UA College of Science: Transforming the Way We Live

This is the eighth edition of this publication, and I am thrilled to share with all of you the many stories that make our college one of the best of the country. I am proud of the quality of our faculty, students and staff.

Creating new knowledge and sharing it with our students and the public is a team effort, and I am always gratified to see how committed our team is to making a difference in our community and the world.

The research articles in this special College of Science showcase exemplify this commitment. Our researchers are interested in understanding our universe and our place in it and how we can have better lives from their discoveries.

The rate of change in our understanding of our physical, biological and digital world is nothing short of amazing.

Perhaps the most explosive changes are occurring in the digital universe, which is why we chose to have this year’s College of Science lecture series on machine learning and artificial intelligence.

There is no doubt that computer scientists are changing the world as we know it; specifically, with deep consequences about how we interact with one another and with machines.

The digital revolution is also affecting how we do medicine, how we study our universe and how our economies will operate.

In fact, we live in a time that some call the fourth industrial revolution. Many jobs that we do will no longer exist in 10 years, and jobs that are now difficult to imagine will be created.

This revolution will greatly affect the mission of our college and university. That is, we need to educate our students in ways that assure they will be the future leaders of enterprises that are yet unknown.

Furthermore, we need to continuously inform the general public of the scientific and technological breakthroughs that will bring complexity to our existing public policies. This is a fascinating challenge that we welcome.

The College of Science has benefited from great support from our community. We are deeply grateful for this as it inspires us to strive for excellence.

Thank you again for your support, and please do take advantage of the many informative programs we offer the community.

These programs include science cafes, the College of Science lecture series, programs at Biosphere 2 and the Mount Lemmon Science Center, apps for those who walk Tumamoc Hill or drive up the Catalina Mountains, and the interactive activities and open houses at Science City, part of the annual Tucson Festival of Books.

If you would like to know more about our outreach programs, please visit cos.arizona.edu/connections

The Galileo Circle is a society of individuals and companies who support the UA College of Science through annual and lifetime charitable gifts.

Approximately 300 members strong, the Galileo Circle was formed in 2001 to nurture both established and budding scientists and to create a healthy ecosystem between donors and the UA’s scientific community.

A central mission of the Galileo Circle is to provide scholarships for UA Science majors who have demonstrated exceptional academic abilities and other positive attributes such as leadership skills and a commitment to volunteerism.

In 2017, members of the Galileo Circle provided scholarships of $1,000 or more to 161 UA Science undergraduate and graduate students.

The Galileo Circle also celebrates the achievements of extraordinary UA Science faculty through the Galileo Circle Fellows awards.

Galileo Circle Fellows recognized in 2018 are S. Scott Saavedra, professor of chemistry and biochemistry, and Adam Showman, professor of planetary sciences/Lunar and Planetary Lab.

In addition, the accomplishments of outstanding staff, appointed personnel and non-tenure eligible faculty are acknowledged with the Galileo Circle Copernicus awards. This year’s Copernicus awardees are Cassandra Faux, clinical associate professor of speech, language, and hearing sciences, and Minying Cai, research professor of chemistry and biochemistry.

To encourage further exploration of the work of UA scientists, Galileo Circle members are invited to participate in trips locally and in faraway locations. In August 2016, Galileo Circle members joined UA leadership in Florida to view the launch of the OSIRIS-REx mission.

Other trips included a tour of CERN, on the border of Switzerland and France, to learn about the UA’s seminal work on the Atlas Experiment, and to the high, dry mountaintops of Chile, where UA astronomers play crucial roles in ongoing experiments and where the Giant Magellan Telescope will be built.

In May 2017, the Galileo Circle ventured to the Peleponnese of Greece and its Cycladic islands to experience the area’s rugged, ancient beauty and to learn of active tectonics, earthquakes, archaeology and human and cultural history.

The key scientific and cultural hubs of England and Scotland will be featured in the May 2018 Galileo Circle: Golden Age of Science trip that will trace the birth of modern science in central London to the flowering of science in Edinburgh with stops in between that will lead us back through 5,000 years of culture.

We invite you to learn more about nurturing the future of science through the Galileo Circle.

Is it possible to receive care from clinicians who aren’t even in the room with you? What if quality care could be provided to patients in underserved areas while the physician is across the country?

With new and improved clinical care models, such as telemedicine coupled with data-rich environments, technology-enabled virtual care is becoming more of a reality.

Telemedicine, when applied to intensive-care units, provides the ability to remotely monitor critically ill patients and identify adverse events that are often challenging for bedside clinicians to detect.

As a research assistant in the departments of biomedical engineering and systems and industrial engineering under Vignesh Subbian, I work in an interdisciplinary team setting where we extract actionable information from clinical data to enhance and develop telemedicine in the intensive-care unit.

In other words, we take physiological and other clinical data from multiple sources as a means of improving care for critically ill patients in ICUs.

This allows for early detection of adverse events and potentially mitigates harm to patients with severe conditions. For example, a patient with a traumatic brain injury admitted to the ICU can be continuously monitored to detect any unstable physiological events that could lead to secondary complications and diminish patient recovery.

As an aspiring physician, I am elated to be working on this groundbreaking digitalization of health care and look forward to continuing to contribute to the facilitation of enhanced health care and medical services in the years to come.

Parkinson’s disease is an age-related, neurological disorder that affects several million people around the globe, including my own family.

One of the hallmarks of Parkinson’s disease is the progressive loss of cells in a region deep in the brain, called the substantia nigra. These cells are a source of a special chemical, dopamine, which helps regulate mood, memory and motor movement, among other things.

Hence when these “dopaminergic” cells degenerate in Parkinson’s disease, individuals experience tremors, difficulties initiating and maintaining smooth movement and cognitive issues.

Unfortunately, there is still no treatment for this debilitating condition.

Despite decades of research, we are set back by the limitations of current research models and the fact that it’s impossible to obtain brain tissue from living patients to authentically study Parkinson’s disease.

So, how do researchers study this evasive disease? One not-so-intuitive answer: skin cells!

Physicians have long known that in addition to the movement-related symptoms, individuals with Parkinson’s disease experience sleep issues, constipation, fatigue, voice changes and pain, among other problems.

This suggests that Parkinson’s disease may be a systemic condition affecting cells more broadly, beyond the boundaries of the brain.

