University of Arizona in the News

Retired University of Arizona Regents Professor of English N. Scott Momaday, who won the 1969 Pulitzer Prize for fiction for his first novel "House Made of Dawn," died last week at his home in Sante Fe, New Mexico. He was 89. Momaday taught English and comparative literature at the university from 1981 to 2005.

Using in-ear headphones such as Apple AirPods poses a risk of ear infection if they go too long without being sanitized. Kelly Reynolds, associate professor of environmental health at the University of Arizona, told BuzzFeed that typically-harmless earwax can build up on earbuds, eventually acting "as a layer to trap bacteria and prevent it from drying out so it can survive and grow."

The Hearing Healthcare Assistance Project, a new partnership among the Arizona Commission for the Deaf and the Hard of Hearing and all three state universities, will provide free hearing health care for eligible people age 21 or older who do not have insurance.

The Millennium Camera, an artistic effort developed by experimental philosopher Jonathon Keats, a research associate at the University of Arizona College of Fine Arts, will capture an image of Tucson from Tumamoc Hill over the course of the next 1,000 years.

A Wisconsin couple recently discovered photos, newspaper clippings and other documents and mementos from the battleship U.S.S. Arizona. They plan to travel to Tucson this week to meet with the curator of the university's U.S.S. Arizona collection ahead of donating the material to the university.

University of Arizona director of threat assessment and management Jessie Semmann discusses her plans to help develop a unified safety plan for the entire university.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt pushed Congress to pass a historic number of bills to stabilize the economy at the height of the Great Depression. The measures enacted included the creation of a series of public works programs, and agencies such as the Securities and Exchange Commission, Federal Housing Administration, Federal Communications Commission, Social Security Administration and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.

University of Arizona professor of geography, development and environment Kevin Anchukaitis co-authored a new study that conclusively links the West's two-decade drought to climate change. Core samples taken from dozens of spruces, hemlocks and firs in mountains from British Columbia to New Mexico show hotter-than-normal temperatures did not necessarily accompany lengthy droughts of the past, such as a 22-year spell in the late 16th century.

NASA's Johnson Space Center curation team members this month successfully removed the two fasteners on the OSIRIS-REx sample return container that previously prevented them from accessing the remainder of the material the University of Arizona-led mission obtained from the asteroid Bennu.

The Chicago-based arts organization United States Artists on Tuesday tapped University of Arizona associate professor of English Farid Matuk as one of its 50 USA Fellows for 2024, each of whom will receive an unrestricted cash award of $50,000, intended to allow them "to deepen their respective practices and devote themselves rigorously to the art of writing."