, dated to more than 9,000 years ago, and even moose bone tools among the ruins of Mesa Verde, only a few centuries ago.

Diaries, newspapers and photo records from the past two centuries show the presence of not only young bull moose, which at times can range widely, but also cows and calves, a sign that local breeding was taking place in Colorado before reintroduction.

This question of whether moose are native to the southern Rockies is not just a philosophical one – its answer will shape management decisions by the National Park Service and others.

Official narrative minimizes moose presence

The contemporary idea of moose as non-native animals reflects a different understanding than was common only a few decades ago. In the 1940s, some biologists described moose as a native species that had been “extirpated except for stragglers.” As recently as the early 1970s, Rocky Mountain National Park officials understood their moose work as a reintroduction of “wild animals once native to the park.” Our findings suggest that the valid knowledge of earlier scientists has since faded or been replaced, repositioning moose as ecological outsiders.

As moose-human conflicts and shifting wetland ecologies prompt hard conversations over how to manage moose, a range of options have been discussed in public discourse. These include courses of action such as the reintroduction of carnivores like wolves, or targeted hunting access for tribes or the public.

If moose are ‘invasive,’ they can be removed

For federal agencies, labels like “invasive” or “non-native” carry legal connotations and can be used to enable other measures, like eradication.

In Olympic National Park, where mountain goats were deemed invasive and ecologically impactful, biologists undertook an extermination campaign that involved shooting the animals from helicopters, despite warnings from archaeologists as long ago as the late 1990s that the data behind their argument was flawed.

As the animal and plant communities of our Rockies change rapidly in a warming world, this kind of policy would not only be unsupported by scientific evidence, but also likely to impede the ability of our animal communities to survive, adapt and thrive.

The historical evidence indicates that moose are not foreign intruders. Archival, archaeological and anthropological data shows that moose have been in the southern Rockies for centuries, if not millennia. Rather than treat moose as a threat, we urge Rocky Mountain National Park and other agencies to work in partnership with tribes, paleoecologists and the public to carefully develop historically grounded management plans for this Colorado native.

William Taylor is an assistant professor of anthropology at the ��. John Wendt is a postdoctoral fellow in natural resources ecology and management at Oklahoma State University. Joshua Miller is an associate professor of geosciences and the University of Cincinnati.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Moose have lived in Colorado for centuries—unpacking evidence from history, archaeology, oral traditions.

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Telling the stories of loss and healing

Rachel Sauer — Wed, 13 Aug 2025 21:52:08 +0000

Telling the stories of loss and healing Rachel Sauer Wed, 08/13/2025 - 15:52

Kathryn E. Goldfarb and Lucas Rozell

Colorado’s Marshall Fire survivors find healing and meaning through oral history project

The Colorado Marshall Fire killed two people and destroyed over 1,000 structures on Dec. 30, 2021.

The news cycle has long since moved on, but people impacted by the fire are still recovering. Part of that process is through storytelling.

The Louisville Historical Museum, which is located 10 miles east of Boulder, later joined by collaborators from the �� Anthropology Department, initiated the Marshall Fire Story Project to preserve the stories of people affected.

CU Boulder researcher Kathryn Goldfarb is an associate professor of anthropology.

“This is the first time we’ve actually sat down and taken this long to talk about it,” said Lisa Clark, one contributor to the project. “’Cause we’re always like, ‘(people) have better things to do. You don’t wanna hear our pain. You don’t wanna hear our stories,’ you know. But yeah, it’s been nice to do it.”

All project contributors are quoted using their real names.

We are a cultural anthropologist and qualitative researcher who are collaborating with the Louisville Historical Museum on the Marshall Fire Story Project. Broadly, we are each involved with research that explores the importance of personal and community narratives for well-being.

However, the Marshall Fire Story Project is not a research project. We have no research questions. Contributors are simply invited to share what they would like about the fire.

While this project embraces the specificity of individual experiences, recent destructive fires in Maui, Hawaii, and Southern California show that the work we are doing is needed in many other locations.

Why oral history?

Recounting personal experiences is critical to the historical record.

Oral history has also become recognized as a powerful method for healing after trauma, both for individuals and larger community groups. Talking about traumatic events may be painful. However, narrative also facilitates meaning-making, strengthens ties within communities, and contributes to social justice efforts.

By telling their own stories in their own words, participants in the Marshall Fire Story Project shape what is remembered and how it is remembered.

Contributors to the project had diverse objectives in sharing their stories. Many welcomed the opportunity to contribute to the historical record, which Jessica Rossi-Katz described as “a record of experience.” Another contributor wanted to share their perspective as a lower-income person. Others mentioned the relevance of local stories as they apply to a global context of climate change.

As wildfires become ever more common, the themes that came up in the oral histories are increasingly relevant to community members, policymakers and scholars alike.

Stories of loss

Two people lost their lives in the fire, along with over 1,000 pets.

“I’d take losing my stuff over losing them,” said Anna Kramer, when describing the loss of her neighbor’s dogs. Kramer, an artist, did lose her stuff, including the majority of her artistic works.

Remediation workers clean the garage of Gigi Yang, a collaborator for the Marshall Fire Story Project. Due to concerns about toxins from smoke and ash residue in their homes, many residents opted for smoke remediation and deep cleaning of their homes. (Photo: Gigi Yang)

Abby McClelland’s family was away from their house when it burned.

“For a while I was really upset that we weren’t there and didn’t get a chance to take anything,” McClelland said. “And the more I think about what we would’ve taken, the more I’m like, that stuff is dumb.”

The family was able to replace their vital records and passports within weeks.

“But things like, you know, my grandmother’s rings or the Champagne cork from our wedding reception. Like things that I would’ve thought, oh, that’s so silly to evacuate that, those are the truly irreplaceable things.”

Mary Barry said the “fire was the ultimate downsizer.” She reflected on the objects she had lost – her daughter’s baby pictures, her sewing machines, a collection of books bound in blue and gold.