As a research assistant in Lalitha Madhavan’s lab, I use the unconventional model of skin cells to investigate a cellular process known as “autophagy” – a mechanism that has recently been implicated in Parkinson’s disease pathology. Autophagy helps break down materials when they are no longer needed or are toxic to the cell.

My research indicates that autophagy is dysfunctional in cells of people with Parkinson’s disease. We have also found the skin cells exhibit several other alterations, such as inefficient energy production, changes in cell structure, and an increased susceptibility to stress.

These features are relevant to cell death and, interestingly, they mirror processes normally seen in degenerating Parkinson’s disease brain cells.

There are still many pieces missing in the puzzle of Parkinson’s disease. Our efforts using this unique skin-cell model, alongside researchers around the world, are helping us get a step closer to the answer.

We hope that this model will not only allow us to better understand Parkinson’s disease and test potential therapeutics, but also act as a system that will support the development of biomarkers that could allow for early diagnosis of the disease.

Have you met anyone affected by cancer?

The answer is, almost certainly, yes.

Although there have been great improvements in medical technology, there is still no universal cure for cancer. The two most universal treatments we currently have are chemotherapy and radiation.

But in some cases, our own body can decrease the effectiveness of these treatments. How? I study this question, and a possible solution, in Eric Weterings’ lab at the University of Arizona Cancer Center.

In every cell, we have about six miles of DNA. This DNA serves as the blueprint for every trait that makes us a unique person; therefore, it is very important that our DNA remains intact and unchanged.

Changes in DNA, called mutations, can result in cancer and other diseases. Because of this, cells have many mechanisms to detect and repair these changes.

A cell with a large amount of DNA damage will kill itself or stop growing, as a sacrifice for the greater good of the body.

Chemotherapy and radiation exploit this mechanism by inducing large amounts of DNA damage, leading to the death of cancer cells and other fast-growing cells.

It is possible, however, for our own DNA repair systems to work too well and decrease the effectiveness of chemotherapy and radiation.

Recently the Weterings lab developed a new small molecule: a drug that interferes with the DNA repair process and thereby sensitizes cells to chemotherapy and radiation.

We do not want this drug to affect all cells; so, how do we specifically target cancer cells only? The answer is, again, by exploiting a protein that already exists in cancer cells.

By targeting cells with large amounts of this protein, our drug may increase the impact of chemotherapy and radiation.

Currently, chemotherapy and radiation are the closest treatments we have to a universal cure, and I am working to make these treatments even better.

I was working on an article on state minerals in 2014 when I looked for Arizona’s state mineral.

Searching countless reference works and not finding such a designation, I called the Secretary of State’s Office. I was informed that Arizona did have a state gem (petrified wood) and a state necktie (the bola tie), but no state mineral.

At about the same time, students at Copper Creek Elementary School in Oro Valley proposed having the mineral copper become the state’s official metal, since Arizona is known as the Copper State. The bill passed quickly through the Legislature and was signed into law on March 27, 2015.

Should copper have been designated the state’s mineral as well? No, I say. Arizona needed a mineral that was known to museums around the world and unrivaled for its beauty. The answer was simple: wulfenite.

Wulfenite? Most residents of Arizona had never heard of it, unless you had an interest in minerals. What mineral collectors around the world knew, however, was that no place on Earth produced more spectacular specimens of wulfenite than Arizona, including nearly two-dozen mines that for decades produced the finest wulfenite specimens in the world.

I asked my state representative, Mark Finchem, to sponsor a bill to have wulfenite become the official state mineral. The bill died for lack of support. I tried again.

I collected signatures at Tucson’s gem and minerals shows. Signers included over 1,000 Arizona residents, as well as curators affiliated with the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, the Harvard University Mineral Museum and even the Natural History Museum in London.

With the assistance of mineral collectors throughout Arizona, particularly Tucson’s Frank Sousa, wulfenite specimens were featured in special display cases at the 2016 and again at the 2017 Tucson Gem and Mineral shows held at the Tucson Convention Center.

I arranged to have Phoenix youngsters affiliated with the Rockhounds of the Future of the Mineralogical Society of Arizona hand out calendars with wulfenite on the cover to every member of the House of Representatives just before the bill came up for a second reading.

On March 22, 2017, wulfenite became the official state mineral, proving wulfenite is the unrivaled choice for Arizona.

Take a moment to reflect on the landscape of your inner mental experience — the thoughts, feelings and emotions that have shaped you into the person you are today.

What do you think about on a day-to-day basis? Are your thoughts a source of happiness, creativity and inspiration? Or do they fuel distress, anxiety and distraction?

Despite its importance for our cognitive and mental well-being, the nature of daily thinking remains a mystery, largely because thoughts are hidden and difficult to study.

The Neuroscience of Emotion and Thought Lab at the University of Arizona, together with researchers at the University of Colorado, are trying to fill this gap in our scientific understanding of the mind by taking advantage of smartphone technology. They recently developed a free, mobile Android app called Where’s My Mind that sends users surveys at random moments to capture the nature of their mental experience.

Here’s how it works:

Upon downloading the app, users are provided details about the research study . Next, users are asked to answer additional questions assessing demographic characteristics and aspects of their personality, goals and well-being.

These questions will give the researchers a better sense of who is using the app and reveal how daily thinking patterns differ across people.

Following these questions, the app helps users track their thoughts over time. It does so by sending the user’s device a push notification four random times each day during pre-specified waking hours.

Users can choose to ignore the push or answer a short survey about the nature of their thoughts, mood and activities right before they received the notification.

After completing roughly a week of thought surveys, the app will show users helpful graphs of their daily thought patterns, and users can choose to see how their thoughts compare with the average user. The graphs will be updated as users continue to use the app and as the database grows.

The researchers are building a large, anonymous international database of daily thinking patterns and are excited to already see over 1,000 international users .

As the database grows, they are starting to gain important insight into the “Four C’s” of thinking:

1. Content. What do people typically think about in day-to-day life?

2. Context. How do thoughts typically change as a function of what people are doing; that is, working, procrastinating, etc. ?

3. Correlates. How do thoughts differ across people of different ages, cultures and outlook on life? How do thoughts relate to mental health, including depression and anxiety?

