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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 91��Ƭ��AV 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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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 91��Ƭ��AV 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 91��Ƭ��AV 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. 91��Ƭ��AV 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

Family shares courtroom and campus legacy

Rachel Sauer — Fri, 01 Aug 2025 20:06:32 +0000

Family shares courtroom and campus legacy Rachel Sauer Fri, 08/01/2025 - 14:06

Cody DeBos

Father and daughter Donald and Maureen McGinnis both pursued CU Boulder educations and then careers in the law

When Judge Maureen McGinnis (PolSci ’00) steps into the courtroom, she carries more than a robe and gavel with her. Several decades of family legacy and lessons in reputation, integrity and the power of doing the right thing have brought Maureen where she is today.

But her journey to the bench didn’t begin in law school. It started at the dinner table during conversations with her father, Donald McGinnis (A&S ’69), a respected Michigan attorney who built his own career on relationships and the strength of his word.

Don and Maureen McGinnis at a legal event, one of many they have attended together.

“I’ve always looked up to my dad,” Maureen says. “Getting an opportunity to grow up in a family where you have a parent that’s a lawyer, you get sort of immersed in that.”

Maureen’s immersion led her to follow in her father’s footsteps to CU Boulder, where Donald first fell in love with the idea of carving his own path in life.

“It’s been a great ride for me from back in Boulder all the way until now,” Donald says.

CU roots of the family tree

For Donald, CU Boulder was a natural fit. His parents were avid skiers, and he’d grown up making trips out west. When it came time to choose a college, there was little question where he would go.

“It was definitely going to be CU without question,” he says. “I think it was the only place I applied.”

His daughter didn’t need much convincing, either. Long before she would set foot on campus, she had already envisioned her future as a CU Buffalo and a lawyer.

“I was the seventh grader wearing the University of Colorado sweatshirt and telling everybody I was going to go to law school. I don’t think I ever wavered from that,” she recalls.

What began with an interest in skiing in the 1960s has since evolved into a lifelong connection to a place that would shape the beginning of both their careers. For Donald, the legacy is deeply personal.

“Obviously, my legacy is my daughter attending CU, which is a very proud one. She also chose to join my profession and then excelled so well at it. I couldn’t be prouder,” he says.

A shared journey in the courtroom

Despite knowing she wanted a career in law, Maureen says she didn’t know what her path would look like. Long before she wore a judge’s robe, she walked into her first job as a lawyer and found herself working alongside her dad.

“I don’t think I had a huge plan for exactly what I was going to do once I became a lawyer,” she says. “But the door was open. As soon as I started working with my dad, there was nothing to figure out. I wasn’t going to leave.”

Donald McGinnis built his family law practice from the ground up, never working for another firm, never having a boss. Running his own practice has helped him understand more than most the value of connection in a field that can be harsh and impersonal.

Don McGinnis (left) moves for Maureen McGinnis' (right, back to camera) admission to the State Bar of Michigan to practice law.

“I would always like to be remembered as the handshake lawyer. If I tell you something and shake hands on it, I don’t need to have 18 emails and five letters,” he says. “That’s the way I would like to be remembered—as a lawyer’s lawyer.”

During her time working at her father’s law practice, Maureen absorbed plenty of legal strategy, but his passion for reputation also bled through.

“People will talk about how you treat them, how you honor your word. … I remember that being really constant in our discussions about the practice of law,” she says.

Working with her dad gave Maureen a head start, but most of all showed her that law could be more than a job. It would soon turn into a lifelong calling shaped by values passed down through the generations.

Carrying the legacy forward

After more than a decade of practicing as a lawyer, Maureen felt pulled toward something more. She wanted a way to serve not just individual clients but her entire community.

“I’ve always had a passion for community service and engagement. So, getting to have the role I have now pretty much marries both of those things,” she says.

The role she speaks humbly of is presiding judge at the 52-4 District Court in Troy, Michigan, where Maureen weighs her opinion on cases that impact everyday lives.

