Assistant Professor Longji Cui and his team have developed a new technology to turn thermal radiation into electricity in a way that literally teases the basic law of thermal physics.

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In the competitive world of entrepreneurship, mentorship is an invaluable resource. Social networks are vital for building relationships, identifying opportunities and securing essential support. But when it comes to making those fruitful connections, female entrepreneurs often face an uphill battle, new research finds.

Gender segregation within mentorship networks plays a major role in limiting access to critical resources for female entrepreneurs, according to a working paper by Ethan Poskanzer, an assistant professor at the Leeds School of Business and Minjae Kim, an assistant professor of management at Rice University Business School, who tracked interactions between startup founders (mentees) and seasoned mentors over the course of an entrepreneurship accelerator program in the Northeast U.S. in 2023.

The study revealed that while both male and female entrepreneurs equally reach out to mentors of both genders, male mentors are disproportionately likely to accept outreaches from male mentees. This bias among mentors, although not necessarily conscious, is a pervasive obstacle for women launching startups, Poskanzer said.

“Men have an easier time getting access to valuable mentorship and resources through social networks,” Poskanzer said, adding that although the study focused on gender, this is a challenge for all underrepresented entrepreneurs.

This may be because people form closer relationships with those similar to themselves, Poskanzer said, which leads to men offering more help and referrals to other men.

“Investment is essential for entrepreneurs,” Poskanzer said. “In a lot of cases, investors tend to source their investments from people they know. So getting plugged into that world and getting those kinds of warm introductions can make the difference between being funded and not being funded. Just having a conversation with a mentor for a few hours can affect a business's trajectory.”

The limits of “lean in”

The study challenges the widely promoted "lean-in" message, which suggests women can overcome network segregation by pushing themselves harder to make connections. 

The researchers argue this advice overlooks a critical factor: The problem lies not in women’s efforts to reach out, but in male mentors’ receptiveness to their outreaches. “Mentors selectively decide where to distribute their resources, so it’s about the resource holders’ choice of who they’re going to work with,” Poskanzer said. 

A high-stakes problem

In another working paper, Poskanzer and co-author Tristan Botelho, associate professor or organizational behavior at Yale University, found these biases become more pronounced in high-stakes situations, such as when investors or senior mentors are making funding decisions. In these cases, women entrepreneurs tend to be rated lower than their male counterparts.

In one study, both men and women pitched their startup ideas to a panel of judges. In less consequential evaluations, women were rated slightly better than men. However, when the stakes were higher—such as decisions about funding—women were rated significantly lower.

“We found that when investors feel something is low stakes, they don't act on their biases,” Poskanzer said. “But when they’re distributing more money, they become more risk-averse, more cautious, and more likely to lean on these cultural biases about women and entrepreneurship.”

Addressing the mentorship gender gap

Poskanzer emphasized that programs must go beyond simply pairing male and female entrepreneurs. “Throwing people into a mixer and telling them to network isn't enough to overcome this disadvantage since it occurs organically,” he said.

Increasing female representation in mentorship roles could be one critical step toward mitigating these biases, especially in industries where women have historically been underrepresented. However, Poskanzer acknowledges this is a complex issue requiring systemic change.

Raising awareness is another starting point, he added, since many mentors are unaware of the subtle gender dynamics influencing their decisions.

“Entrepreneurship is a difficult road to travel alone, and social connections are essential for success,” Poskanzer said. “By providing support for all talented entrepreneurs, we can develop more innovations and drive both progress and productivity.”

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Six years ago, Mark Rentschler helped launch startup company Aspero Medical to develop a medical device used during endoscopy procedures. Today, with the help of grant, Rentschler and team are bringing two new medical devices to the market that have the potential to transform gastrointestinal surgeries.

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Fran Bagenal, a senior research scientist at the Laboratory of Atmospheric and Space Physics at ���������� Boulder, has been named to the NASA Advisory Council’s Science Committee.