The fire also took Barry’s pet turtles, one of whom her husband had kept for over twenty years.

“Losing (a) house is like losing a person, where you mourn the loss of your comfort,” Barry said. This was particularly true in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, where people’s homes were their entire environment during quarantine.

Many of those whose homes did not burn suffered a different kind of ambiguous loss. Their homes were damaged by smoke, which carried with it heavy metals, hazardous chemicals and volatile organic compounds.

Shana Sutton’s family stayed in a hotel for six months while their home was being remediated. Like many others, much of the family’s belongings were deemed nonsalvageable.

“In my head,” Sutton recounted, “I was like, okay, I’m just going to pretend that they all burned.”

Concern with health impacts

As she watched the smoke from a distance, Brittany Petrelli told her brother on the phone, “I can smell how devastating this fire is.” Petrelli, a project contributor involved with the recovery effort, recounted that the fire smelled “like things that shouldn’t be burning. Rubber, plastic building materials.”

Residents with concerns about outdoor and indoor air quality as well as soil and water contamination contacted scientists at the ��, who, along with scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Chemical Sciences Laboratory, conducted air quality sampling. Ultimately, the publicized data for outdoor air quality showed little difference from other urban areas.

Residents whose homes survived but were affected by smoke continued to note symptoms such as sore throats, coughs and stinging eyes for six months and then one year after the fire.

Like others whose homes were damaged by smoke, Beth Eldridge had difficulty obtaining insurance coverage for mitigation. After she attempted to clean char and ash on her own, she experienced persistent health impacts.

After the Marshall Fire, area residents created notes of support for friends and neighbors at the Louisville Public Library; the notes were displayed in the library windows. (Photo: Louisville Historical Museum)

“Being part of an HOA (Home Owner’s Association) should give you two buckets of insurance,” Eldridge explained, “but in reality, everyone is divided and the system makes individuals fend for themselves. My insurance wouldn’t take any responsibility. The HOA insurance wouldn’t take any responsibility. … I was sick and I couldn’t get better and I needed help.”

Accounts from the project highlight uncertainty that remediated personal items were “really clean” – as Shana Sutton shared, it “makes you crazy.” Many people spoke of dissatisfaction with a lack of standards for remediation. Current standards, not specific to wildfires, do not engage the epidemiological and toxicological effects of fire byproducts, although experts in the field recognize these dangers.

Precarity and community solidarity

Being underinsured was a persistent theme in project stories, and some people recounted how negotiating with their insurance companies literally became a full-time job. After the fire, lower-income community members found themselves in an even more acute state of financial uncertainty.

A number of mutual aid groups sprung up in the aftermath of the fire, and several of those groups shared their stories with the project. Meryl Suissa started the Marshall Fire Community group on Facebook, which worked to help families replace items lost in the fire.

“I think what we’ve learned is like, yes, people are okay and they’re strong and they’re resilient and they’re gonna continue fighting,” Suissa said. “But we still have a long way to go to help them heal.”

Kate Coslett, who ran Operation Hotel Sanity, also highlighted how the community came together to contribute to organizations like hers, which delivered home-cooked meals to displaced residents.

“So many volunteers, hundreds of volunteers,” she said. “It’s September (2022), and there are still people making meals. It’s incredible … their empathy and their love, this community is just, I have goose bumps.”

Yet recovery means different things to different people. As Abby McClelland noted, there is a difference between “trauma on the individual level and trauma on the collective level.”

“I can rebuild the house,” McClelland said, “but I can’t rebuild all the houses in the neighborhood, and I can’t plant all the trees, and I can’t, you know, reopen all the businesses. I can’t reverse the trauma in the area. I can only control what’s inside my house. It’s hard to know what’s going to happen on that larger level, and how long that’s going to resonate.”

Like others who shared their accounts with the project, McClelland highlighted a necessity for policy change and governmental actions to prevent further climate-related disasters.

“Individuals can’t solve systemic problems,” she said.

Future of the project

For a community historical museum whose motto is “Be a part of the story,” first-person records constitute valuable resources for both the present and the future.

Our team is currently preparing written and oral project contributor submissions for archiving in a publicly accessible platform. In partnership with Marshall Together and the Community Foundation Boulder County, we are documenting recovery and rebuilding experiences as residents return to their homes.

The first storytellers in our project spoke of trauma and despair, but also gratitude for community. What will future stories tell us as neighbors continue to reunite and adjust to how the community has changed after the Marshall Fire?

This article was written in collaboration with Sophia Imperioli, museum associate – Public History & Oral History, and Gigi Yang, museum services supervisor of the Louisville Historical Museum.

Kathryn E. Goldfarb is an associate professor of anthropology at the ��. Lucas Rozell (MAnth'24) is a research assistant on the CU Anschutz Medical Campus.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Colorado’s Marshall Fire survivors find healing and meaning through oral history project.

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Top photo courtesy the Louisville Historical Museum

It takes a village of mothers

Rachel Sauer — Wed, 13 Aug 2025 20:56:42 +0000

It takes a village of mothers Rachel Sauer Wed, 08/13/2025 - 14:56

Sona Dimidjian and Anahi Collado

How mothers supporting mothers can help fill the health care worker shortage gap and other barriers to care

For generations, women have relied on informal networks of friends, family and neighbors to navigate the complexities of birth and motherhood. Today, research is finally catching up to what generations of women have known: Peer support can be a lifeline.

Despite growing evidence, the unique wisdom and strength that arise when mothers help mothers has been surprisingly under‑explored in the scientific literature, but that’s beginning to change. Peer-delivered programs are beginning to bring together long-standing community traditions and structured, evidence-based approaches to support the mental health of new and expectant moms.

We are clinical psychologists at the �� Renée Crown Wellness Institute. Our work and research weaves together psychological science and the wisdom of mothers supporting mothers. Our program, Alma, supports women in restoring well-being in ways that are community-rooted, evidence-based and scalable.

