University of Arizona in the News

Plunging water levels in Lake Mead and Lake Powell could negatively affect millions of people. The former 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. "The water levels are declining, and so the focus is really on how can there be either a mandatory or voluntary reduction in the amount of water that gets distributed," said Kathy Jacobs, director of the Center for Climate Adaptation Science and Solutions at the University of Arizona.

University of Arizona President Robert C. Robbins discusses the state of Arizona Athletics.

NASA's DART spacecraft will smash into Asteroid Dimorphos today – a first test of a proposed system that would deflect asteroids that might hit Earth. "The most important thing to keep in mind about any of these deflection techniques is they rely on having enough time to work," said University of Arizona professor of planetary sciences Amy Mainzer. "The key is finding objects well ahead of any potential impact."

From 1966 to 1972, the Doris Duke Indian Oral History Program paid for anthropologists, historians and linguists at the University of Arizona and six other state universities to gather the stories and, in some cases, the fading languages, of Indigenous people across the United States.

A new study published this week in the journal Nature finds a vaccine strategy involving formulation changes, an initial escalating dose, and a longer wait for booster immunization results in more effective antibody production against HIV in rhesus monkeys. There are still many steps to be taken before this can be translated into HIV treatment for humans, said Elizabeth Connick, who studies HIV pathogenesis and cure strategies at the University of Arizona College of Medicine – Tucson.

NASA's DART spacecraft will smash into Asteroid Dimorphos on Sept. 26 – a first test of a proposed system that would deflect asteroids that might hit Earth. "We don't want to discover these objects a few days before they are going to hit us, but instead many years or decades in advance," said University of Arizona professor of planetary sciences Amy Mainzer.

Eight University of Arizona student researchers consulted with City of Tucson planners with a report that shows the potential challenges and opportunities when it comes to public transportation improvements in Tucson.

Over the past year, several higher education institutions and state governments have worked to reduce the cost of college for Indigenous students. In June, the University of Arizona's flagship campus in Tucson launched the Arizona Native Scholars Grant program, which fully covers tuition and fees for full-time undergraduate students who belong to any of the state's 22 federally recognized tribes.

Kristen Hoggatt-Abader, a senior lecturer in the Writing Program and a third-year doctoral candidate in rhetoric and composition at the University of Arizona, writes that she hopes educators are thinking about the accessibility of course content and delivery. "When I attended college, I was just off the heels of an event that resulted in a traumatic brain injury. I had significant challenges that affected my cognition, perception, and physical mobility.

Chris Impey, a University Distinguished Professor of Astronomy at the University of Arizona, writes that teams working on NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite found a few particularly interesting planets orbiting in the habitable zones of their parent stars. One planet is 30% larger than Earth and orbits its star in less than three days. The other is 70% larger than the Earth and might host a deep ocean. These two exoplanets are super-Earths – more massive than the Earth but smaller than ice giants like Uranus and Neptune.