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This Valentine’s Day, love is in the air—and so are magic, flaming arrows, fairies, dragons and more.

Last month, "Onyx Storm," the third book in Rebecca Yarros’ Empyrean series, took the publishing industry by, well, storm. The book follows a dragon rider named Violet and her family, friends, lovers and exes at Basgiath War College. It sold 2.7 million copies in its first week on bookshelves, a 20-year record for literature marketed toward adults.

“Onyx Storm” is the latest success story for the fast-rising genre of fiction dubbed “romantasy.” These books blend the conventions of fantasy novels with those of romance. Think sorcerers, mythical creatures and raging battles mixed with heaping doses of sex. Other heavy hitters in the genre include Sarah J. Maas. Her “A Court of Thorns and Roses” (or ACOTAR, to fans) novels dive into the adventures of Feyre Archeron in the faerie lands of Prythian.

Christine Larson, assistant professor of journalism at ���������� Boulder, follows trends in the romance industry closely. Her 2024 book “” traces the 40-year history of Romancelandia, a tight-knit community of romance writers.

Larson weighs in what makes romantasy books so appealing, how TikTok played a role in their popularity, and why you may want to reevaluate those steamy sex scenes.

Is the rise of romantasy a new phenomenon?

Everyone talks about romantasy as if it's new. But the fantasy or paranormal sub-genres in romance have been around for decades. We can look at “Twilight.” We can look as far back as the “Dragonriders of Pern” series by Anne McCaffrey in the 1960s. Those books combined adventure and strong women who find their equal and their happily ever after.

Why do you think they’ve become so popular?

Romantasy has really taken off for two reasons: One reason is that Sarah Maas and Rebecca Yarros are amazingly good writers who tell a great story. The second is because people are feeling unsettled right now. Women, especially, are often feeling powerless, and the heroines in these books have power. They gain power, and they find love interests who are their equals. That’s important to women right now—to imagine a different world.

How did social media play a role in the emergence of romantasy?

Romantasy has been promoted in a huge way by TikTok, or, specifically, by the sub-segment of TikTok known as BookTok. Romance has been the most popular genre of fiction since the 1980s. With the rise of BookTok, younger readers dispelled myths about older romances. A lot of people thought romance was Fabio and a scantily clad woman bursting out of her bodice, and that it was very old fashioned. But, in fact, romance has come a long way. It has all these different sub-genres now.

Where did all these types of romance come from?

The evolution of new sub-genres in romance rose because of self-publishing beginning around the launch of the Amazon Kindle in 2007. There were many stories that could never be told, could never get published in traditional romance publishing, including stories about Black protagonists, Latina protagonists, LGBTQ+ protagonists, and even these fantasy stories.

Romance writers are super smart, and they said, "I don't need a publisher. I can self-publish." These books took off, and, eventually, romance publishers had to change, as well.

Romance has come a long way, but a lot of readers still turn up their noses at these books. Are romantasy books subject to those same biases?

Romance is the most disparaged, dismissed, mocked genre in the history of literature, but women's literature has always been denigrated by the literary community. It’s not only romance. Fantasy has also been a sort of stepchild of the science fiction world that was associated with women writers. It’s also thought less of in the literary world.

  Beyond the story

Our arts and humanities impact by the numbers:

• 40-plus Grammy awards and nominations earned by ���������� Boulder faculty and alumni
• 2,500 exhibitions across the globe have featured art from art and art history faculty
• 10 ���������� Boulder-affiliated Pulitzer Prize winners

One of the central, and perhaps most controversial, aspects of these books are their sex scenes, which get, um, a little explicit. What roles do these scenes play in the books?

Anyone who is shocked by the sex scenes in romantasy has not read romance. Romance comes in, shall we say, a variety of spiciness levels—from zero (like Amish romance, which is very sweet) all the way up to four chili peppers (like “50 Shades of Gray”).

