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A new (and not extinct) moth emerges from the Florida Scrub

Rachel Sauer — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 14:20:20 +0000

A new (and not extinct) moth emerges from the Florida Scrub Rachel Sauer Fri, 04/24/2026 - 08:20

Rachel Sauer

After publishing about a moth he’d only seen in collections, ̽��Ƶ researcher Ryan St Laurent travels to Florida and spots the elusive—and previously thought extinct—Cicinnus albarenicolus

On the second of two nights he spent deep in central Florida forests last week—dripping sweat, shrouded in swarms of flying ants and June beetles, well into the 20 kilometers he’d eventually walk monitoring his four traps—Ryan St Laurent saw the thing he’d come, but didn’t really expect, to see.

To anyone who hadn’t spent a dozen years studying it, the sandy brown wisp might have looked like a fragment of autumn leaf or a shred of bark, but St Laurent immediately recognized Cicinnus albarenicolus. He’d just never seen the moth alive before, let alone in the wild.

In fact, until November, St Laurent thought this new species of Mimallonidae, or sack-bearer moth, might be extinct (DNA barcoding of moth specimens in collections had identified it as a new species). Before November, it hadn’t been seen in its extremely limited Florida habitat since the 1960s.

Ryan St Laurent, a ̽��Ƶ assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and CU Museum curator of entomology, traveled to Florida last week to try finding the elusive Cicinnus albarenicolus moth.

When news came that a collector had found one of the presumed-extinct moths in a sliver of white sand scrub in the Florida peninsula, St Laurent, a University of Colorado Boulder assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and CU Museum curator of entomology, had just finished writing a recently published paper describing the new C. albarenicolus, comparing it with other Mimallonidae species.

“I had written that it might be extinct, so I had to revise the paper and bring in some additional co-authors,” St Laurent says. Then he learned about an upcoming scheduled burn in one of the very few areas where C. albarenicolus conceivably could be found, so he booked a flight to Florida.

“I don’t think this is the only population in existence, and I don’t think it’s going to get burned up and go extinct,” St Laurent said several days before flying to Florida. “But I want to go out there and at least try to get a couple of tissue samples in the event we can’t find it again.”

Needles and haystacks don’t adequately encompass his aim; he was trying to find a small brown moth in a 450,000-acre forest.

‘These look really cool’

But how does a scientist first steer his scholarship to a little-known and barely studied family of moths, a member of which may or may not have been extinct? For St Laurent, the path began during undergrad at Cornell, where he studied entomology and worked with museum insect collections. The collections manager encouraged him to find something that nobody else was working on, “but there was a lot of competition in butterflies and moths—it’s a popular group as far as insects go,” he explains.

“I remember going through the collection, asking, ‘What am I going to work on?’ when I came across this particular family (of moth). I was like, ‘Well, these look really cool,’ but when I went to try to curate them, I realized there were no resources, no books, no field guides, nothing.”

Perfect, he thought. If nobody was working on that family, he would. He wrote his undergraduate honors thesis then pursued his PhD in charting the phylogeny, or tree of life, of this small group of moths. “Once you have a tree of life, you can start talking about them and you can contextualize them as a member of bigger butterfly and moth groups,” he says.

It wasn’t until St Laurent got to the Smithsonian for his postdoc that he had a chance to order mitochondrial sequencing on one of the Mimallonidae specimens that he’d identified as different from its family members. That sequencing showed it was genetically different from anything else in its family, so when St Laurent came to ̽��Ƶ, he continued the project of sequencing specimens from various collections.

The female Cicinnus albarenicolus moth (left) that flew out of the darkness of Seminole State Forest in Florida last week, and Ryan St Laurent (right) holding the twig on which it perched.

Most of the specimens were many decades old, compounding the challenges of genetic sequencing. St Laurent worked with a Canadian lab that specializes in barcode sequencing—a technique that focuses on short sequences of genes—sending them prepared samples for testing. In one instance, St Laurent sampled the leg of one of the few recent specimens, which he put on a sequencing plate and sent to Canada in January, looking for further evidence that this was, in fact, a new species of moth.

The genes didn’t lie: It was.

A moth flies out of the darkness

As if discovering a new species isn’t a big enough deal, discovering that it’s not extinct after all is enough to drive any researcher from the lab and straight into the Florida thickets.

Among the things that make Mimallonidae interesting, St Laurent says, is they belong to a superfamily with ancient lineage—more than 100 million years old—99% of which live in Central and South America. Only a handful of species in the family occur in North America, but the ones that do are (mostly) quite common.

Ryan St Laurent set up four insect traps with moth-attractant LED lights.

Except, of course, for C. albarenicolus—endemic to small patches of Florida Scrub, made rarer still by habitat loss. “Only 10% of Florida Scrub is left,” St Laurent said before leaving for Florida, “and the scrub that does still exist is super isolated. We don’t know if those little pockets can support this moth at all.”

Through some scientific sleuthing and mapping the locations where collection specimens had been found, St Laurent narrowed possible C. albarenicolus habitat to six sites in the Florida peninsula: eastern Ocala National Forest, Weeki Wachee north of Tampa, Cassia and Cassadaga northeast of Orlando, the Archbold Biological Station on the Lake Wales Ridge in Central Florida and coastal southeast Florida in Port Sewall. Each location has or had the rare Florida Scrub habitat—specifically white sand, open canopy scrub, which C. albarenicolus seemed to favor.

“This particular family of moths, there’s a reason nobody studies them,” St Laurent said before leaving for Florida. “They’re really hard to find and really hard to raise in captivity. I’ve done field work all over the Americas, and I’m lucky if I see one or two a night in Central or South America. I’m very used to not being able to find these things, which is why I do a lot of work in collections.”

Still, he had to try. He flew to Orlando and then drove to the township of Cassia. He had previously seen a specimen in the American Museum of Natural History in New York City that had been found near Cassia in 1964. “I knew about that specimen, I knew the scrub in that area because I went hiking there years ago in grad school and found caterpillars, but I didn’t rear them,” St Laurent says, so that’s where he started.

The first night, he set up four traps resembling tall, narrow tents with a specialized moth-attractive LED inside—the aim being to lure insects to the light. Other insects arrived in the thousands, but no C. albarenicolus.

The second night, he set up at a spot in the nearby Seminole State Forest where the trees open to an expanse of sandy soil and scrubby plants. At 8:49 p.m., “I’m standing there and this kind of pinkish moth comes out of the darkness, and it was very recognizable. Nothing else really looks like that, moth-wise.”

After that first moth, two more came. St Laurent knew he was seeing females, which fly right after sunset, so he collected them and raced them to his colleagues at the University of Florida in Gainesville. Collecting live females means collecting eggs, with the attendant potential of rearing them in the lab. If his colleagues are able to rear them, he says, he will receive progenitors and offspring.

As for seeing a moth that he’d only previously seen as a collection specimen, “I was just like, ‘Wow, I was right! It is here!’ My suspicion is the moth is all over the place in Ocala, but it’s rare and diffuse there. It’s a much more concentrated site in Seminole, surrounded by hardwood hammocks and the St. Johns and Wekiva rivers, so you have a better chance of finding something there.”

The site in the Ocala National Forest is scheduled for a controlled burn associated with Florida scrub jay management, “which is probably good in the overall grand scheme of things,” St Laurent says, “but since we don’t know what the moth eats or when it’s active or its annual lifecycle or habitat requirements, I don’t know if the burning regime is appropriate.

“(The moth is) part of Florida’s multimillion-year history, and Florida is the only place in the world where it occurs. It may not be some top-down species that’s controlling the habitat, but it’s still a very important representative of the one-sixth of its family that’s found in North America, and this one is the only species endemic to the U.S. in this family. It’s a part of Florida heritage and U.S. heritage, and we need to protect it.”

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After publishing about a moth he’d only seen in collections, ̽��Ƶ researcher Ryan St Laurent travels to Florida and spots the elusive—and previously thought extinct—Cicinnus albarenicolus.

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̽��Ƶ turns stop-out success initiative into permanent program

Rachel Sauer — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:15:11 +0000

̽��Ƶ turns stop-out success initiative into permanent program Rachel Sauer Thu, 04/23/2026 - 18:15

Bradley Worrell

Designed for students whose lives interrupted college, CU Complete offers a renewed path to graduation, building on the success of Finish What You Started

When a student leaves college before finishing their degree, the reasons are rarely simple. Health crises, family emergencies, financial difficulties, academic setbacks or other major life circumstances can interrupt even the most determined plans.

At the University of Colorado Boulder, students who once left college before completing their degree now have a structured pathway back—one built on a successful federal initiative and reimagined as a permanent program.

For the past four years, the ̽��Ƶ Division of Continuing Education, in partnership with the Office of Undergraduate Education, has overseen the Finish What You Started (FWYS) program, which was designed to help former students who demonstrate financial need complete their degree. The $3.1 million in four-year grant funding for that program was made possible by federal COVID-era relief dollars and distributed throughout the state of Colorado.

