Published Mar 24, 2023 by Staff report

The 2023 International Fly Fishing Film Festival is coming to Fairbanks on April 2.

The festival, which will be held at The Pub on the University of Alaska Fairbanks campus, will feature 10 short and feature-length films from around the globe. The films begin at 7 p.m., with theater doors opening at 6:30 p.m.

The event is hosted by Midnight Sun Fly Casters, conservation organization Trout Unlimited, and Alaska Backcountry Hunters & Anglers. Tickets will be available at the theater door on the day of the showing. General admission tickets are $15 or $40 with a one year subscription to Fly Fusion Magazine.

Published Mar 24, 2023 by Westinghouse Electric Company

“We have more microgrids than anywhere else in the country, perhaps, possibly, the world,” said Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy. “A lot of isolated communities, sometimes hundreds and hundreds of miles apart from each other, and currently most of those communities are dependent on diesel generation.”

Earlier this month, Westinghouse Electric Company welcomed Gov. Dunleavy, Alaska State Senator Click Bishop, and Gwen Holdmann, Director of the Alaska Center for Energy and Power, to its eVinci™ microreactor research and development facility at Waltz Mill, PA. The purpose of the visit was to learn more about how this game-changing technology could provide a sustainable clean energy future for Alaskans and support economic development opportunities for mining and other industries in the state.

“Alaska, we believe, is tailor-made for a technology like eVinci,” said Eddie Saab, vice president of new plant market development for Westinghouse, who attended the governor’s visit. “The key is eVinci’s transportability, which allows it to benefit remote communities that are off the grid, and industries such as mining operations that rely on diesel fuel for heat and electricity, which can be expensive and difficult to transport year-round.”

Published Mar 24, 2023

Academic Minute

The Hardest Things About Aging Healthfully

Your physical space is very important as you age. In today’s Academic Minute, the University of Alaska at Anchorage’s Britteny M. Howell says your health could be on the line. Howell is an assistant professor of health sciences, director of the healthy aging research laboratory at Alaska Anchorage and author of Anthropological Perspectives on Aging (University Press of Florida). 

Published Mar 24, 2023 by https://fm.kuac.org/people/robyne

For some reason, people who recreate in public outdoor spaces are disproportionately white. Folks in the UAF Department of Natural Resources & Environment want to learn more about this by hearing from communities of color.

Researcher Rachel Garcia says National Park and other public land studies have shown that people of color don’t show up in the numbers reflected in the general population. She suspects people of color are not informing recreation and public lands decisions enough.

“Lots of research has looked at why disparities in land use happen. This study is an opportunity to explore the topic of racial equity in outdoor spaces in Alaska today," Garcia said.

She says the two groups most under-represented are Blacks and Hispanics.

“People of color, as part of this project, said things like, ‘yeah, it's been uncomfortable for me to join the Sierra Club or particular hiking groups because I'm usually the only person of color there’.”

Garcia says she’s looking at national organizations like Black Girls Do Bike or Outdoor Afro and Love is King for their environmental education programs.

She is recruiting now for focus groups in Fairbanks and Anchorage where people can talk about their experiences. In addition to her UAF colleagues, the YWCA in Anchorage is partnering on the study. She’s organized more than 20 people of color and Indigenous volunteers to collaborate on the design of the focus groups and ask the questions.

“ Explanations and connections between why people might have both positive and negative experiences in the outdoors. What would people like to be doing more of outside? Are there specific things that prevent them from being able to do that? Are there specific things that might make it more possible to be on the land in the outdoors in ways that they want to be? Garcia said.