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UNLV Newsmakers 2022: August

A roundup of prominent news stories highlighting university pride, research, and community collaboration.

UNLV's fall semester classes resumed Aug. 29 (Josh Hawkins/UNLV).

August signaled the start of a new academic year at UNLV. And while classes are just getting underway, UNLV's faculty experts have been hard at work all summer long sharing insight with journalists on local and global issues, research breakthroughs, and community engagement. 

From the future of energy production and the local economy to our evolutionary past and emerging health concerns, UNLV students and faculty appeared in hundreds of news stories around the globe.

Here are just a few that were covered by journalists in August.

Back to School

UNLV started the new academic year with a host of new academic programs, a new smoke- and vape-free campus policy, and renewed enthusiasm as the campus and surrounding community continue to ease out of pandemic restrictions.  

Big Brains

A UNLV-led team of anthropologists made international headlines for a paper that takes aim at a popular scientific claim that modern humans experienced an evolutionary decrease in brain size around 3,000 years ago. The evidence doesn’t support it, according to anthropology professor Brian Villmoare, who doubled down to say it may not have happened in the last 30,000 or even 300,000 years.

Discover Magazine, Haaretz, Advanced Science News, Frontiers Science News, Yahoo!, Europa Press, IFL Science, Laboratory Equipment 

Record-Breaking Physics Find

Tired of high electric bills and energy grid blackouts? Dream of an efficient bullet train system between Southern Nevada and California? A group of UNLV physicists may have a fix for that. Less than two years after shocking the science world with the discovery of a material capable of room-temperature superconductivity, a team from UNLV's Nevada Extreme Conditions Lab has upped the ante once again by reproducing the feat at the lowest pressure ever recorded. In other words, science is closer than it’s ever been to a usable, replicable material that could one day revolutionize how energy, people, and goods are transported as well as change how everyday technological devices — from laptops to MRI machines — are powered.

Yahoo! (twice), KTNV-TV: ABC 13, Nevada Independent, KSNV-TV: News 3, KVVU-TV: Fox 5, Science Magazine 

Health Happenings

Just when we thought we were out of the woods on COVID-19, media outlets began reporting a rise in reinfection cases nationwide — and news about polio and monkeypox outbreaks also took center stage. Journalists also updated readers and viewers on construction of the Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine’s new medical education building, as well as plans to build an ambulatory care clinic and pathology lab.

Population Forecast

The Center for Business and Economic Research in August released its annual population forecast, which found that Southern Nevada is still on track to add more than 1 million residents in coming years — bringing the population to an estimated 3.39 million by 2060. CBER director Andrew Woods and research director Stephen Miller told journalists that they expect strong economic activity, such as an anticipated high-speed light rail project and new hotel rooms, to drive the population growth. As Southern Nevada’s population ages, they also predict a shift away from reliance on the hospitality sector to other industries, such as health care.

KSNV-TV: News 3, KVVU-TV: Fox 5, KTNV-TV: ABC 13, City Cast Las Vegas, The Regulatory Review, Telemundo

General Roundup

Topics:

newsmakers

Campus Units:

Office of the President,  Housing & Residential Life,  Division of Student Affairs,  School of Public Health,  Office of Information Technology,  UNLV/CSUN Preschool,  College of Education,  Graduate College,  Department of Anthropology,  College of Liberal Arts,  Department of Physics and Astronomy,  College of Sciences,  Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine at UNLV,  Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics,  Lee Business School,  Department of Economics,  Center for Business and Economic Research,  Intercollegiate Athletics,  Department of Political Science,  Department of Psychology,  Department of History,  William S. Boyd School of Law,  Brookings Mountain West,  Greenspun College of Urban Affairs,  Department of English,  Educational Psychology, Leadership, and Higher Education,  Department of Communication Studies,  School of Social Work,  Department of Sociology,  International Gaming Institute,  Office of Economic Development

Related Experts:

Stephen D. Benning ,  Bo Bernhard ,  Emma Frances Bloomfield ,  Alan Feldman ,  Ruben Garcia ,  Shawn Gerstenberger ,  Michael Green ,  Erin E. Hannon ,  Danica G. Hays ,  Nicholas Irwin ,  Dr. Marc J. Kahn ,  Brian Labus ,  Elizabeth Lawrence ,  Dan Lee ,  Ian McDonough ,  Stephen Miller ,  Federick Ngo ,  Edwin Oh ,  Ashkan Salamat ,  David G. Schwartz ,  Brian Villmoare ,  Austin Horng-En Wang ,  Keith E. Whitfield ,  Andrew Woods

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