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How March went mad … for basketball

Rachel Sauer — Wed, 19 Mar 2025 17:12:17 +0000

How March went mad … for basketball Rachel Sauer Wed, 03/19/2025 - 11:12

Jared Bahir Browsh

The big business of the annual college basketball tournament, continuing with the second day of First Four games today, has been more than a century in the making

Every year, as the seasons shift from winter to spring, college basketball fans throughout the country prepare to watch 136 men’s and women’s basketball teams battle for their respective national championships.

Although the tournament starts with the “First Four” games for the men’s and women’s tournaments, respectively, the first two rounds that are played during the first weekend of the tournament have become an unofficial holiday marked by billions of dollars in decreased productivity as fans watch the first 48 games played in each tournament—during which teams vie to extend their seasons another week into the “Sweet 16.”

In the modern media age, this has become a tradition in our sports calendar, but it took several developments over the last half century for March to truly become mad.

Jared Bahir Browsh is the Critical Sports Studies program director in the 91�� Department of Ethnic Studies.

Basketball’s roots grew out of the college game, with James Naismith inventing the game in December 1891 to keep young men at the YMCA International Training School, which is now Springfield College, fit and occupied in the winter months. The game was soon introduced to women at Smith College, and by 1893 colleges and universities began forming teams—first playing against local amateur clubs before intercollegiate games began in 1894.

During this time, teams played under different rules, with some games featuring as many as nine players per side. By the turn of the 20th century, five-on-five became standard for men’s games, whereas women played six-on-six through most of the 1960s, with the last high school six-on-six tournament occurring in 1995 in Oklahoma.

The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) was formed in 1906 as the Intercollegiate Athletic Association of the United States (IAAUS) before taking its current name in 1910. The NCAA was formed in response to the prevalence of injuries in college football; President Theodore Roosevelt called for two conferences comprising top college football programs to address the injuries and deaths occurring in the game. The establishment of the NCAA led to a decades-long power struggle with the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) for control of intercollegiate sports.

As the NCAA wrested control over football from the AAU, basketball continued to be loosely organized under the AAU, which organized the first tournament in 1898. Although the tournament did not happen annually until after World War I, the AAU did organize several tournaments for the 1904 Olympics, during which basketball debuted as a demonstration sport. There was an amateur tournament, a separate college tournament and several tournaments for high school and elementary school players.

A battle for control

The battle for control between the AAU and NCAA continued through the early 1900s, although the latter’s commitment to basketball was questionable through the 1930s. However, the NCAA did begin organizing rules committees and established its first championship, in track and field, for the 1921 season.

The first annual college basketball tournaments were organized in successive years with the NAIA tournament, organized by Naismith, starting in 1937, the National Invitation Tournament (NIT) in 1938 and the NCAA tournament in 1939. Coincidentally, the term “March Madness” was coined by Henry V. Porter, a noted coach and inventor of basketball equipment, in reference to the Illinois high school basketball tournament the same year as the first NCAA tournament. Sports commentator Brent Musburger first used the term in reference to the men’s tournament in 1982.

The NIT, which took place at Madison Square Garden, was seen as the premiere tournament through the 1940s due to the national media presence in New York City. Temple University defeated the University of Colorado in the first NIT championship, with the Buffaloes returning to the championship and winning in 1940 over Duquesne University. Because the NIT occurred before the NCAA tournament, Colorado and Duquesne competed in both.

Clemson players celebrate a win over Arizona in the Sweet 16 round of the 2024 NCAA Tournament. (Photo: TigerNet.com)

The early 1950s featured two developments that further isolated each tournament, both involving the City College of New York (CCNY). CCNY became the first team to win both tournaments in the same year, with the championships of both tournaments occurring in Madison Square Garden in 1950. This double win led the NCAA to ban teams from competing in both tournaments in the same year.

Soon after, that CCNY team was implicated in a wide-ranging point shaving scandal, which involved bribery and match fixing. The school’s presence in New York provided bettors easier access to bookies and bookies greater access to players.

The NCAA held its finals in New York all but one year between 1943 and 1950, but after the scandal the championship never returned to Madison Square Garden, even as the NIT continued to call New York City home.

A growing NCAA

The next big developments occurred in the late 1960s and 1970s as the NCAA further established its control over the basketball postseason. In 1968, UCLA and Houston played in the “Game of the Century” in front of more than 52,000 fans in the Houston Astrodome. This game was a follow-up to the previous year’s semifinal matchup between the two teams, which pitted star players Lew Alcindor (now known as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar), who was recovering from an eye injury, and Elvin Hayes. The game was nationally televised and accelerated college basketball’s transition from a regional to a national sport.

In 1970, Marquette declined an invitation to the NCAA tournament after it was placed in the Midwest Region, where games were played in Fort Worth, Texas, rather than the Mideast Region, where games were played in Dayton, Ohio—significantly closer to Marquette’s campus in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In 1971, the NCAA declared that any team that is offered a bid to the NCAA tournament could not accept a bid to any other postseason tournament.

In 1975, after several top-ranked teams missed out on bids due to not winning their conferences, the tournament expanded from 25 teams to 32 teams to accommodate at-large bids from conferences, establishing a selection process and the anxiety of the “bubble.”

UCLA player Lew Alcindor (now Kareem Abdul-Jabbar), right, snags a rebound as Houston’s Elvin Hayes (44) makes a leaping rebound attempt in what was called the “Game of the Century.” (Photo: Associated Press)

Four years later, in 1979, the tournament expanded to 40 teams but conferences were still limited to two total teams in the tournament. The 1979 tournament championship pitted Magic Johnson’s Michigan State team and Larry Bird’s Indiana State team and is still the most-viewed championship in tournament history.

The tournament continued to grow in 1980, adding eight teams and removing the conference limits. At the time, the Big Ten, Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC), Pac-10 and Southeastern Conference (SEC) were college basketball’s power conferences, with teams in the Northeast and New England playing in the amorphous Eastern Collegiate Athletic Conference (ECAC), which operated four regional tournaments between 1975 and 1981.

Providence coach Dave Gavitt saw an opportunity to organize a new conference with teams connected to major media markets, leveraging the growth of television through cable and syndication to form the original Big East. As the Big East began play in the fall of 1979, a small Connecticut network—the fledgling ESPN—began broadcasting nationally; soon the conference and ESPN became partners in each other's growth. As ESPN sought programming, it also began airing the early rounds of the tournament, which previously aired only locally as national broadcasters refused to pre-empt their regular programming for the early-round games.

The Big East increased college basketball’s media visibility on cable television, particularly during the week in prime time, and aided in recruiting as it became one of the top conferences in college basketball. When the tournament expanded to 64 teams in 1985, three of the Final Four teams were from the Big East, with the eighth-seeded Villanova University defeating defending champion Georgetown University in the championship game.

Expanding tournaments

The first NCAA-sponsored women’s tournament occurred in 1982, with 32 teams facing off. Previously, the Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (CIAW) had established the first tournament in 1969, when women’s games were still under six-player rules. The last CIAW tournament featured five-on-five rules before the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW) took control of the tournament in 1971. Title IX, passed in 1972, accelerated the growth of women’s college sports well before the NCAA finally recognized the profitability of women’s basketball—10 years after the educational amendment was passed.

Kamilla Cardoso was named the NCAA Tournament Most Outstanding Player in 2024 after helping lead South Carolina to an 87-75 victory over Iowa, clinching the championship title. (Photo: Erik Drost/Wikimedia Commons)

Throughout the rest of the 1980s and 1990s, the men’s tournament remained fairly static even as the NCAA continued to evolve. After the 1984 Supreme Court decision NCAA v. Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma, which found that the NCAA’s television plans violated antitrust laws, the NCAA was no longer able to limit how often football teams could appear on television, ultimately allowing conferences to sign their own media contracts with broadcasters and leading to a massive conference realignment that continues today. This, in turn, led to the NCAA basketball tournament becoming the most valuable media property overseen by the association.

The women’s tournament expanded to 64 teams in 1994, and the last men’s Final Four to take place in a basketball venue was played in 1996; subsequent events have taken place in domed football stadiums. The tournament expanded to 65 teams in 2001 to accommodate the Mountain West Conference receiving an automatic bid reintroducing play-in games to the tournament.

A century of madness

As the tournament approached the new millennium, fans were offered new ways to watch it. In 1999, DirecTV offered a premium package allowing fans to watch all the games through the satellite service, a feature previously only available in sports bars. The same year, CBS broadcast the Final Four in high definition for the first time.

In 2003, work productivity took another hit as CBS partnered with Yahoo! to stream tournament games for the first time through the latter’s platinum service. CBS launched its own March Madness OnDemand Service the following year, giving fans access to games outside of the CBS broadcast for $9.95.

