Latest Research News and Events

Ӱ Research News
  • 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 Ӱ 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 Ӱ 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."

  • Clusters of “fairy circles” in Western Australia have been found to seep hydrogen gas.

    Ӱ workshop will look at Ӱ's geologic hydrogen

    October 25, 2024

    Reshaping Ӱ's energy future with geologic hydrogen is the subject of a three-day workshop next week hosted by the University of Ӱ Fairbanks Geophysical Institute and the U.S. Arctic Research Commission.

  • A person holds a toothy skull.

    Weasels are cute, natural-born killers

    October 25, 2024

    Weighing as much as a cup of walnuts and resembling a squeaky dog toy, the short-tailed weasel is easy to underestimate.

  • Two men in winter gear stand together on a snowy mountain top with the sun shining behind them.

    Denali climbed, its snow sampled for plastics

    October 21, 2024

    Two mountaineers who are also University of Ӱ Fairbanks students were successful in their attempt to reach the top of North America's highest peak in summer 2024.

  • a seal's head pokes up above water

    Surprising genetic differences found in Iliamna Lake harbor seals

    October 17, 2024

    In Ӱ, harbor seals thrive in the chilled water of Iliamna Lake, sliding their blubbery bodies onto floating pieces of ice for a winter rest. This group of round-eyed water dwellers has remained a mystery for years, but now, in partnership with local Indigenous communities, scientists have found surprising genetic differences in the seals.

  • A white jawbone with teeth from a Canadian lynx lies embedded in sheet of protective white foam. Below it, in the same sheet, a similar but much larger jawbone, colored dark brown, is also inset into the foam.

    The lion that walked through your yard

    October 11, 2024

    Grizzly and black bears remind humans that we are not at the top of the food chain in Ӱ. Ancient Ӱns shared the grasslands with possibly an even more terrifying predator -- the American lion.

  • Juvenile red king crabs equipped with tags await deployment in Bristol Bay in May 2024.

    Ocean glider opens new 'tool kit' in crab tracking efforts

    October 08, 2024

    A remotely piloted underwater glider is showing promise as a tool to track crabs in the Bering Sea, where their numbers have plummeted. The Ӱ Department of Fish and Game and the University of Ӱ Fairbanks have tested the glider Shackleton for the past three years to locate tagged crabs.

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