University of Arizona in the News

While valley fever is historically endemic to the hot and dry southwestern United States, experts are concerned that the fungus may be on the move due to ecologic and environmental changes, among other factors. "There's a bit of seasonality ... it's multifactorial. There's no question there's been a strong, steady increase," said Andrew Comrie, a professor of climatology at the University of Arizona.

University of Arizona engineering senior Roberto Peralta was recently named one of 60 Astronaut Scholars nationwide for 2021 – winning access to top engineering mentors and a $15,000 scholarship.

NASA's $981 million Lucy mission is about to begin its 12-year journey to a realm of the outer solar system that has never before been visited: a set of asteroids orbiting the sun near Jupiter. The rocks are "the last unexplored but relatively accessible population of small bodies" circling the sun, says Vishnu Reddy, a planetary scientist at the University of Arizona.

A global poll of young people published in the Lancet last month shows that 39 per cent feel 'hesitant to have children' due to climate change. A University of Arizona study identified three concerns: overconsumption, overpopulation, and an uncertain future.

Coronaviruses discovered in Laotian bats are surprisingly adept at infecting human cells, showing that such deadly features can indeed evolve outside of a lab. "That really puts to bed any notion that this virus had to have been concocted, or somehow manipulated in a lab, to be so good at infecting humans," said Michael Worobey, a University of Arizona virologist who was not involved in the work.

In the new scientific (and literal) field of agrivoltaics, researchers are showing how panels can increase yields and reduce water use on a warming planet. "It is a rare win-win-win," says Greg Barron-Gafford, an earth system scientist at University of Arizona who's studying agrivoltaics. "By growing these crops in the shade of solar arrays, we reduce the amount of that intense sunlight that bakes off the water and stresses out the plant." 

A new study supports the theory the moon coalesced from material blasted into space after a Mars-size body slammed into the proto-Earth more than 4.4 billion years ago. "The standard model for the moon requires a very slow collision, relatively speaking, and it creates a moon that is composed mostly of the impacting planet, not the proto-Earth, which is a major problem since the moon has an isotopic chemistry almost identical to Earth," said lead author Erik Asphaug, professor at the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory.

The World Health Organization continues to search for the possible origin of COVID-19 inside bat caves in China. "That kind of proximity of farmed animals and bats that could be carrying coronaviruses is exactly the kind of thing we worry about," said Michael Worobey, head of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Arizona.

University of Arizona engineers have developed a new type of wearable with several unprecedented benefits. Not only are the devices custom 3D-printed based on body scans of wearers, but they can operate continuously using a combination of wireless power transfer and compact energy storage.

The World Health Organization has requested access to China's wildlife farming areas such as the mountains of Enshi prefecture, an agricultural corner of China's Hubei province, calling it a key step in the search for the origins of the coronavirus. Beijing has denied the requests. China's government and the WHO say the likeliest origin of the pandemic is natural transmission through wildlife.