She was elected to the bench in 2014, but the decision to run had been quietly planted years earlier in conversations with her father.

Maureen McGinnis (center) celebrates with her parents after graduating law school and passing the bar exam.

“He sort of has this habit of putting something in your head, and if we talk about it enough, it’s like it helps you visualize it—even when it’s something that isn’t really on the horizon,” she says.

Housing disputes, traffic violations and local criminal offenses are just a few of the cases now crossing Maureen’s desk every day. She says it isn’t glamorous work, but it directly shapes her community, and for Maureen, that is exactly the point.

“She sets an example that other lawyers and I commend her for. It makes it easier for the litigating parties when you have a smart judge and smart lawyers,” Donald says.

Reflections on CU and the legacy they’re still writing

Looking back, both Maureen and Donald agree their time at CU Boulder influenced more than just their resumes. For Donald, college was a time of discovery and independence. After decades of legal work, he looks back on his time in Boulder as uniquely freeing.

“I took it way too serious,” he laughs. “College is probably the only four-year period of time that you have in your life where you don’t really have a lot of responsibility. You should enjoy it with great vigor, in my opinion.”

Maureen, always focused on the next step, says she sometimes wishes she’d taken more of those opportunities—like studying abroad in Australia. But she’s never questioned the choice to attend CU. In fact, she’s already planning to pass that connection on to her kids.

“If you have an ability to start a legacy in that way, it’s amazing. I feel like having those shared memories about places and things that we experienced at CU keeps my dad and I very close. It’s something you can never take away.”

Don McGinnis on the campaign trail when Maureen McGinnis ran for district court judge.

Maureen McGinnis (first row, right) at her investiture when she was seated as a judge.

Don McGinnis when he returned to Boulder to help his daughter, Maureen, move into Farrand Hall.

Maureen McGinnis (center) with friends while she was an undergraduate student at CU Boulder.

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Father and daughter Donald and Maureen McGinnis both pursued CU Boulder educations and then careers in the law.

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All photos courtesy Maureen McGinnis

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 91��Ƭ��AV 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 91��Ƭ��AV 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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'Your love will be your legacy'

Rachel Sauer — Wed, 23 Jul 2025 13:30:00 +0000

'Your love will be your legacy' Rachel Sauer Wed, 07/23/2025 - 07:30

Sarah Kuta

Losing her father to pancreatic cancer inspired CU Boulder undergraduate Giovanna Ruffolo to raise money for cancer research and pursue a career in medicine

Giovanna Ruffolo was a senior in high school when her dad died of pancreatic cancer.

While other students were looking forward to prom and graduation, Ruffolo was navigating a web of tangled emotions—shock, disbelief, sadness, anger, uncertainty.

“Losing a parent is probably the most intense pain someone can feel in their entire life,” she says. “It’s a terrible, terrible pain.”

Giovanna Ruffolo (second from right) with her brothers Leo (left, a 2024 CU Boulder graduate) and Joey (second from left, a CU Denver student) and their mom, Rosanna. (Photo: Giovanna Ruffolo)

Mostly, though, she just felt numb. Heading off to college so soon after her father’s death was the last thing she wanted to do. But she knew education was important to her dad, so she pushed through the pain and enrolled at CU Boulder.

Now a senior studying integrative physiology and psychology, Ruffolo is preparing for a career in medicine so that, someday, she can help support families just like hers. She hopes to work in pediatric oncology, providing compassionate care to children who are fighting cancer.

As a Buff, Ruffolo is also honoring her father’s legacy by raising money and awareness for cancer prevention research, an initiative she started just after her father got his diagnosis.

“I just want people to know they have a support system and a network that hates cancer as much as they do—that they’re not alone,” she says.

Helping others

Life was rolling along for the Ruffolo family when they got the news that would change their lives forever. In 2017, their beloved patriarch, John Ruffolo, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, a disease that is often fatal.

