Archive

Most Arctic development conversations begin with talk of new shipping lanes, or climate change. Two social science events at UAA last week asked a different question: How can Arctic peoples survive and thrive in a time of rapid environmental and economic change in their region? Diane Hirshberg leads us through their discussion.

Are women ditzy when they are pregnant? Check the Twitter hashtag #mommybrain to find out what women and men believe. Now check the science. Whoops!

The Faculty Showcase helped mark the opening of the Alaska Airlines Center, with more than 50 faculty members sharing their talent and research with the public. A happy side product was how much professors and instructors enjoyed learning what their colleagues were up to.

How the liver calibrates copper levels has a lot to do with our health. Too much copper is toxic; too little leads to disease. Funded by the NSF, Jason Burkhead and several undergraduate researchers are working to understand how liver cell proteins signal a copper pump.

“Alcohol killed my mom. Her life and death motivated me to learn how my Tlingit people got to this place we find ourselves in regarding alcohol,” writes scholar Kyle Wark. His research is the first ever to look at alcohol use among the Tlingit from an anthropological perspective.

UAA virologist Eric Bortz works in an NIH-funded global network monitoring respiratory pathogens like influenza. The West Africa Ebola outbreak, transmitted by contact with infected body fluids, offers his students the chance to understand how differing pathogens invade the body.

UAA researcher Loren Buck has been pondering the biological clocks of arctic ground squirrels for the better part of three decades. He's working to understand the persistence of their rhythms and how that might relate to human health.

Far from being bleak hospital photos, this collection of portraits by Henry S. Kaiser Jr., a patient at the Seward Sanatorium, captured beaming smiles and near-laughter in his subjects.

When life gets tense down here on Earth—climate change, civil unrest, the next election cycle—Alaskans can take comfort knowing one of their own is hard at work discovering what our future houses on Mars and the moon might look like. Alumnus Nathaniel Cox is testing "lunarcrete" formulations.

Ghulam Bham, a civil engineering professor, is leading a team of mechanical and electrical engineers to develop a driving simulator out of a 1996 Ford sedan.