Michelle Pagnani (left), Blazey Heier (center) and Ann Herrmann (right) with the Division of Continuing Education.

Now, as Finish What You Started winds down, its success is informing a redesigned and expanded effort: CU Complete. This successor program aims to carry forward the most effective elements of FWYS while creating a longer-term, institutionally funded model for degree completion, says Blazey Heier, director of student services in the Division of Continuing Education, who has been involved with both FWYS and CU Complete.

FWYS proved its worth

From the beginning, Heier says, FWYS targeted a student population that higher education often struggles to serve: stop-out students.

“Students who stop out have a pattern of stopping out multiple times. They re-engage and then stop out again,” she says. “Finish What You Started was designed to interrupt that cycle.”

The results were striking.

By Fall 2025, 117 students had graduated through FWYS, with nine additional students expected to graduate in May, out of 182 students admitted overall, says Michelle Pagnani, program manager for CU Complete and a senior academic and career coach. She notes that this figure represents a 69% graduation rate—which is especially significant given the many challenges students faced upon returning, she says, such as family caregiving responsibilities, managing full-time jobs and dealing with serious health issues.

“Given the obstacles that this student population faces, we’re really proud of that number,” Pagnani says. She also notes that some of the students who were a few credits short of finishing their degree through FWYS will have the opportunity to do so with the new CU Complete program.

Why FWYS worked

While the scholarships provided through FWYS were substantial, Continuing Education staff emphasized that funding alone was not the primary driver of success.

Finishing what she started

For Valeria Mendoza Frutos, the road to graduation didn’t follow a traditional, linear route. Instead, by her own account, it’s been a journey marked by stops and starts, academic setbacks and personal loss, but also one ultimately shaped by resilience and the realization that it’s OK to ask for help.

Read her story

Students in the program received coordinated support that included academic and career advising, academic and career coaching, financial aid consulting and assistance coordinating with other campus offices and advisors. For many students, FWYS was the first time they had experienced such a personalized, sustained engagement from the university, says Ann Herrmann, a program manager and academic advisor in Continuing Education who conducted outreach and advising for the FWYS program.

“For many of the students, their stop-out may have been a real turning point for them—a traumatic event like a death in the family or a financial catastrophe that prevented them from continuing their education,” she says. “Back then, they may not have known about support and resources that were available. When they came back (as a result of FWYS), they’ve talked about how helpful the wrap-around support was and how vital it’s been for them to finish.”

Herrmann notes FWYS graduates have completed degrees across a wide range of disciplines, including computer science, molecular biology, psychology, economics and geography. Multiple FWYS graduates have gone on to graduate school, while others have used their degrees to move up in their organizations or start new careers.

CU Complete gets rejuvenated

As a successor to FWYS, CU Complete is not entirely new. The program initially launched in 2009 as a limited scholarship initiative offering one-time awards of $500 or $1,000, depending upon the recipient’s credit load. Over time, however, rising tuition costs and staff changes reduced its impact.

“If someone found us, we would tell them about the scholarship, but we weren’t doing outreach and we didn’t have dedicated support staff,” Heier explains.

Heier says Finish What You Started changed that trajectory. Seeing the results of intensive advising and coaching and sustained financial support, Continuing Education leaders made the case for reimagining CU Complete as a comprehensive, high-touch program modeled on the best features of FWYS.

Beginning in Fall 2026, the redesigned CU Complete program will offer semester-over-semester scholarships for up to six semesters total, paired with structured support services. Pagnani says the program will provide $1,000 per semester, with the opportunity to earn an additional $250 per term, after the student’s first semester, based upon academic performance.

Funding for CU Complete comes directly from Continuing Education revenue, making it a long-term institutional commitment rather than a time-limited grant, Heier notes. Meanwhile, unlike FWYS, CU Complete is open to both in-state and out-of-state students and does not require students to demonstrate financial need—recognizing that many students face challenges that are not captured by traditional aid metrics.

“That piece is really important,” Heier says. “A lot of times people may not fall into traditional financial-need thresholds, but that doesn’t mean they can just pay for classes—especially when paying for classes means working fewer hours.”

Eligibility is intentionally focused on students who are close to finishing. Pagnani says eligible students must have 90 or more total credits, including at least 45 from ̽��Ƶ; have been away from CU for at least two consecutive years; must be pursuing their first bachelor’s degree; and must be able to graduate within six semesters.

Herrmann says CU Complete is currently accepting applications for the revamped CU Complete program, with eight students thus far who are eligible to participate in the fall semester.

Measuring what comes next

CU Complete is launching with clear metrics in mind, Heier says. Leaders plan to track completion within the six-consecutive-semester window, compare outcomes to both FWYS and the earlier version of CU Complete and assess return on investment.

At the same time, Pagnani emphasizes that qualitative outcomes—student confidence, persistence and sense of belonging—remain central to the program’s mission.

Pagnani says CU Complete reflects a broader shift in how educational institutions think about adult learners and degree completion. The program recognizes them as individuals whose lives changed—and who still want to finish what they started, she says.

Expanding services and building community

While CU Complete mirrors FWYS in many ways, it also aims to expand beyond it.

Pagnani says plans include a one-credit onboarding course for returning students, planned for Fall 2027, as well as expanded access to career assessments such as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, Strong Interest Inventory and Clifton Strengths.

“We’ve been able to offer those for free and it’s been a really meaningful benefit,” she says.

CU Complete students also will have access to a neurodiversity support group and shared resource space for adult learners who identify as having ADHD, dyslexia or autism. As the group’s facilitator, Pagnani describes it as a way for students to build community, share their stories, give and receive advice and, in some cases, normalize experiences that may have contributed to them stopping-out previously.

Along these lines, a major area of focus for CU Complete administrators is community building.

“At our graduation party last year, students were saying, ‘Why didn’t I know these people before?’” Heier says. Administrative demands had limited opportunities for peer connection under the grant, but CU Complete is being designed with more space for that work, she adds.

Meanwhile, Herrmann says she foresees CU Complete as strengthening the bonds between returning students and the university, as happened previously with Finish What You Started graduates. She notes several of those graduates shared how completing their degrees allowed them to fully claim their identity as CU alumni—attending campus events, participating in the community and seeing themselves as part of the university in a way they never could before.

“Students tell us they finally feel like they belong at CU,” she says.

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Designed for students whose lives interrupted college, CU Complete offers a renewed path to graduation, building on the success of Finish What You Started.

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Finishing what she started

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 23:20:41 +0000

Finishing what she started Rachel Sauer Thu, 04/23/2026 - 17:20

Bradley Worrell

Against the odds, ̽��Ƶ student Valeria Mendoza Frutos prepares to graduate in May, thanks in part to the Division of Continuing Education’s Finish What You Started program

As Valeria Mendoza Frutos approaches graduation day in May, excitement mixes with a twinge of uncertainty.

“It’s a little scary,” she admits. “Actually facing the reality that I’m going to be done with school in a month—I don’t know what’s going to happen after.”

It’s a feeling many graduating college students likely share, but for Mendoza Frutos, getting to the finish line didn’t follow a traditional, linear route. Instead, by her own account, it’s been a journey marked by stops and starts, academic setbacks and personal loss, but also one ultimately shaped by resilience and the realization that it’s OK to ask for help.

For Valeria Mendoza Frutos, the road to graduation next month had been a journey marked by stops and starts, academic setbacks and personal loss, but also one ultimately shaped by resilience and the realization that it’s OK to ask for help.

Feeling out of place: college, COVID and self-doubt

Mendoza Frutos first arrived at the University of Colorado Boulder in Fall 2020—during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Her introduction to college life was different than what she had imagined. Most classes were taught remotely, she and other students were housed in hotel rooms rather than dorms and the sense of community she hoped to find was largely absent.

“It was a very weird semester,” she recalls. “Most of my classes were online and everything just felt off.”

What’s more, after graduating from KIPP Northeast Leadership Academy, a small, tightknit high school in northeast Denver with a graduating class of about 80 students—many of whom were Hispanic—the transition to a large, predominantly white institution felt overwhelming at times.

“I felt like I didn’t belong,” she says. “Being Hispanic and surrounded by mostly white students was a huge change for me. There was that voice in my head telling me, ‘You don’t belong here.’”

That sense of not belonging followed her into the classroom. Even when professors encouraged participation, Mendoza Frutos says she struggled with self-confidence. “They would always say ‘there is no such thing as a dumb question,’ but I never believed that,” she says.

Outside of school, Mendoza Frutos’s life was equally complicated. After her first year at ̽��Ƶ, she decided to move back home and commute to college. A self-described “mom’s girl,” she was deeply involved in helping raise her younger siblings while her mother worked.

“People laugh,” she says, “but I tell my mom I see her more like my partner, because I was the one at home helping raise my brother and sister.”

Family demands, financial pressures, the challenges of balancing work and school and the stress of commuting all weighed heavily upon her, and her grades suffered, leading to academic probation. Then came a devastating personal loss: the death of her beloved grandmother in 2022.

“I just lost it,” she says. “I was going through a lot and that was the semester I had all Fs.”