“It hit us like a bus,” says Ruffolo.

Pancreatic cancer is the third-leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States, according to the National Institutes of Health. Between 2015 and 2021, the five-year survival rate was just 13.3 percent—much lower than other types of cancer. In 2025, the American Cancer Society estimates 67,440 people will be diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and 51,980 people will die from the disease.

“It’s the cancer that really gives cancer its bad name,” Ruffolo says.

Prospect Ridge Academy High School Students participate in a cancer fundraiser organized by Giovanna Ruffolo in 2019. (Photo: Giovanna Ruffolo)

Ruffolo was just 14 at the time, but she felt compelled to take action. As a sophomore at Prospect Ridge Academy High School, she created TeamRuffolo, a student-led initiative to raise money and awareness for cancer research.

In November 2018, her school hosted a “Purple Out”—a one-day event in which students were encouraged to wear purple to show their support for the cancer community and donate whatever they could toward prevention research. Students, teachers and administrators raised more than $1,000 for the American Cancer Society that day, and Ruffolo went home feeling inspired and hopeful.

She organized similar fundraisers at her high school in 2019 and 2020 (though the initiative had to go virtual because of the COVID-19 pandemic).

“It was such a wonderful feeling,” she says. “A lot of these people didn’t even know my dad, but they were still so supportive. Seeing people come together not only for him, but just to say, ‘You’re not alone,’ was tremendous for all of us.”

Balancing act

Meanwhile, despite undergoing various treatments and surgeries, her father’s cancer continued to progress. Four years after his diagnosis, he succumbed to the disease in January 2021 at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Center.

Ruffolo was utterly devastated, but she knew she had to finish high school and get a college degree for her dad. And, wherever she ended up next, she wanted to continue her awareness-raising and fundraising events to support other cancer patients and their families.

CU Boulder participants run in the Stronger Together Annual 5K at CU in 2024, the event's most successful year. (Photo: Giovanna Ruffolo)

At CU Boulder, Ruffolo has thrown herself into her studies, with an ultimate goal of working in the medical field. From her father’s experience, Ruffolo learned first-hand that cancer affects more than just the body—it also influences a patient’s mind, spirit and emotions. With that in mind, she’s majoring in integrative physiology and psychology to create her own pre-health pathway.

“My father had trouble grasping being diagnosed with a terminal disease, as anyone rightfully would,” she says. “I want to understand people’s behaviors and thoughts better, so that when someone is going through a hardship, I can better support them.”

To further build her skill set, Ruffolo also completed CU’s emergency medical technician (EMT) program, an online, non-credit specialization that prepares students for national registry testing. She has also worked as a research assistant at CU Boulder and Children's Hospital Colorado.

In addition, Ruffolo has taken on a leadership role with the CU Boulder chapter of the American Medical Student Association, spending three years on the executive board before being elected president for the 2025-26 school year. Through the student group, Ruffolo has carried on her TeamRuffolo efforts—now called Stronger Together—by organizing 5-kilometer run/walk events to raise money for the American Cancer Society.

She is also a journey leader with New Student & Family Programs, where she helps incoming freshmen navigate the CU Boulder experience. Balancing her studies with her extracurricular activities—while also supporting her family and honoring her father’s legacy—has been challenging. But, for Ruffolo, it all comes back to staying true to herself.

“Pretty much my tippy-top value is helping others,” she says.

In class, Ruffolo has never been afraid to ask questions and speak up—even when that means talking about her father’s death in a large lecture hall full of hundreds of students. Jennifer Stratford, a CU Boulder teaching associate professor of psychology and neuroscience, says Ruffolo’s willingness to be vulnerable has opened the door for other students to share their experiences.

John Ruffolo died from pancreatic cancer in 2021. (Photo: Giovanna Ruffolo)

“She just kind of became an ambassador and a face for students who have lost parents,” says Stratford. “I’ve had a lot of feedback from students about how much they appreciated her bravery and how much they identified with some of the struggles she’d been through. It’s a once-in-a-decade or once-in-a-lifetime experience to see a single student have an impact on so many of her classmates.”