Seven years later, in 2010, the NCAA announced it was exploring expanding the tournament, even announcing it wanted to expand to 96 teams. At the same time, the NCAA began negotiations with several media networks on a new media deal. The association settled on expanding to 68 teams, establishing the “First Four” games in which the four lowest-ranked teams that earned automatic bids and the four lowest at-large teams facing off in play-in games. This accompanied a new combined television deal in which CBS and Turner Sports agreed to broadcast all games on CBS, TNT, TBS and TruTV.

In 2021, after Texas Christian University center Sedona Prince, who at the time was playing for the University of Oregon, posted pictures on social media highlighting the disparity between the fitness facilities for the women’s tournament compared to the men’s, the NCAA conducted a gender equality review. This led to the women’s tournament expanding to 68 teams and the March Madness branding being extended to the women’s tournament. Many still feel the women’s tournament is undervalued, especially after the 2024 Women’s Championship earned higher ratings than its male counterpart.

So, every March hope springs eternal for 136 teams, but for dedicated fans, the madness has been more than a century in the making.

Jared Bahir Browsh is an assistant teaching professor of critical sports studies in the 91�� Department of Ethnic Studies.

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The big business of the annual college basketball tournament, continuing with the second day of First Four games today, has been more than a century in the making.

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Communities working together for better air

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 06 Mar 2025 19:32:50 +0000

Communities working together for better air Rachel Sauer Thu, 03/06/2025 - 12:32

Jenni Shearston

Colorado is tackling air pollution in vulnerable neighborhoods by regulating five air toxics

The Globeville, Elyria-Swansea and Commerce City communities in metro Denver are choked by air pollution from nearby highways, an oil refinery and a Superfund site.

While these neighborhoods have long suffered from air pollution, they’re not the only ones in Colorado.

Now, Colorado is taking a major step to protect people from air pollutants that cause cancer or other major health problems, called “air toxics.” For the first time, the state is developing its own state-level air toxic health standards.

91�� researcher Jenni Shearston studies chemical exposure and health, measuring and evaluating the impact of air pollution on people’s well-being.

In January 2025 Colorado identified five air toxics as “priority” chemicals: benzene, ethylene oxide, formaldehyde, hexavalent chromium compounds and hydrogen sulfide.

The state is in the process of setting health-based standards that will limit the amount of each chemical allowed in the air. Importantly, the standards will be designed to protect people exposed to the chemicals long term, such as those living near emission sources. Exposure to even low amounts of some chemicals, such as benzene, may lead to cancer.

As a researcher studying chemical exposure and health, I measure and evaluate the impact of air pollution on people’s well-being.

Colorado’s new regulations will draw on expert knowledge and community input to protect people’s health.

Communities know what needs regulation

In your own community, is there a highway that runs near your house or a factory with a bad odor? Maybe a gas station right around the corner? You likely already know many of the places that release air pollution near you.

When state or local regulators work with community members to find out what air pollution sources communities are worried about, the partnership can lead to a system that better serves the public and reduces injustice.

For example, partnerships between community advocates, scientists and regulators in heavily polluted and marginalized neighborhoods in New York and Boston have had big benefits. These partnerships resulted in both better scientific knowledge about how air pollution is connected to asthma and the placement of air monitors in neighborhoods impacted the most.

In Colorado, the process to choose the five priority air toxics included consulting with multiple stakeholders. A technical working group provided input on which five chemicals should be prioritized from the larger list of 477 toxic air contaminants.

The working group includes academics, members of nongovernmental organizations such as the Environmental Defense Fund – local government and regulated industries, such as the American Petroleum Institute.

There were also opportunities for community participation during public meetings.

At public hearings, community groups like GreenLatinos argued that formaldehyde, instead of acrolein, should be one of the prioritized air toxics because it can cause cancer.

Additionally, formaldehyde is emitted in some Colorado communities that are predominantly people of color, according to advocates for those communities. These communities are already disproportionately impacted by high rates of respiratory disease and cancer.

Other members of the community also weighed in.

“One of my patients is a 16-year-old boy who tried to get a summer job working outside, but had to quit because air pollution made his asthma so bad that he could barely breathe,” wrote Logan Harper, a Denver-area family physician and advocate for Healthy Air and Water Colorado.

How is air quality protected?

At the national level, the Clean Air Act requires that six common air pollutants, such as ozone and carbon monoxide, are kept below specific levels. The act also regulates 188 hazardous air pollutants.

Individual states are free to develop their own regulations, and several, including California and Minnesota, already have. States can set standards that are more health-protective than those in place nationally.

Four of the five chemicals prioritized by Colorado are regulated federally. The fifth chemical, hydrogen sulfide, is not included on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s hazardous air pollutant list, but Colorado has decided to regulate it as an air toxic.

State-level regulation is important because states can focus on air toxics specific to their state to make sure that the communities most exposed to air pollution are protected. One way to do this is to place air pollution monitors in the communities experiencing the worst air pollution.

For example, Colorado is placing six new air quality monitors in locations around the state to measure concentrations of the five priority air toxics. It will also use an existing monitor in Grand Junction to measure air toxics. Two of the new monitors, located in Commerce City and La Salle, began operating in January 2024. The remainder will start monitoring the air by July 2025.

When Colorado chose the sites, it prioritized communities that are overly impacted by social and environmental hazards. To do this, officials used indexes like the Colorado EnviroScreen, which combines information about pollution, health and economic factors to identify communities that are overly burdened by hazards.

The Commerce City monitor is located in Adams City, a neighborhood that has some of the worst pollution in the state. The site has air toxics emissions that are worse than 95% of communities in Colorado.

Air toxics and health

The five air toxics that Colorado selected all have negative impacts on health. Four are known to cause cancer.

When state or local regulators work with community members to find out what air pollution sources communities are worried about, the partnership can lead to a system that better serves the public and reduces injustice.

Benzene, perhaps the most well known because of its ability to cause blood cancer, is one. But it also has a number of other health impacts, including dampening the ability of the immune system and impacting the reproductive system by decreasing sperm count. Benzene is in combustion-powered vehicle exhaust and is emitted during oil and gas production and refinement.

Ethylene oxide can cause cancer and irritates the nervous and respiratory systems. Symptoms of long-term exposure can include headaches, sore throat, shortness of breath and others. Ethylene oxide is used to sterilize medical equipment, and as of 2024, it was used by four facilities in Colorado.

Formaldehyde is also a cancer-causing agent, and exposure is associated with asthma in children. This air toxic is used in the manufacture of a number of products like household cleaners and building materials. It is also emitted by oil and gas sources, including during fracking.

Hexavalent chromium compounds can cause several types of cancer, as well as skin and lung diseases such as asthma and rhinitis. A major source of hexavalent chromium is coal-fired power plants, of which Colorado currently has six in operation, though these plants are scheduled to close in the next five years. Other sources of hexavalent chromium include chemical and other manufacturing.

Finally, long-term exposure to hydrogen sulfide can cause low blood pressure, headaches and a range of other symptoms, and has been associated with neurological impacts such as psychological disorders. Some sources of hydrogen sulfide include oil refineries and wastewater treatment plants.

Jenni Shearston is an assistant professor in the Department of Integrative Physiology.

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

Colorado is tackling air pollution in vulnerable neighborhoods by regulating five air toxics.

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Nationalism and diplomacy are inherent to international sporting events

Rachel Sauer — Fri, 21 Feb 2025 17:48:23 +0000

Nationalism and diplomacy are inherent to international sporting events Rachel Sauer Fri, 02/21/2025 - 10:48

Jared Bahir Browsh

The International Cricket Council Champions Tournament, beginning this week, highlights how national rivalries and geopolitical tensions can meet on playing fields

Courses in the Critical Sports Studies program in the Department of Ethnic Studies often start with the Great Sports Myth, a term coined by Jay Coakley, professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs. The myth is that sports are inherently good, and most experiences in sports are positive and do not need to be studied critically.

In combating this myth, we examine sporting nationalism with the playing field serving as a symbolic battleground between nations. As Pakistan prepares to co-host the International Cricket Council (ICC) Champions Tournament beginning this week, the nation's nationalistic rivalry with India comes to the forefront and reminds us that the competition on the field is often reflective of political tensions off of it.

Jared Bahir Browsh is the Critical Sports Studies program director in the 91�� Department of Ethnic Studies.

India and Pakistan’s political tensions date back to the British partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947, although ethnic and religious tensions predate the end of Britain’s colonization of the region. India has been a member of the ICC since 1926, with Pakistan joining the ICC soon after independence in 1952.

Sporting relations between the nations have faced a number of stoppages, while other countries have canceled test matches because of threats and actual violence against cricket teams, particularly in Pakistan.

The New Zealand cricket team canceled their remaining 2002 matches in Pakistan after a suicide bomb outside of their Karachi hotel, while other countries like Australia refused to tour due to similar concerns. In 2009, the Sri Lankan cricket team’s bus was fired on in Lahore during their test tour, which was scheduled after India pulled out of Pakistan following the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks. As a result, Pakistan lost the opportunity to co-host the 2011 ICC World Cup; the 2025 ICC Champions Tournament is the first international cricket tournament to be hosted by Pakistan since the 1996 ICC World Cup. India's refusal to play in Pakistan led to UAE being named as a co-host for India’s matches in the tournament, exemplifying continued tensions between the nations.

