Galaxy could carry more life than thought

A team led by a UA astronomer has found that terrestrial planets like Earth may form around a majority of the sun-like stars in the Milky Way galaxy, making for a greater likelihood of life on other planets, according to a university press release Sunday.

Michael Meyer and fellow participants learned that such planets may form around as little as 20 percent or as much as 60 percent of sun-like stars.

He revealed these findings and others yesterday at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

The team analyzed six groups of stars, all with masses comparable to that of Earth’s sun, using NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope.

The suns were grouped by age: 1-to 10 million years old; 10-to 30 million years old; 30-to 100 million years old; 100-to 300 million years old; 300 million-to 1-billion years old; and 1-to 3 billion years old.

Earth’s sun is approximately 4.6 billion years old.

Team members included 13 astronomers from the United States and Germany.

UMC reaches transplant milestone

University Medical Center made its 1,000th cardiothoracic transplant, the UA announced Thursday.

The tally includes 821 heart transplants, 73 double-lung transplants, 51 single-lung transplants and 55 heart-lung transplants, according to a press release.

Michael Boudreaux, a 51-year-old maintenance worker, was the milestone patient. He received a new heart Feb. 5 during a five-hour surgery led by Pei H. Tsau, assistant professor of surgery in the UA’s Department of Surgery.

Boudreaux had been on the transplant list for eight months, according to the release. He suffered from congestive heart failure and had suffered five heart attacks.

Education faculty, students win national award for article

Three faculty members and four doctoral candidates in the College of Education have won a national award for a research article on four-year teachers, the university announced Thursday.

“”How Well Do 1st-Year Teachers Teach: Does Type of Teacher Preparation Make a Difference?”” received an award for “”exemplary scholarship”” from the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education at its annual meeting this month in New Orleans.

The faculty authors were Thomas L. Good, head of the college’s educational psychology department; Mary McCaslin, an educational psychology professor and Henry Tsang, an assistant research scientist.

The article, published in the Journal of Teaching Education, looked at teaching practices of first-year teachers over a three-year span.

It concluded that the teachers tracked in research managed to reach their school district’s benchmarks for performance regardless of whether they had received traditional or alternate preparation.

UA gets $1 million to bolster downtown project

The UA has received a $1 million gift to support the Mineral Museum, according to a Feb. 12 press release.

Flandrau: The UA Science Center received the gift from the Freeport-McMoRan Copper and Gold Foundation.

The money is meant to bolster the museum’s presence in a $130 million science center and state museum complex to be built downtown.

The complex is expected to open in 2011.