Richard Dawkins, addressing a packed house Thursday, July 15. Photo by Jeremia Schrock/Sun Star.

By Heather Bryant

Sun Star Reporter

Richard Dawkins, famous biologist, atheist and author made his visit to Alaska to speak at UAF, an event causing controversy long before it happened. The UAF Socratic Society invited Dawkins, who waived his speaking fee.  Dawkins’ airfare and accommodations were entirely paid for by the Richard Dawkins Foundation.

Dawkins has published many books and traveled extensively speaking about religion and science. He established the Richard Dawkins Foundation in order to encourage critical thinking, a concept he feels religion tries to repress.

The speech, scheduled at 7 p.m., had already drawn huge lines by 6 p.m. The evening started with an introduction by Eduardo Wilner, who spoke of Dawkins’ published books.

“The Selfish Gene was published in 1976, and sold over a million copies. Harry Potter and the Bible sold more, but both of those are works of fiction,” said Wilner.

Despite the controversy it was a friendly crowd, with many of Dawkins’ opinions and comments met by an audience nodding and laughing. The only sign of dissent was a table outside where Karl Sapp, of the Campus Bible Ministries, handed out a pamphlet titled “Destroying the Delusions.” Mike Sapp, also handing out the pamphlets, said that, “[they] believe the Bible cover to cover.”

The presentation “Is Religion Good for Nothing?” covered Dawkins’ theories of why religion is a natural phenomenon and how it occurs. His theories include how children are hard-wired to believe what they are told by those older than themselves, most usually their parents.

“Teaching children they are going to hell is one of the most disgusting types of child abuse I can imagine,” said Dawkins to the crowd, prompting a round of applause from the audience.

Even after the presentation ended, much of the crowd remained to watch the question-and-answer portion. At least twenty people lined up with questions; however, time ran out before all could be asked. Taking Dawkins’ lecture to heart, one questioner joked he was “unsure who to thank” that Dawkins decided to come to UAF.

For a presentation that seemed to generate much audience approval, not all were satisfied with the style of presentation.

“I appreciated his discussion, but I wish he was a little more angry about it, like he is in his writing. When he speaks in public, he’s a lot mellower and he doesn’t try to start fights. When he’s writing, he’ll piss off whoever he wants to, which is nice,” said attendee Grant Wright.

Marmian Grimes, public relations officer with UAF, estimated that 1,100 people attended the event either in the Davis Concert Hall or in overflow rooms in the Gruening building. Even with the extra rooms, people were still being turned away for lack of space. The event was also webcast, with around 200 hits to the site.

“We got here 25 minutes early and there was no room. So we headed over to Gruening. After they got the audio and visual up, I only caught about ten minutes of it,” said attendee David Spencer. “I am looking forward to getting a couple of books signed. I have the God Delusion and the Selfish Gene.”

CORRECTION: The article originally stated that Richard Dawkins’ air and hotel fare were paid for by the College of Liberal Arts.  This was inaccurate.  The article has been corrected and as editor I apologize for the mistake that I made.

By Jeremia Schrock
Sun Star Reporter

This month saw theater major Sam German debut his film, “Visual History of the Alaskan Sea Ice” at the PolarCINEMA film festival, an extension of the 2007-2008 International Polar Year (IPY) conference. German’s film is a montage of photographs and video footage showing the movement of sea ice from the 1950’s up to 2008. While easily a nice addition to any student’s curriculum vitae (to say nothing of an undergraduate’s), what is more impressive is that the film debuted not at a local festival, but in Oslo, Norway. And that German shot the film because he was dirt poor.

“I was having a lot of financial issues at the time,” German said. “There was [an] error in my financial aid. I was paying out-of-state tuition while my aid was being based on the in-state tuition rates so I only got a $140 refund.” As German was living off-campus at the time, money suddenly became one of German’s primary concerns. “So, there was a lot of motivation to get a grant or extra funding from some other place.”

That “other place” ended up being the Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR). EPSCoR is a university-based, federal-state partnership that aims to enhance science and technology infrastructure in the private sector, government, and education through grants to academic professionals, both student and non-student alike.

German began working on the film in February of 2008. He began by organizing footage shot in 2007 by Maya Salganek, Assistant Professor of Digital Performance Media.  That was followed by a strenuous search through the Rasmuson Library’s Goldmine computer system for any and all archival footage that might have contained images of sea ice. When all was said and done, German estimated that he viewed close to 80 different archival videos in order to acquire enough footage for the film. In May 2008, German traveled to Barrow and spent two weeks shooting with Salganek and a team of student filmmakers before settling down in the summer to begin the editing process.