Through the Alma program, researchers Sona Dimidjian (left) and Anahi Collado (right) aim to support women in restoring well-being in ways that are community-rooted, evidence-based and scalable.

Pressure on parents

Nearly 50% of parents report feeling overwhelmed by stress on most days. An even larger share, about 65%, experience feelings of loneliness, according to a 2024 report from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. These feelings hit mothers especially hard, the report says.

In 2025, mothers in the United States continue to shoulder most of the caregiving of children while also managing work, personal health and household responsibilities. The transition to motherhood is often marked by emotional and psychological strain. In fact, 10% to 20% of women experience depression during pregnancy, the postpartum period or both. Depression is one of the most common complications of childbirth. A similar number of women also face significant anxiety.

In many communities, mental health resources are scarce and stigma around mental health issues persists; therefore, many mothers are left to navigate such challenges alone and in silence. Antidepressants are widely prescribed, but research suggests that many women stop using antidepressants during pregnancy – yet they don’t start therapy or an alternative treatment instead.

Psychotherapy is the most preferred care option among new and expectant mothers, but it is often inaccessible or nonexistent. This is due in part to a workforce shortage of mental health providers.

The shortage has contributed to long wait times, geographic disparities and cultural and language barriers between providers and patients. This is especially true for underserved populations. In fact, more than 75% of depressed mothers do not receive the care they need.

Science of peer support

The science of peer support is part of a larger field exploring community health workers as one way to address the shortage of mental health providers. Peer mentors are trusted individuals from the community who share common experiences or challenges with those they serve. Through specialized training, they are equipped to deliver education, offer mental health support and connect people with needed resources.

A study that analyzed 30 randomized clinical trials involving individuals with serious mental illness found that peer support was associated with significant improvements in clinical outcomes and personal recovery. Researchers have proposed that peer support creates space for learning and healing, especially when peers share lived experience, culture and language.

In 2025, mothers in the United States continue to shoulder most of the caregiving of children while also managing work, personal health and household responsibilities. (Photo: Shutterstock)

As clinical psychologists, we heard from mothers in our work and communities that wanted to help other moms recover from depression, navigate the challenges of motherhood and avoid feeling alone. This insight led us to co-create Alma, a peer-led mental health program based on behavioral activation.

Behavioral activation is a proven method for treating depression based on decades of randomized clinical trials, including in new and expectant mothers. It helps new and expectant mothers reengage in meaningful activities to improve mood and functioning.

The Alma program

Alma is based on the principle that depression must be understood in context and that changing what you do can change how you feel. One strategy we use is to help a mother identify an activity that brings a sense of accomplishment, connection or enjoyment – and then take small steps to schedule that activity. Mothers might also be guided on ways to ask for help and strengthen their support networks. Alma is offered in English and Spanish.

Peer mentors typically meet with moms once a week for six to eight sessions. Sessions can take place in person or virtually, allowing flexibility that honors each family’s needs. Traditionally, peer mentors have been recruited through long-standing relationships with trusted community organizations and word-of-mouth referrals. This approach has helped ensure that mentors are deeply rooted in the communities they serve. Alma peer mentors are compensated for their time, which recognizes the value of their lived expertise, their training and the work involved in providing peer mentoring and support.

“This was the first time I felt like someone understood me, without me having to explain everything,” shared one mother during a post-program interview that all participants complete after finishing Alma.

To date, more than 700 mothers in Colorado have participated in Alma. In one of our studies, we focused on 126 Spanish-speaking Latina mothers who often face significant barriers to care, such as language differences, cost and stigma. For nearly 2 out of 3 mothers, symptoms of depression decreased enough to be considered a true, measurable recovery — not just a small change.

Notably, most of the depression improvement occurred within the first three Alma meetings. We also observed that peer mentors delivered the Alma program consistently and as intended. This suggests the program could be reliably expanded and replicated in other settings with similar positive outcomes.

A second study, conducted through a national survey of Spanish-speaking Latina new and expectant mothers, found that peer-led mental health support was not only perceived as effective, but also highly acceptable and deeply valued. Mothers noted that they were interested in peer-led support because it met them where they were: with language, trust and cultural understanding.

Supporting mothers works

Supporting mothers’ mental health is essential because it directly benefits both mothers and their children. Those improvements foster healthier emotional, cognitive and social development in their children. This interconnected impact highlights why investing in maternal mental health yields lasting benefits for the entire family.

It also makes strong economic sense to address mood and anxiety disorders among new and expectant mothers, which cost an estimated US$32,000 for each mother and child from conception through five years postpartum. More than half of those costs occur within the first year, driven primarily by productivity losses, preterm births and increased maternal health care needs.

Beyond the impact on individual families, the broader economic toll of untreated mood and anxiety disorders among new and expectant mothers is substantial. For example, it’s estimated that $4.7 billion a year are lost to mothers who have to miss work or reduce their job performance because of symptoms like fatigue, anxiety and depression.

Together – as individuals, families, communities and institutions – we can cultivate a world where the challenges of parenting are met with comprehensive support, allowing the joy of parenting to be fully realized. Because no one should have to do this alone.

Sona Dimidjian is director of the Renée Crown Wellness Institute and a professor of psychology and neuroscience at the ��. Anahi Collado is a CU Boulder assistant research professor of psychology.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

How mothers supporting mothers can help fill the health care worker shortage gap and other barriers to care.

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Raised with pets? Your immune system remembers

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 12 Aug 2025 16:46:30 +0000

Raised with pets? Your immune system remembers Rachel Sauer Tue, 08/12/2025 - 10:46

Cody DeBos

CU Boulder researchers, with an international team of colleagues, find that childhood pets are linked to healthier stress responses

If you grew up in a city and without a pet, your immune system likely developed differently than that of someone who shared their childhood with a dog or cat. That difference, new research from �� Professor Christopher Lowry suggests, could influence how your body responds to stress even decades later.

