University of Arizona in the News

The James Webb Space Telescope provides a new way for researchers such as University of Arizona Regents Professor of Astronomy Marcia Rieke to answer questions they couldn't resolve before about our origins. Rieke, the principal investigator for JWST's Near-Infrared Camera, and her team have spotted candidates for the farthest and oldest galaxies ever seen.

University of Arizona Regents Professor of Law Robert Williams, chair of the Indigenous Peoples Law and Policy Program, writes in opposition to a number of environmental conservation efforts worldwide that involve the displacement of indigenous communities.

Laura Condon, an associate professor of hydrology and atmospheric sciences at the University of Arizona, built the HydroGen website, which combines artificial intelligence with advanced physical hydrology models and national observation networks to track the U.S. groundwater supply and forecast droughts and floods.

The American Bar Association's Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar is slated Thursday to approve JD-Next, an alternative law school admissions program developed by the University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law, as a "valid and reliable" predictor of an applicant's law school grades – a designation that would enable law school admissions offices to use it without special ABA permission, as they do with both the LSAT and GRE.

University of Arizona associate professor Jekan Thanga and a team of student researchers in the College of Engineering are developing smart, robot-built sandbag shelters for astronauts on future NASA missions to the moon. The structures take their inspiration from cathedral termite mounds, which can soar as high as 23 feet and stand for as long as 80 years.

In the same lab where University of Arizona scientists invented ways to decipher Earth's climate history in tree rings, associate professor Bryan Black is using a similar technique – but with tiny fish bones.

Research led by University of Arizona professor of psychology David Sbarra finds people who get divorced have an increased risk of death compared with those who stay married.

NASA recently announced that the University of Arizona-led OSIRIS-REx mission returned to Earth with 121.6 grams of rocks and dust from the asteroid Bennu – more than twice the amount required to declare the mission a success. The final tally came after technicians at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston unstuck two stubborn fasteners and emptied the Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism, the part of the spacecraft that actually contacted Bennu's surface in 2020, and suffered damage during the reentry process last September.

Serving as the heart of knowledge and scholarship in higher education, academic libraries are uniquely positioned to advance and support digital and data-driven storytelling and archival efforts, especially as they relate to marginalized communities. This concept is exemplified by the University of Arizona Libraries' work through the Digital Borderlands Project, a grant project funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation that began in 2020 and utilizes digital technologies to improve understanding of Hispanic and Indigenous populations living near the U.S.-Mexico border.

A new study published in the journal JAMA Network Open finds tai chi, the traditional, slow-moving form of Chinese martial art, does a better job than conventional aerobic exercise at lowering blood pressure in middle-aged people with prehypertension. It appears practice tends to elicit more of a response from the parasympathetic nervous system, according to University of Arizona professor of nursing Ruth Taylor-Piliae, who was not involved in the study. The parasympathetic nervous system is the network of nerves that relaxes your body after periods of stress or danger.