‘Your love will be your legacy’

Since high school, Ruffolo estimates she’s helped raise more than $20,000 for the American Cancer Society. And she’s not done yet. She hopes the CU Boulder AMSA chapter will continue organizing the 5K run/walk fundraisers, and that she’ll be able to host similar events during the next phase of her educational journey.

For now, Ruffolo is focused on finishing up her studies so she can graduate in the spring of 2026. From there, she hopes to continue her education in the medical field, likely as a doctor or physician assistant specializing in pediatric oncology.

“I really want to serve that specific community,” she says. “You’re treating little people who have lots of emotions and a little body. They get very scared easily. You really have to be empathetic and treat them and their families with kindness. I love the idea of sitting down with people, holding their hands, talking to them—not just giving them a death sentence, walking out the door and saying, ‘Best of luck.’”

That approach stems directly from her father’s experiences. As he neared the end of his life, Ruffolo remembers him breaking down and talking about how scared he was. She hopes to be the kind of practitioner who will help people like her dad move forward through their pain and fear, while also treating their underlying illness.

“Your love will be your legacy,” she says. “In a world where there’s no cure for cancer, investing your time in others is the only way you can live forever. And loving other people—giving them kindness and empathy—is one of the best ways to help fight any disease.”

Losing her father to pancreatic cancer inspired CU Boulder undergraduate Giovanna Ruffolo to raise money for cancer research and pursue a career in medicine.

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Top image: Giovanna Ruffolo (right) and her late father, John, representing Colorado cancer patients and survivors at Mile High Stadium at an event sponsored by the American Cancer Society in 2019. (Photo: Giovanna Ruffolo)

Who is afraid of the big, bad (dire) wolf?

Kylie Clarke — Tue, 22 Jul 2025 15:28:17 +0000

Who is afraid of the big, bad (dire) wolf? Kylie Clarke Tue, 07/22/2025 - 09:28

Bradley Worrell

Advancing science may make it possible to bring back extinct species like the dire wolf—but should it? CU Boulder environmental studies and philosophy Professor Ben Hale says the answer is complicated

Earlier this year, Colossal Laboratories & Biosciences made headlines when it announced that—through the science of genetic manipulation—it had successfully re-created three dire wolves, a large wolf species that ranged across North America and South America some 10,000 years ago before going extinct. Some news outlets, including Time magazine, called the development species “de-extinction” while others touted it as “scientifically seismic.”

Subsequently, other scientists challenged Colossal’s assertions of having de-extincted the species, arguing that these wolves—Romulus, Remus and Khaleesi—did not meet the technical definition of dire wolves. That’s because Colossal did not create the animals from a fully reconstructed dire wolf genome but instead relied on a gray wolf’s genetic material and made changes to it with ancient DNA recovered from dire wolf specimens.

Meanwhile, Colossal has announced plans to bring back a variety of other extinct species, including the wooly mammoth, the Tasmanian tiger (or Thylacine) and most recently the Moa, a giant flightless bird that stood about 12 feet tall and weighed about 500 pounds.

However, seemingly lost amid the claims and counterclaims of whether scientists can bring back dire wolves—or any other extinct animals—from extinction is the deeper philosophical and ethical issue: should they?

As a 91��Ƭ��AV philosophy professor in the Department of Environmental Studies, Ben Hale’s primary research focus is on environmental ethics and policy. He has followed the news reports about bringing back dire wolves and other long-gone animals through the lens of ethical issues associated with the extinction and de-extinction of species.

For his part, Ben Hale has no easy answers. A 91��Ƭ��AV philosophy professor in the Department of Environmental Studies, Hale’s primary research focus is on environmental ethics and policy. He has followed the news reports about bringing back dire wolves and other long-gone animals through the lens of ethical issues associated with the extinction and de-extinction of species.