Yet diplomacy has been fostered through sport as well, including the peace initiatives of former Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, which led to the first matches between the nations in Pakistan in 15 years in 1999 and the Friendship Cups in Canada in the 1990s and 2000s.

Colonization and sporting tensions

Colonization has been at the core of sporting tensions between dozens of nations, including Britain and members of the Commonwealth like Ireland and Australia. Ireland in particular has used international sporting events as a forum for protest against Britain—most famously at the 1906 Intercalated Games in Athens, Greece. After being denied the gold medal in what many felt was a biased ruling by a judge from the United States, which followed the decision to force Irish athletes to compete on behalf of the United Kingdom, track and field athlete Peter O’Connor scaled a flag pole and unfurled an Erin Go Bragh flag, a symbol of the movement for Irish home rule.

The Olympics also have long been a nexus for sporting nationalism. One of the most distinct examples of this was at the 1936 Summer Games in Berlin. In spite of rising concerns over antisemitism under Hitler, the United States, led by USOC President Avery Brundage, and others agreed not to boycott the games in exchange for Nazi Germany suspending antisemitic messaging and the full enactment of the Nuremberg Laws until after the games.

Adolf Hitler saw the 1936 Summer Olympic Games as a forum to display Aryan supremacy through victory and spectacle, which included introducing the torch relay. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

Hitler saw the games as a forum to display Aryan supremacy through victory and spectacle. Television was introduced at the games along with the torch relay and the opening ceremony as an ostentatious show. The entire games were a primary example of “sportwashing,” which uses sport to improve public opinion of a nation or group.

Much like the India-Pakistan rivalry, a number of other geopolitical tensions have played out on various sporting fields and courts around the world. George Orwell published “The Sporting Spirit” in December 1945, a few months after the end of World War II, warning of the use of sport to encourage hyper-nationalism. Orwell was particularly critical of the Stalin regime’s use of sport to exhibit the Soviet Union and communism’s “superiority” over capitalism after the soccer team FC Dynamo Moscow toured Britain.

In 1952, the Soviet Union participated in its first Summer Olympic Games, setting off decades of displays of Cold War sporting nationalism on both sides of the Iron Curtain, but particularly exemplified by the competition between the USSR and the United States.

The Olympics became the largest stage for nationalistic competition. Every four years, the Cold War rivalries played out on the global stage of the Summer and Winter Olympics. Some of the most famous moments in Olympic history include the controversial end of the 1972 Olympic basketball final, during which the Soviet Union beat the U.S. team by one point under questionable rule interpretations, and the 1980 Miracle on Ice in the semifinal of the ice hockey tournament, when amateur U.S. players defeated the Soviet Union.

Both events exemplified the rivalry between these superpowers. The 1972 Olympics also included the tragic terrorist attack by Black September militants, leading to the murder of 11 Israeli athletes—an example of how ethnic-nationalism, sport and violence can intersect.

Boycott and protest

Boycotting sporting events and protest actions during competition have also been responses to various forms of nationalism and political tensions. The pending boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympic Games in Moscow by the United States intensified the attention on the competition between the USSR and the United States in Lake Placid during the Winter Games that year.

Recently, hockey reemerged as a forum for nationalism as the United States and Canada faced off twice in the National Hockey League (NHL)-run 4 Nations Face-Off. The tournament was limited to NHL players, so the teams were not technically the national teams of the countries included in the tournament. It did feature four of the five countries with the largest representation in the NHL (Russia was excluded due to the invasion of Ukraine), with the league leveraging nationalistic feelings between Finland and Sweden and United States and Canada. The heightened tension between the North American teams was due, in part, to comments by U.S. President Donald Trump regarding the annexation our northern neighbors. This may serve as a preview of the heightened nationalism around the 2026 Olympic men’s and women’s ice hockey tournaments, especially if Russian athletes are permitted to compete.

U.S. sprinters Tommie Smith (first place) and John Carlos (third place) raised their fists to protest U.S. segregation and racism during the medical ceremony for the 200-meter sprint at the 1968 Summer Olympics; Australian sprinter Peter Norman (second place) wore a badge for the Olympic Project for Human Rights. (Photo: Angelo Cozzi/Mondadori Publishers)

The Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc countries in turn boycotted the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. The 1980 boycott was triggered by the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan in 1979.

White nationalism and racial discrimination have also been a frequent motivator for protest and boycotts. The Olympic Project for Human Rights promoted a boycott of the 1968 games in Mexico City, with several athletes—including Kareem Abdul Jabbar—deciding not to go based on continuing discrimination of Blacks in the United States, lack of African American representation on the coaching staffs of Olympic teams, Muhammad Ali’s loss of his heavyweight championship due to his refusal to be drafted into the Vietnam War and apartheid policies in South Africa and Rhodesia.

Track and field athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos did decide to compete but famously raised their fists in protest after winning gold and bronze respectively in the 200 meters.

Apartheid policies also led to the South African Olympic Committee being expelled from the IOC in 1970. Prior to South Africa’s expulsion, several other organizations had banned the nation from hosting events as far back as 1934 due to their policies forbidding non-white participants to compete. After the New Zealand rugby team toured South Africa in 1976, 29 mostly African nations boycotted the Montreal Games that same year after the IOC refused to ban New Zealand.

This put pressure on Commonwealth countries to adopt the Gleneagles Agreement to expand the sporting boycott of South Africa. Taiwan also boycotted the 1976 games the day before the Opening Ceremony after the Canadian government’s refusal to recognize their nation as the Republic of China.

Sports like cricket and football are important cultural experiences in countries like Pakistan and India, but their presence is evidence of those countries’ colonial past and of nationalism emanating from the British Empire. Most British colonies around the world adopted the sport soon after occupation, serving as historical examples of cultural imperialism.

Since international competition started in the 19th century, sports like cricket and events like the World Cup can simultaneously bring people together and promote community while also inflaming nationalistic tensions. For over 70 years, the intense cricket rivalry between India and Pakistan has done both.

Jared Bahir Browsh is an assistant teaching professor of critical sports studies in the 91�� Department of Ethnic Studies.

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The International Cricket Council Champions Tournament, beginning this week, highlights how national rivalries and geopolitical tensions can meet on playing fields.

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National Bank Stadium in Karachi, Pakistan (Photo: Baseer Piracha/Wikimedia Commons)

It hits Earth like a bolt of lightning

Rachel Sauer — Mon, 10 Feb 2025 22:48:36 +0000

It hits Earth like a bolt of lightning Rachel Sauer Mon, 02/10/2025 - 15:48

Lauren Blum

Lightning strikes link weather on Earth and weather in space

There are trillions of charged particles—protons and electrons, the basic building blocks of matter—whizzing around above your head at any given time. These high-energy particles, which can travel at close to the speed of light, typically remain thousands of kilometers away from Earth, trapped there by the shape of Earth’s magnetic field.

Occasionally, though, an event happens that can jostle them out of place, sending electrons raining down into Earth’s atmosphere. These high-energy particles in space make up what are known as the Van Allen radiation belts, and their discovery was one of the first of the space age. A new study from my research team has found that electromagnetic waves generated by lightning can trigger these electron showers.

A brief history lesson

At the start of the space race in the 1950s, professor James Van Allen and his research team at the University of Iowa were tasked with building an experiment to fly on the United States’ very first satellite, Explorer 1. They designed sensors to study cosmic radiation, which is caused by high-energy particles originating from the Sun, the Milky Way galaxy, or beyond.

91�� scientist Lauren Blum and her research team has found that electromagnetic waves generated by lightning can trigger electron showers in Earth's atmosphere.

After Explorer 1 launched, though, they noticed that their instrument was detecting significantly higher levels of radiation than expected. Rather than measuring a distant source of radiation beyond our solar system, they appeared to be measuring a local and extremely intense source.

This measurement led to the discovery of the Van Allen radiation belts, two doughnut-shaped regions of high-energy electrons and ions encircling the planet.

Scientists believe that the inner radiation belt, peaking about 621 miles (1000 kilometers) from Earth, is composed of electrons and high-energy protons and is relatively stable over time.

The outer radiation belt, about three times farther away, is made up of high-energy electrons. This belt can be highly dynamic. Its location, density and energy content may vary significantly by the hour in response to solar activity.

The discovery of these high-radiation regions is not only an interesting story about the early days of the space race; it also serves as a reminder that many scientific discoveries have come about by happy accident.

It is a lesson for experimental scientists, myself included, to keep an open mind when analyzing and evaluating data. If the data doesn’t match our theories or expectations, those theories may need to be revisited.

