Research

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

51�Թ�� 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 51�Թ�� 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 51�Թ�� 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 51�Թ�� 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.”

51�Թ�� 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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51�Թ�� economics researcher Daniel Kaffine finds that whole electricity markets might help reduce carbon emissions.

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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? 51�Թ�� 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 51�Թ�� 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 51�Թ�� 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, 51�Թ�� 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

51�Թ�� instructor named a 2025-2026 Fulbright Scholar

Kylie Clarke — Wed, 16 Jul 2025 23:45:20 +0000

51�Թ�� instructor named a 2025-2026 Fulbright Scholar Kylie Clarke Wed, 07/16/2025 - 17:45

Award will allow Associate Professor Katherine Lininger to teach at the University of Trento and conduct research on the Tagliamento River floodplain in Italy

Katherine Lininger, a 51�Թ�� Department of Geography associate professor, has received a U.S. Fulbright Scholar award starting in fall 2025 to study and teach in Italy. The award is provided by the U.S. Department of State and the Fulbright Scholarship Board.

The Fulbright award will allow Lininger to investigate interactions among floodplain vegetation, downed wood, water flows and sediment fluxes to better understand and predict changes in floodplains over time. With collaborators at the University of Trento, she will conduct fieldwork, geospatial analyses and numerical modeling to understand ecogeomorphic processes in the Tagliamento River floodplain in northeastern Italy.

Additionally, Lininger will lecture in courses at the University of Trento, lead field trips, give research seminars and mentor graduate students. She said her project will advance ecogeomorphic understanding of floodplains, which provide important ecosystem services, and will support her career trajectory and goals.

Katherine Lininger is an associate professor of geography whose research has mainly focused on large floodplain rivers. Her research methods include fieldwork, statistical modeling and remote sensing.

“I’m honored to take part in the Fulbright program and look forward to building internation connections and collaborations,” Lininger said. “With this award, I will work with researchers at the University of Trento in Italy, investigating interactions between river flows, sediment fluxes and plants to better understand and predict physical and ecological changes in floodplains over time. Our work will inform management and restoration of river floodplains.”

Each year, more than 800 individuals teach or conduct research abroad through the Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program. Since 1946, the Fulbright Program has provided more than 400,000 talented and accomplished students, artists and professionals with the opportunity to study, teach and conduct research abroad. Notable awards received by alumni include 63 Nobel Prizes, 98 Pulitzer Prizes and 82 McArthur Fellowships.

“The benefits extend beyond the individual recipient, raising the profile of their home institutions. We hope 51�Թ�� can leverage Katherine Lininger’s engagement abroad to establish research and exchange relationships, connect with potential applicants and engage with your alumni in the host country,” the Fulbright Program said in its award announcement.

Fulbright is a program of the U.S. Department of State, with funding provided by the U.S. government. Participating governments and host institutions, corporations and foundations around the world also provide direct and indirect support to the program, which operates in more than 160 countries worldwide.

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Award will allow Associate Professor Katherine Lininger to teach at the University of Trento and conduct research on the Tagliamento River floodplain in Italy.

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51�Թ�� instructor named a 2025-2026 Fulbright Scholar

Kylie Clarke — Tue, 15 Jul 2025 17:26:19 +0000

51�Թ�� instructor named a 2025-2026 Fulbright Scholar Kylie Clarke Tue, 07/15/2025 - 11:26

Award will allow Teaching Professor Caroline Conzelman to teach and conduct research on sustainability in Murcia, Spain

Caroline Conzelman, a teaching professor in the College of Arts and Sciences Residential Academics Program (RAP) at the 51�Թ��, has received a Fulbright Senior U.S. Scholar Program award in international affairs and environmental studies for fall 2025 in Spain. The award is provided by the U.S. Department of State and the Fulbright Scholarship Board.

Conzelman’s Fulbright project is titled “Participatory Action Research on Urban-Rural Sustainability Challenges in Murcia, Spain.” Partnering with the Universidad de Murcia, Conzelman will work with undergraduate students to examine sustainability challenges in urban and rural areas of the valley of Murcia.

Trained as a cultural anthropologist, Conzelman’s objectives are to provide students with mentorship and training in applied ethnographic research methods to study how civil society, business and government leaders define and promote sustainable business goals. Additionally, she will give a series of workshops and organize a symposium on campus to present her findings and highlight innovative local solutions as well as meaningful career paths.

“I am honored to have this opportunity and am excited to work with and learn from the faculty and students at MU, and to help facilitate relationships between our universities in support of sustainability through social innovation, entrepreneurship and community engagement,” Conzelman said. “I appreciate the many and varied experiences I have had at CU over the last 28 years that allowed me to be a successful candidate.”

“The benefits extend beyond the individual recipient, raising the profile of their home institutions. We hope 51�Թ�� can leverage Caroline Conzelman’s engagement abroad to establish research and exchange relationships, connect with potential applicants and engage with your alumni in the host country,” the Fulbright Program said in its award announcement.

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Award will allow Teaching Professor Caroline Conzelman to teach and conduct research on sustainability in Murcia, Spain.

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What rats can tell us about the opioid crisis

Rachel Sauer — Mon, 14 Jul 2025 13:30:00 +0000

What rats can tell us about the opioid crisis Rachel Sauer Mon, 07/14/2025 - 07:30

Blake Puscher

51�Թ�� scientists estimate the heritability of opioid use disorder with a rodent study

Opioid use disorder is an ongoing global health crisis. In the United States alone, almost 108,000 people died from drug overdose in 2022, and about 75% of those deaths involved opioids.

Although many factors contribute to this crisis—and there are many approaches to addressing it as a result—one important line of research is into the genetic factors that increase people’s risk for developing an opioid use disorder (OUD). Once these risk factors are known, doctors may be able to prescribe opioids more strategically to people at higher risk of OUD, and such individuals could make more informed choices.

