Tag Archives: the university of arizona

Making Blood-Sucking Deadly for Mosquitoes

*Inhibiting a molecular process cells use to direct proteins to their proper destinations causes more than 90 percent of affected mosquitoes to die within 48 hours of blood feeding, a UA team of biochemists found.*

Mosquitoes die soon after a blood meal if certain protein components are experimentally disrupted, a team of biochemists at the University of Arizona has discovered.

The approach could be used as an additional strategy in the worldwide effort to curb mosquito-borne diseases like dengue fever, yellow fever and malaria. (more…)

Read More

If It’s Summer, It’s Also Scorpion Season

When stung by a scorpion, call 1-800-222-1222 and tell UA poison specialists about your symptoms.

Summer in Southern Arizona brings out the shiny auto sunshades, the supersized water bottles – and the scorpions.

The Arizona Poison and Drug Information Center, located at the University of Arizona College of Pharmacy in Tucson, reminds citizens of the desert that venomous scorpions share our habitat, and that sometimes we come closer to one another than we want. Since Jan. 1, the poison center has recorded more than 1,000 scorpion stings in its service area, which includes all counties in the state except Maricopa. (more…)

Read More

Warming Ocean Layers Will Undermine Polar Ice Sheets

*The UA-led research, based on climate models, shows that melting of the ice sheets will occur in this century and next.

Warming of the ocean’s subsurface layers will melt underwater portions of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets faster than previously thought, according to new University of Arizona-led research. Such melting would increase the sea level more than already projected.

The research, based on 19 state-of-the-art climate models, proposes a new mechanism by which global warming will accelerate the melting of the great ice sheets during this century and the next. (more…)

Read More