University of Arizona in the News

For the first time since the start of the pandemic, more than 100,000 new cases of COVID-19 were reported across the U.S. on Wednesday, according to data collected by the COVID Tracking Project. "I'm increasingly concerned that this will be a rather steep and long third wave," Saskia Popescu, an epidemiologist at the University of Arizona and a member of the Federation of American Scientists' Coronavirus Task Force, told BuzzFeed News late last month.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention wants every eligible American to know they can cast a ballot in Tuesday's presidential election, whether they are free of COVID-19 or not. "I actually equate it with takeout," said Saskia Popescu, an epidemiologist at the University of Arizona and a leading coronavirus safety and risk assessment expert. "There are so many safety protocols being put into place for safe voting that it is really a lower-risk activity."

"I'm becoming more of a firm believer that face masks are a truly effective intervention in this particular outbreak and should be considered our first line of defense," said Joe Gerald, a University of Arizona public health researcher who tracks coronavirus trends in the state. Places without them, he said, are "shooting themselves in the foot, because wearing face masks can protect individuals but also reduce the spread to others and allow more economic activity and social activity."

Australian artist Craig Walsh's "Monuments," a multimedia exhibit that Arizona Arts Live opened on the University of Arizona campus last week, reexamines the often exclusive nature of traditional monuments. Instead of focusing on long-gone historically well known figures, "Monuments" shines the spotlight on local heroes while they are still alive.

"Widespread death has never received this much coverage," said Jeff Greenberg, a social psychologist at the University of Arizona. "On a daily basis, we are exposed to people dying. Something as simple as a mask is a reminder of threat."

Culdesac Tempe is a proving ground for a start-up also called Culdesac, which was founded in San Francisco and moved to Tempe. Started in 2018 by two native Arizonans, urbanists cheered it as a bold and important step toward a future with fewer cars, while suburban developers said the concept could never work on a large scale. Cofounder Ryan Johnson went to the University of Arizona with a full-ride scholarship plus $50,000. This came from the Flinn Foundation, whose Flinn Scholars program aims to keep Arizona's high-achieving high school students from leaving the state.

An article looks into the architectural beauty of the Underwood Garden at the College of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture at the University of Arizona.

Chris Impey, a Distinguished Professor of Astronomy at the University of Arizona, writes that black holes are scary for three reasons: "If you fell into a black hole left over when a star died, you would be shredded. Also, the massive black holes seen at the center of all galaxies have insatiable appetites. And black holes are places where the laws of physics are obliterated," Impey writes.

NASA's University of Arizona-led OSIRIS-REx mission has successfully stowed the spacecraft's Sample Return Capsule and its abundant sample of asteroid Bennu. On Oct. 28, the mission team sent commands to the spacecraft, instructing it to close the capsule – marking the end of one of the most challenging phases of the mission.

"A survey conducted by Samara Klar and Chris Weber from the University of Arizona reveals that Arizonans in both parties are more moderate than often presumed. Arizona is a heavily urban state, with 60% of voters residing in Maricopa county, home of Phoenix and its suburbs. If some of those suburban voters split toward the Democratic Party, as they seem to be doing nationwide in 2020 and as they did in the 2018 Arizona senate race, this bodes well for Democrat (Mark) Kelly," writes Barbara Norrander, a professor of political science at the University of Arizona.