Recently, Hale spoke with Colorado Arts and Sciences Magazine regarding his thoughts on when it makes sense to attempt to de-extinct a species (and when it doesn’t); what it means to de-extinct a species, ethically speaking; how ethicists in the larger scientific community are responding to the latest scientific breakthroughs; and his thoughts on the ethical implications of de-extincting a T-Rex. His responses have been lightly edited for grammar and clarity and condensed for space.

Question: Setting aside the issue of whether Colossal actually created dire wolves, or just something similar, why would we want to bring back an extinct species of wolf?

Hale: That’s the question, right? For some (scientists and entrepreneurs), I think there’s the relatively straightforward scientific challenge of seeing if it can be done—to de-extinct a species. The dire wolf happens to be a particularly charismatic species in no small part because it’s a large mammal that has some resemblance to a dog. Popular fantasy shows like Game of Thrones elevated the ecologically real dire wolf species even further, to a kind of magical status, so there’s an element of fantasy and science fiction that makes the dire wolf intriguing.

Still, that doesn’t speak to the kind of public-facing rationale offered by Colossal Biosciences or other folks who are engaged in de-extinction efforts. Let’s call them ‘de-extinction optimists.’ It’s not enough, generally speaking, just to say, ‘We wanted to see if we could do it,’ or ‘We did it because we think the species is beautiful or cool.’ Using that as a justification starts to look a lot like Jurassic Park, right? And Michael Crichton and Stephen Spielberg and numerous others have warned us about technology unchained with these cautionary tales.

Hale says he believes part of the appeal of de-extincting dire wolves is because they resemble a dog and that popular TV shows such as Game of Thrones have elevated the status of real dire wolves to an almost magical level.

So, the public-facing justification that de-extinction optimists will offer is that we ‘owe it to the species,’ possibly because we’ve made that species extinct by something we’ve done—say, human-caused extinction—or because extinct animals can serve as important elements or components of the ecological system, given that some ecosystems are not healthy. You can make the case that we can revive those ecosystems by reintroducing apex predators that were playing a valuable regulatory function.

Question: If you bring back a creature from extinction, but the natural habitat for it no longer exists, how much have you accomplished?

Hale: I think this a question that looms large over the matter of de-extinction, particularly in an era of accelerated climate change. It may be the case that we can bring back a species that is genetically similar to a past species, but we may not have done anything to make that species function within the ecosystem. Is it in that case true that we’ve brought back the species? Does it even make sense to speak of a species outside of its ecological context?

One of the stated reasons for de-extincting a species is to revive or rejuvenate deteriorating or degraded ecosystems. If you think the environment has been degraded to such an extent that it needs to have some kind of apex predator that was roaming the earth 10,000 years ago, like the dire wolf, reintroduced into the ecosystem, then it’s not clear what it means even to say that the species has been brought back. It’s not back at all. It’s just isolated somewhere. Keeping it as a specimen in Colossal Biosciences laboratories (as the company has done) doesn’t actually de-extinct the species, in my opinion.

Now, you could say that genetic replication is just the first step in a proof-of-concept de-extinction effort, and the next step is to create enough of the species that scientists can develop a viable population and then release them into the wild. Then perhaps that’s the ultimate step to de-extinction.

But if your criterion is that whatever species is brought back derives its status from its function in the system, then it’s a mistake for them to suggest that they have de-extincted the species—because they haven’t yet done that.

Question: Generally speaking, how do ethicists within the scientific community think about the idea of de-extincting species? And what is your position on this subject?

Hale: I would argue that most environmental ethicists, as well as most animal ethicists—these are two different communities of ethicists who agree on some things but disagree on many others—are extremely skeptical of these efforts to de-extinct species. I think you’re going to be hard pressed among the ethics community to find people who are excited about the potential of these de-extinction technologies.

