Tag: Alaska

ScienceDaily (Feb. 8, 2012) — During January, warmer-than-average conditions enveloped most of the contiguous United States, with widespread below-average precipitation.

The overall weather pattern for the month was reflected in the lack of snow for much of the Northern Plains, Midwest, and Northeast. This scenario was in stark contrast to Alaska where several towns had their coldest January on record.

ScienceDaily (Dec. 29, 2009) Scientists have identified a novel antifreeze molecule in a freeze-tolerant Alaska beetle able to survive temperatures below minus 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Unlike all previously described biological antifreezes that contain protein, this new molecule, called xylomannan, has little or no protein. It is composed of a sugar and a fatty acid and may exist in new places within the cells of organisms.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) - Alaska's Rat Island is finally rat-free, 229 years after a Japanese shipwreck spilled rampaging rodents onto the remote Aleutian island, decimating the local bird population.

After dropping poison onto the island from helicopter-hoisted buckets for a week and a half last autumn, there are no signs of living rats and some birds have returned, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The number of missing people in the state of Alaska is twice the national average. Why do so many get lost?

Amid the untouched beauty of Alaska's varying landscape, a mystery lingers. Because people seem to go missing at an eerily high rate, a large section of the state has come to be called Alaska's Bermuda Triangle. Planes go down, hikers go missing and Alaskan residents and tourists seem to vanish into the largely untouched backdrop.