Our curious observations

While I teach the history of the space race in a space policy course at the University of Colorado, 91��, I rarely connect it to my own experience as a scientist researching Earth’s radiation belts. Or, at least, I didn’t until recently.

In a study led by Max Feinland, an undergraduate student in my research group, we stumbled upon some of our own unexpected observations of Earth’s radiation belts. Our findings have made us rethink our understanding of Earth’s inner radiation belt and the processes affecting it.

Originally, we set out to look for very rapid—sub-second—bursts of high-energy electrons entering the atmosphere from the outer radiation belt, where they are typically observed.

Lightning can generate electromagnetic waves known as lightning-generated whistlers, which can travel through the atmosphere and out into space. (Photo: iStock)

Many scientists believe that a type of electromagnetic wave known as “chorus” can knock these electrons out of position and send them toward the atmosphere. They’re called chorus waves due to their distinct chirping sound when listened to on a radio receiver.

Feinland developed an algorithm to search for these events in decades of measurements from the SAMPEX satellite. When he showed me a plot with the location of all the events he’d detected, we noticed a number of them were not where we expected. Some events mapped to the inner radiation belt rather than the outer belt.

This finding was curious for two reasons. For one, chorus waves aren’t prevalent in this region, so something else had to be shaking these electrons loose.

The other surprise was finding electrons this energetic in the inner radiation belt at all. Measurements from NASA’s Van Allen Probes mission prompted renewed interest in the inner radiation belt. Observations from the Van Allen Probes suggested that high-energy electrons are often not present in this inner radiation belt, at least not during the first few years of that mission, from 2012 to 2014.

Our observations now showed that, in fact, there are times that the inner belt contains high-energy electrons. How often this is true and under what conditions remain open questions to explore. These high-energy particles can damage spacecraft and harm humans in space, so researchers need to know when and where in space they are present to better design spacecraft.

Determining the culprit

One of the ways to disturb electrons in the inner radiation belt and kick them into Earth’s atmosphere actually begins in the atmosphere itself.

Lightning, the large electromagnetic discharges that light up the sky during thunderstorms, can actually generate electromagnetic waves known as lightning-generated whistlers.

91�� researcher Lauren Blum and her colleagues discovered that a combination of weather on Earth and weather in space produces unique electron signatures. (Photo: Pixabay)

These waves can then travel through the atmosphere out into space, where they interact with electrons in the inner radiation belt—much as chorus waves interact with electrons in the outer radiation belt.

To test whether lightning was behind our inner radiation belt detections, we looked back at the electron bursts and compared them with thunderstorm data. Some lightning activity seemed correlated with our electron events, but much of it was not.

Specifically, only lightning that occurred right after so-called geomagnetic storms resulted in the bursts of electrons we detected.

Geomagnetic storms are disturbances in the near-Earth space environment often caused by large eruptions on the Sun’s surface. This solar activity, if directed toward Earth, can produce what researchers term space weather. Space weather can result in stunning auroras, but it can also disrupt satellite and power grid operations.

We discovered that a combination of weather on Earth and weather in space produces the unique electron signatures we observed in our study. The solar activity disturbs Earth’s radiation belts and populates the inner belt with very high-energy electrons, then the lightning interacts with these electrons and creates the rapid bursts that we observed.

These results provide a nice reminder of the interconnected nature of Earth and space. They were also a welcome reminder to me of the often nonlinear process of scientific discovery.

Lauren Blum is an assistant professor in the Department of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences.

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

Lightning strikes link weather on Earth and weather in space.

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Breaking the color barrier in baseball leadership

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 30 Jan 2025 19:01:20 +0000

Breaking the color barrier in baseball leadership Rachel Sauer Thu, 01/30/2025 - 12:01

Jared Bahir Browsh

Fifty years after Frank Robinson became the first Black manager in Major League Baseball, the league is struggling with a significant decline in Black players and leaders

As Black History Month begins Feb. 1 and Major League Baseball celebrates the 50th anniversary of Frank Robinson making his debut as the first Black manager, the sport is at a point of introspection with the lowest number of African Americans players in Major League Baseball since the 1950s.

The milestone is both a reminder of how far baseball came since segregation and how delicate inclusion efforts are in baseball and other institutions in the United States.

Jared Bahir Browsh is the Critical Sports Studies program director in the 91�� Department of Ethnic Studies.

As the United States emerged from World War II, Plessy v. Ferguson and Jim Crow laws continued to keep the country largely segregated. The war, however, was also a turning point for African Americans, who demonstrated that their service was of equal value to others who fought in the war.

One such soldier was Jackie Robinson, the first athlete to letter in four sports at UCLA. His teammates Kenny Washington and Woody Strode broke the color barrier in the NFL in 1946, while he did the same in baseball the following year—seven years before Brown v. Board of Education determined that “separate but equal” thresholds for segregation were unconstitutional. Jackie Robinson’s last season as a player was 1956, the same season a young Frank Robinson debuted with the Cincinnati Reds.

In 1972, the Reds played the Oakland Athletics in the World Series. By that point, Frank Robinson had been traded twice and spent the season playing for Jackie Robinson’s former team, the Dodgers.

During Game 2 of the series in Cincinnati, Jackie Robinson was honored 25 years after breaking the color barrier in baseball. During his speech accepting the honor, he appealed to MLB leaders to hire the first Black manager, an opportunity he never got despite his expressed desire to manage a team. Jackie Robinson died nine days after his speech—Oct. 24, 1972—never seeing Frank Robinson hired as the first Black player-manager two years later.

Robinson was traded to Cleveland during the 1974 season after openly campaigning for the manager position with the Dodgers. Cleveland was the first American League team to sign a Black player in 1947, Larry Roby, and broke ground again 28 years later by hiring Robinson. He was the first player to win MVP in both the National and American League, but had a rocky tenure with the team, often being pushed to play when he wanted to focus on managing and butting heads with the star player, Gaylord Perry. He did lead the team to its first winning record in eight years in 1976, the last season he played, before being fired during the following season.

Inclusive Sports Summit

Inclusive Sports Summit

We change the game: Embracing the value of inclusive sports and recreation

When: 9 a.m.-6:30 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 5

Where: Dal Ward Athletic Center and Main Student Recreation Center

During this summit participants will

Identify challenges, opportunities and best practices for advancing diversity, equity and inclusion work as practitioners and supporters.
Learn tangible takeaways to build bridges and build unity across similarities and differences.
Build skills and practice techniques for addressing inequities to help increase student retention, engagement and success.
Connect with departments and programs across campus that are available to support students, staff and faculty.

The Inclusive Sports Summit is free and open to faculty, staff, students and community members.

Robinson went on to manage the San Francisco Giants and his former team, the Baltimore Orioles, winning manager of the year in 1989. He was fired from the Orioles during the 1991 season—the year Major League Baseball had the highest percentage of African American players in the league, 18% of all players. The following season, Cito Gaston became the first African American manager to win a World Series.

Robinson continued to work in the league office after his time with the Orioles, returning to the dugout after being tapped by MLB to manage the Montreal Expos, which the league owned at the time. The team moved to Washington D.C. in 2005 and his final season as manager was the first season for the newly founded Washington Nationals.

Declining youth participation

The dearth of opportunities for African Americans to coach and assume leadership positions in sports is not new; however, baseball has seen the most precipitous drop in participation, down to 6% during the 2024 season.

Contributing to this drop is the lack of African Americans in leadership positions, with only two African American managers, Ron Washington (Angels) and Dave Roberts (Dodgers), and one general manager, Dana Brown (Astros). In spite of these paltry numbers, three of the last five World Series winners have been led by African American managers.

The numbers are even worse in college baseball, with only 5% of players and 3% of managers in Division I identifying as African American in 2024; of these 26 managers, 17 were from historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs). The lack of visible leadership affects scouting, mentorship and even participation when players cannot see a career in the sport they love if they do not make it to the major leagues.

The low numbers of African American athletes in the college pipeline to the major leagues is only one of the reasons for the continued decline of African Americans in professional baseball. Like many sports, the privatization of youth sports is forcing many lower- and even middle-income families to reconsider their children’s participation in baseball. Local governments and schools have slashed recreation and athletic budgets, leading to more expensive sports like baseball to be cut, which in turn leads to a higher reliance on private leagues.

In 1975, Frank Robinson became Major League Baseball's first Black manager, assuming the role with the Cleveland Indians. (Photo: Jeff Robbins/Associated Press)

Many families ultimately balk at the cost of playing baseball, steering their children into more accessible sports as youth and high school baseball is increasingly privatized. The relatively low number of Division I baseball scholarships (11.7 maximum per team) and programs (300) compared to basketball (13 maximum scholarships across 352 schools) and especially football with 133 teams at the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) level, 128 teams at the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) level and with 85 maximum scholarships per team in FBS and 63 per team maximum in FCS. This also leads some families to encourage their children to focus on other sports to earn a college scholarship.