The portrayal of sex in romantasy, and all romance, celebrates women's pleasure. That's why it's controversial. Many societies throughout history have feared or suppressed women's sexual pleasure, and romance is a space where that doesn't happen.

Say fantasy isn’t my genre. What other sub-genres of romance should I try?

If you have a favorite genre, there is a romance sub-genre for you. If you like spy fiction, there's romantic suspense. If you like sci-fi, there's sci-fi romance. There's sci-fi paranormal romance. Romance writers are women of words. They write because they love to read, and they're fantastic at world building in any genre.

���������� Boulder Today regularly publishes Q&As with our faculty members weighing in on news topics through the lens of their scholarly expertise and research/creative work. The responses here reflect the knowledge and interpretations of the expert and should not be considered the university position on the issue. All publication content is subject to edits for clarity, brevity and university style guidelines.

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  Beyond the Story

Our research impact by the numbers:

• 45 U.S. patents issued for ���������� inventions through Venture Partners in 2023–24
• 35 startups launched based on university innovations in 2023–24
• $1.2 billion raised by companies built on ���������� Boulder innovations in 2022–24

When it comes to putting science into action, last year was one for the 

record books. From July 2023 to June 2024, ���������� Boulder helped to launch 35 new companies based on research at the university—a big tick up from the previous record of 20 companies in fiscal year 2021.

The new businesses are embracing technologies from the worlds of healthcare, agriculture, clean energy and more—including sensors that could one day help farmers improve their crop yields and breathalyzers that can detect signs of infection in the air you breathe out.

Here’s a look at how scientists, with the help of the university’s commercialization arm Venture Partners at ���������� Boulder, seek to use discoveries from the lab to make a difference in peoples’ lives.

Mana Battery: Cheaper, longer lasting batteries for clean energy

This company is set to spark a renewable energy revolution. Founded by Chunmei Ban, associate professor in the Paul M. Rady Department of Mechanical Engineering, along with ���������� alumni Nick Singstock and Tyler Evans, Mana Battery is developing a cheaper, safer and longer lasting alternative to the traditional lithium-ion battery.

Lithium-ion batteries are the most common type of rechargeable battery on the planet, powering everything from TV remotes to cell phones and even electric vehicles. But the materials used in these batteries, such as lithium and cobalt, are rare and expensive. In contrast, Mana’s batteries run on sodium, an abundant mineral, offering a more affordable and sustainable alternative.

Currently, sodium-ion batteries come with a host of technological challenges. For example, they typically store less energy than lithium-ion batteries of the same size. 

Ban and her team are working on improving sodium-ion battery designs to increase the amount of energy they can store. Their goal is to develop sodium-ion batteries with the same energy density as lithium-ion batteries at just 35% to 75% of the cost. 

The renewable energy industry could reap the benefits. Sodium-ion batteries could store excess clean energy generated by solar panels or wind turbines, providing power even during cloudy or windless days.  

“The use of batteries has significantly supported, and will continue to promote, the widespread use of electric vehicles and low-cost energy storage solutions for the power grid,” Ban said. 

Flari Tech: Laser-based nose to sniff out disease

Imagine a day when, instead of giving blood, saliva or other bodily fluids, you simply exhaled to get a read on what was happening with your health.

That’s the idea behind a new laser-based technology designed to harness human breath for faster, cheaper and less invasive medical diagnostics.

“There is a real, foreseeable future in which you could go to the doctor and have your breath measured along with your height and weight. … Or you could blow into a mouthpiece integrated into your phone and get information about your health in real time,” said Jun Ye, a JILA fellow and adjoint professor of physics who helped develop the technology along with physics doctoral candidate Qizhong Liang.

Humans exhale more than 1,000 distinct molecules with each breath, producing a unique chemical fingerprint or “breath print” filled with clues about what’s happening deep inside them. Scientists have long sought to harness that information, turning to dogs and other animals to sniff out cancer, diabetes and more.

Liang and Ye’s “frequency comb breathalyzer” could someday do the sniffing instead.