4. Consequences. Are certain types of thoughts helpful or harmful for our cognitive and emotional well-being?

One class of thoughts the researchers are trying to understand is often called “mind-wandering.” We all have the experience of mind-wandering, but we do so in different ways and with different consequences.

The researchers want to understand both the costs and benefits of mind-wandering. A large user database will be critical to answering these questions.

If you’re interested in contributing to this research project, download the Where’s My Mind? app through the app’s Facebook page or directly through the Google Play store.

And stay tuned if you’re an iPhone user — the researchers plan to develop the app for iOS in the coming year.

Tumamoc Hill is one of Tucson’s cultural icons.

About 1,500 daily visitors come to the hill, immediately west of “A” Mountain and downtown Tucson, for a great cardio workout while immersed in the beautiful Sonoran Desert.

Yet, did you know that Tumamoc is actually the Anglicization of the Tohono O’odham words Cemamagi Du’ag, meaning “hill of the horned lizard”? Or that people first settled at the top of Tumamoc Hill over 2,500 years ago? And that the study of ecology in North America began at the Desert Laboratory buildings halfway up the hill?

These and many more are the stories that await you in the fully bilingual Tumamoc Tour — narrated in English by desert explorer David Yetman and in Spanish by acclaimed Mexican scientist Alberto Burquez.

The Tumamoc Tour tells the story of this desert and the more than 4,000 years of human history through the lens of these historic grounds.

Those of us who walk the hill today partake in the thousands of years of migration up and down this steep volcanic peak. With each step, you will be taken through a journey in six different sections, punctuated with music by Calexico and Gabriel Naim Amor. You will hear about those who have preceded you and learn to see the plants and animals around you in a new way.

Each engaging section and 16 YouTube feature videos tell how the careful study of this ecological preserve has resolved many of the desert’s secrets, such as how old saguaros are, the close connection between saguaros and palo verdes, and the secret lives of ants and barrel cactus.One of the 16 features is an augmented reality reconstruction of the village that once stood on top of the hill 2,500 years ago.

Download the Tumamoc Tour, on the App Store and Google Play, to see the desert and Tumamoc Hill through new eyes.

Beyond human and animal migrations across the U.S.-Mexico border, another process is continuously active: the movement of groundwater.

The Gran Desierto region of the Sonoran Desert is the largest area of sand dunes in North America.

On your way south to Puerto Peñasco (or Rocky Point), the large dune field to your right is what used to be the interior of the Grand Canyon, brought to rest here by the once-mighty Colorado River.

North of Peñasco, the arid Sonoran coast of the Gulf of California is filled with sands that seem to extend endlessly until they abruptly meet the sea.

However, nestled into these dunes along the coast is a series of salt flats from which an array of freshwater springs, or pozos, seems to magically appear.

This is the only fresh water for at least 50 kilometers in any direction and was the destination for centuries of old salt pilgrimages by the Tohono O’odham.

Where does this water come from and how old is it?

A transdisciplinary collaboration among a botanist, a hydrologist and an artist seeks to answer these questions.

Beyond academic papers, as part of the Next Generation Sonoran Desert Researchers 6&6 art-science collaboration (nextgensd6and6.com) results of the work will be shown at the University of Arizona Museum of Art January-April 2019.

After nearly two years and over a dozen trips, a cohesive story of permanence has emerged.

Water samples analyzed for stable isotopes — chemical signatures of elements in the water itself that tell where and when the water is from — reveal that this water is ancient, deposited toward the end of the last Ice Age, about 10,000 years ago.

Its origin seems to share a history with the former paths of the Colorado and Gila rivers.

Thousands of camera-trap images show a riparian habitat at the center of life for multiple species, especially coyotes, great blue herons, migrating water fowl and bats in the summer.

A myriad of archaeological remains fills the dunes at the edges of the springs, which contrast with the continuous hum of traffic along the new coastal highway that offers a shorter route from California to Sonora.

Freshwater springs that used to be a sacred destination are now bypassed unknowingly as thirsty cities continue to grow.

This hidden water once used over millennia by desert peoples and still essential to animals in the dune fields is central to the larger story of how humanity interacts with water in the binational Sonoran Desert.

One out of every four kindergartners in the United States is Latino, making bilingual communities like we have in Southern Arizona the norm, rather than the exception.

Tucson is also a refugee resettlement city where preschools and elementary schools are infused with speakers of a variety of languages in addition to English and Spanish.

What happens when bilingual children encounter a school system that was designed for children who speak only English? I tackle this question through science and community outreach.

Latino children are four times more likely to be identified as having a speech disorder than their white, English-speaking peers.

The reason we see such a disproportionate number of Latino children receiving speech-therapy services is due to how speech-language pathologists evaluate the speech of bilingual children.

The tools and measures we use were designed for children who speak just one language — English.

When bilingual children are tested in only English, they are, in effect, being tested on only half of their language skills.

As a result, their speech skills appear weaker than those of their monolingual, English-speaking peers.

To solve this problem, I examined routine tools and measures for bias and developed assessment procedures for both English and Spanish that will accurately reflect the speech skills of bilingual children. The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health.

I found that assessing both languages of the bilingual child results in a more accurate diagnosis of speech disorders.

Furthermore, I am in the process of identifying a set of English and Spanish measures that accurately identify bilingual children with, and without, speech disorders.

Why is correctly identifying speech disorders so important for bilingual children?

Children who are identified as having a speech disorder are often taken from class to receive speech-therapy services one-on-one with a speech-language pathologist.

For children who truly have disorders, this is a good thing. Children need a quiet room to focus on improving their speech skills and individualized attention to address their disability.

However, for children who have typical speech skills, but are mislabeled as having a disorder, being removed from class for unnecessary therapy results in missing out on general education curriculum. This results in educational disparities for bilingual Latino children compared with their monolingual English-speaking peers.

Conversely, if children do, indeed, have a speech or language disorder, but are not accurately identified by a speech-language pathologist, they may have full access to the general-education curriculum, but they are not receiving the speech therapy services they need to develop age-appropriate communication skills.

This results in a health disparity for bilingual Latino children — and for bilingual children who speak languages other than Spanish — because our tests don’t miss monolingual English-speaking children with speech disorders. Our bilingual children with speech disorders, however, are overlooked.