Even if amateur baseball players get drafted and signed, minor league salaries are so low that the same issues can arise that exist in youth baseball: players who cannot afford to remain in the sport. Minimum salaries are between just under $20,000 and $40,000 depending on the level, which is a significant increase from 2022, when minor league players unionized and negotiated a raise from a minimum salary between $4,800 and $17,500.

Salary expectations have led many scouts to focus on international players, particularly from Latin America, where teams will make verbal agreements with children as young as 12 in spite of the fact that teams technically cannot sign players until they are 16. MLB turns a blind eye to these agreements that often push children as young as 10 from countries like the Dominican Republic to leave school to pursue baseball. These players may be given performance-enhancing drugs to make them look more mature and artificially improve their athleticism. These players are ripe for exploitation, including lower salaries since they are beholden to Major League clubs with which they make these “handshake” deals—while their families take out loans based on future earnings, which may never appear.

Hope for long-term results

Economics and leadership are not the only factors in the decline of African Americans in professional baseball. The sport has declined as “America’s pastime” for decades, and for many is considered less “cool” than sports due to its slower pace—as well as kids’ alternative activities in the summer months—leading to a drop in viewership, especially among young viewers.

African Americans have also been historically discouraged from playing certain positions, particularly the on-field leadership positions of catcher and pitcher, the latter of which is the most visible position in the sport. This position “stacking” has historically impacted all sports, including basketball (point guard) and football (quarterback) due to discriminatory and false assumptions that African American players were not intelligent enough to play those positions. Basketball and football have seen dramatic shifts at these positions while baseball still sees limitations for African Americans at certain positions.

As with viewership, some of the issues pushing African Americans from baseball are emblematic of the decline in baseball’s overall popularity. However, there are some glimmers of hope for the future of African Americans in the sport. The House v. NCAA settlement will allow schools to increase the number of student athlete scholarships up to the roster limit, which is 34 in Division I—nearly triple the current limit.

Frank Robinson had a distinguished career as a player before becoming a manager. (Photo: Bettmann Archives/Getty Images)

The opportunity to earn compensation directly from schools may also support continued involvement in the sport. Much like name, image and likeness opportunities, however, revenue sharing will disproportionately go to the top-earning sports: reports from school point to about 75% of revenue sharing going to football and 15% going to basketball with other sports sharing the rest.

Outside of the college ranks, MLB has been actively involved in a number of initiatives to try to increase participation among young players, including Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities (RBI) that was started in 1989 and is now sponsored by Nike. Players like Jimmy Rollins and recent Hall of Fame inductee C.C. Sabathia are both alumni of the program, but results have been less impactful in recent years with fewer alumni from the United States advancing to professional baseball. MLB also runs the Dream Series in Arizona, a training academy focused on African American pitchers and catchers, in conjunction with USA Baseball during the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. The Andre Dawson Classic, named for the Hall of Fame player, is a round-robin tournament for HBCU baseball programs that runs every year at the Jackie Robinson Training Complex in Florida.

There is hope these efforts will yield long-term results and reverse the decline of African American players in baseball. The sport still needs to address its diminishing cachet among young sports fans in the United States and the lack of African American mentors and leaders in the sport, but some of the structures are there to encourage a renaissance of great Black baseball figures 50 years after Frank Robinson broke the managerial glass ceiling.

Jared Bahir Browsh is an assistant teaching professor of critical sports studies in the 91�� Department of Ethnic Studies.

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Fifty years after Frank Robinson became the first Black manager in Major League Baseball, the league is struggling with a significant decline in Black players and leaders.

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Frank Robinson at Nationals Park. (Photo: Nick Wass/Associated Press)

Who lives in a pineapple and announces football games?

Rachel Sauer — Fri, 10 Jan 2025 15:30:05 +0000

Who lives in a pineapple and announces football games? Rachel Sauer Fri, 01/10/2025 - 08:30

Jared Bahir Browsh

The success of simulcasts means that fans can expect to see more creative takes on traditional sports, including SpongeBob SquarePants calling Saturday’s NFL Wild Card game

As the final seconds of Super Bowl LVIII ticked off, according to social media, the biggest star was not MVP Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce or even Taylor Swift; it was a sea sponge and his starfish best friend. The Nickelodeon alternate broadcast of the Super Bowl starring SpongeBob SquarePants and Patrick Star as commentators was a huge hit, with on-field graphics and animations featuring Nickelodeon stars and, of course, slime.

This was not the first time a media conglomerate aired or streamed a simulcast as a companion to its main broadcast to attract more fans. ESPN’s first basic simulcast was in 1987 after the network gained partial rights to the NFL—the first cable network to air the NFL—agreeing to simulcast the game on local networks of the competing teams. When ESPN2 launched in October 1993, it offered a second ESPN network to sports fans and within a year ran its first alternative broadcast, bringing in-car views to IndyCar fans as a companion to the main broadcast on ESPN.

Jared Bahir Browsh is the Critical Sports Studies program director in the 91�� Department of Ethnic Studies.

In 2006, the network created “ESPN Full Circle,” later renamed the Megacast, leveraging the popular basketball rivalry between Duke University and the University of North Carolina to offer local broadcasts and alternative camera views for the game. The previous year, ESPN had launched its college-focused ESPNU and ESPN360, its broadband broadcast service, and used these newer platforms along with its existing networks to offer eight different ways to watch the game.

ESPN offered statistics and other data on its high-definition networks, which were still separate from the standard-definition networks, and even offered polling through ESPN mobile before social media exploded.

These simulcasts and “Megacasts” aimed to give dedicated fans a more in-depth look at the game or event that was being broadcast. At the same time, leagues and sports broadcasters were looking for different ways to attract young and casual fans who enjoyed sports but were not the obsessive fans at which these Megacasts were targeted.

Courting younger fans

For a long time, leagues took young fans for granted, relying on parental, peer and geographic influence to produce new fans. In today's expanding media environment, young and casual fans have infinite options for entertainment, so leagues and their broadcasting partners have had to strategize new ways to attract new audiences.

One of these efforts debuted in 1973: Peter Puck, an anthropomorphic hockey puck created by NBC executive Donald Carswell and animated by Hanna Barbera. NBC had just obtained the rights to the NHL, which was struggling to grow its audience in the United States. Carswell thought Peter would be a great way to teach U.S. audiences the rules of professional hockey through three-minute shorts between periods. Although NBC stopped airing the NHL in 1975, Peter’s legacy lives on more than 50 years later.

The 1980s brought a sea change for sports as cable and improved marketing began to create the enormous sports media environment we experience today. As networks competed for viewers, sports became a reliable form of entertainment to attract audiences who had more choices than ever. As football continued to dominate the sports landscape, buffered by the 1984 Supreme Court decision to allow college football broadcasting to expand beyond the control of the NCAA, other leagues strategized to draw fans to television, stadiums and arenas.

Throughout the 1970s, teams had built larger stadiums and debuted mascots like the Phillie Phanatic to entertain fans. The following decade, as the NBA struggled to find a broadcaster to air its championship games live, David Stern—who took over the league as commissioner in 1984—“Disneyfied” the NBA experience, making attending games more family friendly with more timeout and halftime entertainment.

It just so happened that same year that the most marketable athlete of all time came into the league. Michael Jordan was not only a boon for adult basketball fans, but also kids who wanted to “Be like Mike.” In 1992, Jordan co-starred with Bugs Bunny in the Nike advertising campaign “Hare Jordan.” He retired the next year to play baseball before returning to the NBA in March 1995. The following summer, Bugs and Jordan reunited to film Space Jam, which grossed more than a quarter of a billion dollars after it premiered early into the NBA season in November 1996.

Announcers Noah Eagle and Nate Burleson with SpongeBob SquarePants and Patrick Star announcing Super Bowl LVIII. (Screenshot: Nickelodeon/YouTube)

As a part of this effort to draw new fans, leagues also produced shows aimed at younger fans like “The Baseball Bunch,” which debuted in 1980 and featured MLB players and managers teaching baseball fundamentals. Ten years later, “NBA Inside Stuff” premiered on NBC’s Saturday morning schedule, joining a growing sports media industry aimed at kids that included publications like Sports Illustrated for Kids and video games like the Madden, FIFA and NBA 2k series, among the most popular video game series of all time.

Primetime slimetime

The consolidation of the U.S. media system throughout the 1980s and 1990s led to massive media conglomerates. Unsurprisingly, NBC held the network broadcast rights for the NBA when “NBA Inside Stuff” aired. As broadcast and cable networks came under the same corporate umbrella as film and animation studios, new opportunities for cross promotion emerged. Disney bought ESPN and opened the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex, named after the anthology series that aired under one of their other subsidiaries, ABC, from 1961 until 1997 . Disney also founded an NHL team, the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim, in 1993—named after the popular 1992 kids hockey movie—and in 1996 debuted “Mighty Ducks: The Animated Series” on ABC, which featured anthropomorphic hockey playing superhero ducks.

