University of Arizona

There's something fishy going on at the old Roger Road sewage treatment plant, or at least there could be if Pima County and UA can agree on a deal that would net taxpayers millions of dollars.

A proposal from researchers in the University of Arizona's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences suggests transforming the decommissioned wastewater treatment plant into a state-of-the-art research station that would become a fish hatchery, farming tilapia, striped bass and eels.

The county currently has $32 million budgeted for the demolition of the treatment plant, which was built in the 1950s.

University of Arizona scientists Wendy Moore and Richard Brusca have published an illustrated book to celebrate and share the rich and unique natural history of southern Arizona's mountains – the "sky islands" – with a general, non-scientific audience.

Moore, assistant professor in the department of entomology in the UA College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and curator of the UA Insect Collection, said the book came about through field research she began two years ago when she founded the Arizona Sky Island Arthropod Project (ASAP). For her field research, Moore enlisted the help of Brusca, who is her husband as well as executive director emeritus of the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum and an adjunct research scientist in the UA's department of ecology and evolutionary biology.

More than 1 million adults and children in Arizona do not have enough money for groceries. They shop with food stamps. They buy staples like bread, beans and milk. Fresh fruits and veggies seem like a luxury they cannot afford.

Through a program known as SNAP-Ed, they learn how to buy healthier foods on a limited budget. They're learning to choose low-fat dairy products, whole-grain breads and tortillas, fresh in-season produce – and to cook with easy healthy recipes. They're also encouraged to increase physical activity.

The goal is to help low-income people buy the food they need for good health – and ultimately reduce obesity – the gateway to diabetes, heart disease and cancer. In Maricopa County 22.9 percent of adults are obese and 30 percent of children between the ages of 10 and 17 are either overweight or obese.

Eight years. Four hundred sixteen weeks. Two thousand, nine hundred and twenty days. That’s the average time it takes a student to make the journey from high school graduate to doctor of veterinary medicine. Now imagine taking that trip in roughly half the time. Would it work?

 The University of Arizona thinks so, and it’s asking its state to fund an initial $250,000 study to find out. Shane Burgess, BVSc, PhD, is a veterinarian, vice provost and dean of the University of Arizona’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. He’s taken the university’s plan to House and Senate committees. If the Legislature includes money for the study in this year’s budget, Burgess would like to complete the economic study in time for the next legislative session.

 “We’re looking at a model that will decrease the cost of a degree dramatically and also be a positive economic stimulus to the state’s economy. So everybody wins,” Burgess says. “If the study shows our plan works and makes sound business sense, we’ll pursue it, and if not, we won’t.”

Here, on a Christian farmer’s land five miles from the Mexican border, lies the holiest of fields for some of New York’s most observant Orthodox Jewish communities. Wheat harvested on these 40 acres is destined to become matzo, the unleavened bread eaten by Jews during the eight days of Passover.

It is not an everyday plant-and-pick operation, and the matzo made from this wheat is not everyday matzo.

Yisroel Tzvi Brody, rabbi of the Shaarei Orah synagogue in Borough Park, Brooklyn, stood at the edge of one of the fields on Monday, stooping to rub a grain of wheat between his wrinkled thumb and index finger. Removing his glasses, he brought the grain close to his eyes and turned it from side to side, like a gemologist inspecting a precious stone.

Cooperation is essential in any successful romantic relationship, but how men and women experience cooperation emotionally may be quite different, according to new research conducted at the University of Arizona.

Ashley Randall, a post-doctoral research associate in the John & Doris Norton School of Family and Consumer Sciences in the UA's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, has been interested for some time in how romantic partners' emotions become coordinated with one another. For example, if someone comes home from work in a bad mood we know their partner's mood might plummet as well, but what are the long-term implications of this on their relationship?

Randall wondered how the act of cooperating, a beneficial relationship process, might impact emotional coordination between partners.

Researchers at the University of Arizona are recruiting patients for a study exploring how heating up the body might help treat severe depression.

Led by Dr. Charles Raison, a UA associate professor of psychiatry and member of the UA's BIO5 Institute, the study will examine the use of whole-body hyperthermia as an alternative treatment for depression. The work will build on Raison's existing research, suggesting that increasing a person's core body temperature may have antidepressant effects.

"We've known for a long time that the brain affects the body – that how you think, how you feel can change how your body functions," said Raison, also the Barry and Janet Lang Associate Professor of Integrative Mental Health at the UA's John & Doris Norton School of Family and Consumer Sciences. "I have been interested for years in the opposite, which is the impact that the body has on the brain."

The University of Arizona class is called "Mushrooms, Molds and Man." Intrigued, undergraduate Lauren Jackson decided to learn about "Kingdom Fungi" and its impact on the world.

He was hooked in a heartbeat. Barely into the course, "I just raised my hand and asked about research opportunities." That week he started working in the lab with UA mycologist Barry Pryor.

Today, Pryor and Jackson are growing delicious, nutritious gourmet mushrooms – while turning coffee grounds, used brewery grains, straw, newspapers, pizza boxes and other woody landscape waste into compost. "Fungi are the great decomposers of the Earth. Without them, fallen trees would be stacked up in the forest. Without them, we would not have this regeneration of soil," Jackson said.

The UA's novel mushroom-based recycling program is "working with nature rather than against it," testing how well the mushrooms break down various materials. The next step is to grow the mushrooms on a larger scale, outside the plant sciences lab. At that point, the gourmet mushrooms could turn into an Earth-friendly cash crop.