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)

The Making of Antarctica’s Hidden Fjords

  • UANews
  • March 5, 2013
Antarctica's topography began changing from flat to fjord-filled starting about 34 million years ago, according to a new report from a UA-led team of geoscientists. Knowing when Antarctica's topography started shifting from a flat landscape to one with glaciers, fjords and mountains is important for modeling how the Antarctic ice sheet affects global climate and sea-level rise.

Mars May Be Habitable Today, Scientists Say

  • Yahoo! News
  • March 5, 2013
While Mars likely was a more hospitable place in its wetter, warmer past, the Red Planet may still be capable of supporting microbial life, some scientists say. "We certainly can't rule out the possibility that it's habitable today," said Alfred McEwen of the UA, principal investigator for the HiRISE camera aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Observations by HiRISE suggest that briny water may flow down steep Martian slopes during the local spring and summer.

UA Shares $9M Contract to Fight, Prevent Citrus Greening Disease

  • UANews
  • March 4, 2013
The UA, together with institutions in California, Florida and Texas, has been awarded a contract to develop new ways to protect citrus trees from Citrus Greening Disease. At the UA, the research is led by plant sciences professor Judith Brown, whose team investigates strategies to disrupt the interaction between the disease-causing bacterium and its host, a tiny insect invasive to the U.S. from Asia.

UA Tech Park Aims to Become a Border Lab

  • Arizona Daily Star
  • March 4, 2013
The UA Science and Technology Park seeks to become a laboratory for third-party testing and evaluation of border technologies. It would draw on the University's expertise in engineering, optics, computing and other sciences. "Southern Arizona could be a leading center in the world for development of border technology," said Bruce Wright, UA associate vice president for university research parks.

Human Y Chromosome Much Older Than Previously Thought

  • UANews
  • March 1, 2013
The discovery and UA analysis of an extremely rare African American Y chromosome pushes back the time of the most recent common ancestor for the Y chromosome lineage tree to 338,000 years ago. This time predates the age of the oldest known anatomically modern human fossils.

Tucson Tech: Storm-Tracking Craft Tests Waters Here

  • Arizona Daily Star
  • March 1, 2013
From a little lagoon in Tucson to raging seas, a tiny unmanned watercraft developed by a Sahuarita company is on course to provide new hurricane-tracking data. Hydronalix Inc., a company headed by UA engineering alumnus Tony Mulligan, is conducting pre-delivery testing of 10 unmanned, autonomous boats for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

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