University of Arizona in the News

Offshore oil and gas operations in the Gulf of Mexico release far more climate-changing methane than official estimates show, according to a new study published Monday. Climate scientists who were not involved in the study praised it for its approach. "This study represents a novel and thoughtful assessment of the climate impact of oil and gas production in the Gulf of Mexico," said Riley Duren, a research scientist at the University of Arizona who leads Carbon Mapper, a group pioneering accessible and transparent information about where greenhouse gases are being released.

University of Arizona faculty and community partners have created the "DETAINED: Voices from the Migrant Incarceration System" – a public archive of interviews with asylum seekers and undocumented migrants incarcerated in Arizona.

New maps show this year spring came 13 days late in Sacramento but two weeks early in Richmond, Virginia. Experts say that could be a problem because plants and animals use environmental cues such as temperature to know when to flower, migrate, breed or emerge from hibernation.

University of Arizona professors Andrea Gerlak and Robert Varady, along with incoming faculty member Gemma Smith, write in support of increased scientific input on the development and implementation of water policy across all levels of decision-making, from the local to the international.

University of Arizona astronomers took part in an international effort to study the aftermath of the brightest gamma ray burst ever observed. "Being so close and so bright, this burst offered us an unprecedented opportunity to gather observations of the afterglow across the electromagnetic spectrum and to test how well our models reflect what’s really happening in GRB jets," said Kate Alexander, an astronomer from the University of Arizona. "25 years of afterglow models that have worked very well cannot completely explain this jet."

University of Arizona’s Student Success District has received the National AIA Interior Architecture Award, the institute’s prestigious awards program celebrating the most innovative interior spaces across the United States.

Operators of a gene database that holds samples taken in late 2019 from animals sold at a public market in Wuhan, China, face scrutiny and criticism both for allowing Chinese researchers to withhold related data and for cutting off archive access to researchers, including University of Arizona professor of ecology and evolutionary biology Michael Worobey, who recently published a report supporting the case that the coronavirus pandemic originated with illegally traded wild animals.

Rather than rely on boilerplate job-posting language, some employers have tried customizing job descriptions to the department or division. That's especially helpful at large institutions like the University of Arizona, which has over 400 units, said Helena Rodrigues, the university's vice president and chief human resources officer. "When you are posting a position, how do you speak to the environment that that individual's going to encounter? What's unique about that department?

New research suggests the asteroid Didymos spins so rapidly it casts off a stream of rocks and dust, and that the phenomenon may be the origin of its moonlet, Dimorphos, which was redirected by NASA's DART spacecraft last October as an initial test of a proposed planetary defense system. Right now the work is based almost entirely on remote observations gathered before the DART mission. "It's a good place to start, and that's all we can do," said University of Arizona Regents Professor of Planetary Sciences Dante Lauretta.

University of Arizona astronomers have joined an international effort to study the aftermath of the brightest flash of gamma rays ever observed. "When you compare the energy in this jet, it's very similar to the energy of jets we've seen in other GRBs," said University of Arizona assistant professor of astronomy Kate Alexander. "So then, why was it so bright? It turns out that all of the energy in this jet was focused into a very narrow angle.