Heather Bryant

The only truly safe ice in Juneau is at the Treadwell Arena. That’s one of the lessons from Saturday’s ice safety workshop.

A full house packed the Mendenhall Visitor’s Center auditorium this weekend to learn about ice safety. The hour and a half workshop was made up of a slideshow and video of safety tips and advice before attendees headed out into the snow to watch CCFR volunteers demonstrate ice rescues on the pond next to the visitor’s center.

CCFR’s Travis Mead demonstrated three different types of rescue including self rescue, assisted rescue and a rescue when the victim is unconscious. Volunteers reminded attendees that the most important thing to do is to call 911 before attempting any sort of rescue in case you also become a victim.

Here’s more from our earlier story on the workshop: Ice safety workshop to be held this weekend

Here’s  a video of the demonstration:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tLKzno54fM?rel=0]

KTOO has published thousands of stories on the website this year. Here are the top ten most read stories from 2013.

 1. A bear walks into a bar | Sept. 24, 2013

Throwing out visitors who overstay their welcome is a common late night practice in downtown bars. But one guest was particularly unwelcome at the Alaskan Hotel & Bar. Read the story...

2. Why Attu Island is still fighting WWII | Feb. 19, 2013

Seventy years after World War II, the island is still littered with shards of old Coke bottles, lead-based batteries, leaking fuel drums and unexploded artillery. Read the story…

3. Trooper arrest investigated after YouTube post | May 2, 2013

A video recording that went viral has prompted an internal investigation by the Alaska Department of Public Safety. The 11-minute video shows a woman thrown to the ground by an Alaska State Trooper before being arrested. Read the story…

4.  Small plane missing off of Yakutat | Sept. 10, 2013

The blue and white Piper PA-32 was heading from Yakutat to Merrill Field in Anchorage with one person on board when it went missing in September. Read the story…

5. Delta challenges Alaska Airlines on Seattle-Juneau route | Dec. 16, 2013

Delta Air Lines is resuming its long-dormant Seattle-Juneau flights. But they’ll only happen once a day — and only during the summer. Read the story…

6. 10 weeks until Juneau goes over a fecal cliff | Oct. 23, 2013

The search for the latest stopgap to get rid of the capital city’s sewage sludge comes after municipal officials abandoned a new disposal contract. Read the story…

7. Geologist discovers underwater volcano | May 15, 2013

About 10,000 years ago, give or take a couple thousand years, a volcano blew its top in the middle of Behm Canal. The crater is still there, covered by 150 feet or so of ocean. But when the volcano exploded many thousands of years ago, it was not underwater. Nobody currently living knew it was even there until just recently. Read the story…

8. Police break up eagle party at Safeway | May 10, 2013

A flock of eagles descended on the Safeway parking lot in Unalaska, prompting police intervention. Read the story…

9. Watch an animation of yesterday’s avalanche | March 12, 2013

An avalanche described as a powder cloud came down Mount Juneau in March. Read the story…

10. You’re going to need almost three minimum wage jobs to rent in Alaska | March 19, 2013

One job is not enough for minimum wage earners who rent in Alaska. Alaska is one of the top ten most expensive states for renters. Read the story…

Updated | Dec. 12, 2013 – 6:17 a.m.

Both the Juneau school buses and Capital Transit buses are continuing to run on snow routes today.

Original Post | Dec. 11, 2013 – 7:15 a.m.

The National Weather Service is calling for heavy snow throughout the day and into tomorrow. The forecast predicts as much as two feet of snow might accumulate. The snow will be heavy and visibility will be limited.

Juneau School Buses

Juneau schools have shifted to winter bus routes for today. You can see those stops here.

Capital City Transit

Capital City Transit has also moved to winter routes, effective until midnight tonight.

Service will be discontinued on St. Ann’s Avenue, Cordova Street, Davis Avenue, Lemon Creek Road, and Franklin and Fourth Streets Downtown:

No service on Cordova Street.  Please wait for the bus at the Breeze Inn stop.
No service to St Ann’s.  Please wait for the bus at the Douglas Post Office stop.
No service on Franklin or 4^th street.  Please wait for the bus at the Main Street stop.
No service on Davis Avenue and Lemon Creek Road.  Please wait for the bus at Glacier Highway.

The snow storm is also causing power outages. According to AEL&P’s Twitter feed, the company is working to resolve power outages from Lena point out the road.

Heavy snow is causing us a bit of trouble. Crew has restored power to about 100 customers and are working hard to restore the remainder.