My research program focuses on reducing educational and health disparities for bilingual children, using Tucson as a model for procedures that will be implemented nationwide.

The collaboration among the University of Arizona, the Sunnyside Unified School District and bilingual speech-language pathologists in the greater Tucson area has already improved the way our schools evaluate and diagnose bilingual children with speech disorders.

This partnership continues to improve the lives of bilingual children and their families, with the goal of equitable education and access to special-education services for all of Tucson’s children.

For over a century, the University of Arizona has been a place of wide-open opportunities both for students to learn and faculty to explore the frontiers of knowledge.

Today, Arizona’s land-grant university has transformed itself into a nationally known resource for technology commercialization.

Like most universities, the UA has long had a “technology transfer office” tasked with identifying, protecting and commercializing the inventions stemming from research.

But five years ago, the UA re-envisioned its commercialization program with the creation of Tech Launch Arizona to bring new energy and impact to the enterprise.

The College of Science was integral to that effort and has been an excellent partner for Tech Launch Arizona since the beginning, according to associate vice president Doug Hockstad.

“The College of Science has historically been one of the biggest contributors to the commercialization process at the UA,” said Hockstad.

In fact, in fiscal year 2017, the College of Science was named on 103 of the UA’s 261 reported inventions from research. The college also received nine of the 20 Asset Development funding awards Tech Launch Arizona provided to researchers to prepare their inventions for commercialization. Those awards totaled $205,100.

Last year, the college also spun out startup Lum.AI to commercialize a natural-language-processing software developed by associate professor of computer science Mihai Surdeanu, doctoral candidate in linguistics Gustav Hahn-Powell and postdoctoral researcher Marco Antonio Valenzuela-Escárcega.

Their software, which started as investigations into cancer, led to a new method for extracting the most useful information from entire bodies of research.

The relationship between the college and Tech Launch Arizona continues to advance, especially with the hiring of Laura Silva, an experienced inventor and intellectual-property expert, as Tech Launch Arizona’s licensing manager embedded with the College of Science.

“With the addition of Laura and the experience and talent she brings to the relationship,” Hockstad said, “we anticipate great growth in collaborations with the college faculty and researcher community, as well as in the impact we see from their inventive work.”

Last fall, the University of Arizona began inviting members of the Tucson community to audit science classes through the new Community Science Scholars Program.

The program allows community members to audit science classes at a reduced tuition rate through the UA College of Science. Auditors enroll as non-degree-seeking students and choose from a menu of classes.

The goal is to increase the college’s engagement with the local community and give lifelong learners a chance to learn from our world-class science faculty.

Only a small number of seats are open to auditors and are filled on a first-come, first-served basis. Auditors attend lectures and participate in discussions but don’t submit written work, take exams or receive a grade.

The cost is $450 for a three-unit class — a fraction of what regular students pay. Auditors may take up to two classes per year. They also get a free UA email account, a CatCard for $25 and access to the UA Libraries and UA Campus Recreation.

Classes cover the life and physical sciences.

Examples include Golden Age of Planetary Exploration, Frontiers of Brain Science, Historical Geology, Foundations of Biochemistry, Bioinformatics Seminar and Astronomy and the Arts.

Award-winning teachers, distinguished professors and department heads are among the instructors.

For more information about the Community Science Scholars Program, visit http://tucne.ws/saq

A rare gem awaits you on the UA campus. The Flandrau Science Center and Planetarium offers a great variety of things to see and do in a beautiful learning environment.

On the main floor is a state-of-the-art full-dome planetarium, and downstairs is a world-class Mineral Museum featuring minerals, gems and fossils.

“Undiscovered Worlds: The Search Beyond Our Sun” takes you on the search for exoplanets. “Perfect Little Planets” gives the younger crowd an intro into the planets in our solar system through the eyes of an alien family looking for the perfect vacation spot.

During the Tucson Festival of Books on the UA Campus, March 10-11, Flandrau will offer free admission and reduced show prices. For more information, visit flandrau.org

To get to the nearest rainforest, from Tucson, that is, head up Oracle Road/Arizona Highway 77 and drive north for 24 miles. Next, at milepost 96.5, turn right onto Biosphere 2 Road.

There you’ll find a rainforest encased in a glass-and-metal enclosure, teeming with 90 species of plants and the occasional animal, or animals, that happen in. You’ll also find an ocean and three enormous sloping landscapes complete with water, soil, plants and microbes.

This is Biosphere 2, a laboratory for controlled scientific studies, an arena for scientific discovery and discussion, and a vehicle for public education, which means you’re welcome to have a look around. And don’t forget to bring the kids.

Visitors of all ages can see science in action, interact with university research and have hands-on experiences with earth-systems science. Families, student groups, the university community and the public can all experience Biosphere 2’s innovative approach to tackling some of our biggest scientific questions.

Various tours are offered, including the Family Tour, a one-hour condensed, interactive tour designed for families with children 12 and under. “The Family Tour helps connect kids to science in ways that can improve their ability to see themselves as the scientists of the future, contributing to the next generation of important innovation and insights,” says Kevin Bonine, Biosphere 2’s director of education and outreach. The Family Tour concludes with an optional hands-on activity enjoyable for all ages.

Other tours include Under the Glass Tour, where you’ll smell the ocean and feel what it’s like to be in a tropical rainforest; and the History Tour, a 45-minute in-depth look into what it was like to be a crew member inside Biosphere 2.

Biosphere 2 is at 32540 S. Biosphere Road in Oracle.

For more information on Biosphere 2’s other tours and hours, visit biosphere2.org or call 520-621-4800.

Should you find yourself in a reflective mood, consider taking a tour of the University of Arizona Richard F. Caris Mirror Laboratory.

That’s where a team of scientists and engineers make enormous, lightweight mirrors for a new generation of optical telescopes.

The 90-minute tour provides a unique opportunity to learn how innovative engineering and optical technology melds with manufacturing techniques to produce the largest and most advanced giant telescope mirrors in the world.

Four mirrors for the Giant Magellan Telescope, each 27 feet across, are in various stages of production at the Mirror Lab.

It used to be that large telescopes were equipped with conventional, solid-glass mirrors. But the mirrors made at the mirror lab are anything but.

Instead, they have a honeycomb structure on the inside and are fashioned from Ohara E6-type borosilicate glass that is melted, molded and spun cast into the shape of a paraboloid in a custom-designed rotating oven.