As grief took its toll, Mendoza Frutos stepped away from college altogether. For nearly a year, she wasn’t sure she would ever return.

“I think in my head I was like, ‘I’ll go back one day,’” she says, ‘but it took a lot for me to understand that I needed help.”

‘It’s OK to accept help’

That help arrived unexpectedly in early 2024, when Mendoza Frutos received an email from Ann Herrmann, program manager and advisor for Finish What You Started, a federal initiative designed to support students who paused their education and wanted to return that was administered at ̽��Ƶ by the Division of Continuing Education (see related story below/at right/at left). Herrmann had reviewed Mendoza Frutos’s academic profile and reached out with a simple but powerful message: Help was available.

Valeria Mendoza Frutos (center, white dress) with her family.

“At first, I wasn’t sure,” Mendoza Frutos recalls. “But we met and I told her everything I had been through. She didn’t judge me; she just helped me figure out a path forward.”

Herrmann helped Mendoza Frutos withdraw from classes she previously started but had not completed, which were hurting her GPA, and worked with her to rebuild a realistic academic plan. Soon after, Mendoza Frutos was paired with Michelle Pagnani, a senior academic and career coach for Finish What You Started.

Although hesitant at first—“I kind of ghosted her a few times,” Mendoza Frutos admits, but adds that Pagnani’s persistence made the difference. “She was always calling me, like, ‘Hey, when do you want to reschedule?’”

Over time, the relationship grew into one of trust and encouragement. “Now me and Michelle and me and Ann have a really good bond,” she adds.

With their guidance, Mendoza Frutos returned to school step by step—starting with summer classes, then fall, then continuing forward. If coursework ever became overwhelming or life intervened, she says Pagnani and Herrmann were there to offer assistance. And for the first time, she says, she felt supported not just academically, but personally.

“I realized it’s OK to accept help,” she says. “It doesn’t make you less than; it just makes your journey easier. That’s what the program did for me.

“Being a first-generation college student made it harder. I didn’t really have anyone guiding me before, but Ann and Michelle gave me the support I needed.”

Advancing in school and at work

While rebuilding her academic life, Mendoza Frutos was also building her career. In February 2024, she began working as an intake specialist for the Frank Azar law practice, fielding calls from clients and potential clients, after connecting with the company at a LinkedIn job fair.

Mendoza Frutos says the work required accuracy, empathy and strong communication skills. She says her bilingual skills became an asset almost immediately, as being able to connect with Spanish-speaking clients helped the firm respond faster and build trust.

CU Complete

As Finish What You Started winds down, its success is informing a redesigned and expanded effort: CU Complete. This successor program aims to carry forward the most effective elements of FWYS while creating a longer-term, institutionally funded model for degree completion.

Learn more

Despite juggling a full-time job with a demanding courseload, her dedication stood out. The firm closely tracks performance metrics including contracts sent, follow-through and client satisfaction—all of which she excelled in. As a result, after about a year on the job, Mendoza Frutos was promoted to the role of investigator, which she attributes to her strong work ethic.

“I’m very dedicated and passionate when I like something—and I really enjoy my job. I like learning and there’s always something new to learn at work,” she says. “This job feels very fulfilling.”

Equally important was how her employer supported her as a student—something she had not experienced before. Mendoza Frutos says she left a previous job after it would not accommodate her schedule once she planned to return to campus to complete her degree.

When she asked her current employer if they could temporarily reduce her work hours so she could concentrate on finishing college, they accommodated her, she says, adding that flexibility has allowed her to succeed in both school and work.

Today, Mendoza Frutos is completing a degree in Spanish for health professions, with a certificate in health resilience. For now, she plans to continue working for the law firm after graduation, where she sees opportunity for growth and advancement.

At the same time, the idea of attending law school—once unimaginable—now feels possible. That shift came during a quiet moment with Pagnani, who once casually guided Mendoza Frutos into the Wolf Law Building under the guise of taking a campus walk.

“I didn’t finish alone. And now I know—I don’t have to do everything by myself.”

“She didn’t tell me her plan,” Mendoza Frutos says, laughing. “But standing there, getting information, I realized that someone outside my family believes I could do this.”

For a first-generation student who once felt invisible, that belief mattered.

“It made me very emotional,” she says. “It was like, damn—you really do care about me.”

Looking ahead: moving forward

In May, Mendoza Frutos will walk across the graduation stage with family in attendance, including relatives traveling from Texas. Her mother is even planning a graduation party. It will mark not just the completion of a degree, but a journey defined by resilience, growth and the power of support.

Looking back, Mendoza Frutos is clear about one thing: Without Finish What You Started, she would not be graduating. “If it wasn’t for that email, I wouldn’t be here.”

There are many beneficial programs on campus, Mendoza Frutos notes, but it’s the people behind them that make the difference. “I’m very lucky to have Ann and Michelle,” she says. “They really care.”

As she looks toward the future—continuing in her career and possibly pursuing law school one day—Mendoza Frutos carries a hard-won lesson.

“I didn’t finish alone,” she says. “And now I know—I don’t have to do everything by myself.”

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Against the odds, ̽��Ƶ student Valeria Mendoza Frutos prepares to graduate in May, thanks in part to the Division of Continuing Education’s Finish What You Started program.

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All photos courtesy Valeria Mendoza Frutos

How important is good sleep after a head injury?

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 21:46:46 +0000

How important is good sleep after a head injury? Rachel Sauer Tue, 04/14/2026 - 15:46

Blake Puscher

Research suggests that disrupted or fragmented sleep after a traumatic brain injury not only interferes with the healing process but also has long-term consequences for brain health

Millions of Americans, and far more people worldwide, report sustaining a traumatic brain injury (TBI) each year. While detection and treatment of TBI have improved over time, this has resulted in new challenges, because survivors may face additional health problems over time as a consequence of their injuries. These problems can include cognitive impairment and even neurodegeneration, including Alzheimer’s. Considering this, there is an increased interest in what factors determine how well TBI patients recover.

Rachel Rowe, an assistant professor of integrative physiology at the University of Colorado Boulder, has investigated this question, along with a number of researchers from The Ohio State University and the University of Arizona College of Medicine, in a recent study linking low-quality sleep following traumatic brain injury to cognitive impairment, persistent inflammation and delayed healing.

Rachel Rowe, a ̽��Ƶ assistant professor of integrative physiology, collaborated on research linking low-quality sleep following traumatic brain injury to cognitive impairment, persistent inflammation and delayed healing.

The study used mice as a controlled experimental model to examine how sleep fragmentation interacts with traumatic brain injury, following the National Institutes of Health Guidelines for the Care and Use of Laboratory Mice, and with approval from Ohio State’s Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee.

Sleep fragmentation, inflammation and microglia

The study did not look at total sleep loss, but instead at sleep fragmentation, which happens when sleep is repeatedly interrupted. Even brief awakenings can prevent the brain from staying asleep long enough to reach the deeper, more restorative stages of sleep. When sleep is broken up many times throughout the night, people may spend less time in these restorative phases, which are important for physical recovery and brain health. Unfortunately, fragmented sleep is common and can be caused by everyday factors such as noise, hospital monitoring, discomfort or changes in temperature.

“For instance,” Rowe says, if someone is in the hospital for a moderate brain injury, “then there are a lot of people coming in, they’re checking monitors, they’re doing activities that could disrupt the sleep of a person.”

Stress can also affect the quality of sleep. “We have got a lot of things in our society that disrupt our sleep,” Rowe says, and people do not always prioritize restful sleep after an injury. These types of disturbances may influence recovery following brain injury.

One reason for this is inflammation, which is a potential determiner of the long-term results of TBI, particularly whether it will result in neurodegeneration. Brain inflammation is an innate immune response initiated by cells called microglia. Similar to a fever, inflammation does not directly target infections, damaged cells or other threats but rather makes the body inhospitable to them. This allows for a quick response to potentially life-threatening challenges, but it can also damage the body if it goes on for too long. One reason that could happen is if the microglia are primed.

When the brain faces some kind of stress, like from an injury or from sleep fragmentation, the microglia become primed, meaning they respond more strongly to subsequent challenges.

“There is some memory in your immune system,” Rowe explains. “That is how vaccinations work. In the case of a brain injury, if it is mixed with sleep fragmentation, it is what we call a two-hit model.” When both stressors come in short succession, “that can change what the microglia are doing,” potentially resulting in a heightened or prolonged inflammatory response in the brain.

Preparation and testing

The mice were split into four groups. Some mice were given traumatic brain injuries using lateral fluid percussion injury, a well-established experimental model used to study TBI in rodents. Other mice were not given traumatic brain injuries, but were put through the same preparation process, so the only difference was that they went uninjured.

Additionally, some mice experienced sleep fragmentation while others did not. Ultimately, the groups were traumatic brain injury (TBI) with sleep fragmentation (SF), TBI without SF, uninjured with SF, and uninjured without SF. This design allowed the researchers to examine the independent and combined effects of injury and sleep disruption.