In recently published research, scientists from the 51�Թ��—including Eamonn Duffy, Jack Ward, Luanne Hale, Kyle Brown and Ryan Bachtell of the Bachtell Laboratory, and Andrew Kwilasz, Erika Mehrhoff, Laura Saba and Marissa Ehringer—tested the influence of genetics on opioid-related behaviors, which include OUD. Specifically, they looked at its heritability by conducting an experiment in which rats were given the ability to self-administer oxycodone, a semi-synthetic opioid that is used medically to treat pain.

51�Թ�� researchers tested the influence of genetics on opioid-related behaviors, specifically looking at its heritability by conducting an experiment in which rats were given the ability to self-administer oxycodone, a semi-synthetic opioid that is used medically to treat pain. (Photo: Jon Anders Wiken/Dreamstime.com)

Experimental design

More than 260 inbred rats from 15 strains were used for the study. In this case, an inbred strain is defined as a population produced by 20 or more generations of brother-sister mating. This was important for the study because the rats within inbred strain are isogenic: “They’re almost like clones; their genomes are identical, except for the X and Y chromosomes between males and females,” Duffy explains.

Like the use of identical-twin research involving humans, this makes the results more reliable. In a twin study, most differences between twins are caused by their environment, so researchers can determine the genetic influence on a trait by how much it varies. Similarly, within an inbred strain, most individual differences are caused by sex differences, and this provides insight into the importance of biological sex to a given trait. Between inbred strains, differences are attributable to either the strains’ different genes, sex differences, or a combination of the two.

The animals in the study could self-administer the oxycodone using levers, so their behaviors could be measured. There were two retractable levers in the testing chamber: one active, which would give the rats a dose of oxycodone after being pulled, and one inactive, which would do nothing.

After the active lever was pulled, there was a cooldown period of 20 seconds, during which time pulling the lever would not dispense another dose. Regardless of whether pulling a lever had an effect, it would be recorded. This allowed researchers to measure two substance-use behaviors in addition to the total amount of oxycodone consumed. These variables were referred to as “timeout responding” and “lever discrimination.”

Timeout responses were pulls on the active lever that happened during the cooldown period. Lever discrimination was a measure of how often rats pulled the inactive lever. Both essentially tracked the rats’ ability to self-administer substances in a regulated manner, although lever discrimination could have other associations. Attempting to get more oxycodone very quickly (timeout responding) and attempting to get it in an illogical way (low lever discrimination, especially once the animals had time to learn how the levers worked) are signs of dysregulated drug use.

These measures are important in addition to total dosage because the rats naturally consumed more oxycodone as they developed a tolerance to the drug, making it difficult to characterize their drug use on that basis alone. “With addiction,” Duffy says, “it’s a complicated story. They’re developing tolerance, and they’re showing dysregulated use.”

Push the lever, get the oxycodone

The tests were split into two phases: acquisition and escalation. Although the number of daily doses the rats received generally increased over time, especially between the two phases, their self-administration behaviors varied significantly by strain.

For example, in the escalation phase, the females of one strain pushed the lever for a total oxycodone dose of less than 100 mg/kg, whereas rats of another strain took a total of about 300. There was also variation between males and females within a strain, though not always: In some strains, males and females consumed a similar amount of oxycodone, while in others, consumption was notably divergent, with males consuming around 200 mg/kg more oxycodone overall.

Once the genetic factors that increase people's risk for developing an opioid use disorder (OUD) are known, doctors may be able to prescribe opioids more strategically to people at higher risk of OUD, and such individuals could make more informed choices. (Photo illustration: iStock)

This is evidence for a strain-sex interaction, meaning that the rats’ substance-use behaviors were determined by a combination of genetic background and biological sex, not either alone, according to the researchers. Although the obvious explanation for this would be different genes encoded on the sex chromosomes of the various strains, this isn’t necessarily the case.

“Some of our collaborators in San Diego have performed several genetic mapping studies,” Duffy says, “and they found that the Y chromosome didn’t appear to play much of a role in regulating behavioral traits.”

It is possible that X-chromosome genes are a greater factor. However, the biggest influence would probably be sex hormones or related differences, Duffy adds. For example, according a separate study, the sex hormone estradiol can increase oxycodone metabolism indirectly by raising the concentration of a protein in the brain.

Moreover, Duffy says, “there could be developmental aspects to the sex difference, so seeing if they’re exposed to testosterone versus estrogen as they’re growing up, that may affect how their brain is wired.”

Several other strains showed notably divergent behaviors. Some strains were fairly stable in their use, while others increased their oxycodone intake rapidly during the acquisition phase. Lever discrimination also varied by strain, with one strain increasing its lever discrimination quickly, for example, while another failed to increase its lever discrimination much over time.

The biggest discovery that emerged from the research was the discovery of how heritable several behaviors related to opioid use are.

The influence of genetics

Heritability is a measure of what part of the variation in a group is due to genetic or heritable characteristics.

“With heritability,” Duffy explains, “when you’re looking at everything that goes into some kind of trait, like opioid use disorder, the average genetic component will be your heritability. You also have environmental influences, which could be things such as diet.”

Taking OUC as an example, variation might be understood qualitatively in terms of how destructive the effects of drug use are on individuals, from having minimal effect on people’s lives to potentially causing overdoses and death, Duffy adds.

If the heritability of OUD were 0, the fact that some people use the drug safely and others die because of it would be explained entirely by non-genetic factors. If the heritability of OUD were 1, this fact would be explained entirely by genetics. However, as with most traits, OUD appears to be caused by a combination of genetic and environmental factors.