— AEL&P (@AELPJUNEAU) December 11, 2013

Jennifer Moss is an instructional designer for the University of Alaska Fairbanks eLearning and Distance Education program.

She’s also a Google Glass Explorer. That means when she’s out biking, skiing or running, she’s often wearing a pair of technology-infused glasses. They don’t have lenses, but they do have a small display and a camera that sits just above her right eye. She’s able to search the internet, send texts and Tweets, and share photos and video using voice commands or swipe gestures. She can share live video in a Google Hangout or see a map interface that gives her directions.

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Glass was introduced to the world in the spring of 2012 and has since been heralded as one of the next big things in the world of wearable technology. Google’s Sergey Brin said in a TED Talk earlier this year that the idea for Glass was born from wanting deliver an experience that doesn’t isolate people the way staring down at a screen does.

Moss says that wearing glass is a lot like having a smart phone strapped to your head.

Google invited people to join a limited pool of users to test the devices by asking them to  tweet what they would do if they had the Glass.

Moss saw the invitation and responded with an Alaskan take on using the technology.

“So I sent out a tweet back to Google saying that I would use Google Glass for recording the aurora at 40 below from my backyard in Fairbanks because I thought that would be a good test of the device for dark conditions and extreme cold situations. So that was good enough to get me an invitation to purchase.”

Explorers had to shell out $1,500 for the glasses and fly to Google’s headquarters to pick them up. This testing period is the company’s approach to refining the device before making it available for wide distribution.

Given the nature of Moss’s job, her employer was on board with buying the glasses. Since then, Moss has been testing out the capabilities of the device for education and research.

“I’m also taking them into classrooms and introducing them to students and getting the conversation going about what can you do with wearable technology such as this in the classroom situation. And introducing them to faculty and researchers at the University who might be interested in taking them out into the field and using them for field experiments and recording.”

Later this year, Moss will also be testing a Google Glass competitor called Meta, which bills itself as a personal holographic interface.

“We are very interested in innovative–not just techniques for instruction–but also the new technology that coming along and how that technology is integrated into education. Is it viable? So we’re always testing the boundaries to see what will be viable for good pedagogy in teaching.”

Using the technology has a little bit of a learning curve and sometimes results aren’t what you were looking for. During a demonstration asking it to search “movies in Juneau” Glass returned the movie Juno. But Moss says using Glass has been a fairly intuitive experience and she could see the use of the device becoming more widespread once the it’s for sale.

“I think that it’s very good for educators and the business community to really take a look at this new wearable technology. It’s about to become and is rapidly becoming the next largest industry. It’s going to become very big, so learning how to use it, and learning how it might be useful for you in your profession will be important.”

Moss says that sometimes Alaska’s small population and limited bandwidth can be a bit of a barrier to keeping up with new technologies, but there are still ways for us to stay in the loop.

“We do have the wonderful world of the internet and we can learn about all kinds of things as they come out and be on that cutting edge to some extent.”

But until Glass hits the stores sometime next year, we’ll have to stick to searching for information the old fashioned way, looking down at a screen in our hands.

Here’s Google’s video introducing Glass:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1uyQZNg2vE?rel=0]

KUAC reports that technical problems have resulted in the new National Science Foundation vessel over-wintering in the Great Lakes.

The Sikuliaq is the University of Alaska Fairbanks’ new 261-foot research vessel. It launched last year in Michigan almost a year ago, but is now spending the winter undergoing trials. The vessel will call Seward home when it finally makes it to Alaska.

Here’s a video produced by the NSF on the vessel’s design and construction.
 

Alaska’s three largest cities were included in the recent Municipal Equality Index. The survey is a scorecard that that evaluates the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.

The results show that Alaska’s three largest cities have a lot of room for progress.

Juneau scored 23 points out 100 points. There was an additional 20 bonus points possible.

Juneau received credit for having domestic partner health benefits, legal dependent benefits and equivalent family leave. The city also received points for having a Human Rights Commission and anti-bullying school policies. Three bonus points were awarded for having openly LGBT elected or appointed municipal leaders.

Anchorage earned 21 points and Fairbanks earned only 2 points.

Nearly 300 cities were involved with the survey which measured city laws, employment practices, services, law enforcement and relationships with the LGBT community.

25 cities included in the survey had perfect scores including Missoula, Atlanta, Austin and Phoenix.

The study does note that not all cities are able to enact laws or ordinances that the survey measures due to restrictive state laws.

The annual survey is a project of the Human Rights Campaign.