University of Arizona in the News

Since opening in 1977, the University of Arizona's Main Library has served as a central hub for students to study and conduct research, but it hadn't changed much in four decades. The university recently completed major library renovations, and the first two floors have now been transformed into a bright, colorful and airy space full of state-of-the-art technology, flexible furniture with hard and soft seating, and new rooms for classes, quiet study and group collaboration.

University of Arizona President Robert C. Robbins sat down with Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs at the InvisionAZ Tech Summit at the Phoenix Open to discuss how to ensure Arizona remains a leader in innovation.

In the aftermath of the catastrophic earthquake that hit Turkey and Syria, Turkish student-athlete Dilara Gedikoglu started taking financial donations to assist those suffering in her home country.

The University of Arizona astronomy and space sciences operations generate as much money for the local economy every year as a Super Bowl, according to a new economic impact report. The total yearly economic output of the university's space sciences operations is estimated at roughly $560.5 million. In addition, space sciences activities generate roughly $21.1 million in state, county and municipal taxes every year. For comparison, Visit Phoenix estimates Sunday's Super Bowl will generate $600 million in economic impact for the Phoenix and Arizona economies.

University of Arizona Regents Professor of Planetary Sciences Dante Lauretta, who leads NASA's OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample return mission, talks about what they have gathered from the near-Earth asteroid Bennu.

A multistate quest to protect a dwindling Colorado River has devolved into a high-stakes battle pitting California against its neighbors. At odds are two dueling proposals as to how seven states should apportion critical consumption cuts that could help save the lifeblood of the Western United States. If the basin’s reservoirs reach “dead pool” — a situation in which there isn’t enough water to flow over the dams — then no one will be getting anything, said Sharon Megdal, director of the University of Arizona Water Resources Research Center.

Clinics and hospitals in places where Valley fever is most prevalent, like Arizona, know what the disease looks like and usually can confirm a case, via a blood test, within a day or two. However, there is a dangerous tendency for clinicians outside the western U.S. to mistake Valley fever for some other, more common, disease. "It presents with an illness that can't be distinguished from bacterial or viral infections," said University of Arizona professor of medicine Dr. John Galgiani, director of the Valley Fever Center for Excellence.

Katharine Jacobs, director of the University of Arizona Center for Climate Adaptation Science and Solutions, writes that the underlying management system of the Colorado River needs urgent attention.

A cemetery in central Italy has the remains of children whose bodies were pinned down with rocks, likely to prevent "revenants" rising from the dead. Dog burials from this period "are often associated with children as tomb protectors and puppies would have been an especially lively and fresh sacrifice with perhaps more potency for remedy for the community," said David Soren, a professor of anthropology at the University of Arizona.

The citizen science-driven Dog Aging Project relies on thousands of pet dogs to help scientists to understand what happens to memory and cognition in old age. "There's a lot we just don't know about how dog cognition changes with age," said comparative psychologist Evan MacLean, director of the Arizona Canine Cognition Center at the University of Arizona and a collaborator on the Dog Aging Project.