University of Arizona in the News

Patricia L. Haynes, an associate professor of health promotion sciences at the University of Arizona, writes about five key strategies that companies could adopt to help workers navigate mental health issues.

A guest column focusing on the myriad effects of loneliness quotes University of Arizona psychologist David Sbarra, who co-authored a 2011 review paper hat found a 23% increased risk of early death for divorced people compared with married people. "There is an inflammation story related to divorce," he said.

University of Arizona humanities professors Ken McAllister and Judd Ruggill have spent the past two decades quietly assembling what is perhaps the world's largest archive devoted to the study of video games and game culture. The Learning Games Initiative Research Archive now contains more than a quarter of a million items, including at least 15,000 individual games, 200 game systems and thousands of documents, books, promotional materials and other artifacts from the game industry’s ever-expanding universe.

An international team has discovered hundreds of large bursts of methane from oil and gas production activities across the globe. The bursts account for 10% of global oil and gas methane emissions and are missing from most greenhouse gas emissions inventories.

With the omicron wave rapidly loosening its grip, new cases of COVID-19 in the U.S. are falling in 49 of 50 states, even as the nation's death toll closes in on another bleak round number: 900,000. Arizona has seen its daily case and hospitalization numbers decline, though deaths are still on the rise, climbing from average of about 61 a day last week to almost 79 as of Tuesday. "We have reason to be hopeful, but we are by no means out of the woods," tweeted Elizabeth Jacobs, a University of Arizona professor of epidemiology.

The James Webb Space Telescope is ready to change the way we view the universe. And ground control just turned its instruments on. This story summarizing the development of the device mentions NASA chose the University of Arizona's design proposal for the Near-Infrared Camera because of its compact design.

The University of Arizona has announced the hiring of a new police chief following a national search. Paula Balafas will serve as the next assistant vice president and chief of police, assuming the role in early March.

The United States Senate on Feb. 2 confirmed Shelly C. Lowe as the 12th chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities, making her the first Native American to lead the federal agency. Lowe, who earned a bachelor's degree in sociology and a master's in American Indian Studies from the University of Arizona, previously served on the National Council on the Humanities, the panel that advises the endowment.

James D. Brushwood, a senior lecturer of accounting at the University of Arizona, contributed to a new study that shows that banking activity in the first four U.S. states to make recreational marijuana legal grew significantly more than in other parts of the country, despite federal laws that prohibit financial companies from any involvement with cannabis.

Immunologists have raced to work out how to protect against multiple variants of SARS-CoV-2. Their research has yielded a wealth of insights and a few surprises. The response after a shot of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, for example, elicits a weaker immune response than the mRNA vaccines initially, "and then it actually starts to get better over time," said Deepta Bhattacharya, an immunologist at the University of Arizona. "Something interesting is happening there."