It uses frequency comb lasers, which feature narrow optical lines spread across a vast spectral window, to distinguish between different kinds of breath molecules, which are known to vary in concentration when people are sick. Paired with sophisticated algorithms for machine learning and data analysis, their laser-based nose has been shown to be able to detect whether someone has COVID-19 in a matter of seconds.

Research is underway, in close collaboration with medical doctors from the ���������� Anschutz Medical Campus, to see if breath can also be used to detect chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), pediatric respiratory issues and even lung cancer. The team also plans to miniaturize their technology.

In 2023, Flari Tech Inc.—named after the word ‘flari’ (“to smell”) in the Esperanto language—was formed to help move the technology from the lab to the bedside. Much more research is necessary, but ultimately the researchers believe their work could lead to earlier diagnoses for patients—and save lives.

Space Dust Research & Technologies: Tools for cleaning up dust on the moon

When future astronauts travel to the moon, they’ll face a little-known problem: The moon’s dust, or regolith, is made up of particles as sharp as glass that stick to everything.

“As we learned from the Apollo missions, lunar dust readily sticks to all surfaces of exploration systems, causing damage to spacesuits, degrading thermal radiators and solar panels and posing risks to crew health when inhaled,” said Xu Wang, a research associate at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) at ���������� Boulder.

Wang and Mihály Horányi, professor of physics and a researcher at LASP, launched a company to help. will pioneer technology known as Electron-beam Lunar Dust Mitigation (ELDM). ELDM devices generate a beam of electrons that add electric charges to those sticky particles of dust—causing them to, literally, jump off of surfaces.

This technology is versatile enough that it could work in handheld devices or in larger “car washes” that could clean entire spacesuits or rovers.

Space Dust Research & Technologies will also develop a separate type of technology that can sort through dust on the moon and arrange grains by size—an important step in mining regolith to turn it into building materials and more. The company’s work emerged out of years of research in LASP’s NASA-funded Institute for Modeling Plasma, Atmospheres and Cosmic Dust (IMPACT) lab.

Biosensor Solutions: Biodegradable sensors for tracking soil microbes

Scientists have long known that healthy soils and crops depend on vibrant communities of bacteria and other microbes living in the dirt. There’s just one problem: These microbial communities can be difficult to keep track of.

Until now. Engineer Gregory Whiting and his team at ���������� Boulder recently invented a way to measure soil microbial communities using low-cost, printed sensors. The trick: tasty electronics. The sensors include biodegradable resistors that soil microbes eat and degrade over time.

“It’s like a bait for microbes,” said Whiting, associate professor in the Paul M. Rady Department of Mechanical Engineering. “As they eat the device, the signal changes.”

That, in turn, could allow farmers to get a sense of how many microbes are in their soil.

The Boulder-based company , led by co-founders David Beitz and Carl Kalin, licensed this technology in 2024. The group is currently piloting the sensors with an initial group of local companies, precision agriculture providers and growers. According to company officials, “Data and insights from these new sensors will help growers increase yields and save resources on water, fertilizer, pesticides and herbicides.”

Mesa Quantum: Navigation devices based on the behavior of atoms

One new startup could make it easier to navigate the globe, even when GPS satellites go out, such as during bad storms.

For decades, scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have pioneered the technology of atomic clocks. These devices keep track of time and can help to track your location by measuring the behavior of electrons whizzing around atoms.

Svenja Knappe, associate research professor in the Paul M. Rady Department of Mechanical Engineering at ���������� Boulder, recently helped to improve on those inventions. She discovered a way to make atomic clocks more reliable while also shrinking them down to the size of a computer chip.

Sristy Agrawal and Wale Lawal, who founded Mesa Quantum in 2024, have high hopes for these chips. They say the company's atomic clocks could one day become part of a suite of technologies that enable GPS-free navigation—allowing anyone, from farmers to airplane pilots, to pinpoint their locations on Earth more reliably and precisely than ever before.

