October 27, 2017
Students at UAF and beyond are learning the Inupiaq language with help from a website created by a fellow student. Qaġġun Zibell, whose English name is Chelsey, has built a website to help students, both at UAF and around the world, absorb basic Inupiaq. Zibell’s work was completed as part of a summer graduate fellowship through UAF eLearning and Distance Education. The website is a supplement to the textbook used in elementary and beginning Inupiaq courses. Zibell worked closely with instructor Ron Brower to develop the tool.
More than 200 high school juniors and seniors are registered for the fall Inside Out campus preview day, a record number for the open-house event. The Oct. 27 session will include campus tours, academic presentations and informational sessions for students, parents and guests. Inside Out sessions, which are held three times each year, have been an extremely successful recruiting tool — on average, 60 percent of high school seniors who participate in the open houses enroll at UAF the fall after they graduate.
A team of researchers, including the curator of earth sciences at the University of Alaska Museum of the North, received a grant from the National Science Foundation to study dinosaur and other fossil remains from Alaska’s North Slope. The $454,801 award will further research on the Cretaceous Prince Creek Formation, origin of most of the dinosaur bones in Alaska. The three-year award will support Patrick Druckenmiller and collaborators as they work to understand all members of the vertebrate community living in the paleo-Arctic during the late Cretaceous Period, including dinosaurs, fish, mammals and other newly discovered fossils.
Amy Lovecraft, a professor of political science, has been nominated for induction into the Norwegian Scientific Academy for Polar Research. Much of her work at UAF has focused on international cooperation and climate change adaptation in the Arctic. The polar academy was established in 2008 to contribute to research, education, understanding of environmental issues and enrichment of the polar research community. Academy members “must have a distinguished career in polar research or in other ways contributed to the advancement of polar research.”
UAF was well-represented at the Alaska Federation of Natives convention in Anchorage. Col. Wayne Don, a UAF alumnus, was one of two keynote speakers at the gathering, and several people from the College of Rural and Community Development helped lead workshops. Vice Chancellor Evon Peter taught a Gwich’in fiddling and jigging workshop, and another session, “Gwinzii Gwarandaii: Living Good, Practicing and Protecting Our Way of Life,” featured student Rhonda Pitka and UAF faculty Jessica Black and Carrie Stevens.
The UAF Cooperative Extension Service hosted its annual Alaska Invasive Species Workshop in Anchorage, which brought together 80 people involved in invasive species management, research and education efforts. The three-day workshop focused on the aquatic plant elodea, which has appeared in lakes and slow-moving waters of Interior and Southcentral Alaska. Tobias Schworer of UAA’s Institute of Social and Economic Research kicked off the workshop with a public lecture that highlighted the economic and environmental risks associated with invasive species.
Nick Konefal, a research engineer at the Alaska Center for Energy and Power, deployed storm-surge sensors in October in Kivalina, Shaktoolik and Shishmaref. All three villages are threatened by coastal erosion, much of it caused when winter storms push powerful waves onto shore. Through the Rapid Deployment Inundation Platforms project, researchers hope to better understand the amount of surging water that reaches land and its effect on local erosion.
Alaska Sea Grant’s Chris Sannito taught a dozen students how to smoke seafood for fun and profit in Kodiak. Fishermen came from the Lower 48 and statewide to learn how to make safe, saleable products. Sannito, a research assistant professor in the College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences, also assisted eight companies in September with a variety of projects, including developing dried seaweed products, pH testing, building a seafood plant and salmon oxidation.
The Alaska Climate Science Center hosted the 2017 CSC All Hands Meeting at UAF’s International Arctic Research Center. Host university and U.S. Geological Survey directors and managers from all eight climate centers attended. The Alaska center also hosted a field trip to the Poker Flat Research Range, a tour of the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory permafrost tunnel near Fairbanks and a glacier field trip out of Anchorage.
Scientists may finally understand how the rabies virus can drastically change its host’s behavior to help spread the disease, which kills about 59,000 people annually. A new study published in the journal Scientific Reports shows how a small piece of the rabies virus can bind to and inhibit certain receptors in the brain that play a crucial role in regulating the behavior of mammals. Dr. Karsten Hueffer, lead author and a professor of veterinary microbiology, said he hopes the findings will help scientists better understand and treat the infectious viral disease.