According to the study, measures of oxycodone intake ranged between 0.26 and 0.54 heritability. The high end of this range is total oxycodone intake over the course of the experiment, while the low end is change in intake (increase in intake over the acquisition phase). The other behavioral phenotypes had heritability scores of 0.25 to 0.42, with timeout responding being more heritable than lever discrimination.

“About half of that variability is due to genetic background,” Duffy says, referring to total intake. “That’s really strong heritability.” However, because these data come from rats, the heritability of these behavioral phenotypes may be different in humans. “We’re not going to capture everything about OUD in a rat model, but we can capture specific aspects and use that to put together a bigger picture.

“OUD is hard to study in humans because there aren’t as many people using opioids as alcohol or nicotine, and of that smaller population, we also have people using several types of drugs, so it’s harder to calculate these heritability values, but I believe ours do fall within the range for opioid dependence and opioid use disorder in humans.”

“With addiction, it’s a complicated story. They’re developing tolerance, and they’re showing dysregulated use.”

It's also important to recognize that heritability is a population-level statistic. This means that it does not represent the chance for any individual to develop a trait, even if that trait could be inherited from the individual’s parents. However, a higher heritability of some trait would correspond to a greater resemblance between parents and offspring in that respect throughout the population, Duffy says.

What genes contribute to OUD?

While it is useful to know how heritable opioid use disorder is, meaningfully assessing the risk for individuals requires knowing what genes contribute to it. This study doesn’t identify these genes, but progress has already been made to this end.

“There’ve been a number of studies in humans that have found that these SNPs, or single nucleotide polymorphisms, are associated with your risk of developing conditions like opioid dependence or opioid use disorder,” Duffy says. “There’s another group that is performing some genetic mapping in outbred rats, and that’s going to be the next stage of this project for us as well.”

One potential gene influencing OUD in mice is an SNP in the Oprm1 gene, which is explained in the study to affect the brain’s response to reward-related behavior generally and analgesics like oxycodone specifically. Common Oprm1 SNPs have also been associated with dysregulated use of an opioid in humans, specifically heroin.

Once relevant SNPs are identified, however, the situation remains complex. “It’s not going to be a simple answer,” Duffy says. “Like, you have this one SNP in Oprm1 and that’s going to increase or influence your risk for OUD. It’s probably going to be a multitude of SNPs, and those additive effects are going to influence the risk for this disorder.”

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51�Թ�� scientists estimate the heritability of opioid use disorder with a rodent study.

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How deep is that snow? Machine learning helps us know

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 10 Jul 2025 13:30:00 +0000

How deep is that snow? Machine learning helps us know Rachel Sauer Thu, 07/10/2025 - 07:30

Blake Puscher

51�Թ�� researchers apply machine learning to snow hydrology in Colorado mountain drainage basins, finding a new way to accurately predict the availability of water

Determining how much water is contained as snow in mountain drainage basins is very important for water management, because measuring it is a necessary part of predicting the availability of water—especially in places that rely on snowmelt for their water supply, like Colorado and other western states.

Snow water equivalent is the amount of water in a mass of snow or snowpack. The depth of this water is a fraction of the snow depth, and this fraction is obtained by multiplying the depth by the snow density, which is expressed as a percentage of the density of water. If there are 10 inches of snow with a density of 10%, the snow water equivalent is 1 inch.

A persistent challenge is that snow water content is calculated from both snow depth and snow density, yet it remains unfeasible to directly measure snow density over a large area. Traditionally, this issue has been addressed with remote sensing, which allows for consistent and relatively large-scale measurements. However, remote sensing methods have their own limitations, which has prompted the search for an alternative in machine-learning technology.

51�Թ�� researchers Jordan Herbert (left), a PhD candidate, and Eric Small, a professor of geological sciences, developed a model that can estimate the snow density at times when and in places where it has not been observed or sensed.

In their study on the subject, 51�Թ�� Ph.D. candidate Jordan Herbert and Professor Eric Small of the Department of Geological Sciences developed a model that can estimate the snow density at times when and in places where it has not been observed or sensed. This model is split into different scenarios, each trained on a different subset of the data, and while performance varied, all scenarios were more accurate than extrapolation from remote sensing methods, according to Herbert and Small.

Model performance analyses also demonstrated that information from Airborne light detection and ranging (LIDAR) can be transferred to different times and places within the region it was collected.

LIDAR and SNOTEL data

LIDAR surveys are an important tool in snow hydrology, as they provide detailed information about snow properties, specifically through their detection of snow depth.

“You fly the plane twice,” Small says, “once when there’s no snow, once when there is snow. The laser reflects off the surface, and if you know where the plane is and the distance to the surface, then you know the height of the snow relative to the ground surface.” This is called differential LIDAR altimetry.

While LIDAR is very useful in snow hydrology, it does have some limitations. The first is that it only measures snow depth, but snow density (either measured or modeled) is also needed to determine snow water equivalent. This isn’t a unique limitation, however, because snow density cannot be surveyed in the same way as snow depth.

“Measuring snow density in the field reveals just how variable the snowpack is,” Herbert explains. “Depending on if you dig a snow pit under a tree or on a north versus south facing aspect, you can get a completely different answer.”

This is a major limitation of on-site observations. Density also varies with depth, and remote sensing signals will be affected by the amount of liquid water content in snow, which makes measuring snow density remotely or over a broad scale impossible for the foreseeable future.

The second and more easily addressed issue with LIDAR surveys is the logistical issues associated with necessary plane flights.

“You can’t fly a plane all the time,” Small says. “It’s too expensive, and we don’t have enough planes to fly everywhere.” Planes also cannot be flown when the weather is bad, and surveys only provide a snapshot of snow depth, which can change rapidly as snow falls or melts.

