University of Arizona in the News

Experts say languages that contain only "he" and "she" pronouns pose problems for communicating about gender identity. At the start of the semester, Kris Knisely, an assistant professor of French at the University of Arizona, introduces students to a number of linguistic developments used by native French nonbinary speakers. He has found that teaching these new forms has a profound impact on his nonbinary and LGBTQ students: Some who had been on the verge of dropping French subsequently declared it their major.

After two bone-dry years that sank the U.S. Southwest deeper into drought, this summer's rainy season unleashed with fury. "That traumatized a lot of us here in the Southwest, really worried if the monsoon was broken," said Mike Crimmins, a climatologist at the University of Arizona. "And then here 2021 monsoon comes along, and it's almost like we're trying to make up for the last two seasons."

Robert Glennon, Regents Professor and Morris K. Udall Professor of Law and Public Policy at the University of Arizona, joins The Indicator from Planet Money podcast to talk about the strangely nonchalant way the U.S. prices water, one of its most precious commodities.

Homes in some of the largest U.S. cities just keep getting more expensive. In Phoenix alone, an index that measures home prices climbed a whopping 29.3% in June from the previous year, as more people move to the city, many of them workers who can do jobs remotely and who picked a lower-cost city to make their home base, said George Hammond, director of the Economic and Business Research Center at the University of Arizona's Eller College of Management. "Arizona is an attractive place for migrants given the climate and cost of living," he said.

Among the solar system's more intriguing mysteries is whether a large, icy planet lives in the outer regions of our cosmic neighborhood, well beyond the orbit of Neptune. This hypothetical world, nicknamed "Planet Nine" by some of the scientists searching for it, has stirred up controversy since it was first proposed. The unseen planet is predicted to exist based on its apparent gravitational influence on a group of small objects with odd, clustered orbits.

New studies suggest mRNA vaccines like Pfizer and Moderna trigger the immune system to establish long-term protection against severe COVID-19. While antibody levels reach a peak about a month after the second mRNA shot, the quality of antibody improves over time according to University of Arizona bioimmunologist Deepta Bhattacharya. "It takes far fewer of those new antibodies to protect you," Bhattacharya says. "So I think that worrying about antibody decline is not something that's productive."

More than a year since the pandemic shifted many employees to remote work and made virtual meetings a familiar part of daily life, new research from Allison Gabriel, McClelland Professor of Management and Organizations and University Distinguished Scholar in the University of Arizona Eller College of Management, suggests many workers suffer from "Zoom Fatigue" – a feeling of being drained and lacking energy following a day of virtual meetings.

A story examining the safety of music festivals and other outdoor events as the Delta variant of COVID-19 continues to spread quotes University of Arizona infectious disease expert Saskia Popescu: "If you are considering an event in a high or substantial transmission area, now is probably not the perfect time for a large gathering."

The U.S. and Canada recently started facing up to the history of Native American boarding schools with Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland launching comprehensive review of "the troubled legacy of federal boarding school policies." The government created these schools to assimilate American Indians into the dominant culture of the day – white American culture – says Matthew Sakiestewa Gilbert, professor and head of the Department of American Indian Studies at the University of Arizona and an enrolled member of the Hopi tribe from Northeast Arizona.

University of Arizona researchers have identified an enzyme they believe to be the key driver behind COVID-19 severity and mortality.