University of Arizona in the News

Before Tropical Storm Hilary's arrival this week, Lake Mead's water levels stood at 1,063.49 feet. On Aug. 20, they rose to 1,063.62 feet and on Aug. 21, the second day of the storm, water levels stood at 1,063.78 feet. While Hilary helped replenish the reservoir a bit, it won't make much difference in the wider drought picture, according to University of Arizona professor of geography, development and environment Andrea K. Gerlak, director of the Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy.

Neuroscience studies suggest dogs evolved to attend to and understand human communication cues. University of Arizona assistant professor of veterinary medicine Emily Bray led a study of eight-week-old puppies in a service dog program that found even at an early age, puppies pay attention to human faces, voices and gestures.

The School of Information at the University of Arizona is officially debuting as its own standalone college. Interim dean Catherine Brooks is interviewed.

This guest column celebrates the excellence of the space sciences programs at the University of Arizona. It includes special praise for the university's role in the James Webb Space Telescope, OSIRIS-REx mission and the upcoming deployment of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope.

This week, India plans to land a robotic probe – Chandrayaan-3 – near the south pole of the Moon. On Sunday, Russia's Luna-25, which was expected to be the first to do this, crashed into the lunar surface. India also plans a joint Lunar Polar Exploration mission with Japan to explore the shadowed regions or the "dark side of the Moon" by 2026. But scientists are wary of calling these endeavors a race to the south pole. "These missions have been planned for decades and got delayed so many times. 'Race' is not critical to our understanding of the Moon.

Gov. Katie Hobbs on Thursday announced her slate of appointees to the Arizona-Mexico Commission, an economic and cultural development group. Javier Duran, a professor of border studies at the University of Arizona's Center for Latin American Studies, is among the appointees. "I think there is more intentional conversation, more direct conversations related to collaboration," Duran said of the relationship going forward between Arizona and Sonora, the Mexican state that shares a border with Arizona.

The movie "Barbie" set box office records and reignited the world's love for the fashion dolls. University of Arizona associate professor of practice in fashion industry science and technology Hope Simpara applauds Mattel – the company behind Barbie – for keeping the doll current with the needs of society. "Barbie is so relatable, and they do a great job of keeping her relevant to the current social climate," she said.

University of Arizona professor of environmental science Kathy Jacobs, director of the Center for Climate Adaptation Science and Solutions, discusses how communities can respond to the effects of climate change.

The burgeoning field of conservation paleobiology uses the fossil record to inform and assist present-day conservation efforts. "We often need some sense of the way things used to be before there was extensive human impact," said University of Arizona professor emeritus of geosciences Karl Flessa, a paleobiologist who coined the term "conservation paleobiology" two decades ago and co-authored an early look at the field in the 2015 Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences.

Satellites have long been used to enhance weather forecasts, TV and radio signals, military surveillance and, more recently, cell phone and internet coverage and GPS navigation. And while low-earth orbit satellites such as the Starlink system deployed by SpaceX aren't the brightest man-made objects in the sky, the sheer number of them causes concerns for the future of terrestrial astronomy.