An Italian Teacher's experience in Antarctica, by Graziano Scotto di Clemente. Italian Translation I am an Italian Science teacher. I am working in a lower secondary school (11-14 year old pupils), for the past 30 years, in Treviso, a town near Venice (North Italy). I am interested in science education, science history, and environmental activities. I participated in the ARISE

Gianluca Frinchillucci writes: Some years ago I was in eastern Greenland on an research. I was visiting a very particular village, Isertoq, probably housing the last branch of Inuit migratory movements, remained isolated for ages. As an researcher, I usually don't travel without a notepad, where I can take note of my impressions, the people I meet, the places I pass through and everything I want to fix in my mind. It was the time of Iraq war, when televisions from all over the world talked about the flight and the torment of thousands of men, women and children. An inuit child took my notepad and started drawing a sketch of how war was in his mind. ...

My name is Gianluca Frinchillucci, I am an Italian polar researcher and the Director of the Polar Geographic Institute "S.Zavatti" of Fermo, Marche Region. In this moment I am in Eastern Greenland, in the village of Isertoq. Together with a group of Italian researchers, we are realizing a research expedition called "Saxum", in this part of Greenland. It is a very important initiative, one of the few Italian activities realized during IPY. For this reason also the President of Italian Republic, Giorgio Napolitano, give at this expedition a merit badge. It is realized in the sphere of the CNR-Polarnet Project "Map of Arctic People", in collaboration with the Explora-Nunaat Association, started on the 11th of June and finishing on the 9th of July....

On the occasion of the 31st Antarctic Treaty Consultative meeting held in Kiev, Ukraine, from the 2nd to the 13th of June 2008, SciencePoles looks at one of the lasting legacies of the International Polar Year (IPY) 2007-08: A series of high-tech scientific research stations recently completed, or in the process of being constructed in Antarctica. Never since the International Geophysical Year of 1957-58 has the frozen continent seen suc...

By Lucia Simion Far away from traffic jams, polluted cities and rat races, one thousand people are getting ready to live a fantastic adventure on the most remote continent of the world: They are the over-wintering population of Antarctica. Inhabiting some 35 different permanent stations scattered across a continent twice as large as Europe, they will be alone on the ice, where they will experience the polar night, the austral auroras, the blizzards, the solitude and the confinement. They will be more isolated than the astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) as it is very hard to be evacuated from Antarctica during the polar night. One of these stations is Concordia, where the overwintering began on February 1, 2008 for a crew of thirteen people fr...

By Louise Huffman, ANDRILL Coordinator of Education and Outreach During survival training known as Happy Camper School. ANDRILL (ANtarctic Geologic DRILLing) is in Antarctica for the second back-to-back drilling season. It is a multi-national science research team drilling rock cores from the McMurdo Sound area. With each new meter of core recovered, the scientists are working to unlock the climate secrets stored there. By understanding past climates, they hope to fill in missing pieces of the climate puzzle that will help us explain the rapid changes around the globe we are experiencing tod...

On March 1 2007, students at schools around the world marked the advent of International Polar year by conducting an ice experiment. They then told the IPY community and the world by pinning a virtual balloon onto a web-based map showing exactly where they were. It proved to be quite a success, with hundreds of schools contributing so far. IPY enthusiasts also joined in, turning the map into a riot of red balloons. See the whole map here. For technical reasons, browsers don't like it if you show too many balloons at one time, so only the most recent 200 balloons are shown. However, you can see all contributed posts directly by browsing the directory from ...

The International Polar Year has begun. What a week! With US and UK launches on the Monday stirring up media attention, followed by an event in Portugal on the Wednesday and over 20 more national events on the day itself, March 1st 2007, we definitely hit the news! While traveling to Paris with Nicola, to prepare for the international launch, the phone didn't stop ringing, both sides of the Channel Tunnel and even on the Paris subway system! I was contacted by journalists as diverse as New Zealand Radio, an In-flight magazine, BBC World Service, Vatican Radio, Al Jazeera English, an Italian science magazine, Chinese TV networks, and Scientific American to name a few. During the International Ceremony itself, my phone kept shaking, and afterwards, on a tour of Paris, I saw ...

Mabel's recovery from the ocean floor off Antarctica. [Update 2007-02-20: The recovery attempt was not successful, reports Polarstern. Mabel will stay on the ocean floor for another year.] The joint German-Italian project "Mabel" (Multidisciplinary Antarctic BEntic Laboratory) is the first scientific project to be conducted during the current Antarctic Polarstern Expedition ANT-XXIII/9. Mabel is...