University of Arizona in the News

Willem de Kooning's "Woman-Ochre" was stolen from the University of Arizona Museum of Art in 1985. It has since been recovered and restored at at the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Getty Conservation Institute in Los Angeles. The oil on canvas will go on display at the Getty before returning to the University of Arizona Museum of Art in October.

Travel writer Pam Fieber writes about her recent trip to Tucson and singles out the University of Arizona Alfie Norville Gem & Mineral Museum. "One surprise was the recently opened gem museum, located in the Pima County Courthouse in Tucson. Expecting rows of turquoise? No. There are full-on boulder-sized meteorites, geodes and a bit of a history of the universe going on here, through the stories of rocks and minerals," Fieber writes.

In the winter, COVID-19 cases shot up and plummeted with unprecedented speed. But experts say something else is going on with this surge. So far, the immunity many people acquired then has helped to dampen the spread of the two forms of Omicron powering the current, stretched-out wave of cases. "It's imperfect, but it's at least some protection," said Dr. Joe Gerald, an associate professor of public health policy at the University of Arizona's Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is analyzing more than 100 deaths that could be attributed to "long COVID" by looking at death certificates from across the country over the last two years, according to two people familiar with the matter. "There is a significant underdetection of long COVID," said Sairam Parthasarathy, chief of the pulmonary division at the University of Arizona College of Medicine – Tucson and one of the leads on its long COVID study. "It ties into health literacy ... of someone being aware that they have a medical problem.

A $500,000 grant from Arizona's Technology and Research Initiative Fund will help the University of Arizona College Academy for Parents to expand outreach efforts to helps families of K-12 students plan for college. Another $150,000 TRIF grant will support the creation of the Arizona Road Trip, a new program that will bring between 2,500 and 3,000 potential future college students to campus in one academic year.

The historic Maya oriented their lives by the heavens. A stream of recent data supports the idea that the Mesoamerican people built temple structures to mark particular solar positions and significant points on the calendar, such as a kickoff for planting or a harvest festival.

A monkeypox outbreak continues to grow, with more than 640 cases reported in dozens of countries where the virus isn't normally found. Research published this week reported a genetic link between the current strain and an outbreak dating to 2017. University of Arizona professor ecology and evolutionary biology Michael Worobey, a member of the BIO5 Institute who was not involved in the research, said it suggests the world failed deploy the resources needed to control monkeypox at its source before it spread globally. "It's really a tale of two outbreaks," Worobey said.

A $1.2 million grant from the Arizona Department of Education will allow the University of Arizona College of Education's Native Student Outreach, Access and Resiliency program to expand mentoring and educational resources to Arizona's Indigenous communities. "The ADE grant will help us to continue creating healing and innovative spaces to encourage students and communities that they are loved, and they are brilliant leaders.

Arizona Football letter winner and longtime University of Arizona supporter Douglas Allred has given gifts totaling $4.8 million to Arizona Athletics. The funds will support program enhancements for the football and men's basketball programs as well as the Lute Olson Endowment for Excellence in Men's Basketball.

An unprecedented drought has created a national security issue as more than half of Chile's 19 million population live in areas deemed to be experiencing "severe water scarcity." In hundreds of rural communities in the center and north of the country, Chileans must rely on emergency tankers to deliver drinking water. "Water has become a national security issue – it's that serious," said Pablo García-Chevesich, a Chilean hydrologist working at the University of Arizona.