University of Arizona in the News

As temperatures rise and drought intensifies, fires grow larger and burn more severely. Experts say what happens to the landscape next is unknown. Don Falk, a professor at the School of Natural Resources and the Environment at the University of Arizona, and a research team plan to survey approximately 80 study plots across the Catalinas. The plots burned at different severities and a varying number of times in the Bighorn, 2002 Bullock and 2003 Aspen Fires. "A recovery is a beautiful ecological process," said Emily Fule, who is leading the study's field team.

Three scientific studies released on Monday offered fresh evidence that widely used vaccines will continue to protect people against the coronavirus for long periods, possibly for years, and can be adapted to fortify the immune system still further if needed.

The government still has no explanation for nearly all of the scores of unidentified aerial phenomena reported over almost two decades and investigated by a Pentagon task force, according to a report released on Friday, a result that is likely to fuel theories of otherworldly visitations. "Unfortunately, I don't think that landscape is really going to change," said Chris Impey, University Distinguished Professor of Astronomy at the University of Arizona. "It's still an area where scientists mostly fear to tread."

Researchers have found evidence that a coronavirus epidemic swept East Asia some 20,000 years ago and was devastating enough to leave an evolutionary imprint on the DNA of people alive today. The finding could have dire implications for the COVID-19 pandemic if it’s not brought under control soon through vaccination. "It should make us worry," said David Enard, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Arizona who led the study, which was published on Thursday in the journal Current Biology.

Arizona, California and Texas account for about a third of the 700 average heat deaths a year in the United States. Heat-related illness and deaths are a "very big deal" in Arizona, which unfortunately leads the nation in the number of migrants who die in the desert, said Daniel Derksen, associate vice president for Health Equity, Outreach and Interprofessional Activities and a health policy expert at the University of Arizona. People often don't realize they need to drink much more water, even after the sun sets and folks go out to play tennis or baseball, he said.

About a year ago, genetic sequences from more than 200 viruses that caused early cases of COVID-19 in Wuhan disappeared from an online scientific database. Now, by rooting through files stored on Google Cloud, a researcher in Seattle reports that he has recovered 13 of those original sequences – intriguing new information for discerning when and how the virus may have spilled over from a bat or another animal into humans.

Last week's heat wave – when temperatures reached as high as 118 degrees in Phoenix – was one for the books, but according to weather experts and researchers, it's still unclear what it means for the rest of the summer. Gregg Garfin, director of the Southwest Climate Adaptation Science Center at the University of Arizona, said the monsoon season is approaching, which typically cools down the Southwest. "There's a so-called organized complex of thunderstorms in northern Sonora, which is a good indication that the monsoon is heading our way," Garfin said.

Michael A. Crimmins, a professor and extension specialist in the Department of Environmental Science at the University of Arizona, writes that extreme heat is an increasing threat in the Southwest and will require both mitigating the causes of climate change and long-term adaptation strategies to protect the people, ecosystems and natural resources in the region.

Record-breaking temperatures in the American West this week are a weather emergency, scientists and health care experts say, with heat responsible for more deaths in the U.S. than all other natural disasters combined. Joellen Russell, a climate science professor at the University of Arizona, said the Southwest is an early example of what will hit the rest of the nation later when it comes to the dangers of heat extremes caused by global warming.

Triatomine bugs, commonly known as kissing bugs, are vectors for a dangerous parasite that can cause a debilitating illness in humans called Chagas disease. If left untreated, the infectious disease can become lifelong and painful, and in some cases lead to death.