University of Arizona in the News

Sam Chambers, a researcher in University of Arizona Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health, argues against U.S. Customs and Border Protection's experiment using robotic dogs to patrol the international border with Mexico.

A new bill in Congress would eliminate a lucrative tax break professional sports teams routinely use to help fund new stadiums. A March 2020 study co-authored by University of Arizona researcher Austin J. Drukker published by the National Tax Journal estimated the federal government had lost $4.3 billion in revenue as a result of tax-exempt municipal bonds used for stadium construction since 2000.

Publicly traded companies headquartered in California have more than doubled the number of women to their boards in the three years since the state set gender quotas, growing to 1,959 in 2021 from 782 in 2018, according to research led by University of Arizona professors Ji Hoon Hwang and Kathleen Kahle, and colleagues from Clemson University.

Student journalist Susan Barnett writes that the University of Arizona has a one-of-a-kind approach to building its Indigenous community on campus. On every level, they are making an effort to meet Native Americans' needs – from students, to teachers, to higher-up positions and programs with focuses specifically on Native American students.

With an incredibly successful launch, deployment, and journey to its final destination now complete, NASA's James Webb Space Telescope is slated to begin science operations in mid-2022. In an exclusive "20 questions" interview with nine members of those teams, an insider's view of what awaits James Webb now awaits us all, too.

Scientists have spent the past few years deploying aircraft and satellites to untangle one of climate science's greatest mysteries: pinpointing exactly what's causing methane, a particularly powerful greenhouse gas, to rise so fast in the atmosphere. University of Arizona scientist Riley Duren likens the problem of rising methane to an unbalanced checkbook. "We have a general idea of methane emissions, particularly at a global scale.

Drought linked to climate change, along with overgrazing, is destroying the agave plants on which the Mexican long-nosed bat depends. This story reporting on a new initiative trying to restore the balance between the agaves, the bats that feed on them, and people cites a 2016 paper co-authored by Gary Paul Nabhan of the University of Arizona Southwest Center that concluded conservation biologists have inadvertently hampered public concern by viewing conservation as an attempt "to simply avert extinction and foster recovery of single imperiled species."

The moon is top of mind for many national space programs and private companies, with some planning to send humans back to the lunar surface as early as 2025. In advance, scientists are launching satellites and other payloads to orbit the moon. But so far, no one has kept track of just how many artificial objects are already up there, or where they are at any given moment. The Air Force Research Laboratory's Space Vehicles Directorate has tasked University of Arizona researchers with getting a handle on this impending lunar traffic jam, awarding them $7.5 million in funding.

University of Arizona associate professor of geosciences Jianjun Yin writes that "(sea) levels are rising whether people are ready or not, and that will bring profound flood risks to large parts of the Gulf and Atlantic coasts and the U.S. economy."

Since the 1990s, a warming climate has shortened winters, extending the duration and expanding the reach of traditionally seasonal illnesses such as Lyme disease and Valley fever. University of Arizona climate scientist Andrew Comrie suspects that Valley fever is already quietly trekking north, as desert-like conditions spread up the Mountain West.