If you go to a movie and notice brilliant color, tack-sharp images and symphonic sound quality, thank UA Regents’ Professor Michael Marcellin. He led the international team that developed JPEG 2000. This new form of film based on data compression technology outperformed competitors worldwide. This new digital cinema is sharper than hi-def TV, difficult to pirate and cheaper than reels of film in metal cans. This break-through technology also improved hundreds of other commercial products, from cell phones and CT scans to the archives of the Library of Congress. With joint appointments in the College of Engineering and the College of Optical Sciences, students laud Marcellin as ”brilliant” and “the best instructor in the universe.”

Next time you pull on your favorite cotton sweats, polo or T-shirt, thank The University of Arizona. In the 1950s, UA scientists genetically enhanced long-staple Pima Cotton that is softer and wears longer than shorter fibers. More recently, researchers from the College of Agriculture & Life Sciences and BIO5 tested biotech cotton that produces Bt toxin, a natural insecticide. A just-completed two-year study found that Bt cotton kills the pink bollworm, a major threat to the cotton harvest, which reduces insecticide sprays and keeps yields high. That’s good news for the environment – and Arizona’s cotton farmers.

Throughout the Southwest, desert golf courses and sports fields are growing green thanks to UA College of Agriculture and Life Sciences turfgrass scientists. Golf course superintendents, professional sports turf managers and commercial landscapers rely on research and expertise from the UA to maintain and manicure acres of lush, durable turf. UA faculty specialists in plant sciences, soil science, irrigation management, water quality, weed science, plant pathology and entomology host research activities at the UA Karsten Turfgrass Research Facility, north of campus. One project they are testing is heat-hardy grasses that thrive on salty water and only need irrigation every two weeks.

At age 9, Hubert Charles de Monmonier discovered a box of minerals under his uncle’s porch in Pearce, Arizona. It changed his life. Though he grew up in Los Angeles and worked there as a school groundskeeper and steel worker for 40 years, he never lost his passion for minerals. An avid collector with a sharp eye for value, Monmonier acquired 871 specimens, including a dinner-plate-sized piece of gold from a pocket near the mine that started the1849 gold rush. He quietly willed this remarkable collection – now worth over $7 million – to the UA Mineral Museum, making it one of the best university-owned collections in the nation.

Did you ever wonder how national weather programs televised from New York know about lightning strikes anywhere in the country? They rely on a company that was founded by University of Arizona scientists in the 1980’s. UA researchers started a detection network that has grown to 150 lightning sensors all over North America and is now part of an international company, Vaisala, with 1,000 employees. By detecting and reporting lightning wherever and whenever it first occurs, Vaisala helps people protect themselves and their families, thanks to UA scientists with heads in the clouds but feet firmly on the ground.