Campus Science & Tech News
UA Engineering Students Work with GE, Continental in Mexico
Two UA engineering senior design teams, as part of the UA Engineering Senior Capstone Design Program, are working with manufacturing facilities in Mexico to design solutions to real-world engineering problems. This is the first time the students have collaborated with companies that have facilities in Nogales, Sonora.
Tech Launch Arizona Awards $715,000 to UA Faculty for 2012-13
Awards to 19 researchers kicked off Tech Launch Arizona's Proof of Concept Program, which aims to enable faculty with promising discoveries to address technological hurdles, moving the inventions closer to commercialization. Tech Launch Arizona is a new UA initiative with the primary mission of ensuring greater cohesion among University researchers and the business community.
Golden Algae: They Hunt, They Kill, They Cheat
Cheating is rampant among microscopically small algae, UA biologists have discovered. Their study adds to the emerging view that microbes often have active social lives. Future research could potentially open up new approaches to control or counteract toxic algal blooms.
Hydropower Dams Hamper Migrating Fish Despite Passage Features, Study Finds
State-of-the-art fish passage facilities built into river dams have failed to help fish migrate upstream from the sea to reach their spawning grounds, a study has revealed. The research, led by a UA graduate, concludes that only dam removal would enable up-river migration in the three large and historically important river systems studied – the Merrimack, Connecticut and Susquehanna.
Climate Change Report Forecasts Major Impacts for the Southwest
Hailed as the most comprehensive and inclusive national effort to date to assess the science of climate change and its impacts, the National Climate Assessment will contribute directly to the U.S. climate policy debate. The UA has a total of six authors on the draft report, more than any other university in the country.
Students Improving Scientific Knowledge to Present Work
Research-based inquiries today should lead to answers for tomorrow. To that end, 125 high school and undergraduate researchers connected through the UA's Undergraduate Biology Research Program will present their research during an annual conference on Jan. 19.
UA Engineering to Help Tucson Become Smarter City
IBM recently awarded a Smarter Cities Challenge Grant to the city of Tucson and Tucson Water, which will work with the UA College of Engineering on technology to improve water reliability. The UA department of civil engineering and engineering mechanics will advise the utility as the Smarter Cities technologies are implemented over the next year.
The Supernova That Cried Wolf
A luminous supernova in a galaxy 67 million light years away from us has finally exploded for good, a UA-led team of astronomers has discovered. The result is of special interest because it provides new critical information on the final death throes of massive stars in the years leading up to their explosion.
Dark Energy Alternatives to Einstein Are Running Out of Room
Research by the UA's Rodger Thompson finds that a popular alternative to Albert Einstein’s theory for the acceleration of the expansion of the universe does not fit newly obtained data on a fundamental constant, the proton to electron mass ratio. His findings impact our understanding of the universe and point to a new direction for the further study of its accelerating expansion.
Asteroid Belt Found Around Vega
A UA-led team of astronomers has discovered inner asteroid belts and outer comet-filled belts similar to the arrangement found in our solar system around nearby stars Vega and Fomalhaut. A wide gap between the inner and outer belts strongly hints at the existence of yet undiscovered planets circling the bright stars.
Scientists Peer Into a Brown Dwarf, Find Stormy Atmosphere
Pointing the Spitzer and Hubble space telescopes simultaneously at a brown dwarf, a UA-led team of astronomers has obtained detailed images of the stormy atmosphere that enshrouds these strange objects, which are not quite planets and not quite stars. The forecast shows planet-sized storm systems and showers of sandy and iron rain.
Testing Einstein's E=mc2 in Outer Space
UA physics professor Andrei Lebed has stirred the physics community by suggesting that Albert Einstein's iconic equation, E=mc2, may not hold up in certain circumstances. To test his finding, Lebed has proposed an experiment using a space probe carrying hydrogen atoms away from Earth while a detector records "jumping" electrons.