“Measuring snow density in the field reveals just how variable the snowpack is. Depending on if you dig a snow pit under a tree or on a north versus south facing aspect, you can get a completely different answer,” says 51�Թ�� researcher Jordan Herbert. (Photo: Pixabay)

These limitations can be worked around by using the LIDAR data to train computer models. “Based on that,” Small says, “you can use the LIDAR information to make predictions in the absence of LIDAR at another time or date or location. So, you’re leveraging the scientific information from LIDAR to improve your knowledge generally.”

Snow telemetry (SNOTEL) is an automated system of snow and climate sensors run by the National Resource Conservation Service, which is part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. There are about a thousand SNOTEL sites across the western United States—small wilderness areas filled with sensing equipment that measures precipitation, snow mass and snow depth.

“All snow hydrology is based on data from these stations,” Small says. “The problem is that they only cover a small area. If you take all the SNOTEL stations in the western U.S. and put them next to each other, they’d be about the size of a football field, so they’re vastly under sampling. That’s why people want to use LIDAR to fill in all the spaces around them.”

The random forest model

Linear regression makes quantitative predictions based on one or more variables, but it becomes difficult to perform when many of these variables interact with each other in complex ways. In this case, some examples are elevation, solar radiation, slope, tree cover and so on. The difficulty of working with all these variables can be minimized by a modeling tool called a regression tree.

“A binary regression tree splits your sample into two groups, and it splits that sample to figure out which variable has the most effect on the thing you're trying to predict,” Small explains. The branching structure created by these splits gives the model its name and is designed to minimize errors. Each branching point is a condition like true/false or yes/no, the answer to which determines the path taken.

Regression trees are useful in that they fit the data better than multiple linear regression models, which are the other option when it comes to using linear regression when there are many variables involved. The better a model fits the observed data, the better it will be at predicting data that have not been observed, Small says.

However, regression trees have their own limitations.

“The downside of a binary regression tree is that it only gives you categorized values,” Small says. “For example, snow depth could be 70 centimeters, 92 centimeters or 123 centimeters. You end up with a map that just has these particular values.” This issue can be solved by combining multiple regression trees into a random forest model.

“What a random forest does,” Small explains, “is take a bunch of these binary regression trees and samples them randomly to give you continuous distributions of the variable that you care about. So instead of it being in these categories, it's more like how we think about snow depth.”

“All snow hydrology is based on data from (SNOTEL) stations. The problem is that they only cover a small area. If you take all the SNOTEL stations in the western U.S. and put them next to each other, they’d be about the size of a football field, so they’re vastly under sampling," says 51�Թ�� Professor Eric Small. (Photo: Ruvin Miksanskiy/Pexels)

Machine learning

While using binary regression trees allows the predictive model discussed in this study to fit the data better, there are other things to consider, Small says. “In machine learning and other statistics, there’s this trade-off between how well a model can fit the information you give it and how generalizable it is. If I keep adding training data, training the model and tuning the parameters, I can have it fit the data pretty well, but then it becomes fixated on those very specific data, and it’s not going to make good predictions elsewhere.”

This is called “overfitting,” and it can be described simply as the model becoming too used to patterns in the data it was trained on. In anticipating these patterns, the model will make incorrect predictions that would have been right in the same place or under the same circumstances as the training data were collected, but aren’t otherwise.

This explains the different performance of the three different versions of the model: the site-specific model, the regional model and the site-specific and regional (SS+Reg) model. The site-specific model makes predictions about a given basin using LIDAR data from the same basin that was collected at other dates, whereas the regional model makes predictions about a basin using data from other basins and at other dates. The SS+Reg model was trained using all available data.

The SS+Reg model was the most accurate, but all models were generally accurate, both compared to models from prior studies and remote sensing methods. Because models of the sort used in this study output on the 50-meter scale, this scale was used to compare this study’s models to existing ones, and the former were more accurate. The models’ outputs were at a scale of 50 meters, but these were upscaled to 1- and 4-kilometer scales as well.

The 1- and 4-kilometer scales are more typically used in water management applications, and all three models became more accurate when applied to these scales, outperforming SNOTEL. This means that the models were more accurate than extrapolation from observation data. The success of both the SS+Reg and regional models indicates that information gained from LIDAR is transferable to different times and locations within the Rocky Mountain Region.

Besides fitting the data well and being adaptable to different scales between the three model scenarios, this approach is also beneficial because it does not rely on modeling physical processes (like snow formation, accumulation and melt) or on uncertain weather data. This makes it so that, once a model is trained, it doesn’t take long to make predictions. “The big gain is that it's much more computationally efficient and it just takes a fraction of the time,” Small says. “It's about 100 times faster.”

Herbert says “machine learning has been a huge benefit to my research, with the results to back it up. It’s freed up my time in the winter to put skis on and dig more snow pits to get the density data we desperately need.”

“For whatever reason, all our physically based models and our knowledge of science just gets in our way of making predictions,” Small explains, “because we've tried to boil it down to these simple equations, but it's not simple.”

"Machine learning has been a huge benefit to my research, with the results to back it up. It’s freed up my time in the winter to put skis on and dig more snow pits to get the density data we desperately need."

Expanding to other regions

The primary limitation of the snow density-measuring framework that the researchers created for this study was its reliance on on-site and LIDAR data for snow depth measurements. Small says that this could be addressed by bringing in other data sets, which would provide a more independent test of success than models’ ability to predict snow density in regions they were not trained on.

One of these data sets, the fractional snow-covered area (how much of the ground is covered by snow), could be measured using LIDAR equipment mounted to a satellite rather than relying on airplanes. While LIDAR has been used with satellite technology, this doesn’t address the limitations of plane-mounted LIDAR, because as Small says, “the (satellite) overpass interval is very slow. It’s about 90 days before it comes back to the place you’re looking at. So, you get a snapshot very infrequently, but it’s everywhere on the planet.”

The next step of developing this kind of model is to apply it to other regions, and it remains to be seen how easily that translation can be made, Herbert says.

