Published Oct 3, 2023 by Josh Reed

On the college scene, the UAA volleyball team went 1-1 last week in a pair of conference matches on its home court. On Thursday, the Seawolves swept Montana State University at Billings, outscoring the Yellowjackets by 10 or more points in all three sets. On Saturday, they fell in four sets to Seattle Pacific University in a tightly contested match. The leading scorers for the team this past week were senior Nicole Blue with 23 kills and junior outside hitter Bethany Tuchardt with 22 over the course of the two contests.

The UAA hockey team opened its 2023 season with an exhibition bout at home Friday night and comfortably defeated Vancouver Island University. Senior forwards Matt Kinash and Matt Allen each scored a pair of goals to lead the Seawolves in scoring as the hometown team starts off its second season since being fully reinstated on the right foot.

“As a group it was a good opportunity for our freshmen to get some game reps and for some guys to try and build some chemistry,” said head coach Matt Shasby in a statement. “We see we have some things to focus on this week in practice to be ready for next Saturday. We really appreciate Vancouver Island for making the trip.”

Published Oct 2, 2023 by Jack Barnwell

It could be possible that trends such as the use of electric vehicles and heat pumps will expand across the Railbelt over the next 25 years, but several paths are still being modeled in a study conducted by the Alaska Center for Energy and Power at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

The Railbelt Decarbonization study aims to take a look at what pathways and tools Alaska utilities can do to reduce carbon emissions on the Railbelt without sacrificing reliable and affordable power.

Phylicia Cicilio and Jeremy VanderMeer, two of study’s researchers working for the Alaska Center for Power and Energy, provided an update Tuesday at the Westmark Hotel Gold Room.

“The goal of this project is to quantify the economics and reliability implications of these scenarios and create invaluable information,” Cicilio, the lead researcher, said. “We are not predicting the future or saying this will happen.

The study is still in its first phase, with a goal to examine the various technologies, grid transmission and economic modeling and the impact on rates.

Published Oct 2, 2023 by https://www.knba.org/people/rhonda-mcbride

A national prison research group, which tracks inmate populations, says American Indians and Alaska Natives, next to Blacks, are vastly overrepresented in state prison systems nationwide, and Alaska tops the list.

But Brad Myrstol, a researcher at the University of Alaska Anchorage Justice Center, says the picture is much more complicated, because Alaska’s prison system is structured differently than most other state correctional centers.

“It’s one thing to talk about disparities and try to understand how they're produced,” Myrstol said. “It's quite another thing to talk about discrimination, which implies a systematic intent.”

He says, when analyzing data, he looks at what he calls the three D’s: Difference, disparities and discrimination.

Myrstol says the “difference” for Alaska lies in how its prison system is structured. Most other states, he says, house inmates in two separate institutions, prisons and local jails. But in Alaska, the two are combined into one, known as a “unified corrections system.” Alaska and five other states — Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Rhode Island and Vermont — have unified systems.

In most states, unsentenced or pre-trial inmates are housed separately.

 Myrstol says there is more racial disparity in this population, usually traced to poverty. He says white inmates are more likely to be able to afford bail or legal help to get out on supervised release, but Alaska Natives and other minorities don’t have those resources, so they remain incarcerated longer while awaiting sentencing. Myrstol says a backlog of court cases, created by the COVID-19 pandemic, has made the problem worse.

Myrstol says he can’t say whether Alaska’s criminal justice system is racist.

“What I will say is we see disparities throughout the criminal justice system in Alaska and elsewhere. And the reasons for those disparities are complex, but they are very important to understand,” Myrstol said. “But we have to guard against over simplistic, single-cause explanations.”