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UAF Research News
  • Two people stand next to a University of Alaska Fairbanks sign as a pickup idles nearby producing a white plume of exhaust. An illuminated temperature reading on the sign reads minus 41F. In the background is an evergreen-covered hill topped with a building. A large smokestack from a powerplant also rises above the pickup and trees.

    Ancient beavers, sea floor bumps, thick air

    December 20, 2024

    It's time to start emptying the notebook following the Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union, where more than 25,000 scientists shared their work during five days.

  • At night, cars and people crowd a street outside a brightly lit, several-story glass-fronted building with a large poster featuring the words

    More familiar news of the North

    December 13, 2024

    I am once again elbow to elbow with thousands of scientists, at a meeting I first attended 25 years ago.

  • In between mountains, a broad column of smoke rises from a evergreen forest just beyond a highway lined with buildings.

    Alaska continues to change, fast

    December 06, 2024

    With his eyes on Alaska weather and climate for many years, Rick Thoman saw a need for a recent update on what is happening within America's largest state.

  • A person sits at the bottom of a square hole dug in the ground. He is holding an animal jaw bone.

    Study shows ancient human, canine relationship

    December 04, 2024

    Humans are no strangers to sharing their food with their dogs: Look no further than the average American dining room. As it turns out, that's been the case for millennia.

  • Four squirrels poke their heads in unison from the entry hole in a bird nest box made of boards and attached to a tree.

    The secret life of red squirrels

    November 27, 2024

    Stan Boutin has climbed more than 5,000 spruce trees in the last 30 years. He has often returned to the forest floor knowing if a ball of twigs and moss within the tree contained newborn red squirrel pups.

  • Advertise your Ph.D opportunities at AGU

    November 27, 2024

    Do you have openings for Ph.D. students on your team? UAF will be at the American Geophysical Union meeting in December and will share information about your Ph.D. opportunities at our booth.

  • A woman wearing an orange vest and earphones smiles while sitting in a small aircraft.

    Earthquake scientist moving on after 30 years

    November 22, 2024

    One Sunday more than 20 years ago, Natalia Ruppert held her 1-year-old son a bit tighter in her arms. A friend's house had started shaking with an intensity she had never felt before.

  • Head and shoulders photo of a man in a knit cap and light jacket in a fall landscape with the Alaska oil pipeline in the background.

    A rich career in a quirky place that fit

    November 15, 2024

    Brian Barnes did something outrageous earlier this week. The biologist drove to a movie theater. In the middle of the day. Barnes, 70, had time to catch a matinee in Fairbanks because after 38 years he recently retired from the University Alaska Fairbanks.

  • A landscape with spruce trees in the foreground and a rocky mountain slope in the distance.

    Geologic hydrogen may be an answer

    November 09, 2024

    The internal combustion engine is less than 100 years old. Same for the technologies we have developed to pull oil and gas from the ground. It's hard to imagine life without our cars and planes and buildings heated with natural gas and oil. But it really wasn't that long ago that people had none of these things. Sometimes, advances happen, and clever people change the way we live.

  • Cars sit in a parking lot covered with slushy snow.

    The numbers behind a weather forecast

    November 01, 2024

    A meteorologist from the National Weather Service's local office recently told a newspaper reporter that heavy, wet, snow would materialize in a few days. He said it would resemble "cement falling from the sky."

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