University of Arizona in the News

Space experts are interviewed about what they hope to see from President Joe Biden's NASA priorities. Dante Lauretta, principal investigator for the OSIRIS-REx mission and professor at the University of Arizona, hopes that the Biden Administration will maintain or increase funding for the NASA Science Mission Directorate. "This Directorate performs essential research to monitor and predict the effects of climate change, explore the Solar System, and survey the universe," he said. "Budgets over the past four years have been favorable, and this is one area of the U.S.

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter viewed the "Happy Face Crater" on Mars in both 2011 and 2020 and found some changes in its complexion. The spacecraft's HiRISE camera and its science team at the University of Arizona have witnessed all sorts of Martian wonders, from dust devil tracks to an avalanche in action.

The University of Arizona is leading the charge in studying wastewater for potential diseases. Now, the work of epidemiologists could help save the nation from a leafy-green shortage. Paul Brierley, executive director at the University of Arizona's Yuma Center of Excellence for Desert Agriculture, is interviewed.

Researchers found that the variant originated in California and showed up in more than half of samples tested last week by researchers in Los Angeles. B.1.1.7 was in the United States in early November, according to a study posted online Tuesday by University of Arizona biologists Brendan Larsen and Michael Worobey. That would mean the variant had been circulating for two months before being detected.

Building resilience in renewable energy and food production is a fundamental challenge in today's changing world, especially in regions susceptible to heat and drought. Agrivoltaics, the co-locating of agriculture and solar photovoltaic panels, offers a possible solution, with new University of Arizona-led research reporting positive impacts on food production, water savings and the efficiency of electricity production.

The University of Arizona College of Law, the School of Journalism, and the School of Government and Public Policy have launched a Participatory Democracy Initiative. Former Tucson Mayor Jonathan Rothschild writes that the purpose of the initiative is to make a difference in practice by educating and developing students and the community to find ways out of the partisan thicket and share a common foundation for debate and rationally engaging in the challenges that lie ahead.

It is important to maintain practices such as social distancing to protect those for whom the vaccine might not work. "When community transmission rates are very high, as they are now, you will hear of people getting infected even after the vaccines," said Deepta Bhattacharya, an immunologist at the University of Arizona. "But as more and more people get vaccinated, the chances of that happening will drop by a lot. At that point, we can very much look forward to going out to dinner, etc., and still be safe."

Americans are being more careful to avoid catching and spreading the coronavirus but are still not being careful enough to slow the pandemic, especially with worrisome, apparently more contagious new variants looming. That's the conclusion of the latest findings, released Friday, from the largest national survey tracking behavior during the coronavirus pandemic. "It was a bit startling to see how many people spent time indoors with someone outside their household," said Saskia Popescu, an epidemiologist at the University of Arizona.

Gov. Doug Ducey announced $500,000 to fund a wastewater testing pilot project to provide early detection of COVID-19 throughout Yuma County. The project is a partnership with Yuma County Public Health Services District, the University of Arizona, and the Arizona Department of Health Services. It builds on the success of wastewater testing at University of Arizona dormitories to identify potential outbreaks, and will help the county further understand how wastewater testing may be used to inform public health in rural Arizona communities.

A team of astronomers led by the University of Arizona has observed the most distant quasar to date. Fully formed just 670 million years after the Big Bang and powered by the earliest known supermassive black hole, the quasar provides insight into the formation of massive galaxies in the early universe.