In The NOCO

A handful of Colorado schools monitor their students with cameras that use facial recognition software. It’s a security measure: An administrator with access to the technology can upload a student’s photo and then the system can use cameras around the school to pinpoint the student’s location.   More school districts across the state have been exploring whether to adopt this technology, the Denver...

An estimated 13 percent of the construction workforce in Colorado is made up of immigrants without legal status, according to the American Immigration Council . These workers often handle lower-paying jobs at construction sites like installing drywall or laying bricks.  Colorado has a housing shortage. So we wondered what is likely to happen to Colorado’s construction industry as the Trump adminis...

It’s one of the first concepts you learned in science class: Trees take in carbon dioxide and release oxygen. It’s part of why forests play such a critical role in reducing carbon in the atmosphere.   Which is why a recent report on Colorado’s forests sounds a bit alarming.  Researchers set out to gauge how many tons of carbon are taken in by Colorado’s nearly 23 million acres of forest – and also...

The Trump administration announced recently it’s terminating hundreds of jobs at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration . The announcement sparked protests, including one in Boulder in which NOAA supporters and employees took part.  The threat of layoffs at NOAA also led our guest to write a defense of the work the organization does.  Kari Bowen is an atmospheric scientist at the Univ...

Wildfires are an ever-present threat in Colorado. And those that grow and spread quickly are becoming more common – and more destructive .    But there’s a piece of technology that could help spot a blaze in the earliest stages, before it spreads.   Cameras equipped with artificial intelligence can detect plumes of smoke in the air – even in remote areas – and alert firefighters nearby. This makes...

Crowds of sandhill crane admirers gather in Southern Colorado each spring to watch these birds – which have recovered after nearly being wiped out a century ago.  The birds’ admirers are fascinated by the cranes’ calls, their mating behaviors, and the fact that the species has existed for 2.5 million years.  Scott Weidensaul is a writer and ornithologist who has also found inspiration from the san...

Colorado has ambitious goals around renewable energy.  Governor Jared Polis is aiming for 100 percent of the energy in the state to come from renewable sources by the year 2040.    But there’s an obstacle: Colorado doesn’t have enough power lines to deliver all that renewable energy from where it’s produced – often in rural parts of the state – to where it’s needed. A new study from the state’s El...

Democrats in Colorado control the governor’s office and both houses of the state legislature. Many of them openly oppose the Republican Trump administration’s actions to ramp up arrests and deportation of immigrants without legal status in the state.    And those Democratic lawmakers have heard from many constituents in recent weeks who also oppose immigration raids.    But more than a month after...

Challenging anti-trans legislation – and   finding a way to laugh about it.  That’s the idea behind a new national comedy tour created by a transgender comedian who lives in Gunbarrel, outside of Boulder.   Ren Q Dawe is the organizer of the tour – called “Here  to Pee” – which launches this Saturday at Junkyard Social in Boulder. The comedians have stops planned in all 50 states. And some of the...

A piece of U.S. immigration law allows some people who have entered the country illegally to be detained and quickly deported – without typical legal proceedings and a hearing before an immigration judge.    Until recently, this policy applied to people without legal status who had been in the country for less than two weeks, if they were detained near the U.S. border.   But on the first day of hi...

Dozens of childcare and preschool centers in Colorado are run by companies backed by private equity funding.    Private equity firms use investor money to buy companies with a goal of improving them and selling them for a profit. This kind of investment can help a small childcare business grow and make upgrades, which could be useful in a state like Colorado that has a childcare shortage.   But ma...

In 2018 the City of Boulder and Boulder County filed an unusual lawsuit: they sued Exxon Mobil and Suncor Energy for contributing to climate change.   Climate change, the lawsuit argued , has caused a plethora of problems like flooding, road damage, and an increase in wildfires. The city and county have spent millions of dollars reacting to these problems.   And they wanted help paying for it.   S...

