University of Arizona in the News

The African American Museum of Southern Arizona will open on Jan. 13 in the University of Arizona Student Union. The attraction will offer interactive and educational displays covering the gamut of local African American history.

The return to Earth by the University of Arizona-led OSIRIS-REx mission ranks as a top space exploration mission in a roundup of upcoming astronomy and astrophysics projects.

Plunging water levels in Lake Mead and Lake Powell could negatively affect millions of people. The former at one point this year dropped to less than 150 feet from "dead pool" status – when the volume falls to a level so low that water cannot flow downstream from the dam. Andrea Gerlak, professor of geography, development and environment at the University of Arizona, said Lake Mead is "dangerously close" to hitting a low enough elevation for it to stop turning the turbines, and producing electricity.

The University of Arizona will lead an effort to develop hypersonic aircraft, which are capable of exceeding five times the speed of sound. Professor of systems and industrial engineering Roberto Furfaro earned a three-year, $4.5 million Pentagon contract to lead the development of improved guidance, navigation and control systems for "autonomous vehicles operating at hypersonic speeds."

Timian Godfrey, a Navajo assistant clinical professor of nursing at the University of Arizona, traveled to the Navajo Nation in early 2021 to help with its mass vaccination campaign. Barriers to health care access and high rates of chronic diseases made the Diné community highly vulnerable; leaders responded with strict lockdowns and other safety measures. Getting vaccines into arms was the next phase of Navajo Nation's response. Godfrey said people waited in line for upward of four hours to get their vaccinations.

COVID-19 has killed millions around the world, including more than 1 million in the United States. But some people who have been infected have no symptoms at all. Others have the equivalent of a head cold. Some patterns are intuitive. Many of the deaths have been in people over age 70, or who suffer from chronic health conditions that undermine their ability to fight off the infection. But sometimes the variability of the illness makes little sense, a fact that has surprised Deepta Bhattacharya, professor of immunology at the University of Arizona College of Medicine – Tucson.

Surrounded by a vast ocean underneath a thick ice shell, Enceladus is a hot candidate for potentially harboring alien life. A team of researchers led by the University of Arizona concluded that a future mission could provide answers even without landing on the tiny world.

The Vera Rubin Observatory now under construction atop Cerro Pachón in Chile's Atacama Desert could fill in a lot of gaps in our knowledge of the far outer Solar System, such including whether a theorized "Planet Nine" may lurk out there. University of Arizona planetary scientist Kat Volk counts herself among the researchers who have never quite bought that hypothesis. "The evidence for Planet Nine is very weak," Volk said. "I don't think there is currently strong evidence for specific large objects in the (trans-Neptunian object) population.

The University of Arizona once again ranks among the nation's top public research universities, with $770 million in total research activity in fiscal year 2021, according to data released Thursday by the National Science Foundation. The university also retained its No. 1 ranking in astronomy and astrophysics expenditures at more than $113 million – more than $40 million ahead of the No. 2-ranked university.

Antonio Bacelar da Silva, an assistant professor at the University of Arizona who studies, among other things, the relationship between culture and food, says plenty of historical examples illustrate how people's eating habits can be tied to the cultural, socioeconomic and political landscape.