In a study published in the journal Brain, Behavior, and Immunity, an international team of researchers, including Lowry and CU Boulder PhD student John Sterrett, found that for people raised in urban environments, having regular contact with pets early in life may protect against harmful immune responses to stress.

CU Boulder scientist Christopher Lowry and his research colleagues found that having regular contact with pets early in life may protect against harmful immune responses to stress.

“Being raised in a home with pets can provide protection against chronic low-grade inflammation, which we know is a risk factor for stress-related psychiatric disorders and more,” Lowry says.

The study adds to a growing body of evidence that our childhood environments can leave a lasting mark on our physical and mental health.

Our oldest friends

Lowry is a professor in the Department of Integrative Physiology at CU Boulder and has spent much of his career studying how the microbial world interacts with the human brain. It’s a fascination that traces back to the 1990s when he started exploring how soil microbes influence mood.

“For about 25 years, we have been interested in understanding how microbes found in our environment—in nature, soil, fermenting vegetable matter, and unpurified water—can signal from the body to the brain,” Lowry says.

Along with a research team directed by Stafford Lightman at the University of Bristol’s University Research Center for Neuroendocrinology, Lowry studied Mycobacterium vaccae NCTC 11659 (M. vaccae), a microbe commonly found in soil.

His lab found that exposure to M. vaccae in mice activated serotonin pathways in the brain and produced antidepressant-like behavioral effects.

“M. vaccae is representative of diverse microbes in nature that have the ability to promote immunoregulation and protect us from inappropriate inflammation,” Lowry explains.

The microbe soon became a model for studying what scientists now call “Old Friends”—the microorganisms humans co-evolved with and depend on for proper immune system development.

“Being raised in a home with pets can provide protection against chronic low-grade inflammation, which we know is a risk factor for stress-related psychiatric disorders and more,” says CU Boulder researcher Christopher Lowry. (Photo: Bonnie Kittle/Unsplash)

It’s thought that modern urban living, with its clean indoor environments and reduced contact with naturally occurring microbes, disrupts this relationship. In turn, people living in such environments have experienced a rise in chronic, stress-related disorders.

Pets as microbial messengers

In a previous study, Lowry and his colleagues showed that people raised on farms, with regular exposure to animals, exhibited lower inflammatory responses to psychological stress. But in that study, it was hard to separate the effects of rural living from contact with animals.

So, the team designed a new study to answer a more specific question.

“We designed the study to determine if having pets in the home could protect against inappropriate inflammation in individuals raised in urban settings,” Lowry says.

The team recruited healthy adult men who had been raised in cities either with or without household pets. The participants were then exposed to the Trier Social Stress Test, and measurements of their immune function and inflammation were taken both before and after completing stressful tasks like public speaking.

Compared to their pet-free peers, individuals who grew up with pets showed a more balanced immune response and better regulation of stress-reactive cells.

But what accounts for this striking result?

“Exposures to ‘Old Friends,’ which are thought to increase in homes with pets, interacts with our immune system to produce more regulatory T cells,” Lowry explains. “Without sufficient exposure to ‘Old Friends’ we have reduced capacity to produce these regulatory T cells, which leads to inappropriate or unresolved inflammation.”

In short, a four-legged friend in the house means more microbial diversity. That might be just what your immune system needs to stay in balance.

Something as simple as living with a pet could help buffer the long-term health risks of urban living, notes CU Boulder researcher Christopher Lowry. (Photo: Helena Jankovičová Kováčová/Pexels)

From theory to therapy

Lowry and his team’s findings are just the beginning. He is now involved in several projects exploring how they could be applied in the real world.

“We are interested in exploring if we can increase mental health outcomes by increasing exposure to ‘Old Friends,’” he says, pointing to clinical trials testing microbial supplements and high-diversity plant-based beverages, which contain diverse microbial communities.

He’s also a co-founder of a CU Boulder startup company Kioga, which is developing soil-derived microbiome-based nutritional supplements, food ingredients and therapeutics. Their goal is to improve mental health outcomes for anyone experiencing high levels of perceived stress, whether or not they have a diagnosed disorder.

What comes next?

Lowry also notes that more research is needed to explore if the recent findings hold true for women or people of different ages or backgrounds.

“This is an extremely important question,” Lowry says. “More work is needed to fully understand the importance of upbringing in rural versus urban lifestyles in females.”

Still, the implications are clear. Something as simple as living with a pet could help buffer the long-term health risks of urban living. Given that more people than ever today live in cities and stress-related conditions are on the rise, Lowry’s work offers a hopeful solution.

“Humans co-evolved with these microbes in nature, and our body depends on them for a normally functioning immune system,” he says.

So, the next time you’re scrubbing muddy paw prints off the floor, remember that your four-legged friend is just trying to help you stay healthier in the long run.

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CU Boulder scientist Christopher Lowry and research colleagues find that childhood pets are linked to healthier stress responses.

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Study: Using cannabis and psilocybin together may increase dependence

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 07 Aug 2025 18:16:17 +0000

Study: Using cannabis and psilocybin together may increase dependence Rachel Sauer Thu, 08/07/2025 - 12:16

Bradley Worrell

CU Boulder researchers studied cannabis-psilocybin co-users and cannabis-only users to look for similarities and differences between the two groups, including drug use motivations

In November 2022, Colorado voters approved Proposition 122, decriminalizing the personal use of mushrooms containing psilocybin, a psychedelic substance. That followed a decision by Colorado voters in 2014 to legalize recreational marijuana use.

Cannabis and psilocybin are becoming more commonly used, but there is still relatively little research on what happens when people use both, says Maddie Stanger, a �� Department of Psychology and Neuroscience researcher whose area of focus is motivations behind substance abuse and how people use substances to cope.

A recently published research paper co-authored by Stanger examined differences in cannabis dependence and reasons for using among individuals who regularly use marijuana and psilocybin versus marijuana-only users. In this case, co-use could either be the simultaneous use of cannabis and psilocybin or concurrent use over the same time period, Stanger explains.