Sleep fragmentation was achieved through disturbances that happened automatically every two minutes for five hours per day during the early light phase, when mice normally obtain most of their sleep. All mice experienced a simulated light/dark cycle where each half lasted 12 hours. Sleep fragmentation began an hour before the end of the dark period and ended four hours after the beginning of the light period.

“Mice are nocturnal,” Rowe says, “so the study was designed to fragment their sleep right at the beginning of the light period, which is when mice normally get most of their sleep. In many ways, it’s similar to repeatedly waking a person just as they are trying to fall asleep at night.”

The mice’s sleep, including both when they were asleep and how long they stayed asleep, was measured using specialized piezoelectric sensors. This technology has been popularized recently through its use to generate electricity from people walking on piezoelectric tiles in places with heavy foot traffic in Japan. The sensors from the study work according to the same principle, transforming pressure from the mice’s movements into electrical signals.

“Sleep is a time when the brain can heal, and if that is disrupted, the healing process can be disrupted too,” says ̽��Ƶ scientist Rachel Rowe. (Photo: Mart Production/Pexels)

“When a mouse drops into sleep,” Rowe explains, “their breathing gets really rhythmic at 3 hertz.” The frequency of pressure created by that breathing was distinguished from the way mice breathe when they are resting using an algorithm.

Sleep fragmentation continued for 14 days following injury. After this period, mice were allowed to recover with normal sleep conditions, and researchers evaluated behavioral and molecular outcomes. One of the behavioral assessments used was the Morris Water Maze, a common test of spatial learning and memory in rodents. In this task, mice learn to locate a hidden platform in a pool using spatial cues in the environment. Their ability to remember and efficiently navigate to the platform reflects spatial memory performance.

How good sleep improves outcomes

When tested in the Morris water maze, mice with TBIs who also experienced sleep fragmentation used random search strategies, indicating that they did not learn the cues or that they did not remember them. This means that sleep fragmentation after this type of injury could impair spatial learning and memory.

“If there are cognitive deficits, then the mouse is looking at those cues, but it does not know which one is near the platform. It is just searching randomly because it does not know what it is supposed to be doing,” Rowe says.

Researchers also looked at what was happening inside the brains of the mice. They found that when brain injury was combined with disrupted sleep, the brain showed stronger signs of inflammation and less activity in the genes involved in repairing and rebuilding connections between brain cells. These connections, called synapses, allow brain cells to communicate with each other and are important for recovery after injury. In other words, poor sleep after a brain injury appeared to increase inflammation while slowing some of the brain’s natural repair processes. In contrast, mice that had a brain injury but were able to sleep normally showed stronger signs of these repair pathways being activated.

There were 14 days for the mice to recover from sleep fragmentation before these results were measured, and they had 30 days to recover from the injury itself. This indicates that the consequences were long-term or chronic.

“When we are looking at rodents,” Rowe says, “their lifespan is much shorter than humans’.” In mouse studies, researchers often consider about one month after injury to represent a chronic time point. “So, when we see effects at 30 days in a mouse, it suggests that the biological changes are lasting well beyond the immediate injury period.”

While animal models cannot directly predict human timelines, these findings indicate that sleep disruption shortly after a brain injury may have long-term consequences for recovery.

“The chronic time period is when you start thinking about longer-term consequences of brain injury,” Rowe says. If inflammation persists beyond the initial injury phase, even at lower levels, it can create an environment that interferes with normal brain recovery. “You can start to see sustained inflammatory signaling, stress on neurons and changes that may contribute to neurodegenerative diseases over time.”

In summary, when combined with sleep fragmentation, TBI can weaken spatial learning and memory, cause persistent inflammation and prevent proper healing. If this inflammation continues for long enough, it can cause serious, permanent damage to the brain, potentially resulting in long-term neurological consequences or pathology associated with neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s.

“Sleep is a time when the brain can heal,” Rowe says, “and if that is disrupted, the healing process can be disrupted too.” Ultimately, the study shows that “if you are not protecting sleep after a concussion or brain injury, there are some long-term consequences through inflammatory pathways, and that can delay your healing process.”

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Research suggests that disrupted or fragmented sleep after a traumatic brain injury not only interferes with the healing process but also has long-term consequences for brain health.

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Debating America’s power—and peril—in a time of instability

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 16:59:45 +0000

Debating America’s power—and peril—in a time of instability Rachel Sauer Tue, 04/14/2026 - 10:59

Bradley Worrell

Veteran national security advisors John Bolton and Susan Rice sparred over whether America is committing “superpower suicide,” headlining the Conference on World Affairs week

“The United States is not committing superpower suicide,” veteran national security advisor John Bolton told a capacity audience gathered Monday evening in the University of Colorado Boulder’s Glenn Miller Ballroom. He paused, then added a qualifier, “So far.”

Seated a few feet away, veteran national security advisor Susan Rice offered a very different take.

“Sadly and dangerously,” she said, “the United States, under the current administration, is indeed in the process of committing superpower suicide.”

Susan Rice (left) and John Bolton (second from right) with Jennifer Schubert-Akin (second from left), chairman and CEO of The Steamboat Institute, and Chancellor Justin Schwartz (right).

The stark disagreement between the two policy experts set the tone for a wide-ranging debate, during which the pair clashed over the extent to which America’s status as the world’s sole superpower has been damaged. Monday’s debate, sponsored by The Steamboat Institute and the Bruce D. Benson Center for the Study of Western Civilization, headlined ̽��Ƶ’s 78th Conference on World Affairs week.

While the debate’s title—“Is the United States is in the process of committing superpower suicide?”—was deliberately provocative, what emerged during the roughly two-hour debate was a respectful disagreement on certain subjects and a fair amount of common ground between Bolton, a staunch Republican, and Rice, a lifelong Democrat.

Bolton and Rice both have extensive experience shaping American foreign policy for U.S. administrations. Bolton was a national security advisor during President Trump’s first term in office and was U.S. ambassador to the United Nations from 2005 to 2006. Rice’s previous roles in government include serving as a U.S. national security adviser (2013–17), U.S. ambassador to the United Nations (2009–13) and domestic policy adviser (2021–23).

Opening salvos contrasted views

In her opening remarks, Rice issued a sweeping indictment of the Trump administration. She accused the administration of undermining the “five key pillars” of America’s postwar superpower status: military strength, economic power, alliances, domestic resilience and soft power.

“On each of these five dimensions, we are far weaker today than we were even 18 months ago,” she argued. She specifically accused the administration of politicizing the Pentagon and purging senior officers, implementing an unpredictable tariff policy, damaging the European alliance and openly threatening allies. She also took the administration to task for making cuts to research funding, attacking universities, expressing hostility to public health institutions, dismantling USAID and rolling back environmental protections.

Bolton did not dispute that American foreign policy under Trump—as well as previous administrations—had gone badly wrong. What he rejected was the claim that the damage was fatal.

“We have made multiple mistakes since the end of the Cold War,” he said, arguing that both political parties share responsibility. After the Soviet Union collapsed, Western leaders mistakenly believed history ended and rapidly reduced military spending, he told the audience, adding, “we have never recovered from that mistake.”

Bolton said U.S. leaders misunderstood Russian nationalism and ignored Vladimir Putin’s warnings that he viewed the Soviet collapse as a geopolitical tragedy. Failures to deter Russian aggression in Georgia and Ukraine flowed from that misreading, he said.

John Bolton (left) and Susan Rice (right) discussed whether the United States is committing "superpower suicide" during a Conference on World Affairs event Monday evening.

Meanwhile, China represents another long-running error, Bolton said. American officials assumed economic integration would produce political liberalization, but “we were wrong on both counts,” he said, warning that China today is more autocratic and more aggressive.

Yet Bolton insisted these failures—serious as they are—do not mean America’s greatest days are behind it.

As for President Trump, Bolton said, “We are suffering undeniably by his mistakes, but it is not superpower suicide. He is an aberration and will pass from the scene.”

United on alliances and the UN

Despite their opposing conclusions, Rice and Bolton did find agreement on the importance of alliances.

“NATO is the greatest alliance in human history,” Rice said, emphasizing its deterrent value and reminding the audience that Article 5, which regards an attack on one NATO member as an attack on all, had only been invoked once—following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States. Undermining NATO, she warned, benefits Russia and China.

“NATO is the envy of Russia and China, which is why they are trying to subvert it,” she said.

Bolton largely agreed.

“What has provided peace and security in the world since 1945 was American power and the system of alliances that we built,” he said. He dismissed the idea of a “rules-based international order” as a myth, arguing that stability came from American strength.

Their disagreement was on tone and trust. Rice said Trump’s threats regarding his desire to see the U.S. acquire Greenland and annex Canada and his transactional rhetoric have damaged allies’ confidence in America, while Bolton emphasized the long-standing failure of European allies to meet defense commitments, acknowledging that Trump’s confrontational style prompted allies to increase defense spending.

Bolton and Rice also agreed that the United Nations is largely dysfunctional, but disagreed about whether it can be fixed.

“The UN’s main political bodies are broken beyond usefulness,” Bolton said, while acknowledging some of its specialized agencies do valuable work.

