University of Arizona in the News

Sue Bird, the WNBA's career leader in assists, is retiring at the end of the season after an illustrious 19-year WNBA career. She made her first pro assist to Adia Barnes, now the women's basketball coach at the University of Arizona. Barnes last played professionally 12 years ago and spent several years as a broadcaster before coaching, all while Bird continued stacking one assist after another. "I totally forgot that," Barnes said of Bird's first assist, laughing. "I made the shot, so that was a good thing.

The COVID-19 pandemic caused the broader health community to overlook research out of Africa indicating monkeypox appeared to be spreading through sexual contact and affecting mostly young men. Now the number of cases stands at 31,700 worldwide – about a third of those in the United States.

The western U.S. is in the middle of a 22-year-long megadrought, forcing farmers to facing tough decisions over how to keep us fed when there is less water to go around. Michael Kotutwa Johnson of the University of Arizona Indigenous Resilience Center, an assistant specialist with the School of Natural Resources and the Environment and a Hopi farmer, discusses the innovative solutions farmers have developed and how the drought has changed the way we think about agriculture.

Measurements of methane emissions from shallow water oil and gas platforms in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico found they were substantially higher than those from drilling on land, according to research published on Thursday. The study, by researchers at the University of Arizona, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and several other organizations is among the first to measure methane leaking from offshore facilities, which account for about 30% of global oil and gas production but are difficult to study because they are so remote.

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. "(Dead pool) would be a catastrophe. It could happened, but there's no reason to to allow it to happen. We have the tools we have the skill set to to act to avoid that catastrophe," said University of Arizona Regents Professor of Law Robert Glennon.

Extreme heat is deadly for humans and not great for infrastructure, either. This story uses a simulated city – Meltsville – to illustrate some of what can happen when unprecedented heat plagues a location that isn't ready for it. University of Arizona assistant professor of planning and sustainable built environments Ladd Keith explains several ways transportation systems sometimes struggle to keep up. "As you have a heat wave occurring, it will expand the asphalt, it will expand the steel," Keith said.

Climate change links recent deadly flooding in Eastern Kentucky to the ongoing drought in Arizona. As the Earth warms, its atmosphere can hold more water vapor, but at a slower rate, resulting in fewer, but more powerful, rainstorms. Higher temperatures also mean less snow, which has historically fed many of the American West's rivers and streams, helping to stave off drought. "This has been a slow-motion crisis for two decades now," said Michael Crimmins, professor of climate science at the University of Arizona. "It's just converging at this moment."

University of Arizona professor of hydrology and atmospheric sciences Xubin Zeng discusses what he sees as a lack of collaboration between insurance companies and academia that slows progress in the development of catastrophe modeling tools.

Grounded32 is a nonprofit community center in north Phoenix that seeks to counter the increase in loneliness many people experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic. High-quality social relationships reduce emotional distress, and improve psychological well being and life satisfaction, according to David Sbarra, a clinical psychologist and professor of psychology at the University of Arizona. "We're not out and about seeing our strong connected networks and loose affiliative networks – college kids have come home, children stop attending school, everyone's working from home.

Representatives from the University of Arizona Center for Innovation and Tech Parks Arizona last month met with community partners and business leaders across Cochise County to discuss efforts to bring a startup business incubator to Sierra Vista, potentially later this year. "When we engage with an incredible community like Sierra Vista, it's actually not because we decided we wanted to expand it," said UACI executive director Eric Smith.