“We’ve just begun running the model in California to see if the model works in regions with different climates,” he says. “We want to see how transferable data from one region is to another, and California is an ideal test site since it has more LIDAR than anywhere else in the world.”

The presence of LIDAR is important because these data were the most useful when it came to statistical model validation, or making sure that the models were accurate and reliable, compared to data limited by the small-area reporting of SNOTEL and the variability of on-the-ground snow density measurements. Without data to judge models’ predictions against, it is impossible to determine how well they do, because the actual snow depth is unknown.

Also, because LIDAR isn’t available everywhere, it is important to continue developing other methods of validation, the researchers say. Small says reducing reliance on LIDAR will help the innovative modeling framework apply to many parts of the country.

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51�Թ�� researchers apply machine learning to snow hydrology in Colorado mountain drainage basins, finding a new way to accurately predict the availability of water.

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That lightbulb represents more than just a good idea

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 08 Jul 2025 18:39:18 +0000

That lightbulb represents more than just a good idea Rachel Sauer Tue, 07/08/2025 - 12:39

Rachel Sauer

In research recently published in Science, 51�Թ�� scientists detail how light—rather than energy-intensive heat—can efficiently and sustainably catalyze chemical transformations

For many people, the role that manufactured chemicals plays in their lives—whether they’re aware of it or not—may begin first thing in the morning. That paint on the bedroom walls? It contains manufactured chemicals.

From there, manufactured chemicals may show up in prescription medicine, in the bowls containing breakfast, in the key fob that unlocks the car, in the road they take to work. These products are so ubiquitous that it’s hard to envision life without them.

Professor Niels Damrauer and his 51�Թ�� and CSU research colleagues were inspired by photosynthesis in designing a system using LED lights to catalyze transformations commonly used in chemical manufacturing.

The process of transforming base materials into these desired products, however, has long come at significant environmental cost. Historically, catalyzing transformations in industrial processes has frequently used extreme heat to create the necessary energy.

Now, continuing to build on a growing body of research and discovery, 51�Թ�� scientists are many steps closer to using light instead of heat to catalyze transformations in industrial processes.

In a study recently published in Science, Niels Damrauer, a 51�Թ�� professor of chemistry and Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute fellow, and his research colleagues at 51�Թ�� and Colorado State University found that a system using LED lights can catalyze transformations commonly used in chemical manufacturing. And it’s entirely possible, Damrauer says, that sunlight could ultimately be the light source in this system.

“With many transformations, the economics are, ‘Well, I need this product and I’m going to sell it at this price, so my energy costs can’t be larger than this amount to make a profit’,” Damrauer says. “But when you start to think about climate change and start to think about trying to create more efficient ways to make things, you need different approaches.

“You can do that chemistry with very harsh conditions, but those harsh conditions demand energy use. The particular chemistry we are able to do in this paper suggests we’ve figured out a way to do these transformations under mild conditions.”

Inspired by plants

Damrauer and his colleagues—including first authors Arindam Sau, a 51�Թ�� PhD candidate in chemistry, and Amreen Bains, a postdoctoral scholar in chemistry at Colorado State University in the group of Professor Garret Miyake—work in a branch of chemistry called photoredox catalysis, “where ‘photo’ means light and ‘redox’ means reduction and oxidation,” Damrauer explains. “This type of chemistry is fundamentally inspired by photosynthesis. A lot of chemistry—not all of chemistry, but a huge fraction of chemistry—involves the movement of electrons out of things and into other things to make transformations. That happens in plants, and it happens in photoredox catalysis as well.

“In photosynthesis, there’s a beautiful control over not only the motion of electrons but the motion of protons. It’s in the coupling of those two motions that a plant derives functions it’s able to achieve in taking electrons out of something like water and storing it in CO2 as something like sugar.”

Further inspired by photosynthesis and a plant’s use of chlorophyl to collect sunlight, the research team used an organic dye molecule as a sort of “pre-catalyst” that absorbs light and transforms into a catalyst molecule, which also absorbs light and accelerates chemical reactions. And because the four LED lights surrounding the reactor are only slightly brighter than a regular home LED lightbulb, the transformation process happens at room temperature rather than extreme heat.

The molecule is also able to “reset” itself afterward and harvest more light, beginning the process anew.

“We set out to understand the behavior of a photocatalyst that was inefficient at this process, and my student Arindam discovered there was this fundamental transformation to the molecule occurring while we did the reaction,” Damrauer says, adding that the team discovered there are key motions not just of electrons, which is essential for photoredox, but also of protons.

“In our mechanism, the motion of the proton occurs in the formation of a water molecule, and that very stable molecule prevents another event that would undermine the storage of energy that we’re trying to achieve,” Damrauer says. “We figured out what the reaction was and, based on that reaction, we started to make simpler molecules.

“This was a really fortuitous discovery process: We were studying something, saw a change, took the knowledge of what that change was and started to design systems that were even better. This is the best advertisement for basic science—sometimes you can’t design it; you’ve got to discover things, you’ve got to have that freedom.”

A sunny future

Damrauer, Sau and their colleagues in the multidisciplinary, multi-institutional Sustainable Photoredox Catalysis Research Center (SuPRCat) are continuing to build on these discoveries, which happen at a small scale now but may have the potential for large-scale commercial use.

In an essay for The Conversation, Sau noted, “Our work points toward a future where chemicals are made using light instead of heat. For example, our catalyst can turn benzene—a simple component of crude oil—into a form called cyclohexadienes. This is a key step in making the building blocks for nylon. Improving this part of the process could reduce the carbon footprint of nylon production.

“Imagine manufacturers using LED reactors or even sunlight to power the production of essential chemicals. LEDs still use electricity, but they need far less energy compared with the traditional heating methods used in chemical manufacturing. As we scale things up, we’re also figuring out ways to harness sunlight directly, making the entire process even more sustainable and energy efficient.”

