FAIRBANKS — Sen. Lisa Murkowski is using a historic gathering to make a simple point this week: Alaska is different.

Murkowski is leading a delegation that includes Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and Interior Appropriations Subcommittee chairman Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., on a busy three-day tour of the state. It began on Monday, with stops in Anchorage and a tour of the Alaska Fire Service headquarters at Fort Wainwright. Trips to the North Slope and Denali National Park will follow during the next two days.

FAIRBANKS — Like alchemists with an especially grubby laboratory, researchers at the Alaska University Transportation Center have spent the past four years working to transform powder into rock.

“We’re taking this,” said AUTC director Billy Connor, sifting a handful of dusty gray material through his fingers, “and turning it into that,” he said, tossing a cylinder of hardened earth onto a lab table with a clang.

FAIRBANKS — Cathy Cahill has never been to Iraq, but the grimy DRUM Aerosol Sampler in her lab at the University of Alaska Fairbanks provides her with a vivid portrait of downtown Baghdad.

The device, which looks like a bulky black plastic suitcase, is covered with anonymous bird droppings and a layer of fine red dust. But it’s the eight drum-shaped air filters inside that make it truly remarkable.