The success of Space Jam and the continued media conglomeration strengthened the relationship between animation and sports. NASCAR rights holder FOX debuted “NASCAR Racers,” an animated action series featuring NASCAR branding, a day before the 1999 race season finale. Cartoon Network aired the marathon “NBA All-Star Slam” in 2003, featuring interstitial interviews with NBA players in the lead-up to the All-Star Game, which aired the evening of the game on TNT (both networks were owned by Warner subsidiary Turner).

In 2016, LeBron James appeared on the Cartoon Network series “Teen Titans Go!” the same night as a TNT basketball doubleheader and a few days before the All-Star Game. Later, the Teen Titans offered commentary of the 2023 NBA Slam Dunk Contest in the lead-up to the NBA All-Star Game airing on TNT.

Although these series and specials expanded the visibility of league branding and special events, the engagement with actual games was limited. When Viacom and CBS merged again in 2019, after splitting 14 years earlier, they began strengthening the relationship between former Viacom network Nickelodeon and broadcast network CBS. They began featuring Nickelodeon content on CBS All-Access, now Paramount+, and in 2021 Nickelodeon aired an NFL simulcast of the Wild Card playoff game between the Chicago Bears and New Orleans Saints featuring Nickelodeon live-action and animated stars joining the real-time NFL broadcast with alternate announcers Nate Burleson and Noah Eagle. Current Denver Broncos coach Sean Payton, then the coach of the Saints, volunteered to be slimed, similar to the traditional Gatorade shower.

Current Denver Broncos coach Sean Payton, then the coach of the New Orleans Saints, gets "slimed" after a 2020 Wild Card win against the Chicago Bears. (Screenshot: Nickelodeon/YouTube)

The following season, “NFL Slimetime” premiered on Nickelodeon, a highlight show hosted by Burleson that strengthened the relationship between the NFL and Nickelodeon. This relationship exploded during last years’ Super Bowl as the Nickelodeon simulcast on the cable network and Paramount+ was credited for a growth in game viewership, especially among younger and casual fans who appreciated the irreverent approach to the game.

A pineapple under the arena

As media conglomerates continue to leverage sports rights to attract audiences and increase subscriptions to their streaming services, they have also leaned into the popularity—and meme-making possibilities—of these simulcasts. Several months after the Nickelodeon simulcast of the Wild Card Playoff, Disney leveraged its Marvel Cinematic Universe to produce a simulcast, “Marvel Arena of Heroes,” on ESPN2 and its streaming service, which was similar to the Wild Card game on Nickelodeon and featured special graphics and superhero-themed content related to the real-time NBA games between the Golden State Warriors and New Orleans Pelicans. ESPN and Genius Sports, the company behind augmented games like the Arena of Heroes simulcast, extended their contract in the summer of 2024.

In 2023, Disney aired its own fully animated simulcasts with the “Big City Greens Classic” NHL broadcast in March and the “Sunday Funday” Toy Story-themed NFL game in September. Both regular-season games included a rendering of the real-time broadcasts featuring stars from its animated franchises. Disney followed this up in December 2024 with another “Sunday Funday” featuring “The Simpsons” and the Christmas Day “Dunk the Halls” animated simulcast featuring classic characters like Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck. In between these two games, NBC’s Peacock service offered an alternate stream of the game between the Kansas City Chiefs and Houston Texans featuring graphics from the popular video game series Madden.

As SpongeBob and Patrick prepare to announce the Nickelodeon simulcast of the 2025 NFL Wild Card game between the Houston Texans and Los Angeles Chargers Saturday, fans should be prepared for more of these simulcasts as networks and streaming services try to market these games to young and casual fans, boosted by social media memes like Patrick roasting the starting quarterback and Lisa Simpsons scoring a touchdown against Homer.

Jared Bahir Browsh is an assistant teaching professor of critical sports studies in the 91�� Department of Ethnic Studies.

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The success of simulcasts means that fans can expect to see more creative takes on traditional sports, including SpongeBob SquarePants calling Saturday’s NFL Wild Card game.

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3 years later, Marshall Fire impacts still being learned

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 02 Jan 2025 21:23:38 +0000

3 years later, Marshall Fire impacts still being learned Rachel Sauer Thu, 01/02/2025 - 14:23

Colleen E. Reid

Wildfire smoke’s health risks can linger in homes that escape burning—as Colorado’s Marshall Fire survivors discovered

On Dec. 30, 2021, a wind-driven wildfire raced through two communities just outside 91��, Colorado. In the span of about eight hours, more than 1,000 homes and businesses burned.

The fire left entire blocks in ash, but among them, pockets of houses survived, seemingly untouched. The owners of these homes may have felt relief at first. But fire damage can be deceiving, as many soon discovered.

When wildfires like the Marshall Fire reach the wildland-urban interface, they are burning both vegetation and human-made materials. Vehicles and buildings burn, along with all of the things inside them—electronics, paint, plastics, furniture.

Colleen E. Reid, a 91�� associate professor of geography, and her research colleagues created a checklist for people to use after urban wildfires in the future to help them protect their health and reduce their risks when they return to smoke-damaged homes.

Research shows that when human-made materials like these burn, the chemicals released are different from what is emitted when just vegetation burns. The smoke and ash can blow under doors and around windows in nearby homes, bringing in chemicals that stick to walls and other indoor surfaces and continue off-gassing for weeks to months, particularly in warmer temperatures.

In a new study released three years after the Marshall Fire, my colleagues and I looked at the health effects people experienced when they returned to still-standing homes. We also created a checklist for people to use after urban wildfires in the future to help them protect their health and reduce their risks when they return to smoke-damaged homes.

Tests in homes found elevated metals and VOCs

In the days after the Marshall Fire, residents quickly reached out to nearby scientists who study wildfire smoke and health risks at the 91�� and area labs. People wanted to know what was in the ash and causing the lingering smells inside their homes.

In homes we were able to test, my colleagues found elevated levels of metals and PAHs – polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons – in the ash. We also found elevated VOCs – volatile organic compounds – in airborne samples. Some VOCs, such as dioxins, benzene, formaldehyde and PAHs, can be toxic to humans. Benzene is a known carcinogen.

People wanted to know whether the chemicals that got into their homes that day could harm their health.

At the time, we could find no information about physical health implications for people who have returned to smoke-damaged homes after a wildfire. To look for patterns, we surveyed residents affected by the fire six months, one year and two years afterward.

Symptoms six months after the fire

Even six months after the fire, we found that many people were reporting symptoms that aligned with health risks related to smoke and ash from fires.

More than half (55%) of the people who responded to our survey reported that they were experiencing at least one symptom six months after the blaze that they attributed to the Marshall Fire. The most common symptoms reported were itchy or watery eyes (33%), headache (30%), dry cough (27%), sneezing (26%) and sore throat (23%).

All of these symptoms, as well as having a strange taste in one’s mouth, were associated with people reporting that their home smelled differently when they returned to it one week after the fire.

Many survey respondents said that the smells decreased over time. Most attributed the improvement in smell to the passage of time, cleaning surfaces and air ducts, replacing furnace filters, and removing carpet, textiles and furniture from the home. Despite this, many still had symptoms.

We found that living near a large number of burned structures was associated with these health symptoms. For every 10 additional destroyed buildings within 820 feet (250 meters) of a person’s home, there was a 21% increase in headaches and a 26% increase in having a strange taste in their mouth.

These symptoms align with what could be expected from exposure to the chemicals that we found in the ash and measured in the air inside the few smoke-damaged homes that we were able to study in depth.

The Marshall Fire swept through several neighborhoods in Louisville and Superior, Colorado. In the homes that were left standing, residents dealt with lingering smoke and ash in their homes. (Photo: Michael Ciaglo/Getty Images)

Lingering symptoms and questions

There are a still a lot of unanswered questions about the health risks from smoke- and ash-damaged homes.

For example, we don’t yet know what long-term health implications might look like for people living with lingering gases from wildfire smoke and ash in a home.

We found a significant decline in the number of people reporting symptoms one year after the fire. However, 33% percent of the people whose homes were affected still reported at least one symptom that they attributed to the fire. About the same percentage also reported at least one symptom two years after the fire.

We also could not measure the level of VOCs or metals that each person was exposed to. But we do think that reports of a change in the smell of a person’s home one week after the fire demonstrates the likely presence of VOCs in the home. That has health implications for people whose homes are exposed to smoke or ash from a wildfire.

Tips to protect yourself after future wildfires

Wildfires are increasingly burning homes and other structures as more people move into the wildland-urban interface, temperatures rise and fire seasons lengthen.

It can be confusing to know what to do if your home is one that survives a wildfire nearby. To help, my colleagues and I put together a website of steps to take if your home is ever infiltrated by smoke or ash from a wildfire.