Damrauer adds that he and his colleagues aren’t trying to change the nature of manufactured chemicals, but the approach to how they’re made. “We’re not looking at making more stable paint, for example, but we’re asking if it costs a certain number of joules to make that gallon of paint, how can we reduce that?”

In addition to Niels Damrauer, Arindam Sau and Amreen Bains, Brandon Portela, Kajal Kajal, Alexander Green, Anna Wolff, Ludovic Patin, Robert Paton and Garret Miyake contributed to this research.

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In research recently published in Science, 51�Թ�� scientists detail how light—rather than energy-intensive heat—can efficiently and sustainably catalyze chemical transformations.

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Top image: dreamstime.com

Supporting survivors of sexual assault through community

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 03 Jul 2025 00:31:29 +0000

Supporting survivors of sexual assault through community Rachel Sauer Wed, 07/02/2025 - 18:31

Cody DeBos

CU PhD graduate Tara Streng-Schroeter's research offers a new way to support survivors of sexual violence

The first time Tara Kay Streng-Schroeter stepped into a sorority house to deliver her sexual assault support training, she hoped it would help students feel more prepared to support one another.

She didn’t anticipate the crowd of women lining up afterward to ask questions and offer thanks.

“At one chapter, many women came up to me and thanked me for being there, told me how important they think this training is,” she recalls. “Some said it was better than any training they’ve received from school or as an RA (resident advisor).”

51�Թ�� scholar Tara Streng-Schroeter, who earned a PhD in sociology in May, designed a peer-based intervention program designed to help students respond supportively when someone they care about discloses they have experienced sexual violence.

That moment reaffirmed Streng-Schroeter’s belief in what she’d spent years building: a peer-based intervention program designed to help students respond supportively when someone they care about discloses they have experienced sexual violence.

Her program, called Building Support for Survivors (BSS), offers a promising new approach to how college campuses can support students who experience sexual violence.

“We know the majority of survivors never seek support from the police or formal support from a non-profit or university resources. They instead disclose to a close connection,” Streng-Schroeter says.

Yet most students haven’t been trained to handle such a sensitive moment. Even well-intentioned responses can backfire, leading to shame, self-blame or isolation for survivors.

That’s the gap Streng-Schroeter, who in May earned her PhD in sociology from the 51�Թ��, hopes to close.

Taking innovative research to the front lines

Streng-Schroeter has spent more than a decade working both professionally and academically in the field of sexual-violence response. She has coordinated sexual-assault response teams, trained volunteer victim advocates and witnessed firsthand the long-term effects of both harm and healing.

After talking with hundreds of survivors, she was acutely aware of the opportunity that existed to help college students support their peers who have experienced sexual violence.

Building Support for Survivors, a 90-minute training intervention that she designed to be implemented with peer groups of college students and has piloted with sorority chapters, combines education about the prevalence of sexual violence with hands-on learning around how to listen, what to say and what not to say.

As part of Building Support for Survivors, Streng-Schroeter also provides customized flyers listing local confidential and non-confidential support options.

“Even though there are so many victims within campus communities, students don’t necessarily know the right thing to say to someone who’s experienced this kind of violence unless they have received training,” she says. “And it’s those individuals that don’t have the training but need it that we’re trying to help.”

Over the course of her study, Streng-Schroeter partnered with sorority chapters at nine universities across the country, delivering her training in person at four of them.

A wake-up call

“We know the majority of survivors never seek support from the police or formal support from a non-profit or university resources. They instead disclose to a close connection,” says 51�Թ�� researcher Tara Streng-Schroeter.

One of the most striking findings of Streng-Schroeter’s research was just how many students have been affected by sexual violence. More than half of the sorority women who completed her surveys reported experiencing sexual violence in their lives.

That number is significantly higher than national averages had previously suggested.

“It could have happened in the week or the month or the semester leading up to when they took a survey,” Streng-Schroeter says, “but it also could have happened when they were a child, or when they were in high school.”

She notes that sorority members, as well as queer students, are disproportionately affected by sexual violence on college campuses. However, many studies only ask about incidents within a narrow time frame, obscuring the full picture.

“Knowing more about what the actual affected population looks like was very important to me,” Streng-Schroeter says.

The data from her study underscores the urgency of making peer support more effective. Fortunately, there are many promising signs that her intervention works.

Rethinking support for survivors

After completing Streng-Schroeter’s BSS training, students showed meaningfully improved responses in how they thought about and responded to sexual-assault disclosures.

Participants who received the training reported lower levels of rape-myth acceptance—the false or harmful beliefs about what “counts” as sexual violence or who is to blame.

“The program also increased how often participants in chapters that received the training actually provided positive responses to their friends’ disclosure of sexual victimization,” Streng-Schroeter says. “And the data also appears to show that the training reduced negative responses and reduced how often participants anticipate that they will use negative responses when faced with a disclosure of sexual violence in the future.”

Streng-Schroeter believes that her community-first training model is an essential part of why it’s so effective.

Unlike large, anonymous lectures, her program is delivered in already-formed social networks. She theorizes that within peer groups where trust already exists and that experience disproportionately high levels of sexual violence, individuals may be more likely to disclose being the victim of sexual violence to one another.

"Even though there are so many victims within campus communities, students don’t necessarily know the right thing to say to someone who’s experienced this kind of violence unless they have received training."

“The social community aspect is a really important aspect of why we saw promising results with this,” Streng-Schroeter says. “Deploying the exact same training in an orientation for new students … it wouldn’t have the same effect because those friendship networks aren’t there yet.”

In other words, the best way to support survivors may be to start with the people they already lean on by giving them the tools to respond appropriately.

