UA News - All News

Spending a year studying and volunteering in Guatemala, Chelsea Halstead discovered an important aspect of her college experience: passion. Halstead returned to the UA engaged, focused and full of ideas. She graduated with honors in 2012, began working as a research assistant and now is headed to Berlin as part of the Humanity in Action Fellowship.

The UA's Confluencenter for Creative Inquiry 2013 faculty grants will fund five innovative research projects, including television documentaries, a digital archive and a virtual seminar series. The grants provide start-up support for professors to establish their research projects, positioning them to leverage future competitive federal or private funding.

Building on research that sent her biking across Tanzania a couple of summers ago to test remote water sources on the spot for bacteria, the UA's Linda Powers is moving into the diagnostic realm: developing fast, disposable blood tests for pathogens that cause diseases such as HIV and hepatitis.

Describing the measurement of temperature across extremely tiny distances such as individual molecules, UA physicists have glimpsed a phenomenon mimicking the actions of Maxwell's Demon, a hypothetical figure in a thought experiment that seemingly defies the laws of thermodynamics. The research project and its unexpected results were several years in the making.

Arizona once again has captured the Territorial Cup Series title, edging Arizona State University, 9.5-8.5, across 18 men's and women's sports in the 2012-13 athletics season. Said Director of Athletics Greg Byrne: "We are very proud of our student-athletes and coaches who helped us secure the fourth-straight Territorial Cup Series."

In an effort to help Afghanistan preserve its past, the UA is partnering with Kabul University to help build the college's cultural heritage conservation program. Three faculty members from Kabul will come to Tucson this summer to work with UA faculty and learn the latest techniques in conservation, research, artifact examination and documentation, and more.

Whether it's a bicycle collision or difficulty breathing, the UA community can count on quick help from students trained and certified as EMTs. The UA Student Emergency Medical Services group has been operational for three semesters and provides assistance in medical emergencies. Its leaders emphasize thorough training and certification.

Individuals who learn two languages at an early age seem to switch back and forth between separate "sound systems" for each language, according to new research conducted at the UA. The research, to be published in Psychological Science, addresses enduring questions in bilingual studies about how bilingual speakers hear and process sound in two different languages.

The UA's Dr. David Labiner has offered quarterly neurology clinics at Indian Health Service and health-care facilities on the Navajo and Hopi reservations for about 15 years and bimonthly ones in Flagstaff for 20 years. Common consultations include treating patients for epilepsy, Parkinson's or Alzheimer's disease, stroke recovery, headaches and neuropathy.

Three UA faculty members have been named Regents' Professors by the Arizona Board of Regents: Neal R. Armstrong in the department of chemistry and biochemistry, Hsinchun Chen in the Eller College of Management, and Xiaohui Fan in the department of astronomy. The title recognizes achievements of national or international distinction.

Tyler Meier has been named the new executive director of the UA Poetry Center. Meier, currently the managing editor of The Kenyon Review in Ohio, will join the UA in August. A widely published poet, Meier's poetry and nonfiction have appeared in numerous national and international publications.

Applying newly developed analysis techniques to data obtained by NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft in 1989, a team involving two UA planetary scientists discovered that weather phenomena on Uranus and Neptune are confined to the upper 680 miles of atmosphere instead of reaching deeper into the planets' interior as was previously thought.

NASA has granted final approval of the OSIRIS-REx sample return mission led by the UA. The target asteroid, uniquely interesting scientifically, is one of the most potentially hazardous objects known - it has a one-in-2,000 chance of colliding with Earth in the late 22nd century. The asteroid could hold clues to the origin of the solar system.

Countries in East Asia have long been thought of as economic powerhouses capable of pulling up the global economy. But a UA researcher and his colleagues studying such economies and the peoples' day-to-day realities say it likely isn't so and that the social impacts of neoliberal polices and practices have, in some cases, been devastating.

Taking before and after pictures of the Martian terrain, researchers with the UA-led HiRISE camera have identified nearly 250 fresh impact craters on the Red Planet. The results provide scientists with a better yardstick to estimate how frequently craters are blasted on Mars, allowing them to assess recently formed features with greater accuracy.

The UA Eller College of Management's internationally recognized MBA program will be available online beginning this fall. Applications for the program now are being accepted. With a focus on innovation, application and communication, the Eller MBA experience is designed to give graduates what they need to effectively lead in today's changing global marketplace.

UA genomics experts have helped decipher the DNA of the carnivorous bladderwort. This genome is the smallest ever sequenced from a higher plant, and scientists say that nearly all of it - 97 percent - comprises genes that code for proteins, suggesting the majority of noncoding DNA may not be crucial for complex life.

The UA's Dennis Ray will lead the effort of breeding guayule, a rubber-producing plant suited for arid environments, to achieve higher yields and reduced harvest cycle time. Tech Launch Arizona, a technology commercialization center at the UA, assisted with the UA partnership with Yulex Corporation, which is providing the grant.

Fifty UA College of Medicine-Phoenix students were conferred with their medical degrees at ceremonies on May 8 in the third graduation for the downtown Phoenix medical school. The college, which has graduated 114 physicians in three years toward addressing Arizona's doctor shortage, opened in 2007.

More than 5,700 undergraduates just earned UA degrees, and while the job market is starting to look up, it remains competitive. For those still looking for jobs, a variety of UA Career Services resources continue to be available, including online job postings, career fairs, seminars, career counseling and more.