UAF in the news: Week of Aug. 21, 2006

Submitted by Marmian Grimes
Phone: (907) 474-7902
08/25/06

TVC program puts students on fast track to union jobs
Fairbanks Daily News-Miner
The Fast Track program at the Tanana Valley Campus is designed to get students out of college and into the work force more quickly than ever before. Now, thanks to an agreement between TVC and a local union, some of those students will be able to get jobs even faster. Read more ...

Satellite facility marks 15 years of high-altitude Earth work
Fairbanks Daily News-Miner
SKY VIEW: For 15 years the Alaska Satellite Facility at UAF has received data from spacecraft crossing overhead from pole to pole at 17,000 miles an hour. Read more ...

International expert concludes rapid assessment of Lebanon oil spill
Oneworld.net
As a result of a rapid assessment mission over the past 10 days, an environmental scientist from Alaska has concluded that the Lebanon Oil Spill has caused extensive injury to the near shore environment of Lebanon. Rick Steiner, a professor at the University of Alaska Marine Advisory Program and Member of the Commission on Environmental Economic and Social Policy of IUCN, who has been in Lebanon to conduct a rapid assessment of the spill, was also advising the Lebanese Ministry of Environment (MoE), on behalf of the World Conservation Union (IUCN) and Green Line. Read more ...

KUAC links soldiers, families via live video
Fairbanks Daily News-Miner
The local public radio and television station is providing a link between families and soldiers of the 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team in Baghdad. Read more ...

Experts: Interior fires to worsen
Fairbanks Daily News-Miner
Fairbanksans got a break this summer from the heavy smoke and raging forest fires of the past two years. Read more ...

Do melting glaciers make for bad oysters?
SITNews
"ÂThe rate of melting of Alaska’s glaciers into the Gulf of Alaska has nearly doubled since 1995. In July 2004, passengers on a small cruise ship in Prince William Sound came down with stomach flu after eating local oysters. Some scientists think there’s a connection between the two. Read more ...

Removing the mystery from Alaska’s washboard roads
Alaska Star
While driving Alaska’s graveled highways, countless people have no doubt wondered about how an unpaved road surface turns into a bouncing bed of corduroy. Keith Mather, who was studying nuclear physics in Australia in the early 1960s, had the same question. He wrote a paper about washboard roads in 1963. Read more ...

If walls could talk -- UAF cabin housed the famous
Anchorage Daily News and Juneau Empire
FAIRBANKS -- Gleaming, multimillion-dollar buildings at the University of Alaska Fairbanks stand as symbols to the advancement of science in the North and a research budget of more than $120 million. Read more ...

Concern raised over effects of seismic exploration
"ÂAlaska Journal of Commerce
Seismic work now underway in the Chukchi Sea in conjunction with marine petroleum exploration is raising eyebrows among scientists concerned about the health of ocean ecosystems. Read more ...

Belugas bottom out
Homer Tribune
For a decade or more, scientists have been trying to figure out how a once-thriving beluga whale population in local waters has nearly dropped off the radar. Read more ...