“The UN is a mess, but we would be worse off without it,” Rice said. “The challenge is reform—not abandonment.”

As for China and its aspirations to reclaim Taiwan, Bolton argued that the United States should abandon its policy of “strategic ambiguity” regarding the island nation in favor of a stated commitment to defend Taiwan to deter possible Chinese aggression.

“I think if we lose Taiwan, even slowly, to China … all of East Asia and Southeast Asia are in real jeopardy, because our credibility would be shot beyond repair,” he said.

Rice did not offer an opinion as to whether the U.S. should formally commit to defend Taiwan but she said Trump’s foreign policy regarding Asia is distracted.

Susan Rice (left) and John Bolton (right) during Monday night's Conference on World Affairs discussion.

Experts divided on Iran

Iran exposed the deepest philosophical split between the two national security experts.

Bolton argued that a hostile regime bent on acquiring nuclear weapons and supporting terrorist networks ultimately leaves America with only one option: “If a regime that’s hostile to the United States can’t be persuaded or forced to change its behavior, regime change is the only option.”

Rice forcefully disagreed.

Noting that she would welcome regime change in Iran, she added, “Regime change through the barrel of a gun virtually never works … and it definitely never works without a ground invasion.” Preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons was best pursued through diplomacy rather than sustained military escalation, she argued.

Bolton said he believes that, as a result of recent U.S. strikes on Iran’s leadership and military sites, the Iranian regime is at its weakest point since it took power in 1979 and it could experience a “slow-motion collapse” before the end of the year if the U.S. applies sufficient pressure.

Rice countered that by taking out the country’s leadership in a U.S.-Israeli first strike, Iran’s new leaders are now willing to do whatever they believe is necessary to remain in power—which has made Iran more dangerous.

What Bolton and Rice did agree on is that the United States currently has not clearly improved its strategic position against Iran.

“That spirit—open inquiry, civil discourse and the exchange of ideas across differences—is the fundamental role of universities in the United States and exactly what the Conference on World Affairs was created to advance."
Chancellor Justin Schwartz

The U.S. and Iran are now engaged in brinkmanship, waiting to see if their opponent blinks, Rice and Bolton agreed. “If it depends upon Trump’s resilience, we’re screwed,” Bolton said, drawing laughter from the crowd. Trump fired Bolton during the president’s first term due to sharp disagreements over foreign policy.

The Steamboat Institute allowed those in attendance and watching online to take a poll as to whether they believe the United States is committing superpower suicide. Before the night’s debate, 77% of those casting votes said the country is committing superpower suicide, 9% said it is not and 14% were undecided. After the debate, 75% of respondents said the country is committing superpower suicide, 13% said it is not and 12% were unsure.

CWA designed to foster civic debate

Kicking off Monday’s debate, ̽��Ƶ Chancellor Justin Schwartz noted that higher education is often criticized for failing to platform diverse political opinions.

“Tonight, we are here and we are pushing back on that perception,” he told the audience, adding,

“That spirit—open inquiry, civil discourse and the exchange of ideas across differences—is the fundamental role of universities in the United States and exactly what the Conference on World Affairs was created to advance. At the University of Colorado Boulder, we believe democracy depends on our willingness to debate hard questions with rigor and with civility. Tonight, that belief is alive and visible.”

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Veteran national security advisors John Bolton and Susan Rice sparred over whether America is committing “superpower suicide,” headlining the Conference on World Affairs week.

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Top image: Susan Rice (left) and John Bolton (right) during Monday night's Conference on World Affairs discussion. (All photos by Glenn Asakawa/̽��Ƶ)

‘A home for the humanities, a home for the liberal arts’

Rachel Sauer — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 22:55:07 +0000

‘A home for the humanities, a home for the liberal arts’ Rachel Sauer Fri, 04/10/2026 - 16:55

Rachel Sauer

Hellems Arts and Sciences building reopens Friday following an almost three-year renovation that enhanced its accessibility, sustainability and role as the heart of the arts and humanities at ̽��Ƶ

A while back, third-year student Natalie Cleary was on her way to a Shakespeare class in the Engineering Center when she bumped into a friend—an engineering major—who was perplexed by her presence and asked her, “What are you doing here?”

It’s not that she wasn’t welcome, but she’s an English creative writing major, and she was far from the Hellems Arts and Sciences building—the heart of arts and humanities at the University of Colorado Boulder. In a way, she was far from home.

"For most students, Hellems is literally where their ̽��Ƶ journey begins," said Daryl Maeda, interim dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.

Friday afternoon, then, was a homecoming, as Hellems officially reopened following an almost three-year renovation that saw the 105-year-old building become more accessible, more sustainable and more welcoming and expand its role as “a home—a home for the humanities, a home for the liberal arts and for the unending work of understanding the human experience,” said Daryl Maeda, interim dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, during a reopening ceremony on the steps in front of the Hellems main entrance.

“We do live in a moment that sometimes questions the value of a liberal arts education and the profound thinking that this building represents. I want to say very clearly that the questions explored here have never been more important: How do we understand our history to help us navigate our future? How do we find common cause across cultures and languages? How do we reason thoughtfully about what is right and what is true and what is ethical and what has integrity? These are the questions the world urgently needs answered, and Hellems is where ̽��Ƶ says, ‘We believe in these questions, we invest in them and we honor the people who ask them.’”

More than just a building

Hellems’ reopening Friday was imbued with particular significance because it happened during ̽��Ƶ’s 150th-anniversary year, a time to celebrate the university’s past and to envision its future. Hellems plays a significant role in both.

When it opened in 1921, it was the first campus building designed by architect Charles Klauder in what has become the university’s signature—and iconic—Tuscan vernacular style, which has aesthetically defined the university for a century. It was named in honor of Fred Burton Renney Hellems, who served as dean of the College of Arts and Sciences for 30 years, beginning in 1899.

Maeda noted that about 85% of undergraduate students take at least one class in Hellems during their time at ̽��Ƶ, and 56% of all first-year students take a class at Hellems during their first semester, “so for most students, Hellems is literally where their ̽��Ƶ journey begins. It’s a shared experience that unites students and alumni across many generations.”

Chancellor Justin Schwartz observed that there are moments on a university campus when a building reopening feels like something much more. Hellems, he said, is not just where a student's experience at the university begins, “but where the ideas of the university take root, where perspectives are challenged and where intellectual confidence begins to take shape.”

Schwartz praised the state of Colorado, whose leaders committed 40% of the funds for the $105.2 million total renovation cost. That public investment, he said, affirms that the humanities and the liberal arts are a public good, essential to civic life, economic vitality and a society that is capable of making thoughtful, informed decisions.

The Hellems renovation "demonstrates that we can honor the character of a place while dramatically improving how it performs for the future,” said Chancellor Justin Schwartz.

Further, Schwartz praised the renovation’s significant improvements in sustainability, which reduce the building’s energy use by 68% while still adding air conditioning for the first time in its history. The renovation also preserved more than 80% of the building’s original clay roof tiles, which “demonstrates that we can honor the character of a place while dramatically improving how it performs for the future,” Schwartz said.

“Taken altogether, these choices reflect something larger than just a renovation. They reflect our commitment to stewardship—stewardship of the public investment that made this happen, stewardship of this historic space that all of you who had a class in here previously can reflect on and stewardship of our core academic mission that defines ̽��Ƶ. It also reflects a clear belief that the significance of a building isn’t just the building; it’s what happens within it.”

Schwartz noted classrooms designed for flexibility, shared spaces that invite students to stay and greatly increased accessibility that reflects a commitment to dignity, independence and ensuring that everyone can participate in the life of the university. “This is a renovation guided by the idea that we put students first,” he said.

‘A home away from home’

As the center of arts and humanities on the ̽��Ƶ campus, Hellems is home to the departments of history, English, linguistics and philosophy, as well as the Anderson Language and Technology Center and the Colorado Shakespeare Festival. In fact, Klauder returned to campus in 1938 to design the building wings framing the courtyard that’s home to the Mary Rippon Outdoor Theatre, where Colorado Shakespeare Festival performances happen.

The Hellems renovation also reflects a commitment to the arts in the four commissioned works of original art now on display.

For Cleary, “Hellems has been the breath of fresh air I needed on campus this semester,” she said, adding that before it reopened, her study spots were growing stale, and she was zig-zagging all over campus to attend classes and meet with professors. Now, she said, she’s at home in the building’s wide-open spaces and natural light and is there most days—often making a beeline for the cozy new study booths.

“Hellems is a home away from home,” she said, “and the heart of the College of Arts and Sciences is beating stronger than ever.”

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All photos by Glenn Asakawa/̽��Ƶ

One safety step sparks another

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 22:15:23 +0000

One safety step sparks another Rachel Sauer Tue, 02/10/2026 - 15:15

Bradley Worrell

Research from ̽��Ƶ environmental economist Grant Webster finds that wildfire risk mitigation and proactive evacuation preparation are complementary

The 2025 Los Angeles fires, the 2023 Lahaina Fire in Hawaii and the 2018 Camp Fire in northern California were rapid-moving wildfires that resulted in 196 combined fatalities, tens of thousands of displaced residents and billions of dollars in property damage.

