University of Arizona in the News

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday issued an opinion gutting affirmative action policies. In Arizona, universities and civil rights experts say little is expected to change. The state is one of eight that already bans consideration of race, ethnicity or gender in admissions decisions at state institutions, including Arizona's three public universities.

Increased temperatures and a persistent heat wave in the Southwest have exacerbated an already difficult immigration crisis and endangered the lives of migrants who often undertake long and perilous journeys without food, water or sun protection. "Now it's not all that uncommon to spend three, four, five days in the desert," said University of Arizona associate professor of sociology Daniel Martínez, who co-authored a study of 2,746 migrant deaths between 1990 and 2022.

The University of Arizona earlier this year celebrated the grand opening of the three-story, 89,000-square-foot Applied Research Building. The facility expands the university's already considerable research capabilities thanks to state-of-the-art equipment and technology, including a 40-ton thermal vacuum chamber used to replicate the conditions in outer space – the largest of its kind at any university in the world. "Every year, we can continue to watch the incredible science that's done in this building," said University of Arizona President Robert C.

Chris Impey, Distinguished Professor of Astronomy at the University of Arizona, writes that even though members of the team behind this new discovery aren't yet certain, they strongly suspect that the background hum of gravitational waves they measured was caused by countless ancient merging events of supermassive black holes.

The University of Arizona received $3 million in federal funding to create Project ADELANTE – Advancing Culturally Responsive Place-Based Educational Opportunities for Latinx Students in the Borderlands – which provides academic support and career readiness programs for Hispanic and low-income students.

The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft remains on schedule for a September rendezvous with Earth to deliver the material it collected from the asteroid Bennu in October 2020. Researchers from the University of Arizona on Tuesday participated in a recovery rehearsal in Colorado. Regents Professor of Planetary Sciences Dante Lauretta, the OSIRIS-REx principal investigator, called the cargo on board a "scientific bonanza," that could potentially reveal secrets about the formation of our solar system, even how life began here on Earth. "I've been poring over origin-of-life research.

Community violence intervention programs are one key avenue for change that's showing promise, said Jennifer Carlson, a sociologist at the University of Arizona studying the politics of firearms in American life.

Mohammed Hassan, an associate professor of physics and optical sciences at the University of Arizona, writes about his work to develop faster ways to move data, using ultrafast laser pulses in free space and optical fiber.

A compost pile can become too dry without enough water. Ilse Rojas-Hamilton, program manager for Compost Cats within the University of Arizona's Office of Sustainability, explains that where you live plays a role, too. "For example, in the desert in summer when we have (104-degree heat) every day, we do need to water the compost more often."

Several data scientists discuss their best practices for publishing usable, high-quality data. Data should be in an open, non-proprietary file format, says Ellen Bledsoe, who teaches ecological data science at the University of Arizona. Otherwise, they could become unreadable.