University of Arizona in the News

A multistate quest to protect a dwindling Colorado River has devolved into a high-stakes battle pitting California against its neighbors. At odds are two dueling proposals as to how seven states should apportion critical consumption cuts that could help save the lifeblood of the Western United States. If the basin’s reservoirs reach “dead pool” — a situation in which there isn’t enough water to flow over the dams — then no one will be getting anything, said Sharon Megdal, director of the University of Arizona Water Resources Research Center.

The citizen science-driven Dog Aging Project relies on thousands of pet dogs to help scientists to understand what happens to memory and cognition in old age. "There's a lot we just don't know about how dog cognition changes with age," said comparative psychologist Evan MacLean, director of the Arizona Canine Cognition Center at the University of Arizona and a collaborator on the Dog Aging Project.

University of Arizona President Robert C. Robbins, women's basketball head coach Adia Barnes, vice president and director of athletics Dave Heeke and other members of university leadership spoke at a ribbon-cutting ceremony for McKale Memorial Center's first lactation room.

Andrea K. Gerlak, director of the Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy and a professor in the School of Geography, Development and Environment at the University of Arizona, writes that it is time to think more creatively about long-term planning and shared problem solving in the Colorado River basin.

When loneliness is with us for a long time, it increases the risk of depression, anxiety and substance use disorders, as well as heart disease, cancer, stroke, hypertension and dementia. While not everyone who is immunocompromised in the age of COVID-19 is lonely, our culture has created the conditions for that to be more likely – and as University of Arizona professor of communication and psychology Kory Floyd pointed out, loneliness puts them at an even higher risk for illness.

The University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law's Innovation for Justice program applies a design- and systems-thinking methodology to engage students in project-based, community-engaged learning. Students work with lived experience experts from the community – people who are navigating common legal issues like eviction, debt collection and domestic violence – as well as other diverse stakeholders to gain an understanding of existing imbalances in the justice system.

Despite claims made on a graph labeled "Climate History Over 9,500 years" shared widely on social media that shows current global temperatures as being on the lower end of that time period, recent studies have concluded human activity has contributed to increasing global temperatures that are now warmer than those of the past thousands or tens of thousands of years. A University of Arizona study highlighting the main drivers of climate change and how far out of bounds human activity has pushed the climate system is cited.

The James Webb Space Telescope provides a new way for researchers like University of Arizona professor of astronomy Marcia Rieke – the principal investigator for JWST's Near-Infrared Camera – to answer questions they couldn't resolve before about the origins of the universe. With JWST, Rieke and a team spotted candidates for the farthest, and therefore oldest, galaxies ever seen. They were "relieved to see that our observing plan was yielding the results that we hoped for," she said.

Colin Denny, a research assistant in the University of Arizona College of Education who grew up on the Navajo Nation, will perform a sign language interpretation of the song "America the Beautiful" during the Super Bowl 2023 pregame show.

Vishnu Reddy, a professor of planetary science at the University of Arizona, writes that space junk is an emerging problem that could create hazardous conditions for astronauts and spacecraft in the future.