Emergency preparedness experts have long recognized that wildfire risk mitigation and proactive evacuation efforts can both play important roles in lessening the risk of danger to people and property. And yet, previous research focused on those two efforts independently of one another, says Grant Webster, an environmental economist and postdoctoral research associate with the Institute of Behavioral Science at the University of Colorado Boulder.

Seeking to bridge that gap, Webster and his fellow researchers at the U.S. Forest Service and U.S. Geological Survey analyzed household survey data from the Wildfire Research Center (WiRē) collected in 25 wildland-urban interface (WUI) communities across five Western states, specifically examining both mitigation and preparedness measures.

Grant Webster, a postdoctoral research associate with the Institute of Behavioral Science and ̽��Ƶ PhD graduate in economics, and his research colleagues find that wildfire risk mitigation and proactive evacuation preparation are complementary.

“Our interest was looking at whether there’s a relationship between them. Is there a trade-off, like some people deciding, ‘I’m really prepared to evacuate but I’m not going to mitigate my home,’ or vice versa?” he says.

After evaluating their findings, Webster and his co-authors determined that those two strategies are not competing priorities but instead are mutually reinforcing behaviors. They explain their conclusion in a recently published paper in Ecological Economics,

“When people think about their risk and take action in one area, they are more likely to take action in the other,” he explains. “There’s a spillover between the two.”

Webster says this means that a homeowner who takes proactive mitigation measures—such as trimming the vegetation around their home, clearing the area of combustibles (such as chopped wood) and upgrading building materials to make their home more fire resistant—are statistically more likely to plan safe evacuation routes, prepare “to-go” bags, identify where the household will evacuate to and talk with neighbors about evacuation strategies.

The finding also holds in reverse: Households that take no action in one area often take no action in the other.

“That’s the troubling part,” Webster says. “People living in the riskiest properties are often the least prepared to evacuate.”

Why would a household neither mitigate nor prepare to evacuate?

Webster says his study controls for factors such as income, risk perception and information sources. None of these fully explains the gap.

“It’s likely something unobserved, potentially simply not thinking about wildfire risk,” he says. “If people aren’t engaged with the issue—if they haven’t talked with neighbors or professionals, or if they haven’t experienced a fire—they’re less likely to do either mitigation or evacuation planning.”

Experience is a powerful motivator

The study also examined which households were most likely to have evacuation plans in place. Webster says three patterns emerged. First, people who have evacuated before—or who have lived through a close call—are significantly more likely to prepare. Second, households that understand their vulnerability tend to be more proactive. And third, conversations with neighbors or wildlife professionals can prompt homeowners to act.

“Talking with others gets people thinking,” Webster says. Whether it’s a community meeting or a casual conversation about defensible space, social interaction increases preparedness, he adds.

Interestingly, income was not associated with evacuation planning. Webster says the research found wealthier households were no more likely to have evacuation plans than middle class or lower-income households.

While the study found that all mitigation actions correlate with evacuation preparedness, Webster says a few stood out more strongly: clearing vegetation, replacing combustible siding and addressing attached combustibles, such as wooden decks.

̽��Ƶ researcher Grant Webster found that income is not associated with wildfire evacuation planning; wealthier households are no more likely to have evacuation plans than middle class or lower-income households. (Photo of 2023 Lahaina Fire: Wikimedia Commons)

Still, he cautions against viewing any single action as the “gateway” to preparedness.

“It’s not that there’s one magic measure that will make someone start planning,” he says. “It’s the overall process of thinking about risk and engaging with mitigation that appears to encourage evacuation preparedness.”

So, does that mean mitigation always naturally leads to evacuation preparedness, or does the evacuation preparedness sometimes lead to mitigation efforts? Webster says the question is a bit like the one posed as to which comes first: the chicken or the egg?

“In the paper, with our data, we look only at the direction of mitigation leading to evacuation preparedness. We can’t say anything causal the other way. Hazard literature suggests mitigation usually comes before preparedness, but in practice it could go either way,” he says. “We’re not saying it always does; we just estimate the causal effect in that direction.”

It’s also difficult to interpret from the study how large an impact risk mitigation has on evacuation preparedness for households, Webster says.

“For example, the results suggest that if a household were to change the distance to close vegetation around their home from 5 to 30 feet to over 100 feet, this would result in a household completing one more evacuation preparation action,” he says. “Although certain mitigation and evacuation actions require different levels of effort, making it difficult to quantify a typical effect.”

Implications for authorities and community organizations

Because the study reveals strong spillover effects, Webster says it offers validation for wildfire programs that address mitigation and evacuation together.

“There are teams out there talking to residents about both defensible space and evacuation plans,” he says. “Our findings show that is a good approach.”

Equally important, Webster says, is that even programs that focus on just one area—such as mitigation—are not crowding out the other.

“If you’re spending resources talking about evacuation preparedness, you’re not making people less likely to mitigate,” he explains. “And if you’re talking about mitigation, you’re not reducing the likelihood that they’ll plan for evacuation. People can—and do—take both actions.”

Webster emphasizes that the paper is written primarily for practitioners—fire departments, emergency managers and local governments—that need evidence-based guidance when designing public education programs. Webster’s research is designed to give those practitioners a road map to:

Pair mitigation messaging with evacuation preparedness, as they reinforce each other and improve overall community resilience.
Target outreach to households with no experience or engagement, as they are the most likely to be unprepared in both areas.
Encourage neighbor-to-neighbor conversations, as social networks are powerful tools for spreading risk awareness.
Recognize that income is not a predictor. Preparedness campaigns should include all demographics equally.

“Once we collect and aggregate the data and provide it to the practitioners—those people working on the ground—they can better inform their programs and their policies to deal with the risks in their specific community,” he says. For many at-risk communities, especially rural ones, budgets and personnel are limited, so practical advice that can be easily shared is especially valuable, he adds.

More fires, more need for research

For Webster, this research is particularly timely.

“It’s not that there’s one magic measure that will make someone start planning. It’s the overall process of thinking about risk and engaging with mitigation that appears to encourage evacuation preparedness.”

“Wildfire risk is definitely increasing throughout the country and around the world, due to a variety of factors, including climate change,” he says. “With these fast-moving fires, like in California, it’s really important for people to be ready to evacuate quickly and also to mitigate their home so it’s less likely to be destroyed.”

In addition to the danger of increasing temperatures associated with climate change, Webster says there are two other primary wildfire risk factors: the historical suppression of fires, which has resulted in an accumulation of fuels at risk of catching fire, and the expansion of communities into fire-prone areas, putting more people and properties at risk.

Meanwhile, Webster says he sees the potential for scholars to produce more research on this topic as new data becomes available.

“Our dataset is always growing,” he says. “That allows us to replicate earlier studies on a larger scale and understand the changing dynamics of preparedness.”

He says further research may explore how specific education strategies influence behavior, or how emerging technologies (such as real-time risk maps or AI-driven alerts) shape community responses.

For now, Webster says one message is clear: Proactive steps matter—and households that take action in one area are likely to take action in another. As Webster puts it, “Improving engagement—getting people to think about their wildfire risk—is one of the most powerful tools we have.”

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Research from ̽��Ƶ environmental economist Grant Webster finds that wildfire risk mitigation and proactive evacuation preparation are complementary.

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Top image: U.S. Forest Service

Researchers learn new lessons from old butterflies

Rachel Sauer — Fri, 06 Feb 2026 18:00:00 +0000

Researchers learn new lessons from old butterflies Rachel Sauer Fri, 02/06/2026 - 11:00

Alexandra Phelps

Research co-authored by ̽��Ƶ PhD graduate Megan E. Zabinski and evolutionary biology Professor M. Deane Bowers reveals how museum butterfly specimens, some almost a century old, can still offer insight into chemical defense of insects and plants

You’re sitting in a field, a garden or another outdoor space, basking in a beautiful summer day. Clouds drift across the sky when something catches your eye. You turn to see a butterfly, its delicate wings and vibrant coloring shifting as it moves from flower to flower. For a moment it’s there, but soon, it moves too far away for you to see.

At first glance, butterflies appear to be just simple, dainty creatures that fly around feeding on plants. For University of Colorado Boulder PhD graduate Megan E. Zabinski and evolutionary biology Professor M. Deane Bowers, however, butterflies are anything but simple. Beneath their wings lies a complex system that plays an integral role in their survival.

In recently published research, ̽��Ƶ PhD graduate Megan E. Zabinski (left) and evolutionary biology Professor M. Deane Bowers (right), emphasize the value that museum specimens have in current scientific research.

In a recently published study in the Journal of Chemical Ecology, Zabinski and Bowers researched how two Euphydrays butterfly species—E. phaeton and E. anicia—sequester certain chemical compounds, a process by which organisms capture and store substances from their host plants to defend themselves against their enemies. The researchers found that they were able to understand how these butterflies sequester substances using both historic specimens as well as fresh ones.