Here are a few of those steps:

When you’re ready to clean your home, start by protecting yourself. Wear at least an N95 (or KN95) mask and gloves, goggles and clothing that covers your skin.
Vacuum floors, drapes and furniture. But avoid harsh chemical cleaners because they can react with the chemicals in the ash.
Clean your HVAC filter and ducts to avoid spreading ash further. Portable air cleaners with carbon filters can help remove VOCs.

A recent scientific study documents how cleaning all surfaces within a home can reduce reservoirs of VOCs and lower indoor air concentrations of VOCs.

Given that we don’t know much yet about the health harms of smoke- and ash-damaged homes, it is important to take care in how you clean so you can do the most to protect your health.

Colleen E. Reid is an associate professor in the 91�� Department of Geography.

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

Wildfire smoke’s health risks can linger in homes that escape burning—as Colorado’s Marshall Fire survivors discovered.

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Top image: Bmurphy380/Wikipedia Commons

Breaking bonds in 'forever chemicals'

Rachel Sauer — Fri, 20 Dec 2024 17:23:20 +0000

Breaking bonds in 'forever chemicals' Rachel Sauer Fri, 12/20/2024 - 10:23

Arindam Sau , Mihai Popescu and Xin Liu

We developed a way to use light to dismantle PFAS ‘forever chemicals’–long-lasting environmental pollutants

Perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, have earned the nickname of forever chemicals from their extraordinary ability to stick around in the environment long after they’ve been used.

These synthetic compounds, commonly used in consumer products and industrial applications for their water- and grease-resistant properties, are now found practically everywhere in the environment.

Arindam Sau, a Ph.D. candidate in the 91�� Department of Chemistry, along with Colorado State University research colleagues Mihai Popescu and Xin Liu, developed a chemical system that uses light to break down bonds between carbon and fluorine atoms.

While many chemicals will degrade relatively quickly after they’re disposed of, PFAS can stick around for up to 1,000 years. This durability is great for their use in firefighting foams, nonstick cookware, waterproof clothing and even food packaging.

However, their resilience means that they persist in soil, water and even living organisms. They can accumulate over time and affect the health of both ecosystems and humans.

Some initial research has shown potential links between PFAS exposure and various health issues — including cancers, immune system suppression and hormone disruption. These concerns have led scientists to search for effective ways to break down these stubborn chemicals.

We’re a team of researchers who developed a chemical system that uses light to break down bonds between carbon and fluorine atoms. These strong chemical bonds help PFAS resist degradation. We published this work in Nature in November 2024, and we hope this technique could help address the widespread contamination these substances cause.

Why PFAS compounds are so hard to break down

PFAS compounds have carbon-fluorine bonds, one of the strongest in chemistry. These bonds make PFAS incredibly stable. They resist the degradation processes that usually break down industrial chemicals – including hydrolysis, oxidation and microbial breakdown.

Conventional water treatment methods can remove PFAS from water, but these processes merely concentrate the contaminants instead of destroying them. The resulting PFAS-laden materials are typically sent to landfills. Once disposed of, they can still leach back into the environment.

The current methods for breaking carbon-fluorine bonds depend on use of metals and very high temperatures. For example, platinum metal can be used for this purpose. This dependence makes these methods expensive, energy-intensive and challenging to use on a large scale.

How our new photocatalytic system works

The new method our team has developed uses a purely organic photocatalyst. A photocatalyst is a substance that speeds up a chemical reaction using light, without being consumed in the process. Our system harnesses energy from cheap blue LEDs to drive a set of chemical reactions.

After absorbing light, the photocatalyst transfers electrons to the molecules containing fluorine, which breaks down the sturdy carbon-fluorine bonds.

By directly targeting and dismantling the molecular structure of PFAS, photocatalytic systems like ours hold the potential for complete mineralization. Complete mineralization is a process that transforms these harmful chemicals into harmless end products, like hydrocarbons and fluoride ions, which degrade easily in the environment. The degraded products can then be safely reabsorbed by plants.

A wide variety of products can contain PFAS. (Graphic: City of Riverside, California)

Potential applications and benefits

One of the most promising aspects of this new photocatalytic system is its simplicity. The setup is essentially a small vial illuminated by two LEDs, with two small fans added to keep it cool during the process. It operates under mild conditions and does not use any metals, which are often hazardous to handle and can sometimes be explosive.

The system’s reliance on light – a readily available and renewable energy source – could make it economically viable and sustainable. As we refine it, we hope that it could one day operate with minimal energy input, outside of the energy powering the light.

This platform can also transform other organic molecules that contain carbon-fluorine bonds into valuable chemicals. For instance, thousands of fluoroarenes are commonly available as industrial chemicals and laboratory reagents. These can be transformed into building blocks for making a variety of other materials, including medicines and everyday products.

Challenges and future directions

While this new system shows potential, challenges remain. Currently, we can degrade PFAS only on a small scale. While our experimental setup is effective, it will require substantial scaling up to tackle the PFAS problem on a larger level. Additionally, large molecules with hundreds of carbon-fluorine bonds, like Teflon, do not dissolve into the solvent we use for these reactions, even at high temperatures.

As a result, the system currently can’t break down these materials, and we need to conduct more research.

We also want to improve the long-term stability of these catalysts. Right now, these organic photocatalysts degrade over time, especially when they’re under constant LED illumination. So, designing catalysts that retain their efficiency over the long term will be essential for practical, large-scale use. Developing methods to regenerate or recycle these catalysts without losing performance will also be key for scaling up this technology.

With our colleagues at the Center for Sustainable Photoredox Catalysis, we plan to keep working on light-driven catalysis, aiming to discover more light-driven reactions that solve practical problems. SuPRCat is a National Science Foundation-funded nonprofit Center for Chemical Innovation. The teams there are working to develop reactions for more sustainable chemical manufacturing.

The end goal is to create a system that can remove PFAS contaminants from drinking water at purification plants, but that’s still a long way off. We’d also like to one day use this technology to clean up PFAS-contaminated soils, making them safe for farming and restoring their role in the environment.

Arindam Sau is a Ph.D. candidate in the 91�� Department of Chemistry; Mihai Popescu is a postdoctoral associate in chemistry at Colorado State University; Xin Liu is a postdoctoral scholar in chemistry at Colorado State University.

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

We developed a way to use light to dismantle PFAS ‘forever chemicals’ – long-lasting environmental pollutants.

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Top image: PFAS foam washed up on beach (Photo: Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy)

Sand verbena uses grains of sand to deter herbivores

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 19 Dec 2024 19:41:09 +0000

Sand verbena uses grains of sand to deter herbivores Rachel Sauer Thu, 12/19/2024 - 12:41

Jeff Mitton

Apparently, herbivores are not fond of chewing sandpaper

Sand verbena, Abronia fragrans, has a moth pollination syndrome, or a suite of floral characters modified by natural selection driven by moth pollination. Its flowers are open all night but closed all day, and long corolla tubes prevent bees from taking nectar but are ideal for moths with long tongues.

Moths follow plumes of floral fragrance from sand verbena until they are within sight of the bright, conspicuous white globes of 25 to 80 flowers, where they sip a nectar reward.

Although sand verbena has a large geographic range, it is limited to sandy habitats in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Colorado, Oklahoma, Kansas, Wyoming, Montana, Nebraska, South Dakota and North Dakota. While sand verbena is described as having white flowers that open only at night, populations in northern Texas and southwestern Oklahoma have a range of flower colors from light pink through fuchsia, and they also differ from most populations in the times that flowers open and close.

The plants with pink or fuchsia flowers remain open until late morning, and they reopen in early evening, allowing considerable visitation by bees and butterflies. Measurements of pollination success in the pink and fuchsia populations showed that diurnal or daytime pollination contributed 18% of the pollination success, in contrast to nothing at all in the remainder of the geographic range of the species.

Dwarf lupine with patches and particles of sand on its flowers, leaves and stem. (Photo: Jeff Mitton)

These data are consistent with the hypothesis that diurnal pollinators were a selective force producing and maintaining novel flower color and diurnal presentation of open flowers in the mornings and late afternoons. The long corolla tubes frustrate bee efforts to collect pollen or nectar but hold nectar available to virtually all butterflies.

Butterflies are visiting diurnally—the most common among them is the skipper Lerodea eufala, the Eufala skipper. These data and other observations suggest the hypothesis that the Eufala skipper applied selective pressure to change flower color from white to pink or fuchsia and to modify the times that flowers open and close.

How could a butterfly apply selection pressure? This terminology unintentionally suggests that the butterflies had a plan and the organization to apply it. But that was not the case. If some flowers did not close exactly at sunrise and if a small butterfly pollinated them, enhancing their seed set, the genes that influenced tardy closing of flowers would become more common in the next generation.

The butterfly did nothing more than sip nectar from a large globe of flowers, nor did the sand verbena do anything to achieve an intended goal. The metric of natural selection is the relative number of offspring produced by competing genotypes of sand verbena. Genes that had been rare produce more seeds, making those genes more common.

