University of Arizona in the News

A new report from the World Resources Institute and other environmental watchdogs finds the international community lacking in 41 of 42 criteria required to mitigate the worst of global warming, and even heading in the wrong direction in six crucial areas. The lone bright spot: Global sales of electric passenger vehicles appear on track to match what's needed.

University of Arizona researchers behind a study published in September in the Journal of Research in Personality report little correlation between loneliness and aloneness in most people. It appears the threshold for most people to feel the need to connect with others is spending more than three-quarters of their time alone.

"Killers of the Flower Moon" – director Martin Scorsese's latest epic, based on the nonfiction book by journalist David Grann – tells the true story of a criminal family's murderous theft from Native Americans in Oklahoma a century ago. University of Arizona professor of law Torivio Fodder, manager of the Indigenous Governance Program, describes the extremes of wealth and violence depicted in the film as typical, in many ways, of how native people throughout the 20th century lost control of oil, coal and other resources.

The University of Arizona's San Xavier Mining Laboratory near Sahuarita is a hands-on learning space for students and a place where people in the industry can discover the future of mining. "We were trying to teach and train in a mine that was started in the 1880s, so we really saw a need to put in a modern space to be able to teach, train, equipment development, autonomy, flying drones," said James Werner, the lab's director of the San Xavier Mining Laboratory.

Geologists are discovering that activity deep within the Earth may play a role in building mountains, according to University of Arizona associate professor of geosciences Jonny Wu. As one tectonic plate descends beneath another in the process of subduction, it may interact with layers of the mantle or churning flows which can trigger a chain reaction felt at the surface, and cause mountains to rise or fall. "(Mountain) building profoundly shapes the Earth on which we live," Wu said.

After NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission successfully collected and delivered the first U.S. sample from a near-Earth asteroid in September, the space agency extended the University of Arizona-led mission so that the spacecraft can study another near-Earth asteroid, Apophis, under the new name OSIRIS-APEX.

The Arizona Commerce Authority has awarded the University of Arizona College of Engineering $35.5 million in funding to expand a facility that supports manufacturing and research efforts involving semiconductors, computer chips, optical devices and quantum computing systems.

The University of Arizona Indigenous Resilience Center received $2 million from the Waverley Street Foundation to support its efforts to develop local solutions to climate-related issues among tribal communities. The gift was announced on Nov. 3 during the public launch of the university's $3 billion fundraising campaign, Fuel Wonder.

The University of Arizona CatCloud system won the "University IT Innovation of the Year" category at the 2023 EdScoop 50 Awards, which recognize the year's most influential people and projects in the higher education technology community. Judges praised CatCloud for its ability to "streamline the process of evaluating degree completion for students, making it possible for them to view classes and grades, see upcoming deadlines for assignments and quizzes, make an appointment with an adviser, or check their meal plan balance, all in one place."

University of Arizona professor of information Barney Maccabe, executive director of the Institute for Computation and Data Enabled Insight, discusses President Biden's recent executive order which attempts to address the risks posed by artificial intelligence.