During the height of Alaska oil pipeline construction there was a critical need for all types of housing in Fairbanks, Alaska. Eight architects practising in that city were asked (1) what design criteria they considered for housing habitability, (2) what habitability criteria they considered when siting a structure, (3) how they designed for individual privacy and (4) whether they conducted post-occupancy evaluations of their projects. The results clearly show that little attention is given to habitability in high latitudes. Several factors that would help to accomplish this are considered

Seals were hunted in the Bay of Bothnia during the 16th century in four areas — inshore open water, fast ice, ice edge, and pack ice — with methods appropriate for each area. Inshore open water sealing involved netting and some seining, exclusively for ringed seals. On fast ice the techniques used were stalking, den-hunting, and breathing hole-hunting, again for ringed seals. Grey and ringed seals were hunted on the ice edge. Provincial tax returns have provided information on methods used by sealers from different parishes in the Bay of Bothnia area. Catching techniques, tools, prey species, numbers of crews, hunting seasons, catch figures and annual yields are discussed.

Following Italy's accession to the Antarctic Treaty in 1981, the Italian Parliament made provision for a six-year programme of Antarctic research, to be administered by the Ministry for University and Scientific and Technical Research. The programme, Progetto Antartide, centres on a permanent scientific station at Gerlache Inlet, installed in 1986–87 for a staff of up to 60. Chartered ships, helicopters, snow vehicles and heavy transport aircraft provide logistic support for a substantial scientific and field programme, ranging widely from the base, the scope and extent of which is likely to increase.

The Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic MarineLiving Resources has met annually since 1982, with the task of implementing the Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources; the treaty which was designed to manage rationally the exploitation of resources in the Southern Ocean. The central resource of the region is Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba Dana) and despite nine years of meetings the Commission has yet to adopt any conservation measures to protect krill. This article examines the published work of the Commission, seeking to determine how the Commission has dealt with the krill fishery and why it has not yet developed a krill management plan.

Like many of his contemporaries, the popular novelist Jules Verne (1828–1905) was deeply influenced by the geographical explorations of the mid 19th century. Of more than 60 novels published from 1855 onward in his series Les voyages extraordinaires, which involved tales of adventure, travel, geographical discovery or scientific or technological innovation, 11 included scenes or themes of polar travel. Verne clearly relied for his material and inspiration on current or recently-published polar expedition narratives of the Victorian era.

Modern shore station whaling spread from Norway to Newfoundland in 1896 with development of the Cabot Steam Whaling Co Ltd. Their success stimulated formation of a second company, the Newfoundland Steam Whaling Co Ltd, which in 1908 mounted a pelagic expedition to hunt in both hemispheres, particularly from the South Orkney and South Shetland Islands and off northern Labrador. The expedition was a failure, and Newfoundland whaling remained a totally shore-based industry until cessation in 1972.

The East Antarctica ice sheet advanced onto the continental shelf during the last glaciation but appears to have been thinner (<300 m) than previously hypothesised and probably did not everywhere extend to the edge of the continental shelf. Where the shelf is wide, the ice probably terminated against shallow banks on its outer edge. There may not have been time for the sheet to develop the maximum profile form and thickness predicted by Hollin (1962) and Hughes and others (1981) of about 1000–500 moverthe shelf. Large outlet glaciers occupied deep troughs that conveyed most of the ice towards the edge of the shelf: intervening areas were less intensely glaciated. Much of Prince Charles Mountains and Amery Oasis were not ice-covered: Vestfold, Bunger and Casey oases were glaciated. Vestfold and Bunger oases became ice-free after 10 ka BP under the influence of the Holocene marine transgression, which was complete by about 6 ka BP. During at least the last 5–6 ka these oases have been approximately their present size. Since then the margins of the Antarctic continental ice sheet have maintained almost steady state conditions against the landward edges of the hill masses.

The recent discovery in a US Government archive of acomplete run of the newspaper Arctic Moon, written during the early months of the Lady Franklin Bay Expedition (1881–84), permits us to see what this 19th century onice publication looked like and examine its contents, and perhaps judge why it had so brief an existence in the tragic expedition led by Lt A. W. Greely to Ellesmere Island.

Natural resources of Svalbard, notably seal, walrus, whale, reindeer, polar bear and Arctic fox, were exploited through the 19th and early 20th centuries by both overwintering and seasonal hunters and trappers. Hunters also collected eggs and down of eider ducks to supplement their catches. Amounts of uncleaned down officially registered as imported to Norway ranged from 300–2600 kg annually (mean 1300 kg). The accuracy of these figures is discussed. Eider down accounted for 7–10% of the annual income of the trappers who wintered on the islands. Competition between trappers spending the winter and the crews of the sealers and whalers often resulted in an unorganized free-for-all collection of down and eggs, causing a steady decline of the eider population. The population was protected by legislation in 1963 and the designation of several bird sanctuaries in 1973, in which it was hoped that eider numbers would recover. It is not clear whether these measures have been successful: historical records have too many lacunae for a reliable calculation of the original size of the eider population which the trappers and sealers exploited.

Levels of some chlorinated hydrocarbon residues (HCB, HCH isomers, p,p'-DDT and related compounds, PBC congeners) in lichen and moss from Kay Island, Ross Sea, Antarctica, are reported and compared with data from similar species collected on Antarctic Peninsula. The role of the cold remote areas in the global circulation of these contaminants is briefly discussed.

Fur seals were exterminated from Macquarie Island about 20 years after discovery of the island in 1810. Their specific identity is unknown. Few fur seals were reported at the island until it was occupied by the Australian National Antarctic Research Expeditions in 1948. Fur seal numbers are now increasing. An archaeological excavation at a sealers' quarters at Sandy Bay in 1988 revealed the fragmented skull of a young Antarctic fur seal Arctocephalus gazella 1.1 m below the surface in a layer dated in the 1870s and 1880s. This period coincides with the recovery of fur seal populations in the South Atlantic Ocean following earlier harvesting. Elsewhere it has been argued that the Antarctic fur seal is unlikely to have been the original fur seal at Macquarie Island because few individuals of that species are ashore in winter, which is the season when the island was discovered and fur-seal harvesting began. It is concluded that the Sandy Bay skull is from a vagrant animal.

Seasonal ice of the Southern Ocean, occupying some 15 x 106 km2, supports a distinctive biota based on algae that live on, within and immediately beneath the ice floes. How this annually-forming habitat recruits its biota, and the fate of the biota after the ice thaws in late summer, are little-known. Studies in the Weddell Sea in 1984–88 have shown that the seasonal ice is important as the wintering substrate of krill Euphausia superba which, together with other zooplankton and fish, supports a large breeding population of seals and penguins. Clearly a key habitat in the economy of the Southern Ocean, this seasonal ice is likely to be vulnerable to small climatic changes.