The Gulf of Alaska (GOA) is crucial to the Alaskan fishing, tourism, and shipping industries which are cornerstones of the Alaskan economy. Currently, the GOA is a healthy and productive ecosystem which provides invaluable cultural and commercial resources; these resources are derived from a number of aquatic fauna that spend the majority of their lifespan in the GOA region. Knowledge of this ecosystem, before the advent of any negative ecological and economical impacts as a result of the Fukushima Daiichi disaster, is essential baseline

The ability to generate new meaning by rearranging combinations of meaningless sounds is a fundamental component of language. Although animal vocalizations often comprise combinations of meaningless acoustic elements, evidence that rearranging such combinations generates functionally distinct meaning is lacking. Here, we provide evidence for this basic ability in calls of the chestnut-crowned babbler (Pomatostomus ruficeps), a highly cooperative bird of the Australian arid zone.

Differentiation of embryonic stem cells (ESCs) into specific cell types with minimal risk of teratoma formation could be efficiently directed by first reducing the differentiation potential of ESCs through the generation of clonal, self-renewing lineage-restricted stem cell lines. Efforts to isolate these stem cells are, however, mired in an impasse where the lack of purified lineage-restricted stem cells has hindered the identification of defining markers for these rare stem cells and, in turn, their isolation.

Theoretically all parts of a fish could be sold and used in various ways. However we live in Cordova Alaska, a place where canneries produce hundreds of pounds of fish waste every day. This waste includes mainly the head, tail and bones of the fish, parts that the cannery cannot use. All of this gets pumped into the surrounding waters where it is consumed by various marine life, including Steller sea lions, glaucous winged gulls and halibut.

In Dillingham, and around the world, oceans are changing; due to these changes oceanic habitats are being affected. The changes could result in what we call the “salmongeddon”- the functional extinction of Alaska’s salmon.

Locomotor strategies in terrestrial tetrapods have evolved from the utilisation of sinusoidal contractions of axial musculature, evident in ancestral fish species, to the reliance on powerful and complex limb muscles to provide propulsive force. Within tetrapods, a hindlimb-dominant locomotor strategy predominates, and its evolution is considered critical for the evident success of the tetrapod transition onto land.

Coastal resilience is important to coastal communities. Coastal resilience can be defined as the capacity for a coastal community to absorb a disturbance while at the same time undergo changes that help retain that community’s services, structures, and sense of identity. Hazards that would require coastal resilience include natural and man-made disturbances such as tsunamis, earthquakes, landslides, flooding, and oil spills.

Sustained and coordinated vaccination efforts have brought polio eradication within reach. Anticipating the eradication of wild poliovirus (WPV) and the subsequent challenges in preventing its re-emergence, we look to the past to identify why polio rose to epidemic levels in the mid-20th century, and how WPV persisted over large geographic scales.

With the recent opening of the Northwest Passage above the Arctic Coast of the United States and Canada, increased ship traffic from shipping, research, and tourism will increase risk of ships running aground or becoming trapped within the ice in the Arctic Sea.

Prince William Sound (Figure 1) is located in southcentral Alaska. It covers 65,000 square kilometers (personal communication Scott Pegau, 2013) and there are 3,800 miles of coastline (Alaska Department of Fish and Game, 2013) containing environmentally sensitive areas that are important for commercial harvests.