Healing together

With her dissertation completed and defended, Streng-Schroeter now hopes to expand the BSS program. She believes the model could scale to more chapters—and other student communities where close peer-bonds exist—with more funding.

She says, “One goal is to secure funding so I can provide this training across a whole network of a sorority, every chapter. That could impact thousands of people’s lives.”

She’s also eager to adapt the training for queer student organizations, college athletic teams and other student clubs.

Streng-Schroeter knows institutional and cultural reform takes time. But helping students become better friends, listeners and supporters can happen right now.

“People just voluntarily sharing that they felt this training was impactful really meant a lot. It made me think, ‘Okay, something good is happening here,’” Streng-Schroeter says.

As her training and research show, the most important support doesn’t always come from an office or through official channels. Often, healing begins when one person is ready to talk and another is prepared to hear them.

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CU PhD graduate Tara Streng-Schroeter's research offers a new way to support survivors of sexual violence.

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Harnessing the abundant resource of sunlight

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 24 Jun 2025 17:55:24 +0000

Harnessing the abundant resource of sunlight Rachel Sauer Tue, 06/24/2025 - 11:55

Arindam Sau , Amreen Bains and Anna Wolff

Light-powered reactions could make the chemical manufacturing industry more energy-efficient

Manufactured chemicals and materials are necessary for practically every aspect of daily life, from life-saving pharmaceuticals to plastics, fuels and fertilizers. Yet manufacturing these important chemicals comes at a steep energy cost.

Many of these industrial chemicals are derived primarily from fossil fuel-based materials. These compounds are typically very stable, making it difficult to transform them into useful products without applying harsh and energy-demanding reaction conditions.

Arindam Sau, a Ph.D. candidate in the 51�Թ�� Department of Chemistry, along with Colorado State University research colleagues Amreen Bains and Anna Wolff, have been working on a system that uses light to power reactions commonly used in the chemical manufacturing industry.

As a result, transforming these stubborn materials contributes significantly to the world’s overall energy use. In 2022, the industrial sector consumed 37% of the world’s total energy, with the chemical industry responsible for approximately 12% of that demand.

Conventional chemical manufacturing processes use heat to generate the energy needed for reactions that take place at high temperatures and pressures. An approach that uses light instead of heat could lower energy demands and allow reactions to be run under gentler conditions — like at room temperature instead of extreme heat.

Sunlight represents one of the most abundant yet underutilized energy sources on Earth. In nature, this energy is captured through photosynthesis, where plants convert light into chemical energy. Inspired by this process, our team of chemists at the Center for Sustainable Photoredox Catalysis, a research center funded by the National Science Foundation, has been working on a system that uses light to power reactions commonly used in the chemical manufacturing industry. We published our results in the journal Science in June 2025.

We hope that this method could provide a more economical route for creating industrial chemicals out of fossil fuels. At the same time, since it doesn’t rely on super-high temperatures or pressures, the process is safer, with fewer chances for accidents.

How does our system work?

The photoredox catalyst system that our team has developed is powered by simple LEDs, and it operates efficiently at room temperature.

At the core of our system is an organic photoredox catalyst: a specialized molecule that we know accelerates chemical reactions when exposed to light, without being consumed in the process.

Much like how plants rely on pigments to harvest sunlight for photosynthesis, our photoredox catalyst absorbs multiple particles of light, called photons, in a sequence.

These photons provide bursts of energy, which the catalyst stores and then uses to kick-start reactions. This “multi-photon” harvesting builds up enough energy to force very stubborn molecules into undergoing reactions that would otherwise need highly reactive metals. Once the reaction is complete, the photocatalyst resets itself, ready to harvest more light and keep the process going without creating extra waste.

Designing molecules that can absorb multiple photons and react with stubborn molecules is tough. One big challenge is that after a molecule absorbs a photon, it only has a tiny window of time before that energy fades away or gets lost. Plus, making sure the molecule uses that energy the right way is not easy. The good news is we’ve found that our catalyst can do this efficiently at room temperature.

Enabling greener chemical manufacturing

CSU chemistry researcher Amreen Bains performs a light-driven photoredox catalyzed reaction. (Photo: John Cline/Colorado State University Photography)

Our work points toward a future where chemicals are made using light instead of heat. For example, our catalyst can turn benzene — a simple component of crude oil — into a form called cyclohexadienes. This is a key step in making the building blocks for nylon. Improving this part of the process could reduce the carbon footprint of nylon production.

Imagine manufacturers using LED reactors or even sunlight to power the production of essential chemicals. LEDs still use electricity, but they need far less energy compared with the traditional heating methods used in chemical manufacturing. As we scale things up, we’re also figuring out ways to harness sunlight directly, making the entire process even more sustainable and energy-efficient.

Right now, we’re using our photoredox catalysts successfully in small lab experiments — producing just milligrams at a time. But to move into commercial manufacturing, we’ll need to show that these catalysts can also work efficiently at a much larger scale, making kilograms or even tons of product. Testing them in these bigger reactions will ensure that they’re reliable and cost-effective enough for real-world chemical manufacturing.

Similarly, scaling up this process would require large-scale reactors that use light efficiently. Building those will first require designing new types of reactors that let light reach deeper inside. They’ll need to be more transparent or built differently so the light can easily get to all parts of the reaction.

Our team plans to keep developing new light-driven techniques inspired by nature’s efficiency. Sunlight is a plentiful resource, and by finding better ways to tap into it, we hope to make it easier and cleaner to produce the chemicals and materials that modern life depends on.

Arindam Sau is a Ph.D. candidate in the 51�Թ�� Department of Chemistry; Amreen Bains is a postdoctoral scholar in chemistry at Colorado State University; Anna Wolff is a PhD student in chemistry at Colorado State University.

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

Light-powered reactions could make the chemical manufacturing industry more energy-efficient.