The lab began around 1980 with a backyard experiment conducted by mirror lab founder and director Roger Angel.

Curious about the suitability of borosilicate glass for making honeycombed structures, he tested the idea by fusing two custard cups together in an improvised kiln.

In 1985, the Mirror Lab moved to the facility at 933 N. Cherry Ave., under the east wing of Arizona Stadium.

Tours are held Monday through Friday.

They will also be given during the Tucson Festival of Books on Saturday, March 10, and Sunday, March 11.

Find more information about the Mirror Lab at mirrorlab.arizona.edu

Tours also will be given Saturday, Feb. 17, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. as part of the Steward Observatory’s 100-year anniversary as a campus department.

That celebration includes activities for children, panel discussions, solar observing and chats with students and faculty.

On Friday, Feb. 16, from 6 to 9 p.m., hear Chris Impey, associate dean, College of Science and Distinguished Professor of Astronomy, and stargaze with the Clark and White telescopes.

For more information, as.arizona.edu/openhouse

Just north of Tucson, 9,157 feet above sea level, sits the Mount Lemmon SkyCenter.

The UA SkyCenter boasts the world’s largest dedicated publicly accessible telescope, known as the Schulman telescope.

The telescope was conceived and designed so the world’s amateur astrophotographers could harness its optical power remotely — via the web.

Thanks to the Schulman telescope and its astrophotographers, breathtaking images of galaxies, nebulae and star clusters have been captured.

So have images of our very own solar system.

But each night, the SkyCenter offers the public a view of the heavens via the 32-inch Schulman telescope and a 24-inch Philips telescope, located atop Mount Lemmon.

Members of the public can take in wonders of the cosmos such as moons, planets, star clusters, nebulae, galaxies, stellar spectra and comets or asteroids.

Or, if you would prefer an extended visit at the SkyCenter, you might consider Astronomer Nights, a program in which visitors observe the cosmos for one or two evenings as professional astronomers are wont to do.

That is, you become the astronomer investigating the cosmos, and you decide how the night unfolds. What’s more, no background or experience in astronomy is necessary.

The SkyCenter also offers year-round residential science programs to Arizona K-12 students as part of the UA Science: Sky School.

The programs focus on core UA science areas such as sky island ecology, biology, geology and astronomy, and have been developed in collaboration with local school districts to meet Arizona State and Next Generation Science standards.

Find detailed information about SkyCenter visits at skycenter.arizona.edu

“Why hasn’t anybody found a cure for cancer yet?” I’ve been asked that question by family members and friends more times than I can count.

It’s an excellent question.

With all the money and effort that has gone into cancer research, why does it feel like we’re not gaining any ground? What’s it going to take to beat this thing?

I wish the answer were simple, but the truth is, cancer is an incredibly complex disease.

To start with, there are many different kinds of cancer, each with its own set of contributing factors. For example, the age of the patient, diet, genetic makeup, tissue of origin and the ability of cancer cells to evolve can drastically affect how and when cancer spreads.

When you look at the problem of cancer in the abstract, it’s so dauntingly complex that the idea of science ever being able to cure it seems frustratingly out of reach.

Things become even more complex when you compare adult cancers to pediatric cancers, which is the area of research my lab focuses on.

Here’s why: When a normal cell becomes a cancer cell, it must acquire a set of “hallmark” characteristics. Some of these characteristics enable the cell to multiply without restriction. Some provide the ability to evade cell death. Some form new blood vessels to carry oxygen and nutrients, which allows the cancer to spread to other tissues.

These are all processes that normal cells need for proper development into tissues, organ systems and so on, but cancer cells take over these processes and use them to their advantage, which can be dangerous.

What remains unclear is why these cells suddenly become cancer cells. Historically, it is thought that these “hallmarks” are acquired through multiple mutations within genes encoded in the DNA, a type of molecule that acts as the instructions for a cell. Basically, the instructions are corrupted, resulting in the formation of cancer.

The above is true for many adult cancers, but studies over the last 10 years have revealed that this is not the case for some pediatric cancers.

These cancers have far fewer mutations and, in a small subset, just one mutation is found. This is highly unusual and leads to an interesting question: Why would those pediatric cancers form if they don’t acquire as many mutations as adult cancers? What else could be happening?

Well, others and I have learned that there are additional mechanisms, beyond mutations in genes, that cancer cells can use.

One example of an additional mechanism is epigenetics, which is defined by groups of different proteins that essentially affect how the gene is read.

Think of it as the instructions in a foreign language, and you are trying to translate them as accurately as possible. The instructions are correct, but it’s the translation that is flawed.

In fact, in my earlier studies in retinoblastoma, a childhood cancer of the eye, we identified epigenetic changes in tumor cells that led to the activation of many cancer-causing genes that are supposed to be turned off.

That research led to exciting progress: We were able to identify a new drug to shut down one of these cancer-causing genes, meaning it can be used as a potential therapy.

By exploring these non-genetic mechanisms, we were able to unearth new therapeutics for retinoblastoma.

Fortunately, after decades of research, retinoblastoma is now curable with more than 95 percent of patients surviving.

However, survival rates for other pediatric cancers are much lower and have not improved for more than 30 years. One of these cancers is called rhabdomyosarcoma, which is a cancer of skeletal muscle cells. Like retinoblastoma, a subset of patients has a type of rhabdomyosarcoma that carries only one major mutation known as the PAX3/FOXO1 translocation. This mutation is essentially the parts of two genes stitched together to make a whole new gene.

To date, it is not entirely clear how this translocation is turned on. It is also not clear what other mechanisms contribute to developing rhabdomyosarcoma besides this one mutation.

These questions about rhabdomyosarcoma are what my lab and our collaborators are focused on answering right now.

In fact, we discovered a new non-genetic mechanism that turns on this translocation and also helps to keep the cancer cells alive.

This mechanism is mediated by a class of novel RNAs, molecules that act like a second set of instructions provided by the DNA.

As shown in the accompanying image, we removed one of these RNAs in rhabdomyosarcoma cancer cell lines and observed rapid cell death.

In addition, we found that the PAX3/FOXO1 is no longer turned on and, in contrast, genes that normally function to suppress cancer formation are now turned back on.