Maddie Stanger is a CU Boulder Department of Psychology and Neuroscience researcher whose focus is motivations behind substance abuse and how people use substances to cope.

Stanger says this research is valuable because assessing individuals’ reasons for using substances can provide insight into potential harms, such as addiction or mental health issues. This is because motivations are related to quantity and frequency of use.

The researchers used a previous, larger study by the Center of Health and Neuroscience, Genes and Environment within the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience that investigated the effects of different cannabis strains on metabolic processes and insulin sensitivity.

From that study, researchers drew a test sample that included 97 regular cannabis users (those who used marijuana more than seven times a month) in Colorado. �� a third of those had used psilocybin in the past three months while the rest had not. The researchers compared these two groups to understand how psilocybin use might affect marijuana use motives and dependencies.

Study participants were, on average, about 35 years old, mostly male and white, healthy overall and predominantly from the Boulder area, with at least some higher education. They reported using cannabis 21.73 out of the previous 30 days.

The motivations of all participants were measured using the Comprehensive Marijuana Motives Questionnaire (CMMQ), which encompasses 12 possible motives, including enjoyment, coping, experiment, boredom, celebration, altered perception, social anxiety, sleep and availability. Participants were also assessed for cannabis dependence based upon an 11-item Marijuana Dependence Scale (MDS) scoring system, which asks users to self-evaluate if they believe their cannabis use is excessive.

Considering motivation

Stanger says she and her research colleagues hypothesized that recent psilocybin users would have higher MDS scores and more strongly endorse coping, expansion (also referred to as “altered perception”) and enhancement/enjoyment motives compared with non-recent psilocybin users. Additionally, the researchers hypothesized that there would be correlations between dependence and coping motives for both groups, but that these would be stronger for recent psilocybin users relative to non-recent users.

The prediction that recent psilocybin users would have higher dependence scores than non-recent users was borne out, Stanger says. As expected, the research data demonstrated that psilocybin users showed mild signs of marijuana dependence, while non-psilocybin users did not, she says.

“Interestingly, we found that recent psilocybin users had indicated they were more likely to use for enjoyment, boredom and availability—and boredom and availability are shown in previous literature to be linked to increased cannabis problems and mental health symptoms.”

Additionally, compared to cannabis-only users, Stanger says the psilocybin co-user group exhibited higher scores on the motivations of enjoyment, boredom relief and availability/access, which can be indicative of dependency problems.

“Interestingly, we found that recent psilocybin users had indicated they were more likely to use for enjoyment, boredom and availability—and boredom and availability are shown in previous literature to be linked to increased cannabis problems and mental health symptoms,” she says.

However, contrary to the researchers’ hypothesis, Stanger says there was no difference in coping motives between the two groups.

The researchers note that these findings should be considered within the confines of the study limitations. Specifically, Stanger explains that the data came from a preexisting study and that this analysis was not the primary purpose of the larger project. Thus, there is no data on the dose of the psilocybin used and no information as to whether cannabis and psilocybin were used simultaneously versus concurrently. Additionally, the study ideally would have involved a more diverse group of participants, Stanger adds.

Still, Stanger says she believes the research is timely and valuable, as more states have followed Colorado since 2014 in legalizing marijuana sales for medicinal or recreational purposes, and it’s conceivable that states will follow the Centennial State in legalizing psilocybin in the coming years.

In addition to Stanger, co-authors of this paper include Professor Angela Bryan and Research Assistant Professor Carillon Skrzynski, both with the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience; and Researcher Harmony Soffer with the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Center.

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CU Boulder researchers studied cannabis-psilocybin co-users and cannabis-only users to look for similarities and differences between the two groups, including drug use motivations.

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Medical issues and neighborhood opportunity can affect infant development

Rachel Sauer — Mon, 04 Aug 2025 20:21:30 +0000

Medical issues and neighborhood opportunity can affect infant development Rachel Sauer Mon, 08/04/2025 - 14:21

Sarah Kuta

CU Boulder researcher Emily Yeo finds that some babies may benefit from more support and resources so they can grow up to lead long, happy and healthy lives

In an ideal world, every baby would be born perfectly healthy. Unfortunately, many newborns arrive prematurely or suffer from medical conditions that could hinder their future development.

Some of these high-risk infants live in neighborhoods with access to healthy food, low crime rates and affordable housing. Others, however, live in worse-off communities with limited access to quality education, health care, housing and jobs.

Now, new research led by CU Boulder’s Emily Yeo explores how medical complexity and neighborhood opportunity might affect the development of high-risk infants.

Emily Yeo, a PhD student in the CU Boulder Department of Integrative Physiology, led research exploring how medical complexity and neighborhood opportunity might affect the development of high-risk infants.

The findings, recently published in the Journal of Pediatrics, suggest some babies may benefit from more support and resources so they can grow up to lead long, happy and healthy lives.

“What the study highlights is that there’s sort of a double burden on medically complex infants living in lower-opportunity neighborhoods,” says Yeo, a doctoral student in the Department of Integrative Physiology. “There needs to be a lot more research into how we can better support these infants, especially within the first couple of years of their lives, which are critical for development and when small interventions could have a huge, life-long impact.”

Studying high-risk infants in California

Public health professionals have long understood that social, environmental and economic factors affect human health and development. Everything from a person’s income and education levels to the purity of the air they breathe and their access to grocery stores can play a role in their well-being.

Against this backdrop, scientists wanted to understand whether there was a relationship between the complexity of infants’ medical conditions, their neighborhood opportunity and their developmental progress.

“To fully understand the developmental challenges these infants face, it is essential to consider how their medical conditions interact with the social and environmental contexts of their upbringing,” says Yeo.

The team studied 440 infants born in Southern California between 2014 and 2023. Doctors had deemed these babies “high-risk” because they were born prematurely, had very low birth weights or suffered from conditions that required treatment in a neonatal intensive care unit.

