Fire restrictions start Wednesday in most forests

Most of Arizona's national forests will impose fire restrictions for the Memorial Day weekend as the state enters the long, dry period before monsoon moisture arrives in early July and the potential for wildfires increases.

NASA greenlights UA-led mission to get bits of asteroid

NASA gave the all-systems-go signal Thursday for a University of Arizona-led mission to mine samples from a near-Earth asteroid named Bennu.

Addition to University of Arizona architecture building is an energy hog

The 2007 glass-and-steel addition to the UA College of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture - promoted by the university as "a laboratory for sustainable practices" - is one of the biggest energy wasters on campus.

Student fee paying for green programs all over the University of Arizona campus

University of Arizona students are bankrolling green projects across campus - from improving the efficiency of campus buildings to growing mushrooms from pizza boxes, coffee grounds and mesquite bean pods.

Unconscious bias a threat in academic hiring, University of Arizona official warns

Education about unconscious bias is critical to getting more women and minority faculty in science and engineering, said Thomas P. Miller, associate provost for faculty affairs at the University of Arizona.

Star 200: Biomedical industry in Southern Arizona still recruits 'outside'

The local talent pool in the biomedical industry has expanded dramatically since T.J. Johnson moved to Tucson to work for Ventana Medical 11 years ago, but he still must recruit regionally and nationally for top positions at HTG Molecular, where he is now president and CEO.

Visitors bureau changes name to 'Visit Tucson'

The Metropolitan Tucson Convention and Visitors Bureau, the tourism agency with the tongue-twisting acronym - MTCVB - will have a new marketing "brand" to go along with its shortened name of "Visit Tucson" beginning in June.

Tucson astronomy history lives Monday at Steward Observatory

WHEN: 7:30 p.m. Monday

High winds create travel and fire warnings across Arizona

Travel could be hazardous across Arizona today, with high winds and blowing dust from Interstate-40 in Northern Arizona to Interstate-10 in the central and south portions, according to the National Weather Service.

Repository for state's past faces a challenging future

The Arizona State Museum celebrated its 120th anniversary last week- basking in its glory days, predicting a grand future and plodding through its current crises.

University of Arizona's HiRISE camera possibly sees old Soviet craft on Mars

Citizen scientists in Russia may have identified the remains of a long-lost Soviet lander on Mars by poring over photos of the surface taken from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter with the University of Arizona's HiRISE camera.

S. Arizona scientists fare well in budget

President Obama's proposed budget had good and bad news for Tucson-area astronomers and space scientists, most of it anticipated.

Scientist feels tie to distant spacecraft

NASA scientist Larry Lasher feels a bit left out when people talk about Voyager 1 being on the verge of leaving the solar system.

Kitt Peak funding won't evaporate, but it will shrink with squeeze on National Science Foundation

National Science Foundation support for telescopes and instruments on Kitt Peak will decrease but not vanish, federal officials told tenants of Kitt Peak last week.

Plastic wins UA student an innovator award

Jared Griebel, the University of Arizona's Student Innovator of the Year, has some "retro" advice for researchers interested in a business plan.

UA testing vast, open online courses

The best-enrolled course at the University of Arizona this semester could be a virtual one.

Fighting fire with ... preparation: Agencies gather in Oracle, north of Tucson, for training

ORACLE - More than a dozen local, state and federal firefighting agencies gathered Tuesday to train for what could be an active fire season in Southern Arizona.

Voyager 1 thought to be along the 'magnetic highway at edge of solar system

Faculty and graduate students at the UA's Lunar and Planetary Lab spent the noon hour Monday discussing the conflicting signals being sent by Voyager 1, which may become the first spacecraft to ever leave our solar system.

Fire danger is high for southeastern Arizona

A red-flag warning is in effect for Southeastern Arizona from noon today until 8 p.m. and again on Saturday afternoon through evening.

CDO grad wins international physics prize

Joe Polchinski, professor at the Kavli Insitute for Theoretical Physics at UC Santa Barbara, has won one of three Physics Frontiers Prizes from the Fundamental Physics Prize Foundation.

Comet Pan-STARRS is getting even tougher to see

Comet Pan-STARRS is staying up later, but it's getting dimmer even as the moon gets brighter, making it a tough catch.

Study: Dry winters tied to weak monsoon

We've always been comforted by the common belief that wet summers follow dry winters and vice versa - but that has only been the case for the last half of the 20th century.

Modified foods hold out promise, pitfalls

Arizona is one of 20 states considering laws to require labeling of genetically modified foods.

Tucson getting comet crazy

Gates Pass is getting crowded at sunset with crowds of comet watchers, trying to catch a glimpse of Pan-STARRS in the short window of time between the sun setting and the comet dropping beneath the western horizon.

Look west to see Comet Pan-STARRS and a crescent moon again tonight

Comet Pan-STARRS continues to make a brief appearance on the western horizon this week, but is difficult to see with the naked eye.

