UAF in the news: Week of July 3, 2006

Submitted by Marmian Grimes
Phone: (907) 474-7902
07/07/06

Rural students getting a leg up on college life
Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, KTVA, Anchorage Daily News
Keane Richards hasn’t exactly had an average high school experience.
The soft-spoken 16-year-old has never attended a public school, instead being home-schooled at his family’s homestead on the Kandik River, a tributary of the Yukon. The closest phone is 50 miles away in Eagle. Read more ...

Turning up the heat: Scientists teach students about effects of arctic global warming
Anchorage Daily News
FAIRBANKS -- Surrounded by a fine cloud of silt and below-freezing temperatures, 15 teenagers quietly watched as permafrost researcher Daniel Fortier pointed out a dark triangular stain in the tunnel wall Read more ...

Climate change: A hot button for young activists
Fairbanks Daily News-Miner
Megan Waggoner, a 15-year-old high school student from Palmer, has spent time with her friends meeting with mayors, city councils, state representatives and even senators in Washington, D.C. But nothing makes her more nervous than speaking before a group of other high school students. "Peers can be the hardest people to face," she said. Read more ...

Melting permafrost’s impact on climate assessed
Earth and Sky
JB: This is Earth & Sky. Scientists are beginning to measure the potentially big impact that melting permafrost will have on global warming.
DB: Terry Chapin is a research scientist with the Institute of Arctic Biology in Fairbanks. He studies very deep soils in Arctic that contain high concentrations of carbon. As long as the soil is frozen as permafrost, the carbon is locked in the soil. But as Earth’s climate warms and the permafrost melts, the carbon in the soil is released into the atmosphere. Read more ...

UAF student honored with NEURON Travel Award
Fairbanks Daily News-Miner
University of Alaska Fairbanks post-doctoral fellow Sherri Christian has been named the first recipient of the NEURON Travel Award. Read more ...

Rasmuson Foundation celebrates 50 years of giving
Fairbanks Daily News-Miner
A sentence at the top of the Rasmuson Foundation’s Web site says it all.
"Rasmuson Foundation is a catalyst to promote a better life for Alaskans. Read more ...

KUAC advisory group named
Fairbanks Daily News-Miner
KUAC/AlaskaOne has announced the members of the public station’s new Community Advisory Council. The 13 volunteers were selected from a pool of about 25 by the Anchorage-based Foraker Group, an independent consulting firm. Read more ...

’Whad’ya know?’ road show
Fairbanks Daily News-Miner
To gauge just how much interest there is in Friday’s local broadcast of "Michael Feldman’s Whad’ya Know?," consider Jeff Benowitz’s plan to land a seat. Read more ...

Summer Arts Festival seeks students
Fairbanks Daily News-Miner
Even though the Fairbanks Summer Arts Festival includes esteemed instructors from around the country, the founder of the event said intimidation definitely isn’t part of the course work. Read more ...

Settlement reached on sea lion research
Kodiak Daily Mirror
A federal agency and an animal protection group reached a settlement over research that most likely causes pain to endangered Steller sea lions. Read more ...

Scientists find more clues in beluga mystery
Fairbanks Daily News-Miner and Forbes.com
It’s beginning to look like the juvenile beluga whale that swam from the Bering Sea up the Yukon and Tanana rivers, only to end up dead 15 miles upriver from Nenana, made its 1,000-mile trek and died last fall rather than this spring Read more ...

The days of the mammoth steppe in Alaska
Alaska Report
Eighteen-thousand years ago, while New York and Chicago were silent under tons of glacial ice, the grasslands of Alaska echoed with the roar of the American lion. In those days, a vast, dry belt wrapped the northern part of the globe, providing a home for lions, bison, and woolly mammoths. Stretching from France to Whitehorse, the only apparent interruption in that belt was near Alaska. Read more ...