By reviewing the infants’ medical records, scientists were able to categorize them based on the seriousness of their situation. Infants with the highest level of medical complexity, for instance, had conditions like permanent brain damage or chronic respiratory issues. Those with the lowest level of medical complexity, meanwhile, had more easily treatable conditions, like acute lung or eye infections.

Researchers also assessed each child’s neighborhood opportunity level, based on their home address. For this, they turned to the Child Opportunity Index, a pre-existing, composite index that analyzes education, health, social and economic data from every census tract in the United States.

Some neighborhoods earn high scores, because the children who live there have access to quality schools, clean air, health care, playgrounds and other conditions that will help them grow up healthy and become thriving adults. Other neighborhoods, however, offer very few or none of these resources. Black, Hispanic and Native American children are more likely to live in very low-opportunity neighborhoods compared to their White peers.

For each child, researchers also collected developmental scores from standard tests conducted when they were between the ages of 4 months and 36 months old. The scores came from the Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development, which doctors consider the “gold standard” for evaluating infant cognitive, motor and language skills, the researchers write in the paper.

CU Boulder researcher Emily Yeo found that childhood development is affected by both medical and social factors, which aligns with what pediatricians see in daily practice. (Photo: Emily May/Unsplash)

When the scientists analyzed all of the data they had gathered, some clear patterns began to emerge. Developmental scores got worse as medical complexity increased, meaning that infants with more severe and complicated health conditions had lower cognitive, motor and language scores. These finding are consistent with previous studies, says Yeo, which have found that infants with fewer medical complications are also likely to face fewer challenges achieving growth milestones.

The study also found that medical complexity had a more significant effect on developmental outcomes than gestational age, or how early a baby was born. This is an important takeaway for pediatricians, who have long used gestational age to predict potential developmental delays or issues, says Yeo.

“Gestational age might be useful for infants who are not medically complex, but if you’re looking specifically at those infants, we need a more granular tool,” she says. “With this group of infants, we saw that gestational age didn’t really play a huge role in deciphering differences in development, whereas their degree of medical complexity did.”

The researchers also found a correlation between lower neighborhood opportunity scores and decreased language scores, but not cognitive and motor scores. The reasons for this discrepancy are not clear. But, overall, this finding indicates that where an infant lives does seem to play a role in their development.

Importantly, the study also ruled out differences in development based on race and ethnicity alone. Black and Hispanic babies did have lower developmental scores than White babies, but the findings indicate those disparities resulted from differences in the infants’ socio-demographic and medical factors.

“The differences do not come from race and ethnicity itself—they come from other influential factors that tend to be worse in those groups,” says Yeo, adding that this finding aligns with the general shift from race-based to race-conscious medicine.

More social supports for development

Together, the study results align with what pediatricians see in real life—that childhood development is affected by both medical and social factors. The research also highlights the importance of early intervention programs and policies designed to help children succeed.

“It’s one more indication of how, if we really want to move the needle and improve the outcomes of these babies that are born with medical risk factors, we need to put as many social supports in place as we can to support their development,” says study senior author Christine Mirzaian, a pediatrician at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles and an associate professor of clinical pediatrics in the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California.

“It’s not just the child’s medical diagnosis that is going to impact their development—it’s also the neighborhood the child is brought up in, how much medical care their family is able to afford and other barriers.”

The study did not explore the possible mechanisms at play—that is, why medical complexity and neighborhood opportunity seem to be linked with development. But the researchers have a few theories.

For one, children with very serious health issues often need to use medical equipment that helps them breathe and eat—like feeding tubes in their stomachs or oxygen tubes in their noses. From a purely physical standpoint, these devices may make it difficult for infants to do “all the basic things babies do,” Mirzaian says, like rolling around or pulling themselves up to a standing position.

Another possible explanation is that a child’s appointments and treatments may leave little time for activities that promote development, like reading and playing with toys, Mirzaian adds.

Families living in neighborhoods with low opportunity scores, meanwhile, may be grappling with poverty—and having a baby with a serious medical condition likely only adds to their stress. Through no fault of their own, caregivers may need to focus more on basic needs—like how they’re going to pay next month’s rent or put food on the table—and less on their child’s development, says Mirzaian.

‘Medical Data Alone Does Not Tell the Whole Story’

Looking ahead, the co-authors hope other researchers will repeat and replicate the study, perhaps in other geographic locations or with slightly different populations. Future work might also involve following the same children as they grow up, to see whether and how their developmental outcomes change over time.

For now, though, the study is a good first step toward understanding the link between medical complexity, neighborhood opportunity and development. Zooming out, the findings also reinforce the idea that “medical data alone does not tell the whole story,” says Yeo.

“It’s important for researchers to consider social explanations to formulate a holistic picture of infant development,” she adds. “It’s not just the child’s medical diagnosis that is going to impact their development—it’s also the neighborhood the child is brought up in, how much medical care their family is able to afford and other barriers.”

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CU Boulder researcher Emily Yeo finds that some babies may benefit from more support and resources so they can grow up to lead long, happy and healthy lives.

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Top photo: Philip Mroz/Unsplash

Cycling tradition meets biomechanics at CU

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 31 Jul 2025 18:47:46 +0000

Cycling tradition meets biomechanics at CU Rachel Sauer Thu, 07/31/2025 - 12:47

Cody DeBos

In time for Buffalo Bicycle Classic, CU Boulder researchers challenge cycling norms that stiff cycling-shoe soles are essential for efficient riding

Years ago, Rodger Kram, a biomechanics researcher and now �� associate professor emeritus of integrative physiology, offered a student in his lab a challenge.

Asher Straw, a sophomore at the time and an avid cyclist, was convinced that stiff, carbon fiber soles were essential for serious riders because they made for more efficient pedaling. Kram, with a twinkle in his eye, disagreed.