Lowell Observatory fundraising to repair telescope, dome

Lowell Observatory, Arizona's oldest center for astronomy, is launching a campaign to recruit an army of benefactors to repair the telescope and dome from which Percival Lowell discovered what he said were ancient canals on Mars.

Check out western horizon to see Pan-STARRS comet this week

The first comet of the year visible from the Northern Hemisphere sits low on the western horizon for the next few days.

This comet's a bit faint, but watching for it is good practice

The first comet of the year visible from the Northern Hemisphere sits low on the western horizon for the next few days.

AZ raises the ante vs. dust menace

The Arizona Department of Transportation has gotten "more aggressive" about monitoring dust on the state's highways and shutting them down when visibility is poor, an agency official said Tuesday.

'Genomics Tomorrow' forum will close UA lecture series

We humans have been thwarting evolution and changing our own genomes and those of other species for as long as we've been able to think.

75 years of 'temporary' offices over for Tree Ring Laboratory

The University of Arizona's "tree-ringers" are celebrating their move this weekend from "temporary" headquarters in the bowels of Arizona Stadium to a light-filled aerie above the stolid brick of the mathematics annex.

Tech Park aims to be border lab

The University of Arizona's Science and Technology Park hopes to parlay its partnership with the U.S. arm of an international defense systems giant into a role as a testing and evaluation center for border security technologies.

Biosphere couple offer to go to Mars

Jane Poynter and Taber MacCallum kept their relationship alive inside Biosphere 2 and now they'd like to test their marriage on a long, risky flight to Mars.

Biosphere 2 couple would like to be the first married couple in space

Jane Poynter and Taber MacCallum kept their relationship alive inside Biosphere 2 and now they'd like to test that relationship on a long flight to Mars. The couple spent two years inside Biosphere 2, emerging from the experiment in contained living in September 1993. Now married, they a…

Dean tries to bring University of Arizona a new breed of vet school

Shane Burgess was undeterred in his bid to bring a veterinary medical program to the University of Arizona, even when a May National Research Council report concluded that there was no shortage of veterinarians in the United States.

Thanks to complex field of epigenetics, it's now clear 'DNA is not your destiny'

You're stuck with the genes you inherited at birth, but the way in which you develop, the environmental factors you encounter and laboratory manipulation can change how those genes work - for better and for worse.

As world population explodes, genetically modified rice is our best hope, University of Arizona scientist says

Rod Wing, director of the Arizona Genomics Institute, has played a major role in mapping the structure and function of the world's primary cereal crops. Rice is the one that needs our immediate attention, he says.

Science authors to explore art, politics at Tucson Festival of Books

You might expect science to meet fiction at the Tucson Festival of Books but it also intersects with art, architecture, politics and even national security.

Why didn't we know meteor that exploded over Russia was coming?

The 150-foot-wide meteor that flew by Earth Friday and the smaller one that exploded over Russia hours before were too small to be easily detected. They are not even targets in NASA's surveillance of potentially hazardous objects.

Meteor that hit Russia: Why didn't we see it coming?

The 150-foot-wide meteor that flew by Earth Friday and the smaller one that exploded over Russia hours before were too small to be easily detected. They are not even targets in NASA’s surveillance of potentially hazardous objects.

David Arnett explores the cosmos with a keyboard

A University of Arizona astrophysicist who made astronomical breakthroughs without ever looking through a telescope lens will deliver a public talk Monday.

Whew! The big meteor missed Tucson

Meteor 2012 DA14 streaked by Earth shortly before 12:30 p.m. Tucson time.

What a dark mouse tells us of evolution's mysterious workings

Owls have a name for a white mouse on a black rock: "dinner."

Big asteroid will come close - but miss us

An asteroid about the size of the one that created Arizona's Meteor Crater will whiz by Earth on Feb. 15, getting closer to us than some of our orbiting communications satellites.

New use for scope to be weighed

The National Solar Observatory is holding a workshop Thursday to find some way of keeping the McMath-Pierce telescope on Kitt Peak open when funding for it stops at the end of the year.

Genetic detective from UA traces disease evolution

Michael Worobey is a genetic detective who uses the genomes of viruses to trace the evolution of major communicable diseases, such as HIV/AIDS and influenza.

Mushroom cloud 'curiosity' came from Manhattan Project

Tom Lindgren sells decorative art pieces quarried from ancient lake beds where fish, animals and plants were encased in calcium carbonate 50 million years ago - give or take a couple of thousand millenniums.

We travel the road to 'mastery of our biological destiny'

Genomics, the topic of this year's lecture series at the University of Arizona's College of Science, is not an inherently controversial topic.

UA's HiRISE camera finds Mars' ice cap fluctuations

Our new understanding of the ever-changing topography of Mars came into full focus in the last week with the release of three scientific papers and dozens of images by the University of Arizona's HiRISE camera team.

S. Ariz. Clovis site is 1 of 5 'great places' cited in Smithsonian

A spot along the San Pedro River where the earliest known humans in the New World butchered bison and mammoths has been named one of the "five great places to see evidence of first Americans" by Smithsonian Magazine.