Their project points to the value museum specimens can have in scientific research. By comparing historic butterfly specimens from ̽��Ƶ’s Museum of Natural History (CUMNH) with freshly collected and laboratory-reared butterflies, their research demonstrates the benefits, as well as the limitations, of using preserved insects to study chemical defenses decades after collection.

Hatching a plan

Although museum collections house billions of specimens, only a small fraction are used in research after they are acquired. Recognizing this gap inspired Zabinski to begin her research. While Zabinski was still a graduate student, an encounter with Bowers helped shape the trajectory of her academic career.

“Deane came up to me one day—I was in the EBIO club—and she told me she had a job for me. And I thought, ‘A job! You mean I can quit waiting tables at Applebee’s?’”

This opportunity allowed Zabinski to explore her interest in insects and plant-insect interactions within a laboratory setting.

“I absolutely loved being in the lab, doing the physical work with my hands, (whether it was) being able to be outside in the field or looking after the plants,” she says.

Working alongside Bowers—whose research also focuses on how insects interact with their environments—Zabinski began developing her own research questions. She specifically focused on how butterflies in different developmental stages consume and store defensive chemicals to use them later.

Zabinski became interested in whether museum butterfly specimens—which have rarely been investigated and examined for their chemical defenses—could still be helpful.

“We thought about how detecting sequestered defenses in museum specimens really has rarely been done,” she says. “The world of sequestration hadn’t really delved into museum collections. So, we were curious if there was utility there.”

The project was made possible in part by Bowers’ extensive research background and personal butterfly collection, which is housed at CUMNH. The collection includes the species used in the study. When combined with outside specimens, this collection, which includes the species used in the study, allowed Bowers and Zabinski to enrich their understanding of the butterflies.

The Euphydryas anicia butterfly is able to sequester compounds that plants create in defense against herbivores. (Photo: Robert Webster/Wikimedia Commons)

“There has been work done on detecting chemical compounds in plants,” Bowers says. “But there had been less done on insects, and Megan’s thesis had centered on looking at how this particular group of compounds in my lab has worked on particular compounds. We thought it would be really interesting to see if we could find them in old specimens.”

For Zabinski, the combination of Bowers’ expertise and insects available for research made this experiment uniquely valuable.

“It’s kind of the perfect storm for a good experiment. You have a colony in the lab; you also know where there is a field lab where you can get fresh specimens. You know that the museum also has them, but one of the species we had sequestered a high amount, so we thought that … even if there was some degradation, we would still be able to detect them,” she says.

Crawling toward a new understanding

Zabinski and Bowers analyzed specimens from two checkerspot butterfly species in the genus Euphydryas: Euphydryas anicia and Euphydryas phaeton. The species were selected because they are known for their high sequestration ability, abundance in the CUMNH entomology collection and the ease of obtaining live adult specimens. Their research aimed to better understand how the insects use and store these compounds after consuming them as larvae.

Both species sequester iridoid glycosides (IGs), which Zabinski explains are “compounds created by the plants in defense against the herbivores. They’re trying not to get eaten, but there are certain insects— including these butterflies—that capitalize off this process.” Bowers adds, “I’ve tasted (iridoid glycosides), and they’re really bitter. So they are a really good defense against predators and diseases.”

“They’ve been able to find a way to store these compounds in their own bodies and then they can confer some defense against predators,” Zabinski says.

In an initial pilot experiment, the researchers chemically extracted from only one set of wings—a forewing and a hindwing—from historic specimens to determine whether IGs could be detected from the wings alone. Previous experiments have determined that, because in butterfly wings there’s hemolymph (a circulatory fluid similar to blood), it’s possible to detect IGs there. Unfortunately, the results showed extremely low concentrations. To obtain detectable amounts, they found it necessary to analyze both the body and a pair of wings together. For documentation and future research, the set of right wings from each specimen was removed and preserved.

With their methodology established, they chose six E. phaeton specimens from the CUMNH that had been collected from 1936–1977. For comparison, E. phaeton larvae were collected from Burlington County, Vermont, brought back to Boulder and raised in the laboratory with their host plant, white turtlehead, Chelone glabra. Once the butterflies reached adulthood, they were freeze-killed and analyzed for their IG content.

Zabinski and Bowers also examined nine historic E. anicia specimens collected between 1933–1998. Fresh adult E. anicia were collected from Crescent Meadows in Eldorado Springs, Colorado, freeze-killed and immediately underwent extraction for chemical analysis. Although it’s almost impossible to tell what plant the freshly caught butterflies consumed as larvae, the field they were collected from is known to have four catalpol-containing host plants. Catalpol, an IG that is found in these plants, allowed the researchers to determine whether the butterflies were sequestering these compounds, even if they weren’t sure what specific plant was the butterflies’ food source.

“Raising butterflies is not easy,” Zabinski says. “Plants can’t just be alive and available—they have to be high quality, because it’s been shown in studies with these plants that if the plant is not happy, it will not allocate energy to create those compounds. Then your caterpillars are not going to want to eat it.”

Shifting predetermined perceptions

Despite being preserved for decades, the historic specimens still contained detectable traces of sequestered chemical defenses. While IG concentrations were significantly lower in museum specimens than in freshly collected butterflies, Zabinski’s results demonstrate that even after nearly a century, chemical traces of larval diets can still be detected in preserved specimens.

Euphydryas phaeton butterflies have "been able to find a way to store (plant defense) compounds in their own bodies and then they can confer some defense against predators,” says researcher Megan E. Zabinski. (Photo: Joshua Mayer/Wikimedia Commons)

By focusing on the detectability of chemical compounds in older specimens, Zabinski’s work contributes to a broader discussion about preservation methods. She notes that museums often have little control over how donated specimens were originally collected or preserved. She says that despite this, “If you’re a collections manager and you have a researcher that conducted a research experiment and would like to donate them to your collection, if you have the capacity to access them, you’re probably not going to say ‘no.’”

Zabinski explains that previous research demonstrating how preservation methods affect scientists’ ability to detect DNA in museum specimens really shifted how people preserve certain organisms.

“Most insects are preserved as dried specimens, although some are preserved in alcohol,” she says. “In other groups of organisms, like vertebrates and other invertebrates besides insects, they’re often preserved in alcohol or formaldehyde. We now know that using formaldehyde destroys DNA, and so I think the protocol for specimen preservation has changed, trying to preserve the DNA. That’s been one change that museums have been trying.”

Zabinski’s project and others like it are creating an incentive. “As more research comes out about the extended museum specimen and the utility of specimens—particularly with standardization—museums will find a draw to create some uniformity,” she says.

Soaring to new heights

On that summer day, someone who was watching the butterflies move was Bowers.

“I started collecting insects when I was a little kid,” she says. “In undergrad, I did some independent research on butterflies, [and later,] in graduate school, I had a really supportive advisor who told me to spend my first summer going out and looking at butterflies and seeing if I could find some interesting questions. That’s been the focus of my research since.”

Recognizing Zabinski’s curiosity and potential, Bowers recalls, “I brought Megan into the fold.”

“We hear a lot about climate change and we don’t really hear about these smaller interactions that are quite literally under our feet every day,” Zabinski reflects. She says this paper offers one example of how museum specimens are not just remnants of the past, but tools that can be used to better understand specimens today. As technology advances and more research is conducted into chemical defenses, Zabinski says museum specimens can prove to be even more valuable in understanding how organisms interact with their environments long after they’ve been collected.

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Top image: Euphydryas anicia butterfly (Photo: U.S. Fish and Wildlife)

One photo, many whales: scholar captures research above the Arctic Circle

Rachel Sauer — Mon, 02 Feb 2026 21:31:55 +0000

One photo, many whales: scholar captures research above the Arctic Circle Rachel Sauer Mon, 02/02/2026 - 14:31

Cody DeBos

For ̽��Ƶ ecology and evolutionary biology alumna Emma Vogel, an award-winning photo captured a vital moment of research and science

Soft light slanted across the gray Norwegian sky, bouncing off the frigid water where Emma Vogel sat in a research boat. She had just helped her team tag a whale and was scanning the waves for the next group. It was a rare reprieve in what otherwise tends to be a chaotic venture.

She lifted her camera, but not for data collection this time. The scene was simply too vivid not to capture.

“I was super surprised about catching the little whale in the background of it, framed in the platform,” Vogel recalls. “That was a very, very nice surprise. I’m not often using my camera to take pictures of people, but the lighting was so atmospheric, I thought it would be a good shot.”

Emma Vogel, a 2016 ̽��Ƶ graduate in ecology and evolutionary biology, is a postdoctoral researcher at The Arctic University of Norway.

The photo, showing a researcher poised to launch a tracking tag set against a backdrop of swarming seabirds, went on to win Nature’s 2025 Scientist at Work photo competition.

For Vogel, a 2016 University of Colorado Boulder graduate, the image is more than an award-winner. It’s a snapshot of her life spent tracking giants of the ocean through the shifting currents of science and sustainability.