“The agricultural sector in Colorado relies heavily on GPS for the operation of tractors, irrigation systems and other modern equipment,” said Agrawal, who earned her doctorate in physics from ���������� Boulder in 2024. “As the industry moves toward greater automation, these systems will become even more dependent on precise and reliable positioning data.”

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See a history of quantum research at ���������� Boulder
 

  Learn more

Interested in being part of the quantum incubator? Reach out to 
cubit@colorado.edu

To kick off the in 2025, three Colorado universities in collaboration with have announced that a new facility for fostering quantum technologies is coming to Colorado.

The State of Colorado has taken bold action to help bring the advances in quantum physics out of the lab and into the real world through its investment into the Quantum Incubator and related quantum assets throughout the state.

The facility will be housed in a 13,000-square-foot space in east Boulder. It is funded by a state tax incentive and spearheaded by ���������� Boulder, in partnership with Colorado State University, Colorado School of Mines and Elevate Quantum, a coalition of 120 organizations, including the three campuses, in Colorado, New Mexico and Wyoming. Additionally, ���������� Boulder is providing leadership and staff resources for its development and launch.

  From the partners

Gov. Jared Polis:

"Colorado is the national hub for innovation in the fast-growing quantum industry and this new incubator will strengthen the industry in our state. By bringing together our world-class higher education system with the companies who are helping to shape this industry, this incubator will help drive forward the next chapter for quantum in Colorado, driving more jobs and economic development."

U.S. Rep. Joe Neguse, House Assistant Minority Leader"

“Thanks to the partnership of ���������� Boulder, Colorado State University and Colorado School of Mines, we were successful in designating Colorado and the Rocky Mountain West the nation’s leading quantum tech hub under the CHIPS and Science Act. And as we cheer the development of our state’s new quantum incubator—right here in Colorado’s 2nd—we are also celebrating the advancements and developments still to come."

CSU President Amy Parsons:

"Quantum technology will revolutionize industries, solve complex problems and significantly improve lives. CSU is proud to collaborate with other quantum experts across the state as part of this effort. We will continue to develop a leading-edge degree program infrastructure that will meet future workforce needs in this high-demand space."

Colorado School of Mines President Paul C. Johnson:

"The new quantum incubator is a great example of the strong collaborative spirit driving Colorado's leadership in quantum innovation. The quantum incubator and the Quantum COmmons shared-use campus in Arvada will be great attractors for and enablers of the technological innovation and quantum industry growth that is the Elevate Quantum vision."

Elevate Quantum CEO and Regional Innovation Officer Zachary Yerushalmi:

"With these new facilities from ���������� and our R1 universities, we're strengthening the foundation of what is already the world's largest quantum industry cluster. Elevate Quantum could not be more excited to see this vital piece of infrastructure come to life."

University of Colorado President Todd Saliman:

"As a longstanding leader in this research, ���������� is excited to team up with CSU, the School of Mines, our partners at Elevate Quantum and the State of Colorado to realize this wonderful new facility. This meaningfully advances our efforts to establish Colorado as a global epicenter of quantum research and technology, and it will enable our great state to continue to drive this critical industry."

“I couldn’t be prouder of the role ���������� Boulder is playing in this important work,” said Massimo Ruzzene, vice chancellor for research and innovation and dean of the institutes at ���������� Boulder. “By stepping up to secure the physical facility, establish the operating entity, identify prospective tenants and ready the building to ramp up operations starting in January, we are positioning the incubator to quickly fill an important need in advancing quantum innovation across the region.”

The facility will include a collaborative office environment for early-stage quantum companies and state-of-the-art scientific equipment—providing a testbed to transform ideas for quantum technologies into products that will benefit consumers in Colorado and beyond. Quantum technologies could include sensors for detecting signs of illness in human breath or networks that may one day send data that can’t be hacked over long distances.

“Quantum science and technologies will enable life-changing advances that touch every segment of society,” said Chancellor Justin Schwartz. “This collaborative facility will allow our researchers’ discoveries to progress more quickly from lab to market and will help cement Colorado and the United States as global leaders in this exciting field.”