“I provocatively said that I didn’t think they made any difference,” Kram recalls. “I figured even very flexible running shoes would be just as efficient as carbon fiber cycling shoes when riding at a steady pace and moderate intensity.”

Rodger Kram is a biomechanics researcher and CU Boulder associate professor emeritus of integrative physiology.

Straw was determined to prove his professor wrong. So, the two set out on a small but illuminating study and found that ultra-stiff shoes didn’t offer improved efficiency during moderate cycling.

But that was just the beginning.

Kram and his students have since spent nearly a decade exploring a deceptively simple question: How stiff does a cycling shoe really need to be?

The answer, it turns out, may surprise even the most gear-obsessed riders.

The stiffness myth

Carbon fiber shoes have been marketed as the gold standard for years, and riders have adopted the message. These shoes are sleek and featherlight, and their unyielding soles allegedly transfer more power from leg to pedal.

Kram’s research team, including then-graduate student Tripp Hurt, conducted a study to test the limits of this belief. They equipped trained cyclists with a set of three identical shoes, each fitted with a unique sole material of varying stiffness. The cyclists were then asked to sprint as hard as possible up a 50-meter stretch of road in each pair.

After multiple experiments, the researchers had their answer.

“There was a breakpoint,” Kram says. “Below a certain stiffness, sprint performance does trail off.”

But not by much. Going from nylon soles (a very stiff reference) to a medium-stiff TPU (thermoplastic polyurethane) sole caused only a 3.1% drop in maximal one-second power output. The more flexible, soft TPU sole yielded a further power-output decrease of just 2.4%. At those levels, most cyclists wouldn’t notice the difference.

“The $150 shoes were just as good as the $450 shoes,” Kram says.

Comfort over carbon

“For most of us, like riders in the Buffalo Bicycle Classic, there are far more important qualities in a shoe beyond sprint performance. Are they comfortable would be number one. Do they fit your foot?” Kram asks, adding that when picking out new shoes, “sole stiffness should be way down your list.”

“For most of us, like riders in the Buffalo Bicycle Classic, there are far more important qualities in a shoe beyond sprint performance. Are they comfortable would be number one. Do they fit your foot?” asks researcher Rodger Kram. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

It’s a refreshing perspective in a world where the latest (and often most expensive) iterations are always advertised the loudest. Stiff soles may seem impressive in an ad, but they aren’t always practical, Kram says. They can even be a hazard.

“Social riders often stop for a snack or coffee, and it’s easy to fall when trying to walk in carbon fiber soles on the tile floor of a café,” Kram says.

There’s also a growing awareness of carbon fiber’s environmental toll. Making carbon fiber is energy intensive and expensive, and the end product is nearly impossible to recycle. Though the sole of a cycling shoe isn’t world-ending, the cumulative effect of our consumption habits adds up.

If riders are sacrificing comfort, affordability and sustainability for just a few watts of power they may never use, Kram wonders, what’s the point?

Lab to innovation

That question stuck with Tripp Hurt, the aforementioned CU Boulder graduate. Inspired by the science, he found Brevay, a shoe startup based in Seattle.

“I had my ‘lightbulb’ moment after a night out with friends,” Hurt says. “I started to think about my biomechanics research and how it was relevant to the overall cycling market. We see these results, but nothing has changed about the way cycling companies were building their product.”

So, Hurt decided to build a new kind of shoe. Brevay’s first model, the Road One, will be a high-performance road cycling shoe made from sustainable materials.

“Sustainability and performance are the north star for Brevay. We’re the first brand developing a sustainable cycling shoe, so the market is unproven if this is a category that cyclists are interested in. But we’re building it anyway,” Hurt says.

This year, Rodger Kram will work at the Buffalo Bicycle Classic aid station near his home in Ward, handing out water and snacks to the riders. Though he’s retired from teaching, he nevertheless considers it important to help make CU Bulder affordable for the next generation of curious students.

That means sourcing bio-based materials, investing in an alternative supply chain and pricing the shoes competitively with the high-end carbon-fiber models they aim to replace.

Challenging assumptions

For Kram, the research is about more than shoes.

“We love challenging conventional wisdom,” he says, “and cycling is a sport fraught with tradition.”

That spirit of inquiry is part of what makes CU Boulder’s research culture special, he adds. The study, and its illuminating results, started with a student’s curiosity and a professor’s willingness to be proven wrong.

“It represented a major shift in my career trajectory,” Hurt says of his time in Kram’s lab. “I felt more at home working on running and cycling biomechanics.”

As elite athletes continue to chase fractions of a second, Kram and Hurt hope their work encourages others to rethink what performance really means.

For many, like riders tackling Boulder Canyon to fundraise for scholarships in the Buffalo Bicycle Classic, choosing the right shoe shouldn’t be about speed, Kram says, but about enjoying the ride, staying comfortable and being mindful of the environment.

In the end, as Kram puts it, “there are far more important qualities in a cycling shoe than sprint performance.”

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In time for Buffalo Bicycle Classic, CU Boulder researchers challenge cycling norms that stiff cycling-shoe soles are essential for efficient riding.

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Competitive electricity markets help clean up the U.S. energy sector

Rachel Sauer — Mon, 28 Jul 2025 13:30:00 +0000

Competitive electricity markets help clean up the U.S. energy sector Rachel Sauer Mon, 07/28/2025 - 07:30

Sarah Kuta

CU Boulder economics researcher Daniel Kaffine finds that whole electricity markets might help reduce carbon emissions

Even though we use it every day, most of us don’t give much thought to the electricity powering our homes, schools and offices. As long as the lights come on when we flip the switch, we don’t stop to consider where our power comes from, who produces it and how.

Yet, in recent decades, electricity markets—the way power gets bought and sold—have changed dramatically in many parts of the United States. These shifts have largely been good for consumers, promoting competition that often leads to lower electricity bills. But Daniel Kaffine, a �� economics professor, wanted to investigate another, less-obvious ripple effect: How are these shifts affecting the environment?

