The University of Alaska Fairbanks was started in 1917 as a mining and engineering school.  Today, as a Land/Sea/Space grant university perched on a hill a few degrees south of the Arctic Circle, its students study the stars, biological and environmental change at northern latitudes, flora, fauna, glacier ice, the aurora borealis, etc.

From time to time, we brush up against these super scientists, thanks to our friends and neighbors, Anne and Will.  Through them, we've met all sorts of science-y and scholarly types.  The local newspaper recently congratulated the spring PhD students, with a list of their doctoral theses.  Here is a sampling of the disciplines studied by "Nanooks" of UAF:

• Permafrost in a Warmer World: Net Ecosystem Carbon Imbalance
  
• Changes in Extreme Hydroclimate Events in Interior Alaskan Boreal Forest Watersheds
  
• Effects of Snowmobile Noise and Activity on a Boreal Ecosystem in Southcentral Alaska
  
• Examining the Role of Sea Ice and Meteorology in Arctic Boundary Layer Halogen Chemistry

The bulk of scientific activity is centered at the "GI."  As newcomers to Fairbanks, we quickly learned these initials had nothing to do with the human digestive system but, rather, the university's Geophysical Institute.  Among other things, the GI has a bunch of funky, Jetsons-like satellites doing all sorts of stuff, and is the best predictor of seeing the aurora borealis.  Love the GI!

I'm really starting to like the wind.  In the "old days" it meant bumpy flights over the mountains, cancelled lessons by flight students, poorly tied-down aircraft getting bounced around on the ramp, endless worries for a flight school owner.  Yet now, said flight school owner is living in Fairbanks, Alaska, home to 34 species of mosquitos, according to recent article in the Daily News Miner.  A windy day is a welcome occurrence to me now; those little blood-sucking beasts, like new flight students, choose not to fly on windy days.

A different article in the same paper published a few days later  (you gotta understand, this is a BIG topic of conversation here), quoted a biologist's estimate that there are 17 trillion mosquitoes in Alaska! Further, inquiring minds at the local University wanted to know things like: how does body mass of all Alaskan caribou compare against that of mosquitoes, and here is what they concluded:

...that all 950,000 Alaska caribou (which outnumber Alaskans) weigh about 231 million pounds.
Alaska is home to about 17,489,393,939,393 mosquitoes, minus the one you just slapped. Yes, that’s 17 trillion. At 0.0000055 pounds each, the combined weight of Alaska mosquitoes is about 96 million pounds.

So, in case you've been losing sleep wondering about this (as I did last night, due to 20-hours of daylight and slapping at the mosquitoes trying to share my bed), it seems there is NOT a greater weight of mosquitoes in Alaska than caribou.

May the wind blow all summer long!

Driving home last night, I spotted a mother fox with her pups by the road--a treat!  I decided to turn around for another look and when I reached the spot, a huge truck was idling there on the side of the road, I assumed, with other folks enjoying the show.  There was a guy outside the truck, who grabbed a pup by the tail, jumped back in the truck WITH IT and drove off, laughing.  I screamed and honked, but did not get their license plate.  I turned my car around to chase them but they were already out of sight in the hills of Chena Ridge.  Went back to check on the den, and the poor mom was exposed, with her two other pups, looking and sniffing around the road.  Heartbreaking.

Luckily, Alaska has Wildlife Troopers.  I gave a report to one Trooper Hildebrand who seemed to take the issue quite seriously.  While we don't know the license plate, that image of that truck and the guys' laughing faces are burned into my memory.  I'm looking for you, boys.

Kinda makes you wish someone had snatched them from THEIR mothers' den.