This is a remarkable finding because not only have we identified a regulator of the PAX3/FOXO1 gene, but we also discovered a novel mechanism that drives this cancer.

Our lab is currently working on how these RNAs function and what other genes they regulate.

We expect that these data will open new opportunities to explore therapeutics that haven’t been considered for treating children with rhabdomyosarcoma. Research like this could significantly impact the longevity and quality of patients’ lives. And that, hard and time-consuming as it is, is real progress.

So, here’s what I tell my family and friends when they ask me what’s taking so long: Every day, inch by inch, doctors and researchers all over the world are working steadily toward the treatment and cure of many different types of cancer.

And with every new piece of the puzzle we begin to understand, our dream of curing all forms of cancer moves that much closer to reality.

We just have to keep at it.

Over 8 million Americans experience the death of a loved one each year.

Nearly half of American women older than 65 are widowed, in addition to one in six American men of the same age.

The Grief, Loss, And Social Stress (GLASS) Laboratory at the University of Arizona is dedicated to examining psychological and physiological aspects of grief and other forms of profound life stress.

In addition, the GLASS Laboratory uses a clinical science approach to examine and improve psychological support to help people cope with grief.

The death of a spouse in later life has been linked to impairments in mental and physical health. However, research shows that losing a spouse is not the sole cause of these impairments.

Rather, poor mental and physical health following bereavement in later life is associated with the social isolation that accompanies widowhood for many individuals.

Scientifically based grief-support groups have been shown to help widows and widowers cope with their loss, though for older individuals, obstacles such as geographic location and physical immobility can make it difficult to attend in-person support groups.

Thus, we sought to bring the grief support into widows’ and widowers’ homes by creating a virtual-reality support group that allows group members to interact in real time.

In the virtual-reality support group, the group leaders and a small group of bereaved individuals appear on a computer as computer-generated avatars, or visual images representing each person, that can walk and talk on the screen.

With grant support from the Retirement Research Foundation, we developed the virtual-reality support group and a grief-education website for older widows and widowers and compared them with each other in a small-scale preliminary study.

Thirty bereaved adults over 50 years of age were assigned to one of the two study conditions: the virtual-reality support group or the grief-education website.

The virtual-reality support group used a free, easy-to-install and simple-to-use software program called Second Life.

Participants chose an avatar to represent them in the virtual-support-group setting and learned to move their avatar using basic keyboard arrow commands.

The virtual support group met for one hour twice a week for a total of eight weeks (16 sessions) in a private living-room setting owned by the principal investigator.

The group leaders and members communicated with each other by typing into a group chat box.

The first session of each week was led by a licensed mental-health-care provider and consisted of scientifically based education on topics related to coping with spousal grief.

The second session of each week was moderated by a well-trained research staff person and consisted of reflection on educational topics and social interaction.

The other study condition consisted of weekly readings on a grief-education website without interacting with other widows and widowers.

Importantly, the grief-education website and the virtual support group covered the same scientifically based education topics including physical health maintenance, mental well-being, relaxation techniques, dating and parenting, social re-engagement and dealing with the personal property of the deceased.

In this novel pilot study, over 88 percent of participants completed participation in the virtual-reality support group or grief-education website.

Participants rated both interventions as highly acceptable, with 94 percent of the virtual-reality support group and 100 percent of the grief website group reporting that they would recommend the intervention to a friend.

Specific to the virtual-reality support group, members reported a high level of immersion in the support-group environment and a high level of feelings of support from their fellow group members.

In follow-up assessments at the end of the eight-week study period and two months later, we found that participants in both groups showed self-reported improvements in grief, stress, loneliness and sleep quality.

However, only participants in the virtual-reality support group showed self-reported improvement in symptoms of depression.

Although these results are preliminary, it is possible that the social support provided by the group in the virtual environment, along with its interactive nature, decreased depression in the virtual-support group compared with the grief-education website.

A next step in this line of research on novel interventions for grief is to compare the virtual-support group, grief-educational website, an in-person support-group intervention and the simple passage of time to clarify what is effective in these simple and accessible grief-support resources.

The American and global aging populations make this an especially important area of research.

Almost everyone has been touched by news of a cancer diagnosis and the toxic side effects of chemotherapy treatments.

Worse yet is not knowing whether these treatments will cure the disease.

Why do some cancer cells respond to chemotherapy while others don’t? This question has confounded cancer biologists and physicians for decades.

Chemotherapy resistance can occur when a very small number of cancer cells escapes treatment, which often leads to relapse later.

Scientists in the molecular and cellular biology department are turning to new single-cell and systems biology methods to get a fresh look at this age-old problem.

Andrew Paek’s lab uses time-lapse microscopy to create movies of cancer cells responding to chemotherapy treatment.

By following the chemotherapy response in single cancer cells that grow and divide over several days, researchers have found how key proteins in cells “decide” whether the cell will live or die.

The researchers are using this information to design novel treatment strategies that force cancer cells to make the “die” decision in response to treatment.

Guang Yao’s lab combines computer modeling and single-cell measurements to decipher how individual cells decide to enter or exit a state of non-growth, called dormancy.

Entering dormancy is another way in which cancer cells hide from chemotherapy treatments, which typically work by killing off growing cells.

The Yao lab recently uncovered a genetic “dimmer switch” that controls how deep a cell can go into dormancy.

They found that when driven to shallow dormancy, these cancer cells can no longer hide from chemotherapy. Accordingly, the researchers are devising ways to wake up and kill off dormant cancer cells to prevent relapse.

These labs are looking at how cells make critical decisions that impact how they respond to chemotherapy treatment. Understanding these decision-making mechanisms in cancer cells, and how they differ from healthy cells, will help to therapeutically eliminate cancer cells without leaving any renegade cancer cells behind.

Our solar system formed about 5 billion years ago from a cloud of interstellar dust and gas, which condensed first into a young proto-sun and surrounding (circumstellar) material, and later into the sun and planets we know today.

Extra-solar planetary systems, which we now know to be common, probably formed in the same way.

Although a theoretical picture of planet formation has been developed to explain these mature systems, astrophysicists have recently begun to observe the formation in action around young stars.

Building the giant planets in our solar system involved the formation of large rocky cores followed by the accretion of massive gaseous envelopes.

