Chris Richards/University of Arizona
Ecologists studying the tropical rainforest biome in Biosphere 2 near Tucson say it s very similar to being in natural rainforests, which absorb carbon dioxide and release oxygen on a grand scale.
Step inside Biosphere 2’s tropical rainforest, which thrives beneath an enormous glass dome, and visitors are met by a wall of warm humidity and lush greenery. The sprawling complex north of Tucson in Oracle provides climate-change researchers unique opportunities to test theories in ways that would be impossible in the field.
This is where a team of ecologists recently found that tropical forests may be more resilient to rising temperatures than originally predicted. The key isn’t the heat but the humidity, according to the study, which was published in October in the journal Nature Plants.
(Photo: Chris Richards/University of Arizona)
It was a year that changed everything.
In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, the University of Arizona responded swiftly to the challenges presented by an unprecedented public health crisis. The entire Wildcat community – from virologists to public health experts to psychologists and everyone in between – contributed their time, energy and expertise to help the university and the nation with life-saving safety efforts and long-term mitigation strategies.
In between, the world watched as UArizona researchers tagged an asteroid, explored previously unanswered questions about the Maya civilization and, yes, figured out what s up with all those crane flies.
Chris Richards/University of Arizona
An ultracold storage facility capable of storing more than 1.6 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine has been completed at the University of Arizona.
The so-called freezer farm includes eight storage freezers to accommodate the first vaccines expected to be available in the U.S. – the Pfizer vaccine, which received emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration on on Dec. 11, and another candidate produced by Moderna. Seven of the freezers are ultracold freezers that operate at minus 80 degrees Celsius (minus 112 degrees Fahrenheit), and the other one can provide storage at minus 20 C (minus 4 F). Two additional minus 20 C freezers are on the way.