CALS News and Announcements

  • Four UA Professors Elected as AAAS Fellows

    Four University of Arizona professors in the departments of entomology, chemistry and biochemistry, and ecology and evolutionary biology have been named Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, or AAAS. Election as a AAAS Fellow is an honor bestowed upon AAAS members by their peers.

    AAAS awarded the distinction of Fellow to 702 of its members this year. These individuals have been elevated to this rank because of their efforts toward advancing science applications that are deemed scientifically or socially distinguished.

    The AAAS is the world’s largest general scientific society and publisher of the journal Science. Founded in 1848, the association includes 261 affiliated societies and academies of science, serving 10 million individuals.

  • Varady, Cuello Receive 2012 Global Excellence Awards

    Robert Varady and Joel Cuello recently received the University of Arizona's Global Excellence Awards, presented by the Office of Global Initiatives and the Center for English as a Second Language.

    The awards recognize individuals who have had a substantial impact in the areas of international service or international education and have distinguished themselves locally, regionally, nationally or globally.

    Varady, deputy director and director of environmental policy programs at the Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy, received the Award of Excellence in Global Service, recognizing his work addressing environmental and water management policy in arid regions with an emphasis on transboundary issues. He particularly focuses on the border between the United States and Mexico.

  • EPA Taps UA Engineering's Snyder for Drinking Water Expertise

    UA chemical and environmental engineering professor Shane Snyder is lending his expertise to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and in the process giving the Southwest's unique water issues a national forum.

    Snyder, co-director of the Arizona Laboratory for Emerging Contaminants and a member of the UA's BIO5 Institute, will be working with an EPA Science Advisory Board committee that answers directly to EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson on policies that keep drinking water safe for everyone in the nation.

  • Cuello Elected to Philippine-American Academy of Science & Engineering

    CALS Professor Joel Cuello from the Department of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering has been elected to the Philippine-American Academy of Science & Engineering, an organization that honors the achievements of scientists and engineers of Philippine descent who are at the forefront of scientific research and technology development in the United States, the Philippines and other countries. The Academy, which has elected 239 full members since its founding in 1980, also provides independent scientific and technical advice to the Congress of the Republic of the Philippines.

  • Easier Said Than Done: Feeding Kids for a Healthier Life

    The example parents set early in a child’s life, such as eating or not eating breakfast, may last a lifetime. When you consider that according to the National Dairy Council, kids who eat breakfast do better in school, breakfast is no small matter.
     
    Studies in the United States have shown kids who eat breakfast are better able to concentrate, make fewer errors, score higher on tests, are more creative and work faster. They also are less likely to be absent, late or sitting in the school nurse’s office with a stomachache or headache.

  • She Found Fluorine Affected Dental Health

    We can thank University of Arizona researcher Margaret Cammack Smith for the addition of fluorine to much of the nation's drinking-water supply - a development that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention calls "one of the 10 great public health achievements of the 20th century."

    That's despite the fact that Smith crusaded against putting fluoride compounds in water.

    Smith, an agricultural chemist at the Agricultural Research Station in Tucson, performed the field studies and laboratory experiments that proved a link between levels of fluorine and the integrity of tooth enamel.

  • Beginning Farmer Program Offered in Tucson

    Are you interested in growing fresh produce to sell? This six-session workshop is for those interested in starting their own business growing vegetables and other specialty crops. This is a great opportunity for youth and others looking to gain some first-hand experience developing a business plan and acquiring niche marketing skills. Participants will also learn how to build and operate a hoophouse so that they can supercharge the annual growing and market potential of their land.

  • Trainee Sows Gardenroots Results Across Arizona

    University of Arizona Superfund Research Program (UA SRP) trainee Mónica Ramírez-Andreotta has compiled the results from her dissertation research, Gardenroots, the Dewey-Humboldt, AZ Garden Project. In response to interest from gardeners around the state of Arizona, she has been on the road to provide presentations describing the results of her study on metals uptake in garden vegetables.

  • UA Corn-genetics Work Enabling Quicker Adaptations for Vital Crop

    Researchers at the University of Arizona followed up their 2004 sequencing of the rice genome with work on the other important cereal crop - corn.

    It took about 50 researchers - including 10 working full time at the UA - $30 million and four years to produce a blueprint for manipulating the corn, or maize, genome.

  • Gene Researcher Strives to Create Super-rice That Will Feed Billions

    Rod Wing, director of the Arizona Genomics Institute, said he likes to "surprise people" by telling them the University of Arizona is the largest producer of rice in the state.

    The rice grows in experimental plots in the greenhouses and fields of the UA's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences - an outgrowth of research in Wing's lab to help solve the Earth's looming food crisis by creating new strains of the cereal crops that make up 60 percent of humankind's diet.