It’s a commonly held belief that competitive markets tend to be bad for the environment. But Kaffine finds the opposite to be true. His latest research, published in The Energy Journal, suggests that competitive whole electricity markets might help clean up the U.S. energy sector by reducing carbon emissions.

Daniel Kaffine, a CU Boulder professor of economics, finds in recently published research that competitive whole electricity markets might help clean up the U.S. energy sector by reducing carbon emissions.

“The conventional wisdom on a lot of these topics is not always correct, and environmental economics is a very useful structure and framework for developing more nuanced thinking about the relationship between the economy and the environment,” he says.

Understanding U.S. electricity markets

Before the 1990s, electricity in the United States primarily came from vertically integrated utilities—that is, one company that owned and operated the entire electricity supply chain. These one-stop-shop firms handled every phase of the process, from generating electricity at power plants to transmitting it to substations to distributing it to customers. Overseen by public utility commissions, these companies usually had the exclusive rights to serve a particular region.

However, in 1996, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission issued two orders that transformed the nation’s electricity utility industry. The commission sought to break up public utilities and get more players into the mix, in hopes of lowering prices for consumers.

As a result, many states began moving away from the traditional utility model and toward competitive wholesale electricity markets. In regions that have made this shift, there are multiple sellers (companies that produce power) and multiple buyers (local utilities that provide electricity to customers).

For the new paper, Kaffine and co-author Doyoung Park, a former CU Boulder graduate student who is now an assistant professor of agricultural economics at Texas A&M University, turned their attention to one such market.

They looked at the Southwest Power Pool, an independent system operator and regional transmission organization that manages the grid for some or all parts of 14 states. These are Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas and Wyoming.

The Southwest Power Pool is a bit like an air traffic controller. It doesn’t own any of the region’s electricity infrastructure—things like power lines and poles—but it does operate them. It coordinates the flow of electricity, monitors congestion and prevents outages and emergencies.

Another big role the Southwest Power Pool plays is that of auctioneer, Kaffine says. Each day, it is in charge of sourcing enough power to meet the region’s anticipated demand for the following day. This is what’s known as the “day-ahead energy market,” and it functions like an auction.

“You have buyers and sellers of power,” Kaffine says. “The people who sell power offer up a certain amount of electricity at a certain price. And, basically, the cheapest bids win. Those are the power plants that end up producing power the next day.”

CU Boulder researcher Daniel Kaffine and colleague Doyoung Park studied carbon emissions from power plants within the Southwest Power Pool before and after the introduction of day-ahead markets. They compared the emissions intensity, or the amount of carbon dioxide emitted per unit of power generated.

(The Southwest Power Pool also runs real-time markets every five minutes. But, for their study, Kaffine and Park focused only on the day-ahead markets, which were created in 2014.)

Consumers are not involved in this process, which runs seamlessly in the background to produce a continuous stream of on-demand electricity. But, because of the competition between sellers, they do end up paying lower electricity bills every month. And, according to Kaffine’s research, society as a whole gets the benefit of reduced carbon emissions.

Carbon emissions decline in free markets

For the study, Kaffine and Park looked at carbon emissions from power plants within the Southwest Power Pool before and after the introduction of day-ahead markets. They compared the emissions intensity, or the amount of carbon dioxide emitted per unit of power generated.

To isolate the effects of the day-ahead markets and rule out other variables, they also compared the data to a similar power pool in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Maryland, called PJM Interconnection.

When they crunched the numbers, the researchers found that the day-ahead markets caused a 4 percent drop in average carbon emissions intensity in the Southwest Power Pool. That equates to a reduction of roughly 7.66 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions and about $383.4 million in avoided damages per year.

“Shaving off 4 percent from every unit of power that gets generated really adds up,” Kaffine says.

When they drilled down into the data, Kaffine and Park were able to uncover the mechanisms responsible for the decrease in carbon emissions. Some individual power plants got slightly cleaner after the day-ahead markets were introduced. But the primary factor was the retirement of older, dirtier, costlier power plants in the region.

These plants simply couldn’t compete in the new environment, says Kaffine. When they shut down, what remained was a fleet of newer, cleaner and cheaper-to-run facilities—and that resulted in lower carbon emissions overall.

“It’s just like if you have an old air conditioner—it takes more power to run the thing, and that’s expensive,” he says. “In a power plant, if you have an old boiler, it takes more fuel input to produce power and that’s more expensive and dirtier.”

Looking ahead

“You have buyers and sellers of power. The people who sell power offer up a certain amount of electricity at a certain price. And, basically, the cheapest bids win. Those are the power plants that end up producing power the next day.”

Zooming out, the results challenge the long-held assumption that competitive markets are always detrimental to the environment. The findings might be different in other regions but, at least in the case of the Southwest Power Pool, the “market incentives lined up nicely with the environmental incentives,” Kaffine says.

In addition, the findings suggest that other states may want to consider creating or joining competitive electricity markets—for the economic advantages, but also for the potential environmental benefits. Many states in the Southeast and the West (with the exception of California) do not have competitive electricity markets.

Colorado, for example, still operates under the traditional, vertically integrated utility model. But a 2021 state law requires all non-municipal electric utilities that own transmission lines to join a wholesale electric market by 2030.

A study conducted by the Colorado Public Utilities Commission estimates this change could result in savings of up to $230 million each year. And Kaffine’s research suggests it may also lead to a reduction in carbon emissions, too.

“Rather than running an old, dirty plant here in Colorado, having a wholesale market might mean buying cheap wind [power] or cheap natural gas [power] from New Mexico,” says Kaffine. “They do some of that trading already, but having a market in place to facilitate that trade makes it easier to find lower-cost producers. And if the lower-cost producers happen to be cleaner, that’s a win for the environment as well as consumers.”

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CU Boulder economics researcher Daniel Kaffine finds that whole electricity markets might help reduce carbon emissions.

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