University of Arizona in the News

Steven Mintz, a professor of history at the University of Texas, writes that Andrew Comrie, "a former University of Arizona Provost and a professor of Geography, Development and Environment, has written the most accessible, thorough and fair-minded account of how colleges and universities have responded to cost pressures and resource limitations that I have read."

Medina Spirit won the 147th Kentucky Derby, giving University of Arizona alumnus and Hall of Fame trainer Bob Baffert a record seventh victory.

University of Arizona women's basketball head coach Adia Barnes was among those featured on NBC's special, "Inspiring America: The 2021 Inspiration List," hosted by Lester Holt, Savannah Guthrie and Hoda Kotb.

Epidemiologists say they want to see the U.S. vaccination rate to get a little bit higher before resuming eating indoors at restaurants. "It's not just that indoor dining checks one box, it's that it checks many of them," said Saskia Popescu, an infectious disease epidemiologist at the University of Arizona. "All of those things make it higher risk."

Earlier this week, most observers were surprised when the U.S. Census numbers were released and Arizona did not gain a 10th congressional seat. There was speculation about undercounting and whether members of the Latino community didn’t participate in large numbers, at least in part because of concerns about how the Trump administration might use the information. Jason Jurjevich, an assistant professor of practice at the University of Arizona, is interviewed.

There is no government data yet on whether health authorities' 10-day halt in administration of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine soured people on the product, and the company declined to discuss the matter. But in spot checks across the country, people seeking vaccines and officials dispensing them appear eager to resume using the vaccine, which is also easier to store and transport. At the University of Arizona, the vaccination campaign has relied heavily on the Pfizer shots because the school has the substantial special freezer capacity required to store those doses.

Cotton farmers in Arizona started planting genetically modified cotton in 1996 in an effort to eradicate an invasive species of moth from Asia or Australia known as the pink bollworm. A recent study from the University of Arizona shows that farmers were able to eradicate the pest with the help of a coordinated, multifaceted program across the Southwest and northern Mexico among university, federal and state scientists, individual cotton growers and the cotton industry.

A small asteroid barreled through the sky and burned up over the Kalahari Desert of Botswana in the summer of 2018. Now, scientists suspect that the space rock originated from Vesta, the second largest asteroid in the solar system. The small asteroid, named 2018 LA, was first observed through a telescope at the University of Arizona's Catalina Sky Survey and looked like a speck of light whizzing through the stars, according to a statement from the SETI Institute.

A day after the government released the first results from the 2020 Census, some states and civic organizations were reeling from unexpected results, and wondered if the differences between projections and actual data might be an indicator of problems with the count. George Hammond, director of the University of Arizona's Economic and Business Research Center, said that "census population estimates tend not to be particularly close, even in percentage terms, to what the actual population count might be."

Following updated guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, federal health officials announced that fully vaccinated Americans can forgo masks while outside, except in crowded settings. Kacey Ernst, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Arizona College of Public Health, acknowledges that breakthrough transmission risks outdoors are much lower than indoors, but "not all outdoor spaces are the same."