Personally, I tend to be more of a moderate regarding technologies such as these. My view—unlike some of my other colleagues at other universities—is that developing technologies like this can help us to address ecological issues in the near term, but that this gets much more complicated as we reach back in history.

With extinction, an animal can either go functionally extinct or ontologically extinct, which are two different things. For instance, the oysters in the Chesapeake Bay are often said to be functionally extinct. There are still oysters living in the Chesapeake Bay, but they’re not serving the function that they were once serving, which was the cleaning and purification of the bay.

In that context, it would be a much more meaningful outcome for us to revive or to de-extinct oysters in the Chesapeake Bay, say, than to de-extinct the dire wolf. Oysters are important for us, and they were vitally important to many communities in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. I think we should use technologies to de-extinct functionally extinctorganisms and species.

So, it’s a balance. We don’t want to drop the ball on the de-extinction discussion inasmuch as its an important tool for ecologists, but we also don’t want to introduce Jurassic Park-style scenarios where we fetishize a charismatic species simply because it is genetically related to something that we like. Also, as we get deeper into time and deeper into history, I think it becomes more ridiculous and more problematic, ethically speaking, for us to try to de-extinct a species.

Question: So, bringing back oysters to Chesapeake Bay could fulfill a useful ecological role, but ethically it’s harder to make the case for bringing back a Tyrannosaurus Rex?

Hale: Is the de-extinction of a T-Rex the best use of our resources? My answer to that question is probably not.

Again, I’m generally supportive of research into a variety of different technologies that help us better understand how nature works and what we can do to address concerns in our natural environment. And it may well be that some of these gene-splicing technologies do precisely that.

Dire wolves Romulus and Remus, along with their sister, Khaleesi, will spend their entire lives in an animal refuge. Hale says there are ethical questions as to whether a species is really made de-extinct if it’s natural habitat no longer exists.

I believe it’s important for us as a society to have robust technologies, maybe even de-extinction ones in cases ofcatastrophe or calamity—much like seed banks or insurance policies—but we certainly should have security in place in case things go sideways.

Question: Are there any governmental regulations at the international level, or at the national level, governing this kind of scientific work? If not, do you think there should be?

Hale: This is not an area that I tend to work in, but I’m not aware of any regulations. Personally, I do think that this kind of private sector, entrepreneurial research should be regulated.

What would it mean to regulate more pure scientific research is an interesting question. I think it would mean that you would have some kind of external scrutiny of scientific operations in an open framework that would prevent opportunists from developing a technology that could be either weaponized, which would be unusual in this context, or that would prevent ecological recklessness, as in the case of an accidental or intentional release. Given the potential ecological, environmental, and economic impacts of release, we should be very careful about allowing self-replicating but misfit entities, like a de-extincted species, into the wild. The potential for misuse here is tremendous.

I think there probably are other reasons to regulate it as well. You might be concerned about the harm or suffering that you might cause to any given specimen of that species. For example, if you’re creating a huge laboratory of failed experiments with de-extinct species—say, a bunch of failed versions that die prematurely or live out their short lives in pain—I think that should also have some oversight.

Question: So, potentially in the pursuit of a scientific good, scientists could, possibly inadvertently, cause harm to the animals?

Hale: This was an issue with the cloning controversy, when Dolly the sheep was cloned. Anytime you’re experimenting with technologies of this sort, you’re going to create some mutants or some mistakes during trial runs—and there were quite a few of those when Dolly was cloned. Some of the animals had short lives or they were born with mutations and whatnot.

This is one of the key worries for animal ethicists: that the animal will be born with defects that will cause it to suffer, or maybe that it’s destined to spend its entire life in captivity being poked and prodded. …

There are a range of different reasons why animal ethicists think that we should be concerned about the well-being of animals. Some of them include their capacity to experience pain and suffering, and some of them are more abstract, likethat they have rights. So, depending upon which sort of camp you fall in in the animal ethics literature, you may object to de-extincting individual entities for different reasons than environmental ethicists, but two sets of concerns—about the ecology and about the individuals themselves—sort of work in tandem with one another.