This process can be divided into three main stages:

1. Slow collisional growth of dust grains into rocks and eventually solid cores.

2. Slow accretion of a small amount of gas onto that core until the gaseous envelope and solid core have approximately equal masses.

3. Rapid, runaway accretion of a large amount of gas.

Although most of the giant planet’s mass is assembled during the rapid accretion phase, it cannot begin until the first two phases are complete.

The entire process is thought to have taken a few million years in our proto-solar system. To explain the existence of massive planets in other systems, the theory has been modified to try to speed up the process.

For example, if planets drift through the proto-solar system as they form, they have access to fresh food supplies and can hence grow faster.

Higher masses of circumstellar matter, that is, a larger food supply to begin with, can also accelerate the process. However, even under these more-optimistic scenarios, giant planets typically require more than 1 million years to grow to their final masses.

Recent research from University of Arizona astrophysicists has called this timescale, and hence the theoretical picture of giant planet formation, into question.

We recently discovered structure in the circumstellar matter around a young star, which suggests that giant planets may be able to form much more rapidly than previously thought.

We studied a star called WL 17, in the Ophiuchus constellation, about 400 light years away from our solar system. The star is young, probably 500,000 years old or less compared with our more mature solar system.

We used the Atacama Large Millimeter Array, the largest radio telescope in the world, located in the Atacama Desert in northern Chile. We were able to image the region around the star where we expected giant planets might be able to form one day.

What we discovered was that the circumstellar material has a large inner clearing around the central protostar. This clearing is probably caused by one or more giant planets, which can gravitationally sculpt the gas and dust in the vicinity.

Given the age of this system, the presence of one or more giant planets suggests rapid formation and argues for a revision of the basic theory of planet formation.

If giant planets can form on such timescales, this finding also indicates that Jupiter-like planets may be more common in young systems than has been previously realized.

Although the discovery of the structure in the WL 17 disk suggests new modes of giant planet formation, it remains unclear whether this is common around young stars.

Fortunately, we have an ongoing research program that uses the Atacama Large Millimeter Array to search for similar structure around other stars.

And we have already found another example. So, stay tuned.

Decades ago, information scientist Don R. Swanson reasoned that important scientific and medical breakthroughs could come not only from laboratories but from various electronic databases — but only if we can relate, retrieve, interpret and bring together such independently created information.

Should this union not be attained, discoveries, he rightly asserted, would be overlooked, a phenomenon he termed, “undiscovered public knowledge.”

Given the increased importance of interdisciplinary research, we are developing an online visual analytics system to match research scientists at the University of Arizona with research projects and calls for proposals. The prototype system is called MapMatch.

MapMatch is designed to answer complex questions such as how research officers or faculty at the University of Arizona can identify experts in a given field; how the university can identify gaps in our areas of expertise; how officers can forward calls for proposals to the correct experts; and how we can create a sound multi-disciplinary team to apply for integrative research proposals.

MapMatch integrates data from multiple sources. In particular, it relies on data gleaned from university databases such as those pertaining to current staff and research proposals; online databases that pertain to research publications and funding awards; and external ones such as Google Scholar that can be used to find collaborators.

The data are analyzed using machine learning methods, which automate analytical model building, and natural language processing, which allows computers to analyze and understand human language.

The results of this analysis are visualized using map-based networks and overlays. For example, given a call for a proposal, we can find UA research scientists and possible collaborators for that research project, based on the topics of the proposal and the expertise of the scientists.

This is not a trivial task, given that there are thousands of research scientists at the UA who work across multiple colleges and departments.

MapMatch is still in an early prototype stage, and we are working on formal validation of many of its components. Nevertheless, the UA Office of Research, Discovery and Innovation is using MapMatch to help build research teams to tackle large-scale, multi-disciplinary projects.

We are also planning to develop a streamlined, user-friendly version of MapMatch to help new research scientists find research collaborators at the UA.

Our sun is an only child. It is orbited by many planets, asteroids and comets, but it has no stellar sibling.

In contrast, roughly half of the stars like our sun are in orbit with one or more stellar mass companions. These double, or “binary” stars are gravitationally bound, orbiting each other much like the Earth orbits the sun.

Binaries come in a wide range of flavors. The stars can be twins or have very different masses. Some are so close that their “year” — the time it takes to complete one orbit about each other — is only a few days. Others are at a thousand times the distance between the Earth and the sun.

Most of them appear close enough that we can’t identify them by eye even in Tucson’s dark skies. But with modern telescopes, we can easily identify them.

Binaries provide invaluable information about the universe. We use binaries to understand how stars’ mass, temperature, size and brightness are related. The laws of gravity allow us to relate the stars’ orbital speeds and periods to their intrinsic mass.

Because some binaries undergo eclipses, where one star blocks the light of the other, we can also measure their sizes. With these relationships, we can confirm models of nuclear fusion, which we could never test in laboratories on Earth.

Binary stars also produce extremely energetic explosions known as supernovae. These supernovae not only create elements on the periodic table that we need for life, but also allow us to measure the accelerating expansion of the universe.

Supernovae produced by binary stars are called “standard candles” in astronomy. This term indicates that we can tell how much energy they release as light when they explode. But because the light gets fainter as it travels, far-away supernovae appear dimmer.

This allows us to measure how far away they are and ultimately, to measure how the universe is expanding in time.

Even with all of the heavy-lifting that binaries do for the field of astronomy, many mysteries remain about how they form. We know that stars are born in cold, diffuse clouds of molecular hydrogen gas, but we don’t quite understand how sometimes we end up with two instead of one.

We have recently confirmed one theory of how binary stars formed using a large array of telescopes in Chile. Using the Atacama Large Millimeter Array, we imaged a rotating disk of gas and dust that was in the process of breaking up into three stars.

This fragmentation happens quickly (in astronomical terms, over 100,000 years perhaps), and so we were lucky to catch one young system in the act. We found that the disk which was originally orbiting one star became so massive that it broke apart under the strength of its own gravity.

Our group is also studying another curious feature of binary star systems: Some of them have planets. In fact, Luke Skywalker’s home planet of Tatooine, which has two suns, turns out not to be science fiction after all.

We now know that planets can safely orbit a close binary star system and remain stable for billions of years.