A path north

Vogel’s journey to the coast of Northern Norway, firmly situated in the Arctic Circle, began in Washington, D.C., but when it was time to go to college, the mountains of Colorado called.

“I thought Colorado looked beautiful. And I kind of always knew I wanted to do science or ecology, so it seemed like a perfect place for that,” she says.

During her time at ̽��Ƶ, Vogel studied ecology and evolutionary biology, exploring the impact of forest fires and regrowth. A semester abroad in Sweden opened her eyes to marine science.

“I got to take some more aquatic and ocean marine-based courses and I fell in love with the field.”

After graduation, Vogel spent two years working in animal welfare policy with the Humane Society of the United States. However, she felt drawn to do hands-on research.

That led her to Tromsø, Norway, where she earned her master’s and PhD and now works as a postdoctoral researcher at the Arctic University of Norway’s Arctic Sustainability Lab.

Fieldwork at the edge of the world

As one might imagine, life and research in the Arctic come with their own rhythms.

“Some of the unique, really wonderful things that maybe people wouldn't expect, is that it's such a diverse place, both the people and the ecosystems, the organisms that live here,” Vogel says. “We have a beautiful combination of mountains and ocean right in the same space.”

Fieldwork in this environment is both harsh and intimate. Vogel and her team spend weeks tracking and tagging humpback and killer whales in the fjords during the winter herring season. She says the process can be logistically easier than in other places because the whales stay close to the coast.

But the conditions are punishing.

“In the morning, we often need to shovel snow out of our boats before we can get started, and it’s cold enough where the seawater is freezing onto the boat. Temperatures are often well below zero while we’re out doing research.”

Luckily, Vogel has discovered something of a superpower.

“The thing that changed it for me was when I discovered battery-powered socks that you can put on a little cycle to heat up every 30 minutes,” she says with a grin. “They really make all the difference.”

Those socks come in handy during long days on the water when Vogel and her team are using air-powered tracking equipment to attach satellite transmitters to whales. The tags allow researchers to track their movements long after they disappear from the coast.

“Normally, once the whales get enough of the herring, we don’t know where they go. With the tags, we can see their movement patterns for a month to six months, depending on the species and tag,” she says.

From there, Vogel and her team can interpret the data to paint a clearer picture of what these oceanic giants do when they slip below the waves.

“We can figure out their behavior based on the data. If they’re slowing down and turning a lot in one area, we can say they’re possibly looking for food and foraging. If they’re traveling in a straight line really fast, then it’s kind of transiting behavior. For humpbacks, we’ve tracked them through a full migration. So, going down to the Caribbean and then back up to Norway and even up into the Barents Sea.

“These tags let us track them through the entire ocean and see things we otherwise wouldn’t be able to, which is, I think, really exciting.”

Emma Vogel's award-winning photo shows biologist Audun Rikardsen, her PhD advisor at The Arctic University of Norway, battling waves in a northern Norwegian fjord, aided by the glow from a nearby fishing trawler.

Data-informed decisions

Part of Vogel’s work in the Arctic Sustainability Lab involves turning movement data into better marine policy.

“We are working to create ways to use tracking data to help spatial planners consider these migratory animals when designing local marine protected areas,” she says.

It’s a tricky challenge. Protected zones often prioritize stationary habitats for sea grasses and corals (and the animals that rely on them), not animals that travel hundreds or thousands of miles every year. Vogel and her team hope to change that by giving planners reliable data to inform their policy decisions.

But her work isn’t solely focused on marine life. She’s also part of a project called the Coastal Barometer, which helps quantify the health and sustainability of Northern Norway’s seaside communities.

“We developed a website called the Coastal Barometer to offer different ways of looking at and considering sustainability. It lets people from different municipalities click on where they’re from and see where they’re performing well and where there needs to be improvement,” Vogel says.

The project includes metrics for biodiversity, water quality, carbon storage, tourism, economic resilience and even a unique measure called “sense of place” that considers how much people value their connection to the local land and sea.

The latter is more urgent than ever. While Vogel doesn’t want to attribute all changes in her community to climate change, she’s already seen worrying signs.

“This last summer and the summer before we had about a month of days that you were able to go hiking in shorts in the Arctic. That’s been rare since I came here in 2018. For now, they’re nice, but you don’t want it much warmer.”

Those summer days may be rare enough to feel like a novelty today. But for researchers like Vogel, they are a quiet warning that even in the planet’s most rugged corners, change is underway. Thanks to valuable data collected by humans who care, communities and conservationists can be equipped with tools to adapt to those changes.

Boulder foundation, global reach

Despite her current home being thousands of miles away, Vogel still sees her time at ̽��Ƶ as a defining chapter.

“It really set me up so well, I think, to be an interdisciplinary researcher. Not only taking science courses, but also exploring literature, communication, human geography. I even took a course about Vikings, which was quite fun,” she recalls.

That foundation has served her well in a career that now sprawls across ecology, community engagement and policy innovation. For students hoping to follow in her footsteps, Vogel has one piece of advice: “Genuine curiosity.”

“You need to really want to understand and be inquisitive,” she says. “To understand for the sake of understanding—not just taking your courses. Asking questions and not taking things at surface value, just always wondering, ‘Why? Why? Why?’ can really get you far.”

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For ̽��Ƶ ecology and evolutionary biology alumna Emma Vogel, an award-winning photo captured a vital moment of research and science.

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Karolin Luger wins Vilcek Prize in Biomedical Science

Rachel Sauer — Mon, 02 Feb 2026 18:01:29 +0000

Karolin Luger wins Vilcek Prize in Biomedical Science Rachel Sauer Mon, 02/02/2026 - 11:01

The award recognizes ̽��Ƶ biochemist’s career dedication to the study of nucleosomes and groundbreaking discoveries

Karolin Luger, a distinguished professor of biochemistry and the Jennie Smoly Caruthers Endowed Chair of Biochemistry, has been awarded the 2026 Vilcek Prize in Biomedical Science.

The $100,000 award recognizes her career dedication to the study of nucleosomes—research that led to the groundbreaking capture of a high-resolution image of chromatin and resulted in the development of novel drug treatments for diseases including cancer.

The Vilcek Foundation Prizes in Biomedical Science honor immigrants who are leading advancements in biomedical research in the United States. Prize co-founder Jan Vilcek—whose research led to the development of the drug Remicade—established prizes to support distinct ingenuity in scientific inquiry.

Karolin Luger, a distinguished professor of biochemistry and the Jennie Smoly Caruthers Endowed Chair of Biochemistry, has been awarded the 2026 Vilcek Prize in Biomedical Science. (Photo: Vilcek Foundation)

Presented annually since 2006, the Vilcek Foundation prizes honor immigrant contributions to societal advancement in the United States and recognize excellence in the arts and sciences. Since the prizes program began 20 years ago, the Vilcek Foundation has awarded $9.6 million to individuals “whose perspectives, creativity and vision have enriched the United States.”

“The Vilcek Foundation community are unwavering champions of the immigrants and leaders who advance every facet of our culture,” said Vilcek Foundation President Rick Kinsel. “The United States is a nation defined by freedom of expression, imagination and opportunity. This 20th group of prizewinners demonstrates our unshakeable commitment to honor those who embody the spirit of resiliency that defines our country and society.”

Luger, who is an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, became interested in science at an early age, using a microscope to study the plants and soil in her garden at the microscopic level. She earned Bachelor and Master of Science degrees in biochemistry from the University of Innsbruck in Austria and a PhD in biochemistry and biophysics from the University of Basel in Switzerland before immigrating to the United States in 1990.

“I came (to the United States) to join this amazing scientific enterprise that is the envy of the entire world,” Luger said.

As an immigrant from Austria who has participated in international research collaborations throughout her career, Luger notes that cross-cultural perspectives are essential to continued scientific advancement.

“Diversity is key because everything becomes clearer and more three-dimensional when illuminated from all sides,” said Luger. “To borrow a concept from structural biology: You need to see ‘all orientations!’ This can only be achieved with a diverse workforce where people constantly question each other’s assumptions.”

‘The central dogma’

In her postdoctoral studies at ETH Zürich in Switzerland, Luger focused on the atomic structure of nucleosomes, the discovery of which would help scientists understand fundamental aspects of the human genome. After eight years of research, Luger and her colleague, Tim Richmond at ETH Zürich, published a groundbreaking paper that has influenced innumerable studies and changed how researchers understand the interactions of proteins within the nucleosome, how proteins are modified and how this controls gene activity.

Since its publication 28 years ago, the paper has been cited more than 12,000 times and is included in biology textbooks and classes as part of “the central dogma.”

Because of Luger’s discovery, many diseases have since been found to stem from mutations in the nucleosome, resulting in the development of successful drug treatments. Luger continues to study nucleosomes in her laboratory work.

“Like many others, my lab has built on this original discovery, and we continue to be surprised by the elegant and complicated ways in which DNA access is regulated by nucleosomes,” Luger said. “I am proud to have contributed a bit of beauty and knowledge to the world.”

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The award recognizes ̽��Ƶ biochemist’s career dedication to the study of nucleosomes and groundbreaking discoveries.

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