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Healing Indigenous communities from the ground up

Rachel Sauer — Mon, 23 Jun 2025 23:46:02 +0000

Healing Indigenous communities from the ground up Rachel Sauer Mon, 06/23/2025 - 17:46

Sarah Kuta

Mushroom mycelium can clean up the soil. Can it also help Indigenous people reconnect to the land? 51�Թ�� researcher Natalie Avalos aims to find out

Fungi are powerful and versatile organisms. They’re being used in a variety of beneficial ways, from degrading hard-to-recycle plastics and purifying contaminated water to developing new medicines and restoring forests after wildfires.

Now an innovative project from the 51�Թ�� will explore fungi’s ability to remediate urban soil and, in the process, reconnect Indigenous families to the land.

The project is being led by Natalie Avalos, a 51�Թ�� assistant professor of ethnic studies and core faculty member of the Center for Native American and Indigenous Studies (CNAIS). She’s working in partnership with Carissa Garcia, a Denver-based writer, educator and combat veteran with Picuris Pueblo heritage.

51�Թ�� researcher Natalie Avalos, an assistant professor of ethnic studies, is leading a project to explore fungi’s ability to remediate urban soil and, in the process, reconnect Indigenous families to the land.

With grant funding from CNAIS, the duo plans to use mushroom mycelium to clean up the soil at various locations in Denver and Commerce City. They hope to inoculate small farm plots and garden beds on properties that are owned or rented by Indigenous people.

Soil remediation will allow Indigenous families to grow their own foods and medicines and may even lead to the revitalization of ancient crops. But, beyond that, Avalos and Garcia hope their land-based healing project will help Indigenous people restore and strengthen their sacred relationship with the land.

“We talk about decolonization as land repatriation, or the return of Indigenous lands to Indigenous people,” says Avalos. “But this is a form of rematriation, thinking about land as mother and returning to this relationship where you are tending to the health and well-being of the mother so that she can better attend to your health and well-being in return. Restoring that symbiotic relationship is profoundly impactful for families.”

The power of fungi

Mycelium is the name for the network of dense, fibrous, root-like threads that make up the body of a fungus. It’s typically hidden underground, often out of sight and out of mind until it produces mushrooms, which grow above the soil and help fungi reproduce.

In the wilderness, mycelium acts as nature’s clean-up crew. It plays a vital role in decomposition, breaking down dead plants and returning essential nutrients to the soil.

But researchers have also come to realize that mycelium can be a powerful ally for combating pollution. The process, known as “mycoremediation,” harnesses fungi’s natural abilities to remove or break down harmful contaminants in the soil. Scientists are using fungi to clean up everything from heavy metals and pesticides to petrochemicals and other hazardous substances.

Avalos and Garcia want to use mycelium to create healthy and resilient soil for Indigenous families, including some that live in heavily polluted areas on Colorado’s Front Range. They plan to take detailed measurements before, during and after inoculation, to see how the mycelium affects the soil, as well as the plants that will eventually grow in it. Based on these initial results, they hope to expand their mycoremediation work to other Indigenous farms and gardens—and, possibly, even to tribal lands.

They also want to use the soil remediation project to create hands-on educational opportunities for Indigenous communities, particularly Indigenous youth.

Garcia will spearhead the soil remediation work, which is slated to begin later this year. Then, after the mycelium works its magic, Avalos will investigate how the project is affecting Indigenous people.

“I’ll start collecting some oral histories, some ethnographic testaments about what this means to them,” says Avalos. “How is this confirming their relationship to land? How is it speaking to or shaping their religious life, their sense of identity, their Indigeneity? How is it that having restored soil is supporting their health and wellness and contributing to human flourishing?”

“We talk about decolonization as land repatriation, or the return of Indigenous lands to Indigenous people. But this is a form of rematriation, thinking about land as mother and returning to this relationship where you are tending to the health and well-being of the mother so that she can better attend to your health and well-being in return. Restoring that symbiotic relationship is profoundly impactful for families.”

Sovereignty and self-determination

Avalos is also curious to learn how soil remediation might contribute to sovereignty and self-determination for Indigenous people, especially those living in cities. Today, roughly 70% of American Indians and Alaska Natives live in urban areas—but this population is often overlooked.

“How is it that Native people can act as stewards of land, even though they often have less control over that land?” Avalos says. “They may be renters, they may be living in very polluted areas. But just to have that little bit of agency.”

Denver sits on the ancestral homelands of the Arapaho, the Cheyenne, the Ute and other tribes. But, today, the city is home to Indigenous people with a wide array of tribal backgrounds. This diversity largely stems from a federal program that pushed Native Americans away from reservations and into urban areas in the 1950s and ‘60s, as part of the government’s broader attempts to force Indigenous people to assimilate. Denver was one of nine relocation sites located across the country.

“For folks living in cities that have been impacted by displacement and disconnection, I want to document, how are they reconnecting? How are they re-Indigenizing?” Avalos says.

As the world grapples with pressing environmental issues, many Indigenous people are now looking to their sacred ways of life for answers. Long displaced from their lands and separated from their traditional cultural practices, they’re returning to ancestral medicines, deepening their relationships with all living creatures and opening themselves up to the knowledge that’s embedded in the land.

Avalos and Garcia hope their soil remediation project might play a small role in that broader work.

“We can’t count on the treaties, we can’t count on our federal leadership or even our state leadership to really protect us and protect land,” says Garcia. “My generation is looking at a grim future. We’re at a place where many of us are asking, how do we embody the Indigeneity and our sacred ways of knowing and being, and mesh that with an Indigenous futurism that will heal the planet and our people?”

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Mushroom mycelium can clean up the soil. Can it also help Indigenous people reconnect to the land? 51�Թ�� researcher Natalie Avalos aims to find out.

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Top image: mycelium growing on a log (Photo: iStock)

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