Nuclear Waste is piling up at power plants around the country, and we have no idea where to put it. Many states are aggressively fighting plans for new storage facilities.  But northwest Colorado is quietly opening the door.  KUNC’s investigative reporter Scott Franz recently traveled around rural Colorado talking with people about what nuclear waste storage could do for the local economy – and al...

Over the past few months, crews have worked on an unusual firefighting operation near Boulder. They extinguished a blaze that has burned underground for more than a century.   The work happened at Marshall Mesa near an open area that's popular for hiking. A fire in a a coal seam there had smoldered beneath the surface for years. It was a remnant of a time when coal mining thrived in the area. And...

After the recent death of President Jimmy Carter, many of the tributes mentioned his environmental legacy and push for energy-efficient development. And one unusual part of his plan was focused here in Colorado.   Carter’s administration had backed the design of some experimental homes along the Front Range. They were warmed by the sun and fueled by renewable sources – an exciting idea in the late...

A note: Today’s episode deals with issues around suicide and firearm violence.  Over the past decade, Colorado has seen more than 7,000 deaths by suicide that involved a firearm. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, guns are involved in more than half of Colorado’s deaths by suicide.  A bill making its way through the state legislature could help reduce those numbers.   The...

Ask a teacher about the hardest part of their job, and you might expect them to cite long hours or low pay .   But there’s another, less visible challenge that educators face: exposure to student trauma. Students may confide in a teacher about not having enough to eat at home, or an abusive family member.  And exposure to those problems takes a serious toll on teachers.   According to a new study...

In 2025, many of us are on social media – and lots of us are hunting for a new job.   If that sounds like your situation, a University of Colorado researcher says be thoughtful about what you post online. Because what you do on Facebook or Threads or BlueSky can change your odds of landing that new gig.  Jason Thatcher has been studying how hiring managers use social media to make decisions about...

Researcher Caitlin Clark has a job a lot of people would envy. Clark is a food scientist who oversees a new laboratory devoted to the study of chocolate – how it’s made, what makes it taste so good, and how to make new and better varieties of it.  She and her team, based at the Colorado State University Food Innovation Center in Denver, work to dream up new confections that hopefully will end up o...

In February of 1942, not long after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the U.S. military removed thousands of Americans of Japanese descent from their homes. Most of them were full citizens who had been born and raised in the United States.    Families had just a few days to get their affairs in order before reporting to relocation centers, mostly in Western states. Roosevelt’s order affected about 120,...

In the late 1960s, a new movement of Black music grew out of the end of the civil rights era. Black artists declared their “Black power” and rocked the airwaves with the sound of funk.     Funk music was more than just a genre with excellent grooves. It had deeper social and political meaning. Funk began as a reaction to tumultuous times and would ultimately lay the foundation for the hip0hop and...

If you grew up in the 80s, you might remember a famous anti-drug public service announcement from TV. There was a frying pan, a sizzling egg and an ominous warning:  “This is your brain on drugs.”  Josh Gowin, a researcher with the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, remembers that ad quite well. Anti-drug PSA's like that one inspired him to study the effects of marijuana use on the br...

A vaccine against weight gain could be on the horizon, according to new research from the University of Colorado Boulder.  The research shows that a particular strain of bacteria known as M. vaccae could help prevent obesity by reducing inflammation.   Chris Lowry is a professor of integrative physiology at CU and led the research. His study found that he could prevent mice from becoming overweigh...

Travelers making their way through Denver International Airport can experience a colorful, distinctive new art exhibit .   The project, called “It’s Not What You Take, It’s What You Bring Back,” was created from 183 pieces of used luggage, suspended over a walkway in Concourse B. They’re painted in the vibrant colors of the Colorado sky – turquoise, baby blue, ruby red – and they form a shape rese...

For many people, being stopped by police can produce a wave of anxiety. But that sense of stress and uncertainty is even worse for people with conditions like autism spectrum disorder, hearing loss, Tourette’s syndrome, or dementia.   Boulder’s Police Department recently rolled out a new initiative called the Blue Envelope Program to help people with disabilities communicate when they encounter an...