Sand verbena is in the genus Abronia, which has about 20 species, all in North and Central America. All thrive in sandy environments, and it is known that 14 of the 20 species have psammophory, a defense to herbivory that is more commonly called sand armor. The armor is assembled when wind-blown sandy grit adheres to sticky exudates on stems and leaves.

I first encountered psammophory when photographing dwarf lupine in the Maze in Canyonlands National Park, and since then I thought it was a rare defense. But a scientific article whose title begins with "Chewing sandpaper" lists more than 200 psammophorous species in 88 genera in 34 families.

Sand armor is not a rare defense; it is geographically widespread and has evolved many times. Experimental studies show that sand armor reduces herbivory—remove it from stems and leaves, and the plant suffers more herbivory than when the armor was intact. Add more sand, and the plant suffers less herbivory.

While sand verbena has a large geographic range, some species of Abronia have tiny geographic distributions. One example is Yellowstone sand verbena, A. ammophila, which is adapted to and endemic (found nowhere else) to the lake shores in Yellowstone National Park.

An obligate relationship was found recently when a new species of moth, Copablepharon fuscum, was discovered in 1995 on the shores of the Salish Sea between Georgia Straight and Puget Sound. The sand-verbena moth was found on just a few beaches and spits on Vancouver Island and Whidbey Island, and it only occupies sites with windblown sand and large and dense populations of A. latifolia, yellow sand verbena, which is found along Pacific Shores from Baja to British Columbia.

The sand-verbena moth uses yellow sand verbena as its host plant, meaning that it is the site of oviposition and the sole food consumed by the caterpillars. The caterpillars have specialized mouth parts allowing them to manipulate around grains of sand.

I know I will never see a sand verbena nor a dwarf lupine without the phrase "chewing sandpaper" popping into my thoughts.

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Apparently, herbivores are not fond of chewing sandpaper.

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Top image: Sand verbena usually presents white blooms but response to a pollinator can turn a population pink or fuchsia. (Photo: Jeff Mitton)

That red nose still guides us to Christmas

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 05 Dec 2024 17:43:58 +0000

That red nose still guides us to Christmas Rachel Sauer Thu, 12/05/2024 - 10:43

Jared Bahir Browsh

Sixty years after the debut of the Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer stop-motion animated classic, the yearly flood of holiday films can thank the small reindeer for their success

As we spend the Christmas season binging on Hallmark movies and holiday specials, one diminutive reindeer has been part of Christmas media longer than any other figure.

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer was created as a coloring book in 1939 by Robert L. May for Montgomery Ward when the retailer decided to produce its own coloring books after distributing books from other publishers for years. May faced pushback on the story, since red noses were associated with drinking at the time, but ultimately Montgomery Ward distributed more than 2 million copies of the story that celebrates individuality and courage.

Jared Bahir Browsh is the Critical Sports Studies program director in the 91�� Department of Ethnic Studies.

The first Rudolph cartoon debuted in 1948, directed by Max Fleischer and sponsored by Montgomery Ward. The next year, the famous song written by May’s brother-in-law Johnny Marks debuted behind the vocals of Gene Autry, hitting number one—the first top song of 1950 that was added to Fleischer’s cartoon when it was reissued in 1951.

Autry’s beloved version of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” sold more 1.75 million copies in 1949 alone, and altogether Autrey’s and every other version of the song have sold more than 150 million copies, behind only Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas” in total Christmas song sales. It is also the only No. 1 song to fall completely off the charts the week after it peaks.

In 1958, Chuck Berry recorded "Run Rudolph Run,” with Marks receiving a writing credit after suing for trademark infringement. Autry also wrote and sang "Here Comes Santa Claus."

The growth of the recording industry after World War II was part of a larger post-war economic boom in the United States that supported the increased commercialization of Christmas, which had started a century earlier with depictions of Santa in the 1840s and his first in-store appearance at the New York City Macy’s in 1862. His appearance in the first Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in 1924 was thought to kick off the holiday shopping season, with his modern image confirmed by Coca-Cola advertisements in 1931. A decade later, Rudolph joined Santa on his sleigh as a Christmas icon.

Stop-motion animation

In the first 25 years after May created Rudolph, the reindeer with the light-up nose became a multimedia legend, inspiring comic and children’s books in addition to the original coloring book and 1948 cartoon. But the small animation studio Rankin/Bass—founded as Videocraft and going by that name until 1974, when it rebranded as Rankin/Bass—helped Rudolph reach generations of kids and produced the longest continuously running Christmas special in United States television history.

The unique stop-motion animation style Rankin/Bass used was called “Animagic,” crafted by Japanese artist Tadahito Mochinaga and his MOM Production Studio. The process debuted in the United States in 1961 in a syndicated series called The New Adventures of Pinocchio, but the Rankin/Bass 18 Christmas specials helped the stop-motion animation approach become legendary. Rankin/Bass was one of the earliest studios to outsource its animation to Japan, which became common practice in later animated productions.

Since its debut in 1964, the Rudolph special has gone through a number of edits. In 1965, the song “Fame and Fortune” was added, to the chagrin of fans of the original; the song and the scene were removed and Santa’s visit to the Island of Misfit Toys was added in 1966.

Since its debut Dec. 6, 1964, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer has gone through a number of edits. (Image: Rankin/Bass)

Yukon Cornelius’ visit to the peppermint mine was also edited out of the original and would not return until 2019, when the network Freeform obtained the rights to this and several other Rankin/Bass specials as a part of its 25 Days of Christmas.

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer aired on NBC, its original network, until 1971, when CBS purchased the broadcasting rights, which it held until 2023. For the film’s 60th anniversary this year, NBC will air the full film in a 75-minute broadcast on Dec. 6, the same date the original debuted in 1964. Unlike other Christmas specials, the film is not available as a part of any streaming service and must be purchased to view it outside the NBC or Freeform telecasts.

The stop-motion Rudolph film not only became an instant classic, but also led to a wave of classic Christmas visual media in television and film. A Charlie Brown Christmas debuted in 1965, followed in 1966 by the animated How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, which was adapted from the 1957 Dr. Seuss book. Rankin/Bass would continue to produce holiday specials, including traditionally animated specials based on the Charles Dickens Christmas novella The Cricket on the Hearth (1967) and The Mouse on the Mayflower (1968), a Thanksgiving special.

The studio’s greatest successes, however, were its specials based on popular holiday songs and traditional stories. Later in 1968, The Little Drummer Boy debuted, a stop-motion special based on the song written in 1941 by Katherine Kennicott Davis and first recorded by the Trapp family in 1951. The song became a holiday standard in the United States through the later version by The Harry Simeone Chorale, who also recorded the popular version of “Do You Hear What I Hear?” as a plea for peace during the Cuban Missile Crisis. “The Little Drummer Boy” was also covered by Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby with David Bowie.

The film The Little Drummer Boy is fairly dark for an animated special of the time, featuring the drummer boy Aaron’s family being murdered before he is kidnapped, forced to perform and escaped to join the Magi and ultimately performing in Bethlehem.

A holiday deluge

Rankin/Bass studio produced Frosty the Snowman in 1969, which was drawn to look like a Christmas card. (Image: Rankin/Bass)

In subsequent years, Rankin/Bass continued to produce specials that became staples of various holidays, including the traditionally animated Frosty the Snowman (1969), which studio artists wanted to look like a Christmas card. The studio also produced a number of other stop-motion specials, including Santa Claus is Coming to Town (1970) and Here Comes Peter Cottontail (1971). The partnership between Arthur Rankin Jr. and Jules Bass resulted in more than two dozen holiday specials and numerous other films and series, including the original ThunderCats series.

What used to be special, sprinkled throughout late November and December, has become a massive media industry leading to most regularly scheduled series taking a midseason break as a torrent of holiday specials and sporting events dominate television from Thanksgiving through the college football bowl season in January. The holiday season is now overrun by a collection of animated specials, holiday episodes and cheesy rom-coms. The latter of these were popularized by Hallmark, which has been sponsoring specials for broadcast since 1951, making what is now known as the Hallmark Hall of Fame the longest-running anthology series on television.

Hallmark’s low-budget holiday specials have been a staple of the holidays since 2000 and dramatically increased when Odyssey Network was rebranded the Hallmark Channel in 2001. Since then, the channel, which has grown in popularity over the last two decades, has produced more than 300 holiday specials created around formulaic narratives largely focused on family-appropriate romance. Other media outlets, including Lifetime Network and Netflix, have also joined this trend, leading to a deluge of specials of varying quality dominating the holiday season.

However, many of these specials rooted in nostalgia and familiar formulas can thank Santa’s ninth reindeer for using his shining nose to lead the way in establishing our holiday watching habits.

Jared Bahir Browsh is an assistant teaching professor of critical sports studies in the 91�� Department of Ethnic Studies.

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Sixty years after the debut of the Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer stop-motion animated classic, the yearly flood of holiday films can thank the small reindeer for their success.

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