The quantum incubator is one piece of a wide-ranging effort to grow the Mountain West region as a “center of mass” for quantum technology, said Scott Sternberg, executive director of the ����������bit Quantum Initiative at ���������� Boulder. It is especially timely as UNESCO has deemed 2025 the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology.

Rapid growth

Momentum around quantum has been building.

JILA, a joint research institute between ���������� Boulder and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), has served as the regional epicenter for quantum research for over 60 years.

In 2023, the U.S. Economic Development Administration (EDA) named Elevate Quantum, headquartered in Denver, as an official tech hub for quantum information technology. Since that designation, the coalition has secured more than $120 million in funding to grow the quantum industry in Colorado and the Mountain West.

As part of that effort, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis signed into law House Bill 1325 in 2024, which directed funds to create the new incubator. Today, the quantum industry supports about 3,000 jobs in the state, but that number could grow to more than 10,000 in the next decade.

“We asked the question: What is Boulder great at when it comes to quantum?” Sternberg said. “And how can the incubator provide a catalyst to make these assets even greater?”

Center of mass

The quantum incubator will not be alone in Colorado. In June, the U.S. National Science Foundation announced a $20 million National Quantum Nanofab facility that will be constructed on the ���������� Boulder campus. Elevate Quantum is also launching a 70-acre campus in Arvada, Colorado, called the Quantum COmmons, with an initial 30,000 square feet of shared-use facilities being developed by Colorado School of Mines in support of Elevate Quantum partners.

Sternberg sees these facilities as part of a progression—helping companies go from papers in a scientific journal, to new prototypes, to products built at scale and, eventually, to the market.

“Colorado’s new quantum facilities will help turn discoveries in the lab into real-world applications, continuing our leadership in quantum science and creating thousands of new jobs for Coloradans,” said Eve Lieberman, executive director of the Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade. “We are excited to celebrate this milestone and look forward to the achievements it will bring to our state.”

The new Boulder facility will also be a vibrant place to work. Physicists, engineers, lab workers and businesspeople can meet quantum experts from Colorado and around the world to share ideas and expertise. They’ll also be able to run experiments on equipment rarely seen outside of large universities. That could include working atomic clocks or devices that measure the extremely fast “ticking” of atoms.

The quantum incubator will be located in BioMed Realty’s Flatiron Park at 5555 Central Ave. in Boulder. Flatiron Park, a hub for life science and technology innovation, consists of 23 buildings and more than 1 million square feet of lab and office space.

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In ����������riosity, experts across the ���������� Boulder campus answer pressing questions about humans, our planet and the universe beyond.

This week, Jingchun Li, associate professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at ���������� Boulder, answers: “How do sea creatures make light?”

From shallow reefs to pitch-black depths, the ocean is alive with sparkling lights. Fish, squid, clams and plankton have found a wide range of ways to glow, shimmer and flash, lighting up the dark water like stars in the night sky.

Scientists estimate that in the deep ocean where sunlight cannot reach, can produce some kind of light.

“Light is important for signaling,” said Li, who has spent much of her career working in oceans around the world to study marine life. “It helps animals of the same species communicate and recognize each other, and it can also serve as a warning to other animals.”

  Previously in ����������riosity

Do animals have emotions?

Bioluminescence is one of the most common methods animals use to do this. By triggering a chemical reaction between oxygen, a molecule called luciferin and an enzyme, luciferase, in their bodies, they can light up.

On land, fireflies use bioluminescence to emit their electric green light. In the deep ocean, anglerfish, a terrifying antagonist seen in Finding Nemo, use the same method to shine in the abyss.

The fish has a bony structure on its forehead that lights up like a lantern, thanks to the large number of bioluminescent bacteria living inside the fish.

But not all animals are born with the right chemical ingredients to generate light on their own. Some still find ways to shine.

