Memorial service honors former UA administrator

Patricia E. Hutton, former assistant vice president for human resources, died on Feb. 27 after a two-year illness. She was 49.

A memorial service was held yesterday to honor Hutton, who came to the University of Arizona as director of employee services in 1996. She was appointed director of human resources in 1997 and became assistant vice president for human resources in 1999.

Hutton was born in Rochester, N.Y., on Feb. 11, 1954. She worked for Eastman Kodak Company in Rochester, N.Y., for eight years before attending Cornell University's New York State School of Industrial and Labor Relations in 1980. She received her Bachelor of Science degree in industrial & labor relations in 1982, and her master's degree in 1984.

Patricia officially resigned her position in 2002 due to illness.

Astronomy professor lands $40 thousand fellowship

University of Arizona astronomer Xiaohui Fan is among 117 outstanding scientists who recently were selected to receive Sloan Research Fellowships.

The 2003 Sloan Fellows were chosen from about 500 applicants.

The 2003 Fellows are from 50 U.S. and Canadian universities in fields of chemistry, computational and evolutionary molecular biology, computer science, economics, mathematics, neuroscience and physics.

Fan said he will use his 2-year, $40,000 fellowship to support his federally and university funded research, including graduate student, travel and publication costs.

In January, Fan was named winner of the American Astronomical Society's 2003 Newton Lacy Pierce Prize for his systematic discoveries of high redshift quasars in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). He headed a research team that announced the discovery of three of the four oldest known quasars in January.

Fan joined the University of Arizona astronomer department and Steward Observatory as an assistant professor last year. Fan earned his doctorate in astrophysical sciences from Princeton University in 2000. He was awarded his master's degree in 1995 from Beijing Astronomical Observatory, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China and his bachelor's degree in 1992 from Nanjing University, China. Twenty-eight previous Sloan Fellows have later won the Nobel Prize.

Study: mold makes its way into nearly every U.S. home

Researchers from UA have found that household mold is more common than residents believe and often triggers asthma and allergies.

UA research professor Kelly Reynolds led the study and was the chief author.

A survey of 160 homes across the country found one form of mold or another in virtually all of the 1,330 samples taken for the study.