*Students are blogging about their internship experiences from destinations as far away as Switzerland and Africa.*
At the University of Arizona, summer internships matter.
Three graduate students from the UA Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health are working as interns across the globe this summer. (more…)
*Melting ice sheets contributed much more to rising sea levels than thermal expansion of warming ocean waters during the Last Interglacial Period, a UA-led team of researchers has found. The results further suggest that ocean levels continue to rise long after warming of the atmosphere levels off.*
Thermal expansion of seawater contributed only slightly to rising sea levels compared to melting ice sheets during the Last Interglacial Period, a University of Arizona-led team of researchers has found.
The study combined paleoclimate records with computer simulations of atmosphere-ocean interactions and the team’s co-authored paper is accepted for publication in Geophysical Research Letters. (more…)
*In a career that spanned more than half a century, Gehrels fostered new research on asteroids and comets, including those that pose a threat to Earth.*
Tom Gehrels, an internationally noted planetary scientist and astronomer at the University of Arizona, as well as a hero of the Dutch Resistance during WWII, died Monday. He was 86.
Gehrels was among the first members of the fledgling Lunar and Planetary Laboratory when he joined the UA in 1961. During a long and distinguished career Gehrels pioneered new research on asteroids and comets, especially those that pose a collision threat to Earth. He also developed and taught introductory astronomy courses that were popular with non-science undergraduates. (more…)
In a recent publication in Physical Review Letters, physicists at the University of Arizona propose a way to translate the elusive magnetic spin of electrons into easily measurable electric signals. The finding is a key step in the development of computing based on spintronics, which doesn’t rely on electron charge to digitize information.
Unlike conventional computing devices, which require electric charges to flow along a circuit, spintronics harnesses the magnetic properties of electrons rather than their electric charge to process and store information. (more…)
The prevailing narrative of the financial crisis revolves around banks’ reduced ability to issue loans, but a new paper by University of Arizona associate professor of finance Kathy Kahle reveals that the credit supply shock did not affect publicly traded firms as much as expected.
Bank losses from toxic assets were responsible for the credit contraction, but those toxic assets – mostly mortgage-backed securities – are not directly related to the performance of industrial firms. (more…)
*A group of 33 students were competively selected to earn free certification from the UA’s Navajo Interpreter Training Institute to gain eligibility to serve as interpreters in New Mexico and Arizona state courts.*
Many of the 33 students enrolled in the University of Arizona’s Navajo Interpreter Training Institute have similar backgrounds – they began their unofficial role as English-to-Navajo language interpreters as children translating for their parents and grandparents.
Now, as adults who live and work across Arizona and New Mexico, they still find themselves providing the same service. (more…)
*UA researchers have uncovered evidence in ant colonies suggesting that social networks may function differently than previously assumed.*
Be it through the Internet, Facebook, the local grapevine or the spread of disease, interaction networks influence nearly every part of our lives.
Scientists previously assumed that interaction networks without central control, known as self-directed networks, have universal properties that make them efficient at spreading information. Just think of the local grapevine: Let something slip, and it seems like no time at all before nearly everyone knows. (more…)
*UA sociologist Jane Zavisca says the two countries are polar opposites when it comes to mortgage financing.*
When the Soviet Union disintegrated in 1991, one of the structural problems the new government and free-market economy had to deal with was housing. Most Russians lived in government-owned apartments that had been built beginning in the late 1950s. The question then became, who owned all of that Soviet-era housing?
In her new book, “Housing the New Russia,” due to be published by Cornell University Press, Jane Zavisca said the new Russian government dealt with it by announcing that this huge stock of apartments was, as of 1992, privately owned. (more…)