However, the focus of EPSCoR is on scientific and technological research. German is a theater major with a film minor, not a science student.

“It was a film that was dealing with science so I wondered how “cool” it would be. I also know that I’m not a very “science-y” guy so I wondered how well I would be able to [do] a video about something related to science,” said German. Once he started filming, however, German discovered how motivated and interested the scientists were in their research, a feeling that quickly rubbed off on him. “[It] motivated me to try to create something that they would enjoy…and has inspired me to work more with scientists and try to get their projects/work out there for everyone to see.”

Dorothy Nash takes in the new exhibit at the Museum of the North titled "Then and Now: The Changing Arctic Landscape." Photo by Jesse Hoff/The Sun Star

By Kelsey Gobroski
Sun Star Reporter

The UA Museum of the North, along with two guest curators, drew from society and ecology to provide a new look into the Arctic in the special exhibit “Then & Now: The Changing Arctic Landscape.” The exhibit opened May 15, and will run until Jan. 8, 2011.

Visitors to the exhibit are greeted with a text panel: “For several thousand years, the landscape has offered vistas of tundra punctuated by dramatic mountains and glaciers. Now, the Arctic is changing.”

By Molly Dischner
Sun Star Reporter

After months spent discussing how to handle invasive plants on campus, UAF’s weed team has a draft work plan and is hosting a public meeting this week to get input on it. Organizer Marie Heidemann, a graduate student in Natural Resources Management, said the team will have a draft of its plan available at its meeting on Wednesday. The meeting will start at 6 p.m. in Room 102 at U-Park.

The plan includes a variety of management strategies, including ignoring some species, studying others and eradicating still others. Heidemann said that the biology of each plant was considered in deciding how to manage it.

Instructor Dan Solie explains how to collect data to some of his “Bush Physics” students for an upcoming group lab project. Photo by Mark Evans/The Sun Star

 

By Mark Evans
Sun Star Reporter

Last semester, UAF’s Faculty Senate considered a motion to restrict core science classes to only those that included a hands-on lab component. The motion did not pass and still sits in committee while the senators try to resolve the issue of how core science requirements can be met in distance-delivered courses.

In this two-part series, The Sun Star looks at how core natural science labs are currently conducted and the challenges of presenting them to students in rural Alaska.

“Part 1: Two Approaches, One Class,” can be found here.

Part 2: What do we want? How are we getting it now?

Providing a college education to Alaska’s rural residents is a noble objective, but one laden with challenges. Students may live hundreds, even thousands of miles away from their instructors and each other. New technology promises unlimited information but remains tantalizingly out of reach in many villages.

Rural education is not a new challenge for Alaska. But the tools to achieve it have changed and the economic environment it’s in has never been more demanding.

James Halliday and Kodiak Cullen pull out their underwater Remote Controlled Vehicle (ROV) after a dip in their test pool last Sunday. Photo by Jesse Hoff/The Sun Star

By Kelsey Gobroski
Sun Star Contributor

Three UAF students will show off their resourcefulness when they pit their garage-built underwater robot against the big budget Remotely Operated Vehicles of larger teams at a competition in Hawaii this summer. On June 24, University of Hawaii-Hilo will host a three-day underwater robotics competition that requires the teams to run their robots through scenarios that have real-world applications. This year the various tasks will be based on exploring Loihi, an underwater volcano and will demonstrate how ROV’s can be used in treacherous terrain. The robots will take measurements from PVC “hot water vents,” collect biological samples and maneuver in a cramped underwater cave.

The Marine Advanced Technology Education (MATE) center is based in Monterey California. Its mission is to connect science and engineering students with employers in marine technology. The annual International ROV Competition attracts more than 50 teams from throughout the world. This year, UAF students Vincent Weibel, James Halliday and Kodiak Cullen, along with their team adviser, Orion Lawlor, will be the only Alaskan representatives at the event. They will face off against teams from MIT, UCLA, and Purdue as well as international teams from Russia, China, Scotland and Spain.

“It’s kind of cool, we’re building stuff out of a garage and we got teams [at the competition] from MIT with full machine shops … and we’re just slapping stuff together,” said Weibel, a mechanical engineering sophomore. He said they prefer keeping the team small because, without large-team bureaucracy, “we can try really drastic designs”.

By Kelsey Gobroski
Sun Star Contributor

A team of archaeologists surveying a the area near a possible mine site in southwest Alaska has found a 2,000-year-old home on the banks of the Kuskokwim River that could provide a glimpse into the home life and culture of the past.

