University of Arizona in the News

Senate Republican staffers have produced a report asserting the coronavirus pandemic "most likely" originated in China, following safety lapses at a laboratory in the city of Wuhan. University of Arizona professor of ecology and evolutionary biology Michael Worobey, who identified the probable source as animals sold at a market in a pair of studies published earlier this year said the new GOP report "gets the science completely wrong." "As the saying goes, when you mix science and politics, you get politics," he said.

The updated COVID-19 booster shots appear to work about as well against the BA.4 and BA.5 omicron subvariants as the original boosters they replaced, according to two new studies. However, that research probably didn't find any difference between the new and old boosters because of immune imprinting, says Michael Worobey, a professor at the University of Arizona who studies the evolution of viruses and the origins and control of pandemics.

A new report from UNICEF estimates that nearly all the world's children – more than 2 billion – will be exposed to high heat-wave frequency by 2050. That is about 1.5 billion more children than are exposed now. "The models tell us this is the case, as does empirical lived experience," Lauren Gifford, a research scientist at the University of Arizona, said in response to the report. "Children now and children who haven't been born yet are going to exist in the world in very different ways, and some of those ways we can't even conceive yet."

New, greatly improved security measures now protect Willem de Kooning's "Woman-Ochre" following its return to the University of Arizona Museum of Art. Increased staffing, along with physical barriers and modern surveillance technology should prevent a repeat of its theft in 1985. "It might not always be in a case forever,"  said Olivia Miller, the museum's interim director and curator. "But we think that just given its history, given what it's been through, given what the museum has been through, it's a step we just needed to take."

Similar in texture to challah and sprinkled with sugar or sesame seeds, Pan de muerto – "bread of the dead" – is a staple of the Mexican holiday Día de los Muertos, celebrated annually on Nov. 1-2 to reunite the souls of the dead with the living. People eat the bread with their families, but it is also an essential offering on home altars, or ofrendas.

As the midterm election nears, information is moving at light speed and so much of it is exaggerated, misleading and even false. Torivio A Fodder, manager of the Indigenous Governance Program at the University of Arizona Udall Center and a member of the Taos Pueblo, joined a panel discussion examining how average citizens can make informed election decisions. 

University of Arizona professor of linguistics Cecile McKee explains what speech errors – from word substitutions to blended synonyms – can tell us about the human mind.

The oldest individual tree in the world – nicknamed "Methuselah" after the longest-lived person in the Bible – has been alive for more than 4,800 years old (4,854 years as of 2022). Founded by Edmund Schulman in 1957, the core samples were examined and verified by Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research at University of Arizona.

The Washington Post invited readers to submit photos and videos of their companion animals doing funny, wacky or inexplicable things, and then asked for commentary from animal behavior experts such as Evan MacLean, director of the Arizona Canine Cognition Center at the University of Arizona.

"The Art of Food" is from the collection of Jordan D. Schnitzer and has more than 100 food-related works by over 30 artists, including Andy Warhol, Lorna Simpson, Enrique Chagoya and Hung Liu. It originated last fall at the University of Arizona Museum of Art