The disco clam (Ctenoides ales), a mollusk living in the shallow waters of the Indo-Pacific Ocean, has evolved a unique strip of tissue on their mantle that can reflect ambient light. has found that the clam’s reflective strip contains silica, the main component in glass. When disco clams furl and unfurl their mantles quickly, they reflect sunlight, creating an effect reminiscent of a disco ball.

Li said scientists are still working to understand how disco clams developed their reflective tissue through evolution. Other closely related species, such as rough file clams (Ctenoides scaber), lack the silica structure in their tissue.

The disco clam’s dazzling display might serve as a defense mechanism. Disco clams regularly open and close their shells, but Li and her team found that when the clams sense a shadow looming over them—a sign that a predator might be approaching—they flash much faster, up to six times per second, like a strobe light.

Anglerfish, on the other hand, light up to draw smaller fish toward them, helping to attract prey in the dark. The ostracod, a tiny, bioluminescence crustacean that looks like a shrimp inside a pod, glows to attract mates. Males spit out a glowing mucus to create a special pattern during mating rituals.

The question of why deep-sea animals produce light remains an intriguing scientific mystery.

“To survive in extremely dark and cold water, every bit of energy matters. But having a vision is energetically demanding,” Li said. “From an evolutionary perspective, it’s surprising that so many animals in the deep ocean retained the ability to see and even evolved ways to illuminate their surroundings.”

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In ����������riosity, experts across the ���������� Boulder campus answer pressing questions about humans, our planet and the universe beyond.

This week, Marc Bekoff, professor emeritus in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at ���������� Boulder, answers: “Do animals have emotions?”

Pet owners tend to see their animals’ feelings clearly. Dogs wagging their tails when the owners get home? Happiness. Crouching down after being caught raiding the trash? Embarrassment. Barking, and jumping up and down when they see their friends? Excitement.

But what about less cuddly creatures? Do crustaceans and birds have emotions, too?

  Previously in ����������riosity

What does an all-nighter do to your body?

“Of course they do,” Bekoff said “There's solid science showing very clearly that a wide diversity of animals have emotions, from mammals to all the vertebrates and invertebrates.”  

Bekoff has spent decades observing animals from coyotes in the Rocky Mountains to Adélie penguins in Antarctica. He has written multiple books about animal sentience including “The Emotional Lives of Animals: A Leading Scientist Explores Animal Joy, Sorrow, and Empathy—and Why They Matter.”

He said emotions play an important role in helping animals make decisions about how to respond to social situations, such as whether to run from a potential danger or to approach a mate. For group-living animals like coyotes and wolves, having emotions is fundamental to forming packs.

Evidence has shown that mammals—including humans—emit similar brain chemicals during emotional situations. For example, birds secrete dopamine, a chemical that makes humans feel good, when they sing songs to attract a potential mate.

But even invertebrates like insects and crustaceans could experience emotions, according to a growing body of . While scientists can't definitively say lobsters experience happiness the same way as humans do, they certainly avoid painful situations.

“There is a biodiversity of emotions,” Bekoff said. He explained that the feeling of joy varies even between different people, but that doesn’t mean animals like lobsters or ants don’t experience happiness. “It may simply look different than in humans.”

Recognizing all animals have emotions can help people develop more empathy toward wildlife and support wildlife conservation efforts, he added.

In a published earlier this year, Bekoff and his collaborators proposed that treating individual animals as creatures with emotions and personalities, in addition to understanding the species as a whole, could help preserve biodiversity.

For example, people might be more willing to use loud sounds or strong scents to scare away predators they encounter rather than resort to killing.

Bekoff said Colorado could apply these approaches to help manage its wildlife, including grey wolves, which were reintroduced in the state in December following a voter-approved initiative. For social animals like wolves, if the leader dies, it can lead to the dissolution of the entire pack, he said.

“Wolves have very tight bonds with their pack members,” Bekoff said. “Pups have very tight bonds with their mom. Killing any of these individuals will not support a sustainable population.”

