University of Arizona in the News

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.

Pfizer and Moderna say their vaccines are about 95% effective at preventing people from getting sick with COVID symptoms. But there is not enough evidence yet on whether the vaccines also prevent asymptomatic infection and transmission. There is some indication that vaccination may reduce asymptomatic infection, resulting in reduced transmission. Preliminary evidence from Moderna showed that participants in a clinical trial who received the vaccine and were tested for COVID between their first and second doses had a roughly two-thirds reduction in asymptomatic infections.

Naomi Bishop, an associate librarian, at the University of Arizona Health Sciences Library in Phoenix, is one this year's I Love My Librarian Award winners, presented by the American Library Association and sponsored by Carnegie Corporation of New York. Each honoree receives $7,500, and a $750 donation to their library. The winners are nominated by library patrons for "expertise, dedication and profound impact" on their communities. Bishop was one of 10 winners for being "a champion for social justice."

Reports of a highly contagious new coronavirus variant in the United States, published on Friday by multiple news outlets, are based on speculative statements made by Dr. Deborah Birx and are inaccurate, according to several government officials. Another variant circulating at low levels in the United States, known as B 1.346, contains a deletion that is also present in B.1.1.7. "But I have seen nothing on increased transmission," said Michael Worobey, head of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Arizona who discovered that variant.

NASA has selected Carlos Vargas, a postdoctoral researcher in UArizona's Steward Observatory, to lead a $20 million mission to build a space telescope that will map vast regions of star-forming gas that have eluded observation for decades.

The United States Naval Community College will begin serving its first class of about 600 students, under a pilot program running from January through June. Arizona Online and the College of Applied Science and Technology will enroll 150 sailors, marines and coast guardsmen in courses this spring as part of this program.

Glen Fogerty, the associate dean for admissions and recruitment at the University of Arizona College of Medicine – Phoenix, is interviewed about increased enrollment. The university received 7,000 applications to fill 120 spots in the Class of 2025.

To ensure equitable access, support and learning for as many students as possible – including disabled and nondisabled students – the University of Arizona is redesigning curricula, cocurricular experiences, and physical campus spaces according to principles of universal design.

Using the HiRISE camera aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, University of Arizona scientists have been taking close-up shots of Valles Marineris – a system of deep, vast canyons runs more than 2,500 miles along the Martian equator.

Although scholars continue to debate what happened to the Easter Islanders, they say there is much we can learn about civilization from them. According to Terry Hunt, dean of the University of Arizona Honors College, the famed Moai structures were placed near the coast for hydrogeological reasons. "At low tide, when the saltwater's down, fresh water pours right out at the coast." They mapped out freshwater sources all over the island and wherever they found freshwater which was drawn from the ocean they also found Moai.