Southeast Alaska: Boat electrical course offered online By DEBORAH MERCY - Imagine this: Six hours from port and your boat’s engine won’t start. Troubleshooting this situation will certainly include checking electrical sources, connections and components.

Photo by Deborah Mercy

To help operators better understand the multitude of electrical systems aboard today’s marine vessels and to deliver training statewide, the University of Alaska Fairbanks Alaska Sea Grant Marine Advisory Program has teamed with UA Southeast Sitka Campus to offer an online boat electrical course.

UAS Sitka is a leader in distance delivery of technical courses, including marine hydraulics and small boat harbor management best practices. Alaska Sea Grant has a statewide network of marine advisory agents who partner with industry and coastal communities to support the economic strength of Alaska’s maritime sector.

“This self-paced course is designed to improve understanding of marine electrical systems and sharpen troubleshooting skills to resolve basic electrical issues,” said Torie Baker, Cordova Alaska Sea Grant agent. “Troubleshooting is a series of observations and decisions; the course gives new and experienced operators practice and coaching in solving realistic problems.” - More...
Wednesday PM - August 27, 2014

Alaska: State Moves Funding of Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium Housing Forward - The Alaska Department of Revenue Commissioner Angela Rodell announced yesterday that the State of Alaska, through the Alaska State Bond Committee, issued the Series 2014 Certificates of Participation for the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium housing facility project.

The housing facility is designed to improve access to services at the Alaska Native Medical Center, as well as provide temporary housing and support while patients receive care and recover. Approximately half of ANMC's patients travel to Anchorage for care and services, and require housing. The housing facility will be connected to Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium (ANTHC) by an elevated pedestrian sky bridge.

Currently a lack of supportive housing limits the ability to provide access to the best care. The partnership between the State and ANTHC provides a facility which improves the quality of care while providing health care cost savings to the State. - More...
Wednesday PM - August 27, 2014

Alaska Science: Why don't hibernating bears get osteoporosis? By NED ROZELL - Bears have the right idea. Don’t fight the cold; just shut ‘er down for six months and emerge when it’s warmer. Why didn’t we think of that?

Grizzly Bear
Despite putting almost no load on its bones for more than half the year, this grizzly bear doesn’t have osteoporosis.
Photo by NED ROZELL

For one thing, our bones would wither. We’d all get osteoporosis, a disease in which bones become more fragile. Bears don’t get osteoporosis, even though they hibernate for more than half the year in Alaska. What might we learn from this?

Seth Donahue of Michigan Tech University is trying to find out. He once gave a seminar sponsored by UAF’s Institute of Arctic Biology on using bears as a model for preventing osteoporosis.

He started off by showed an x-ray of a female tennis player’s forearms. The bones within her right forearm were larger than those in her left.

“If you overload bone, you have bone gain,” he said. “There’s more bone formation in the racquet arm of a tennis player.”

The opposite happens when people are inactive; bones get thinner, and bones develop little holes in them that make them brittle. Even when people get back on their feet, bones don’t recover so well, rarely regaining the strength they had before.

That’s why hibernating black and grizzly bears perform what seems like a miracle. They don’t lose bone mass during a half-year of inactivity, despite not eating, not moving much, not urinating or defecating, and, for mother bears, giving birth and nursing cubs. - More...
Wednesday PM - August 27, 2015

Columns - Commentary

JEFF LUND: The long road to residency - In the eyes of the state of Alaska, I am still 1/6th Californian. I’ve been in the state for ten months so I exist, but I don’t yet belong.

Since I’m not patient enough to wait until the one year mark of my return to get the benefits of being a resident, I went ahead and bought my out-of-state hunting license and a $150 deer tag.

While I’ve definitely got the hunting bug, it’s not because I’m a skilled deer hunter. That’s what happens when you draw a section of California with an 8-percent success rate for the three week season. You get good at walking around with a gun, which is decidedly different than hunting.

I’m also not one of those dudes who craves stories about out-crafting the craftiest deer in the woods - probably because I’m inexperienced. I’m looking for the meatiest, dumbest deer with a general apathy toward self-preservation. I don’t have a garage filled with massive racks. I’ve never shot a 4-point which is probably a good thing. It gives me something to (ahem) shoot for, while I get more aquatinted with my inner hunter. Had my first ever buck been something massive I would have had no where to go but down. - More...
Wednesday PM - August 27, 2014