Question: Do you think there is a risk that, if scientists show they can successfully bring back extinct species, some people will come to believe that conservation efforts are no longer necessary?

Hale: I think we should be thinking hard about the problem of extinction. The reason I’m interested in de-extinction is not just because I think it’s cool, but because I think it provides a good reason for us to try to prevent extinction in the first place. That’s my real objective in exploring the question of de-extinction.

“It’s not enough, generally speaking, just to say, ‘We wanted to see if we could do it,’ or ‘We did it (de-extincted a species) because we think the species is beautiful or cool.’ Using that as a justification starts to look a lot like Jurassic Park, right?”
Ben Hale, CU Boulder philosophy professor in the Department of Environmental Studies

I think we have good reasons to try to prevent extinction and that de-extinction alone is not going to be a solution to the problem of extinction. Potentially, it just introduces more problems. So, we should try where we can to prevent the extinction of animals or the extinction of a species.

In fact, in a lot of my work I discuss different kinds of reversal scenarios, from air pollution to geoengineering to remediation. Thinking about repair and restoration helps us see better that many of our most basic intuitions regarding environmental wrongdoing aren’t, strictly speaking, about the harm that we’re doing to the environment. For instance, those who think that a company can pollute a river, say, and then right their wrong by cleaning up the pollution using remediation technologies, have a pretty limited sense of what an environmental wrong is. Environmental wrongs also happen in part because people are trespassed upon, their rights are violated, or there are other offenses to them and the world. Those kinds of cases are not properly related to de-extinction, but all of them are an effort to try to repair past harms or restore lost value, just as de-extinction is an effort to return something that is lost.

In many cases—maybe even in most cases—I think we should essentially operate under the assumption that interventions like de-extinctions are cases of last resort. And this goes for many different kinds of environmental interventions like the ones I mention above: We need to try to avoid circumstances in which we need to take drastic action to repair things that we’ve done that are damaging or wrong.

Question: Do you expect that, moving forward, companies like Colossal Biosciences will continue to pursue efforts to bring back extinct species?

Hale: I do. Again, I’d like to see scientists and governments deal with this globally, to set up some kind of commission to create some kind of oversight or monitoring that nudges private companies away from technologies that could be used recklessly, such that they threaten existing ecosystems. This is part of the reason that I think we should be cautious about de-extinction intervention overall. We just don’t know what the downstream impacts of our actions are going to be.

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Photos courtesy of Colossal Biosciences

From war zones to new worldviews

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 17 Jul 2025 13:30:00 +0000

From war zones to new worldviews Rachel Sauer Thu, 07/17/2025 - 07:30

Cody DeBos

After two combat deployments in Afghanistan, undergraduate Benjamin Blume is eager to share is unconventional educational path with fellow veterans

When Benjamin Blume talks about hiking through the Swiss Alps or photographing the stars above the Australian Outback, he does so with the same clarity he once brought to combat patrols in Afghanistan.

It wasn’t long ago that Blume, now a double major in astronomy and photography at CU Boulder, was in a very different place.

While studying abroad may not seem like an obvious next step for military veterans, Benjamin Blume (here at Stonehenge in England) is adamant that it should be. (Photo: Benjamin Blume)

“I had two combat deployments to Afghanistan that were long and stressful,” says Blume, who served in the U.S. Army from 2010 to 2016. “But the friends and (almost all) the experiences I got out of it, I wouldn’t trade for anything.”

Blume grew up in West Houston before being stationed at Fort Carson upon joining the Army. After leaving the service, he came to CU Boulder in 2022 seeking both a new academic challenge and a return to the Rockies.

Inspired by Star Trek: The New Generation and Neil deGrasse Tyson’s StarTalk podcast, Blume found himself drawn to astronomy.

