Syun-Ichi Akasofu, the former director of the International Arctic Research Center at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks, has determined that IPCC computer models have not even been able to duplicate observed temperatures in Arctic regions.

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Hughes, 47, was unmarried with no children of his own and had until recently been a marine biologist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

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As "citizen scientists, " they will collect twice-daily plankton samples for researchers at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks.

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The current transports water from the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans throughout the Arctic, said Tom Weingartner, a marine scientist at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks.

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Falk Huettmann, a wildlife ecologist at the University of Alaska's Fairbanks campus, uses ESRI software to track the spread of the highly contagious H5N1 bird flu virus.

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One of the ongoing problems that will be discussed at the conference by Kevin Stokesbury of the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, is how a viral infection triggered by exposure to the oil has decimated Prince William Sound's stocks of Pacific herring.

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After "eruptive activity" last year at the Cleveland volcano, University of Alaska Fairbanks scientist Steve McNutt noted that 90% of air freight from Asia to Europe and North America flies over Alaska airspace, and hundreds of flights fly through Anchorage's air space daily.

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