UA scientists welcome President Barack Obama's NASA budget proposal, specifically its focus on gaining a better understanding of asteroids that could potentially harm Earth. The UA operates the most prolific ground-based system for identifying near-Earth asteroids, and it is tasked by NASA with leading the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft mission to retrieve a sample from an asteroid.

Computer games developed by UA scientists could help prepare miners to avoid potential fatal accidents and to respond to emergencies in the mines. Based upon real accident data and current training techniques, the games teach miners to make difficult decisions by allowing players to interact with the scenarios to affect the outcome.

The UA STEM Learning Center will provide the structural organization necessary to unify those engaged in STEM learning and workforce development in Southern Arizona. The center is set to launch April 12 during an event at the UA Flandrau Science Center and Planetarium.

New faculty promotion and tenure guidelines take into account efforts in technology commercialization. The move is a cultural shift that emphasizes developing ideas with the potential to benefit the local and state economy, and beyond.

With an abundance of sunshine and wide open spaces, Arizona could be the nation's solar energy capital. But not every sun-soaked patch of land is right for a solar farm. If it's too sloped, sandy or remote, investors are not interested. The UA is producing geospatial maps that pinpoint rural sites with the greatest potential.

The UA College of Engineering and Intel's Fab/Sort Manufacturing College of Engineering - the company's corporate university - are working together to give Intel employees a distance-learning opportunity to earn UA Bachelor of Science degrees in chemical engineering and materials science and engineering.

Dr. Fernando D. Martinez, head of the UA BIO5 Institute, was among the nation's top scientists invited to join President Barack Obama at the White House on April 2 as he unveiled the BRAIN Initiative - a new research effort designed to revolutionize our understanding of the human mind and uncover new ways to treat, prevent and cure brain disorders such as Alzheimer's, schizophrenia, autism, epilepsy and traumatic brain injury.

Tech Launch Arizona, a technology commercialization center at the UA, celebrated its grand opening and new strategic plan during an event on April 1. UA President Ann Weaver Hart said Tech Launch Arizona, which focuses on moving UA knowledge and inventions to market, will play an important role in the University's future.

The UA has established a new School of Animal and Comparative Biomedical Sciences that will bring together teaching, research and extension resources from across the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences to focus on animal health, growth, nutrition and disease, and human health challenges facing Arizona and the global community. The new school likely will host the proposed Arizona Veterinary Medical Education program.

The widely used strategy of endowing crops with redundant toxins to fend off pests rests on flawed assumptions, UA researchers have discovered. Their study helps explain why pests are evolving resistance much faster than predicted and offers solutions for better agricultural management.

The UA's Jonathan Sprinkle recently received an NSF Career Award for his work that could help bring to fruition futuristic ideas such as cars that drive themselves. Sprinkle will give the keys of a robotic car to high school students so they can test modeling techniques designed to keep the vehicle operating safely - while inspiring them to take an interest in engineering.

The Green Fund continues to support faculty, students and staff as they work together to make the UA a more environmentally sustainable institution, benefiting the campus and community. More than $470,000 have been granted to projects that expand sustainability efforts.

Contrary to predictions, trees killed in the wake of widespread mountain pine beetle infestations have not resulted in a large spike in carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere, a UA-led study involving large-scale field studies and satellite observations has found.

By observing electrons in real-time over a few millionths of a billionth of a second, physicists have demonstrated that organic molecules interact with the magnetic electrode in so-called spintronics devices, which use electron spin to encode information. The results open the possibility of manufacturing such data storage devices from cheaper, carbon-based materials instead of metals and silicon.

A UA-developed mobile app provides dust storm alerts and tips for staying safe in a dust storm. Arizona sees some of the worst dust storms in the country during the spring and summer months. Blowing dust can lead to poor visibility and dangerous driving conditions on the state's highways.

Alone in a wilderness of snow and ice, 600 miles from the Earth's South Pole, a solitary telescope watches the stars. The instrument built by the UA's Craig Kulesa and his team is the first ever to map the sky in light emitted by atomic carbon and may give astronomers vital information to understand how sweeping star-forming nebulae arise.

Using entire galaxies as gigantic gravitational lenses, UA astronomers have obtained new measurements of some of the oldest galaxies in the universe. Their observations reveal that some of the most vigorous bursts of star birth in the cosmos took place much earlier than previously thought.

Females of a little-known primate from the rainforests of Madagascar have been known to outlive their male peers by many years, despite no obvious differences in hormone levels or lifestyle. A team led by a UA anthropologist has found the likely answer to the mystery.

Long-term droughts in Southwestern North America often mean failure of both summer and winter rains, according to new tree-ring research from a UA-led team. The finding contradicts the commonly held belief that a dry winter rainy season is generally followed by a wet monsoon season, and vice versa.

Google, Inc. has granted a UA chemistry professor $50,000 to develop a free online course to teach chemistry to potentially hundreds of thousands of students. Katrina Miranda is creating a massive open online course, aiming to explain higher-level and abstract chemistry concepts that build on the science's fundamentals to students worldwide.