Joshua Reuther, Justin Hays, and Jason Rogers presented their findings April 15 at the Museum of the North for Alaska Archaeology Month. The team works for Northern Land Use Research. The company studies the historic importance of sites being proposed for development.

This site, known traditionally as Annjurak, is located on the Kuskokwim River between two other culturally important sites, UAF anthropology professor Reuther said. He said locals knew about the site, but not that it was once a settlement.

CHEM 106 students Nathan Lester (right) and Jeremy Folk (left) work on a "virtual" lab. Photo by Keane Richards/The Sun Star

By Mark Evans
Sun Star Reporter

Last semester, UAF’s Faculty Senate considered a motion to restrict core science classes to only those that included a hands-on lab component. The motion did not pass, and still sits in committee while the senators try to resolve the issue of how core science requirements can be met in distance-delivered courses.

In this two-part series, The Sun Star takes a look at how core natural science labs are currently conducted and the challenges of presenting them to students in rural Alaska.

Part 1: Two approaches, one class

“If we don’t change, we’ll lose these students,” said Alex Hwu, Director of UAF’s Center for Distance Education. Hwu was talking about rural Alaskan students that begin a UAF program and then transfer to another online provider when they are unable to get the courses they need from UAF.

By Kelsey Gobroski
Sun Star Contributor

More than 65 million years ago, an asteroid 10 kilometers in diameter slammed into the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico with an explosive force one billion times more powerful than the atomic bomb at Hiroshima. Tsunamis up to 300 meters high and earthquakes that would have scored more than 10 on the Richter scale tore through the area. Impact temperatures alone would have killed every living thing for thousands of miles, but was this terrible event enough to trigger the KT extinction, one of the three largest mass extinctions in the history of the planet?

A team of more than 30 scientists, including UAF’s Michael Whalen, have concluded that it did. They reported their findings in the March 5 issue of “Science”. The researchers studied more than 20 years of data to see if the massive asteroid impact, known as the Chicxulub impact, could have caused the mass extinction of the dinosaurs. The extinction is believed to have occurred quickly at the end of the Cretaceous period.

By Andrew Sheeler
Sun Star Reporter

Governor Sean Parnell supports it. The Fairbanks Daily News-Miner has written editorials endorsing it. It is the sole budgetary request of the University of Alaska Board of Regents. “It” is the proposed UAF Life Sciences building, and its future is currently uncertain. The dispute comes from how the proposed building will be paid for.

Last year, the Board of Regents asked the legislature for close to $110 million to construct a brand new building for the life sciences. There are currently two senate bills seeking funding for this project. One bill, SB56, seeks to fund the project directly from the state’s general fund. The other bill is SB226, and would fund the project through a long-term, low-interest bond called a Certificate of Participation (COP). This same kind of bond was used to pay for the new Fairbanks courthouse and a prison down in the Mat-Su region. Rep. Mike Chenault, R-Nikiski, and Rep. Bill Stoltze, R-Chugiak, have both said that the COP approach causes them some concern. They say that funding the project through a COP will make the project more expensive in the long run.

Chenault and Stoltze favor having the life sciences project go into a bond package that would be put before Alaskan voters. This package could also include money for a number of other projects. The fear that some, including UAF Director of Community Advocacy Ann Ringstad, have is that such a package could be too much for recession-weary voters. The other downside is that the new building’s site will sit undisturbed until next summer, with researchers and students forced to work and study in crowded trailers.

UAF Chancellor Brian Rogers has suggested an alternative idea. Rogers said that, if full funding is not available, the state should provide $22 million to at least get the project started. The idea is to get the life sciences building project “shovel ready” and with the up-front money UAF can get started with preliminary work for the project. That work includes relocating a greenhouse and putting in an underground utility corridor. Ann Ringstad said that there’s a precedent for the phased approach to constructing buildings in the university. Both the Butrovich Building and the Reichardt Building were constructed in phases.

There are risks with the phased approach however. UA Public Affairs Director Kate Ripley said that the Reichardt Building sat empty during one phase while the university sought enough money for furniture. The university had to pay to heat an empty building. Another concern with building in phases is rising costs. “Costs go up and then you have a moving target,” Ripley said. Ripley said that if people see a project getting more and more expensive, they’d be less likely to support it. Cynthia Henry, chair of the University Board of Regents, said that the board would like to see the project receive all the funding that they asked for. Henry has said that she’s spoken with Rep. Stoltze about this and has urged him to support paying for the project through either direct funding or a COP.