In the end, Bekoff says humans shouldn’t be so quick to brush off other animals. 

“It's really easy to write off an ant or a lobster or a crayfish, but there's no reason to. My take as a scientist is to keep the door open until we are sure that it is not true.” 

Off

Today’s weather report on Mars: Windy with a chance of catastrophic dust storms blotting out the sky.

In a new study, planetary scientists at ���������� Boulder have begun to unravel the factors that kick off major dust storms on Mars—weather events that sometimes engulf the entire planet in swirling grit. The team discovered that relatively warm and sunny days may help to trigger them.

  ���������� Boulder at AGU 2024

Check out more earth and space research news from the 2024 annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in Washington.

Heshani Pieris, lead author of the study, said the findings are a first step toward forecasting extreme weather on Mars, just like scientists do on Earth.

“Dust storms have a significant effect on rovers and landers on Mars, not to mention what will happen during future crewed missions to Mars,” said Pieris, a graduate student at the (LASP) at ���������� Boulder. “This dust is very light and sticks to everything.”

She will at the in Washington.

To put dust storms under the magnifying glass, the researchers drew on real observations from NASA’s satellite.

So far, they have identified weather patterns that may underly roughly two-thirds of the major dust storms on Mars. You won’t see Mars weather reporters standing in front of a green screen just yet, but it’s a step in the right direction, said study co-author Paul Hayne.

“We need to understand what causes some of the smaller or regional storms to grow into global-scale storms,” said Hayne, a researcher at LASP and associate professor at the Department of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences. “We don’t even fully understand the basic physics of how dust storms start at the surface.”

Dusty demise

Dust storms on Mars are something to behold.

Many begin as smaller storms that swirl around the ice caps at the planet’s north and south poles, usually during the second half of the Martian year. (A year on Mars lasts 687 Earth days). Those storms can grow at a furious pace, pressing toward the equator until they cover millions of square miles and last for days.

The 2015 film The Martian starring Matt Damon featured one such apocalyptic storm that knocked over a satellite dish and tossed around astronauts. The reality is less cinematic. Mars’ atmosphere is much thinner than Earth’s, so dust storms on the Red Planet can’t generate much force. But they can still be trouble.

In 2018, for example, a global dust storm buried the solar panels on NASA’s Opportunity rover under a layer of dust. The rover died not long after.

“Even though the wind pressure may not be enough to knock over equipment, these dust grains can build up a lot of speed and pelt astronauts and their equipment,” Hayne said.

Hot spells

In the current study, Pieris and Hayne set their sights on two weather patterns that tend to occur every year on Mars known as “A” and “C” storms.

The team pored over observations of Mars from the Mars Climate Sounder instrument aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter over eight Mars years (15 years on Earth). In particular, Pieris and Hayne looked for periods of unusual warmth—or weeks when more sunlight filtered through Mars’ thin atmosphere and baked the planet’s surface.

They discovered that roughly 68% of major storms on the planet were preceded by a sharp rise in temperatures at the surface. In other words, the planet heated up, then a few weeks later, conditions got dusty.

“It’s almost like Mars has to wait for the air to get clear enough to form a major dust storm,” Hayne said.

The team can’t prove that those balmy conditions actually cause the dust storms. But, Pieris said, similar phenomena trigger storms on Earth. During hot summers in Boulder, Colorado, for example, warm air near the ground can rise through the atmosphere, often forming those towering, gray clouds that signal rain.

“When you heat up the surface, the layer of atmosphere right above it becomes buoyant, and it can rise, taking dust with it,” Pieris said.

She and Hayne are now gathering observations from more recent years on Mars to continue to explore these explosive weather patterns. Eventually, they’d like to get to the point where they can look at live data coming from the Red Planet and predict what could happen in the weeks ahead.

“This study is not the end all be all of predicting storms on Mars,” Pieris said. “But we hope it’s a step in the right direction.”

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