But photography, an integral part of his journey while participating in seven study-abroad programs and getting passport stamps from 30 countries, led him to add a second major in art.

Blume’s path is unconventional, but he’s eager to share it with fellow veterans.

A shift in perspective

Blume’s first study-abroad experience came in 2016 while studying international business. When given an opportunity to join a month-long, intensive German language course in Leipzig, he jumped at the chance.

“I had only been out of the Army less than a year before my first two trips abroad, and wow did my view of the world change,” Blume says.

After years in the military, Blume says his worldview had narrowed. Deployments and Army training had conditioned him to be guarded and wary in unfamiliar environments. While these traits served him in uniform, they became barriers as he transitioned back into civilian life.

After years in the military, Benjamin Blume says his worldview had narrowed. Deployments and Army training had conditioned him to be guarded and wary in unfamiliar environments. (Photo: Benjamin Blume)

“It took me a few weeks being in another country to truly start breaking out of this thick shell I had been in for so long,” Blume says. “But once I started getting out of this mindset, I was able to truly see the world in a different light.”

From that moment on, Blume didn’t look back.

He enrolled in study-abroad programs in Australia, Switzerland, Japan, Germany, the UAE and New Zealand. Some opportunities came through his university, others entirely from his own initiative.

Blume immersed himself in local cultures, connected with fellow students from around the world, and found solace in outdoor adventure.

“I try to do things that (my younger brother and the friends I’ve lost) would have enjoyed,” he says. “Doing this helps keep me connected to their memory and also process the losses.”

Hiking the Swiss Alps, photographing historical landmarks, eating camel burgers and even tubing down an underground river lined with glowworms in New Zealand became part of Blume’s new chapter.

A message to other veterans: Just go

While studying abroad may not seem like an obvious next step for military veterans, Blume is adamant that it should be.

He says, “Many veterans have a hard time breaking out of a certain military mindset or lifestyle where that is their sole identity. This makes it really hard to open up to new things, people and cultures.”

Blume credits his upbringing for his own open-mindedness but says many veterans could benefit from the opportunity to step outside their comfort zone.

Benjamin Blume's many study abroad experiences have included New Zealand and a visit to the Shire. (Photo: Benjamin Blume)

“When we go abroad in any capacity, we should go with an open mind and try to learn, connect and understand other people without judgment or feeling like we are better than them just because of military service,” he says.

One of his favorite talking points when speaking to other veterans? The GI Bill.

“There are currently 83 countries that have schools that take the GI Bill,” Blume says. “Almost all schools have a study abroad office that is a wealth of knowledge and support.”

“Filling out a few applications, renewing your passport and buying a flight are well worth the fully funded education and adventure of studying abroad,” he says. “It’s one heck of an opportunity for veterans to explore the world after serving their country.”

‘You never know until you try’

At CU Boulder, Blume is one of just a few veterans in his science and art classes. Though the coursework is rigorous, he says he’s found his passion and a sense of belonging.

He also uses his rich life experiences to empower those around him.

“I feel like having the life/world experiences I’ve had and being older gives me an opportunity to mentor others. I try to be one of the hardest workers and set an example for younger students,” Blume says.

He’s also grateful for CU Boulder’s Veterans Bridge Program and the campus Study Abroad Office, both of which he credits with making his latest academic journey possible. “The CU Boulder Study Abroad Office is the perfect place to start and get the ball rolling,” he says.

When he’s not focused on combining his love for science and art into a future that includes astrophotography and even more travel, Blume continues to be a passionate advocate for study abroad—particularly for his fellow veterans.

“Joining the military isn’t for everyone, but after getting out as a veteran, why not continue seeing the world? Even if you aren’t going to school, travel is its own adventure and has opened my mind to everything there is to see and do,” Blume says.

“Oh, and it’s even better when it’s pretty much all paid for,” he adds with a smile.

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After two combat deployments in Afghanistan, undergraduate Benjamin Blume is eager to share is unconventional educational path with fellow veterans.

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