University of Arizona in the News

Two new studies confirm that in December the James Webb Space Telescope observed the most ancient galaxies ever discovered, dating back 13.4 billion years, to when the universe was less than 350 million years old. Researchers used more than 10 days of JWST mission time to study the Ultra Deep Field with the University of Arizona-developed NIRCam, observing it in nine different infrared wavelengths.

University of Arizona professor of psychology Matthias Mehl is the senior author of a paper that finds extroverts in an office setting may thrive in an open seating layout, while introverts may do better in private spaces.

The University of Arizona is making waves with a new para swimming program. Based out of the university's Disability Resource Center, the team first hit the pool in Fall 2021 with just a handful of swimmers. The program is the seventh sport to join the university's adaptive athletics roster, alongside sports such as wheelchair basketball, rugby and tennis. This fall, the team will welcome its first recruiting class.

Offshore oil and gas operations in the Gulf of Mexico release far more climate-changing methane than official estimates show, according to a new study published Monday. Climate scientists who were not involved in the study praised it for its approach. "This study represents a novel and thoughtful assessment of the climate impact of oil and gas production in the Gulf of Mexico," said Riley Duren, a research scientist at the University of Arizona who leads Carbon Mapper, a group pioneering accessible and transparent information about where greenhouse gases are being released.

University of Arizona faculty and community partners have created the "DETAINED: Voices from the Migrant Incarceration System" – a public archive of interviews with asylum seekers and undocumented migrants incarcerated in Arizona.

New maps show this year spring came 13 days late in Sacramento but two weeks early in Richmond, Virginia. Experts say that could be a problem because plants and animals use environmental cues such as temperature to know when to flower, migrate, breed or emerge from hibernation.

University of Arizona professors Andrea Gerlak and Robert Varady, along with incoming faculty member Gemma Smith, write in support of increased scientific input on the development and implementation of water policy across all levels of decision-making, from the local to the international.

University of Arizona astronomers took part in an international effort to study the aftermath of the brightest gamma ray burst ever observed. "Being so close and so bright, this burst offered us an unprecedented opportunity to gather observations of the afterglow across the electromagnetic spectrum and to test how well our models reflect what’s really happening in GRB jets," said Kate Alexander, an astronomer from the University of Arizona. "25 years of afterglow models that have worked very well cannot completely explain this jet."

New research suggests the asteroid Didymos spins so rapidly it casts off a stream of rocks and dust, and that the phenomenon may be the origin of its moonlet, Dimorphos, which was redirected by NASA's DART spacecraft last October as an initial test of a proposed planetary defense system. Right now the work is based almost entirely on remote observations gathered before the DART mission. "It's a good place to start, and that's all we can do," said University of Arizona Regents Professor of Planetary Sciences Dante Lauretta.

University of Arizona’s Student Success District has received the National AIA Interior Architecture Award, the institute’s prestigious awards program celebrating the most innovative interior spaces across the United States.