UAF in the news: Week of March 20, 2006

Submitted by Marmian Grimes
Phone: (907) 474-7902
03/24/06

Experts: More volcano monitoring needed
Fairbanks Daily News-Miner
WASHINGTON--Nineteen volcanoes in Alaska and the Northern Mariana Islands that seriously threaten aviation are not monitored by ground sensors able to communicate in real time, according to the federal government’s top volcano hazard warning official. Read more ...

Natural historian sees children’s hands in prehistoric art
Free New Mexican
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) - R. Dale Guthrie sees Paleolithic art lifted from cave walls and makes a connection to 21st century walls--the stalls of a junior high boys’ bathroom. Read more ...

Quake shakes southcentral
Anchorage Daily News
A light earthquake struck near the west shoreline of Cook Inlet across from Kenai just before noon today and was felt from Homer to Palmer, according to the Alaska Earthquake Information Center. Read more ...

McGinnis Glacier surges in Alaska Range
SITNews and several other online publications
Tim Cronin of Fairbanks wanted to climb McGinnis Peak in the Alaska Range recently, but on his approach to the mountain he and his partner ran into a giant wall of ice that wasn’t there a year earlier. Over the winter, McGinnis Glacier had surged, changing from a smooth white belt to a rumpled ice sheet fractured with crevasses. Read more ...

Alaska volcano’s Web site becomes Internet hot spot
Reuters, two dozen placements in mostly international publications
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) - Want to peer into the steaming summit of an erupting volcano without risking death?
Anyone with an Internet connection and a computer can do just that, thanks to about 30 cameras and other recording devices set up on Alaska’s Augustine Volcano that are streaming information to a Web site hosted by the Alaska Volcano Observatory, a joint federal-state office. Read more ...

Augustine Volcano rumbling again
FOXnews.com and UPI wire
KENAI, Alaska--Recent changes with the Augustine Volcano indicate that the activity the volcano is exhibiting now is less explosive than what occurred in January. Scientists, however, are continuing to keep an eye on the Cook Inlet volcano. Activity at the volcano climbed to a new level last week. Read more ...

Arctic Stonehenge: Composer captures Alaska’s rhythms
Anchorage Daily News
FAIRBANKS--You won’t hear Alaska composer John Luther Adams’ "The Place Where You Go to Listen" in Carnegie Hall. You have to go to Fairbanks. That’s because Adams’ newest work is not a composition in the form of a score with notes written on paper. Read more ...

Sprites trigger sky-high chemistry
Chemical & Engineering News
In less time than it takes a hummingbird to flap its wings once, a recently discovered form of high-altitude lightning can come and go, but not before spreading its multiple-branching red streamers with blue tips over 10,000 km3 of the atmosphere. The largest mountains on the planet could fit within the same volume with lots of room to spare. Read more ...

Officials plan to test birds for flu
Fairbanks Daily News-Miner
WASHINGTON--Federal officials want to take 75,000 to 100,000 samples from live and dead birds, many in Alaska, to detect Asian bird flu virus in the United States this year. From those samples, they expect dozens will contain strains of the virus, and some of those may even be the deadly strains described as "highly pathogenic." Read more ...

Computer power provides added evidence of global shrinking
Fairbanks Daily News-Miner & Kodiak Daily Mirror
NEW AGE: A journey from Fairbanks to L.A. covers 2,470 miles, while 3,965 miles separate the snow in our fair city from the sand on Miami Beach. Artists and computer experts plan to present a concert Thursday at UAF with the goal, for purposes of sight and sound, of reducing those distances to zero. Read more ...

Griese’s latest book about Gillam’s historic and ill-fated flight
SITNews
Ketchikan, Alaska - Long time Alaskan resident and author Arnold Griese of Fairbanks was in Ketchikan last week to talk about his latest book; Bush Pilot, a biography of the early Alaskan aviator Harold Gillam, Sr. The presentation held at the Ted Ferry Civic Center was sponsored by the Tongass Historical Society. Read more ...

Author envisions world oil shortage
Fairbanks Daily News-Miner
Kenneth Deffeyes believes the world passed a very important landmark, with very little notice, on Dec. 16, 2005.
On that day, he said, the world’s residents finished off the first half of the world’s oil and started in on the second. Price volatility will be the norm, and if some big changes aren’t made, famine, pestilence, war and death are on the way.
Deffeyes, who presented his ideas during a talk Tuesday night at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, is a Princeton University professor emeritus and author of "Beyond Oil: The View from Hubbert’s Peak" and "Hubbert’s Peak: The Impending World Oil Shortage." Read more ...

Lund, banker and community leader, honored
Fairbanks Daily News-Miner
Jim Lund has been a hunter, fisherman and guide. For five years he was a soldier and for another five, the head of a zoo. For the last 27, he’s been a banker. Tonight he will gain another title--business leader of the year. The University of Alaska Fairbanks School of Management and the UAF Associated Students of Business have chosen Lund as this year’s award winner. Read more ...

Scientist: Another dry, smoky summer on tap
Fairbanks Daily News-Miner and KTVA
Early indications are another fierce wildfire season lurks ahead.
While professional wildfire forecasters are being coy, a University of Alaska Fairbanks scientist developing a theory that Alaska’s weather patterns follow solar cycles says to expect another hot, dry summer. Read more ...

This success story can be replicated elsewhere
New West
It is not surprising that scientists have differing views on the wisdom of delisting grizzlies in the Yellowstone area. There are strategic components to the issue, as well as technical ones. Read more ...

A new bridge for Alaska
Fairbanks Daily News Miner and local television and radio stations
The University of Alaska Fairbanks showed off its Internet system and announced a new agreement to link up with Alaska schools, libraries and other institutions at a daylong conference Thursday. Read more ...