The UA is partnering with Kabul University in Afghanistan to help build the school's heritage conservation program. Project director Suzanne Bott and colleague Atifa Rawan recently visited Kabul to meet with faculty there. Pictured here is the Municipality Building (left) and Abdul Rahman Mosque in downtown Kabul. (Photo courtesy of Suzanne Bott)
UA Helps Build Heritage Conservation Program in Afghanistan 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.
In this artist's impression of Voyager 2's 1989 encounter with Neptune, the gas giant's Great Dark Spot is visible in the distance. Thought to be a hole in the giant planet's cloud cover, winds in that area have been clocked at 1,500 miles per hour, the fastest in the solar system (not the subject of this study). (Photo: NASA)
Storms on Uranus, Neptune Confined to Upper Atmosphere 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.
Scheduled for launch in 2016, the OSIRIS-REx will travel to asteroid Bennu, scoop up a sample of pristine material leftover from the formation of the solar system, and return it to Earth in 2023.
UA-Led Asteroid Mission is a Go 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.
One of many fresh impact craters spotted by the UA-led HiRISE camera, orbiting the Red Planet on board NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter since 2006. (Photo: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/UA)
UA Mars Camera Reveals Hundreds of Impacts Each Year 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.
A scanning electron microscope image shows the tiny, 1-millimeter-long bladders used to catch small organisms by Utricularia gibba, the humped bladderwort plant (color added). The submerged growing plant is a voracious carnivore, with its bladders leveraging vacuum pressure to suck in tiny prey at great speed. (Photo: Enrique Ibarra-Laclette and Claudia Anahí Pérez-Torres)
Carnivorous Plant Throws Out ‘Junk’ DNA 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 is partnering with Kabul University in Afghanistan to help build the school's heritage conservation program. Project director Suzanne Bott and colleague Atifa Rawan recently visited Kabul to meet with faculty there. Pictured here is the Municipality Building (left) and Abdul Rahman Mosque in downtown Kabul. (Photo courtesy of Suzanne Bott)
In this artist's impression of Voyager 2's 1989 encounter with Neptune, the gas giant's Great Dark Spot is visible in the distance. Thought to be a hole in the giant planet's cloud cover, winds in that area have been clocked at 1,500 miles per hour, the fastest in the solar system (not the subject of this study). (Photo: NASA)
Scheduled for launch in 2016, the OSIRIS-REx will travel to asteroid Bennu, scoop up a sample of pristine material leftover from the formation of the solar system, and return it to Earth in 2023.
One of many fresh impact craters spotted by the UA-led HiRISE camera, orbiting the Red Planet on board NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter since 2006. (Photo: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/UA)
A scanning electron microscope image shows the tiny, 1-millimeter-long bladders used to catch small organisms by Utricularia gibba, the humped bladderwort plant (color added). The submerged growing plant is a voracious carnivore, with its bladders leveraging vacuum pressure to suck in tiny prey at great speed. (Photo: Enrique Ibarra-Laclette and Claudia Anahí Pérez-Torres)

At UA, Industry Enables Education

  • UANews
  • June 3, 2011
Tucson Embedded Systems played a key role in student efforts to resurrect two autonomous mine vehicles last semester in ENGR 450/550. The company donated an 8,000-square-foot lab space complete with vehicle hoist, and it provided racks, flat benches, power strips, cleaning agents and other supplies.

Arizona Caves: An Underground Archive of Climate Data

  • Green Valley News and Sun
  • June 2, 2011
Sarah Truebe, a UA graduate student, is looking for clues about past climates inside undeveloped caves. She works alongside UA professors who examine Earth's ancient past to understand how the planet reacts to periods of abnormal warming and cooling.

Drugstore Software Flaws Pose Health Risks

  • Arizona Republic
  • May 31, 2011
A newly published article by a University of Arizona team has found that some systems pharmacies in the state use to flag potentially dangerous drug combinations are flawed. Dan Malone, a UA professor of pharmacy professor, said: "These systems aren't doing as good a job as we hoped, and therefore, we need to be vigilant still."

Astronauts, Students Connect at UA Lunar and Planetary Lab

  • UANews
  • May 31, 2011
Students from Gridley Middle School in Tucson got a 30-minute window to ask questions about life in space.

NASAcronyms: How OSIRIS-REx Got Its Name

  • Space.com
  • May 27, 2011
Dante Lauretta, a UA associate professor and deputy principal investigator of the OSIRIS-REx team, came up with the idea to name the mission after Osiris, the ancient Egyptian god of the underworld. The latter half of the mission's name, which references the Tyrannosaurus rex, was added later.

UA Awarded $2.95M to Study Monsoon Ecology

  • UANews
  • May 27, 2011
The National Science Foundation has awarded almost $3 million to better understand the highly complex processes by which the North American monsoon influences ecosystems and natural cycles.

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