University of Arizona in the News

The University of Arizona and UArizona Health Sciences has announced the completion of a $23 million fundraising effort to build a new home for the Andrew Weil Center for Integrative Medicine, part of the College of Medicine – Tucson.

When researchers want to understand the history of the environment, they extrapolate data from oral histories or peruse digitized weather observations, aging diaries and farmers' journals. But these records are spotty, subjective and only go back a few centuries. So scientists also look to the Earth itself and the vast timeline hidden in storehouses of earthly data – ice cores, seafloor sediments, oyster shells, even road cuts through layers of rock – which offer a far deeper look back in time than human records.

The James Webb Space Telescope's Near Infared Camera, which University of Arizona scientists developed and now manage, has captured its first focused image of a single star. The NIRCam previously helped align the mirrors to first produce an out-of-focus image but the image released Wednesday shows a single image of a fully focused star, as well as the galaxies and stars behind it. The image provides confirmation that the telescope is capable of meeting – and exceeding – the expectations its designers had for it.

Forests around the world pull carbon out of the atmosphere and are crucial in the global fight to stem climate change. But figuring out how much carbon forests are storing as the planet heats up is tricky. A team of international researchers has published a study that puts forth a solution for acquiring these data: gather tree ring cores from live trees in national forests. "Tree rings really have this remarkable annual resolution data," said Margaret Evans, a dendrochronologist at the University of Arizona's Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research who co-led the study.

Vladimir Putin's regime uses a portfolio of digital tools to control information and crack down on protests within the country. In this Q&A, University of Arizona professor of sociology Jennifer Earl explains what she found in a review of 192 studies of digital repression she co-authored for the journal Science Advances, and discusses the different forms digital repression can take and whether Russia's attempts to construct an alternate reality will succeed.

A newly discovered saber-toothed cat-like predator that hunted in the forests and coastal areas of Southern California 42 million years ago has been given the name Diegoaelurus, or “San Diego’s cat,” the San Diego Natural History Museum announced March 15. The discovery was described in a research paper co-written by Shawn Zack at the University of Arizona College of Medicine and other scientists who gave the new species its name.

Gregory Leonard, a research scientist at the University of Arizona's Catalina Sky Survey, offers advice to amateur stargazers and explains the process of reporting to NASA asteroids that might collide with Earth.

A newly discovered saber-toothed cat-like predator that hunted in the forests and coastal areas of Southern California 42 million years ago has been given the name Diegoaelurus, or "San Diego's cat," the San Diego Natural History Museum announced today. The discovery was described in a research paper co-written by Shawn Zack at the University of Arizona College of Medicine – and other scientists who gave the new species its name.

"The Thief Collector," a documentary about the theft and subsequent return of Willem de Kooning's "Woman-Ochre" from the University of Arizona Museum of Art, premiered at the South by Southwest Film Festival.

The University of Arizona men's basketball team was named the NCAA Tournament's No. 2 overall team and placed as the No. 1 seed in the South Region, with an opening game on Friday in San Diego. The Wildcats will face the winner of a First Four game between Wright State and Bryant.