Ned Rozell
Alaska Science Forum
Ned Rozell is a science writer at the Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska Fairbanks.
Recent Stories
- Ancient whalers left their mark on the North
- Sunday, Oct. 5, 2008
- The high Arctic is one of the farthest places from most of the 6 billion people on Earth, but Canadian researchers have found that the far north holds some of the oldest evidence of human impact on a lake’s ecosystem.
- Northern lab featured in the studies of the cold and quirky
- Sunday, Sept. 28, 2008
- “Rectal Temperature of the Working Sled Dog.”
“Cleaning and Sterilization of Bunny Boots.”
“Comparative Sweat Rates of Eskimos and Caucasians Under Controlled Conditions.” - Volcanologists step on familiar but different ground
- Sunday, Sept. 14, 2008
- Jessica Larsen knows an island in Alaska’s Aleutian Chain so well that you could drop her off blind-folded anywhere on its eastern lobe and she’d know where she is. But today you’d have to give her a few minutes to study the horizon, since ash a few feet thick now covers part of Umnak Island.
- Should birds stay or should they go?
- Sunday, Aug. 31, 2008
- One of my favorite lectures so far in 2008 was by Susan Sharbaugh, senior scientist at the Alaska Bird Observatory and steadfast Seattle Mariners fan. She spoke recently about the strategies birds employ to survive in our upcoming season of darkness and cold, talking about the flighty birds that split, and the hardy few that stay. I thought I knew something about birds, but she kept delivering facts that were new to me.
- Rat Island may be due for a name change
- Sunday, Aug. 24, 2008
- Far off in the western Aleutians, Rat Island is closer to Hokkaido than it is to Anchorage. About the size of Homer, Rat Island is green and stormy, and prone to very large earthquakes. Rat Island’s main residents are rats, the first rats ever to live in Alaska. They may not be there much longer. Biologists with the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge will try to rid Rat Island of its namesake this fall.
- Tiny Aleutian island has big impact on people, planes
- Sunday, Aug. 17, 2008
- An island smaller than Alaska’s largest airport has frustrated thousands of people trying to get into or out of Alaska. Kasatochi volcano is one of three volcanoes rumbling in the central Aleutians in August 2008, along with Mount Cleveland and Okmok.
- Mortgage is paid on Chena flood control project
- Sunday, Aug. 10, 2008
- It is gray and raining and chilly and I want some coffee. I’m driving south from Fairbanks, wondering when I have seen a wetter few weeks in Interior Alaska. No past episode is coming to mind.
- Scientists on a search for elusive, fragile ice worms
- Sunday, Aug. 3, 2008
- Ice worms, so small and wispy that several would fit on your fingertip, live on warmish glaciers, eating algae and slithering toward the few spots in the narrow range of temperature they can endure. Ice worms die if the temperature drops much below freezing. At temperatures comfortable for humans, they disintegrate.
- Unhealthy fats arrive with other changes in Native culture
- Sunday, July 27, 2008
- Over the years, medical researcher Sven Ebbesson has made about 7,000 house calls in Eskimo villages touched by the waters of the Bering Sea. Ebbesson spends time in village homes because he is curious as to why diabetes and cardiovascular disease are on the rise among Alaska Natives.
- Remembering the ‘greatest story’ of man and permafrost
- Sunday, July 20, 2008
- In 1973, Elden Johnson was a young engineer working on one of the most ambitious and uncertain projects in the world — an 800-mile steel pipeline that carried warm oil over frozen ground. Thirty-five years later, Johnson looked back at what he called “the greatest story ever told of man’s interaction with permafrost.”