So far, astronomers have only discovered planets more like Jupiter and Saturn in orbit around binaries, but smaller planets like Earth are simply harder to detect.

Our models predict that planets like Earth and Venus could easily be hiding around many binary stars in our galaxy, waiting to be discovered by the next generation of advanced telescopes.

A warming Arctic is undergoing significant environmental change.

The global mean surface temperature of the Earth has increased from 0.6 to 0.7 of a degree Celsius since the mid-1960s.

During the same period, the temperature over the Arctic region has risen by 1.9 to 2.0 degrees Celsius, and even more during the winter and spring months.

This is mostly evidenced by the reduction of Arctic sea-ice extent (SIE) this past September. The Arctic sea ice starts melting in spring and normally reaches its minimum in September, then grows in autumn and winter, and peaks the following March.

As demonstrated in figure 1, satellite observations have shown that the September Arctic SIE has been steadily decreasing by 74,961.8 km2 per year from 1979 through 2015.

The most prominent September SIE decline occurred over a specific region (78°- 85°N, 60°-155°E, in the East Siberian Sea, Laptev Sea and Kara Sea).

The driving forces associated with inter-annual sea-ice variability can usually be divided into two types, dynamic and thermodynamic.

Important dynamical processes include the sea-ice drift away from a given location, anomalous regional atmospheric circulation patterns, abnormal summer storm activities and so on.

Heat-transport anomalies by such atmospheric motion and surface-energy budget anomalies are the important thermodynamic influences on Arctic sea-ice trends and variability.

With all climate components, the cloud radiative effect is strongly associated. Yet, individual models do not well simulate cloud-related processes and thus fail to capture the recently increasing inter-annual SIE variation.

Therefore, an important question is this: Can we predict the September SIE based on the springtime cloud and radiation properties?

Recent studies imply that highly variable clouds, particularly before the melting season, can precondition the September Arctic SIE variation and thus potentially be an important predictor.

My group in the department of hydrology and atmospheric sciences developed a new method to estimate September SIE using 16-year (2000–2015) linear trends of springtime (March–June) cloud fraction, cloud water path and shortwave and longwave fluxes over the Arctic.

Using NASA satellite observations, my group found that increasing springtime cloud fraction and downward longwave flux at the surface tends to enhance sea-ice melting in the Arctic via strong cloud-warming effect.

Surface shortwave fluxes play a more important role in determining September SIE during late spring and early summer.

We also proposed the following hypotheses regarding a mechanism of the Arctic cloud-radiation-sea-ice feedback: Increasing springtime clouds and net surface radiation tends to enhance September SIE retreat, leaving more open seas, which results in higher atmospheric moisture content and more clouds the following spring.

This process will create a positive feedback loop that potentially accelerates sea-ice decline across inter-annual time scales.

The established multi-variable statistical model can accurately provide the forecast of the September Arctic SIE two to three months ahead.

The estimated September SIE in 2016 using the new method is ~3.05×106 km2, which is about 25 to 30 percent below the observed September SIE in 2016.

When retroactively applying this new method to calculate September 2007 SIE, our calculation agreed with the satellite-observed SIE very well, which is within 5 percent against observation.

This study provides an innovative new insight to develop an empirical statistical forecast model by using springtime clouds and radiation observations from available NASA’s satellites.

The lead time of the new method is aimed to be longer than four months, which substantially overcomes the currently limited one- to three-month forecasts of SIEs with dynamical/statistical/hybrid models.

Accurately forecasting the September SIE is a hot topic and a challenging task.

If we can increase the lead time of SIE seasonal forecast by four months, it will not only help us predict the global state of climate better, but also will have significant impacts on marine transport, tourism businesses, resource extraction operations and communities in Arctic regions.

Five years ago, two faculty members whom I’d never met, the late Robert Lusch (professor of marketing) and Matthew Mars (assistant professor of agricultural leadership and innovation), were looking for some ecological insights and reached out to me.

They were intrigued by whether the businesses they were studying might be structured in ways that resembled biological systems.

I had never given much thought to how the approaches I’ve developed to explore cooperative networks between plants and insects might apply to humans.

This is the sort of intellectual leap that requires collaboration among researchers with strikingly different expertise— an interdisciplinary approach that the University of Arizona has long championed.

We chose to explore one particular big idea.

Businesses and organizations, including our own university, often portray themselves as “ecosystems.”

They want to convey that they are complex (there are a lot of working parts) and networked (these parts interact in many ways).

But ecosystems in nature have many other well-studied properties. Do human enterprises really have features characteristic of biological ecosystems? If so, could we build more resilient ones if we were to take lessons from nature?

Matt Mars and I have argued that businesses and other organizations resemble biological ecosystems when they exhibit the following features:

• They consist of a set of “nodes” within which multiple players function and interact.

• Nodes are linked by flows of information and resources.

• Not every node is linked to every other node.

• Links between nodes vary in strength and can impart positive, neutral, or negative effects.

• Nodes grow, shrink, and can be lost over time.

• The loss of nodes doesn’t necessarily mean that the system as a whole will fail.

There are important differences, of course.

The most obvious one is that human organizations are, at least to some extent, intentionally designed, whereas biological ecosystems are not.

This distinction, however, might actually be less important than the similarities in predicting how systems as a whole function.

As a system in which to test our ideas, we settled on the Arizona charter school “ecosystem.”

We have gotten especially interested in features that might determine whether schools (which are the nodes in this case) grow and thrive, or shrink and eventually “go extinct.”

We are testing, for example, whether how long schools persist (their “lifespans”) can be predicted from their initial sizes and subsequent growth rates. We are also looking at whether they initiate cooperative links with other schools – characteristics that are well-studied predictors of persistence in biological ecosystems.

None of this work is motivated by a desire to judge the success of the charter school movement as a whole, or of particular charter schools.

We think, though, that the insights we’re reaching may suggest a set of traits that predict whether a newly initiated charter school will be likely to thrive in the long term.

Ecological insights, we believe, can shed light on how to foster resilient human organizations. But they may also reveal how unwanted human organizations might be eliminated.

Recently, we have worked with national security experts to evaluate whether international terrorist networks can also be viewed as ecosystems – and, if so, whether nature offers useful lessons in how we could disrupt them.

It’s exciting to think of the many other human contexts that can be explored when natural and social scientists collaborate in creative ways.