Prior to westernization, the Alaska Native diet was one that included high omega-3 fatty acids and proteins and low in saturated fats and cholesterol. This may or may not provide protection against certain diseases. As westernization continues to changes the diet with each new generation, it is of great interest as to how it affects Alaska Native health. Alaska Native health has declined substantially within the last decade, and seems to continuously decline at an alarming rate. Investigating both the changing diet and the effects on Alaska Native health may provide a possible cause for this increasing health problem.

With the intention of ultimately making a transition metal-containing helicene to be studied for use as a chiral drug recognition agent, 2,3-bis(3-methylpyridin-2-yl)pyrazine was produced from 2,3-lutidiene over a series of seven reactions.

Though particular algorithms utilizing Snell’s Law effectively describe most ray tracing, issues arise with infrasound applications, particularly in understanding waveguides. A more generalized differential equation derived from Fermat’s principle of least time and general functions may provide a computational solution to coupling ray tracing with wavelength related issues. However, due to its complexity, this differential equation deserves its own experimentation to confirm or deny its effectiveness. In this experiment, a gradient of index of refraction established by the diffusion of sugar emulated an atmospheric temperature inversion (hence “Inverted Sugar”) and comparison of actual rays to computer generated rays in the same gradient confirmed the accuracy of this algorithm.

The overall goal of our research project is to study the unfrozen water mass and mobility in frozen soils. During this project, frozen samples of standard clays with different adsorbed cations will be analyzed to determine their surface potential, micro-fabric, and how they interact with unfrozen water. The amount of unfrozen water content at sub-freezing temperatures is measured using a nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) device. Before using the NMR to test the unfrozen water content, we developed a system to control and stabilize the temperature of the soil sample during the test. We determined that the optimal sample length detected by the NMR is 3.5 cm. Nine duplicate silt samples each with a different moisture content were prepared and tested using the NMR. The result demonstrated a linear relationship between the moisture content of the silt samples and the corresponding NMR signal intensities, thus validating the NMR approach. Future test will be conducted on frozen cation-exchanged clay samples to determine their unfrozen water contents as a function of temperature.