The educational programme LATITUDE60! organized one of the biggest events of the International Polar Year in Portugal on on the 29 June 2007: the national contest “discovering the Polar Regions!” More than 600 children and nearly 50 schools were present at the Lisbon event. At present, LATITUDE60! is a leading educational program with IPY, with more than 170 schools involved, more than 300 teachers and thousands of students from all over Portugal (including the Azores and Madeira) involved. The contest had 6 categories: scientific essay, polar writer, website, audiovisual, art and “build an igloo”, and was open to children of all ages, from kindergarten to university level. More than 500 submissions were received nationally and more than 70 received aw...

The Australian Antarctic Division (AAD) has recently released the latest issue of the Australian Antarctic Magazine. The theme of this issue is the International Polar Year. AAD is participating in over 40 IPY projects and this issue of the magazine features some of these projects including the first marine research voyage for the AAD-coordinated Census of Antarctic Marine Life (CAML). You can download the Australian Antarctic Magazine, Issue 12, 2007 as a pdf here. For further information, please see the ...

Professional photographers with a portfolio of images from the Arctic and Antarctic. To use any of their images, please negotiate directly with the photographer. OUR POLAR HERITAGE / Christian Morel Our Polar Heritage photographic project is proposed by the photographer Christian Morel and the Association Polar Planet. The objective is to work during the 2 years of the IPY to a very large, international, transversal and multidisciplinary set of artistic and professional photographic pictures in the Arctic and the Antarctic. Our Polar Heritage aims to reveal the high precision of the work achieved by women and men under extreme conditions, to illustrate...

The Marine Advanced Technology Education (MATE) Center, the National Science Foundation, and the Marine Technology Society's (MTS) ROV Committee invite you to our 6th Annual International Student ROV Competition. Forty-one teams representing middle schools, high schools, home schools, after-school groups, community colleges, and universities from the U.S., Canada, Hong Kong, Scotland, Spain, and Iran are scheduled to compete in this year’s event, which is being held June 22-24, 2007 on the campus of Memorial University in St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. In partnership with the International Polar Year (IPY), the 2007 competition highlights the science, history, and culture of our earth’s Polar Regions and the impact that these regions have on glob...

IPY project 455, IGLO, is a network of international science centres working together to raise awareness about IPY, the polar regions, and global warming. IGLO is an educational partner of Live Earth, the organization producing concerts in nine major cities around the world on July 7, 2007 to promote awareness of, and action on, global warming. Science centers and museums are participating in this event by screening films, showing the concert via a live satellite feed, hosting activities from the IGLO toolkit, and more. Science Centres in China (Shanghai), Panama, Belgium (Mechelen), The Netherlands (The Hague), Wales (Cardiff), Canada (Toronto), Mexico (Mexico City) and across the US (San Francisco, Fort Lauder...

Contents: 1. IPO Notes 2. Current Operations 3. IPY science promotion days 4. Events, Meetings, and Conferences From: IPY International Programme Office To: IPY Project Coordinators cc: IPY Community Google Groups 1. IPO Notes In seeking to understand the IGY World Days for our discussion of IPY science promotion days (below), I discovered this quote from Dr. Hugh Odishaw, then Executive Director of the US National Committee for IGY: "My contention is a simple one: the IGY is the single most significant peaceful activity of mankind since the Renaissance and the Copernican Revolution." At the beginning of July, at the symposium '...

climateXchange: How's your world? allows users to share stories (in text, photos and video) of how climate change has or might affect them in their local area, no matter where they are. We'd love for individuals, schools and community groups to contribute, as well as see the stories we already have on the site! We're hoping to receive submissions from all around the world. In fact, Questacon has made the site a part of International Polar Year, on behalf of all the science centres in the Asia Pacific region, as a part of the ASTC's Project IGLO. The project has an Asia - Pacific focus but submissions are invited from everywhere. It is prod...

The exhibition is open now, phew! And we’re getting some great feedback. The games are particularly popular. The firm favourite is the meteorite hunting game which is based on the adventures of Natural History Museum's Sara Russell who has been meteorite hunting in Antarctica with ANSMET. This photo is of my friend Paul on the meteorite hunt. It's a great game because visitors not only learn about meteorites but also the terrain of Antarctica. Meanwhile I have started following our visitors around the exhibition for evaluation. I watch where they go and what they do, ideally without being spotted. This, combined with exit surveys, will help us to see what visitors are learning and how much they enjoy the e...

July 2-6, 2007: Antarctica New Zealand and the Royal Society of New Zealand are proud to announce a conference celebrating 50 years of New Zealand's involvement in the Antarctic. The conference aims to present the successes of the past (International Geophysical Year to present day) and enthuse New Zealand about its future in Antarctica. This five-day conference combines invited talks from national and international speakers, presentations from artists, media and students, film screenings, panel discussions, poster sessions, and social functions. In particular five key themes within Antarctic science and policy will be explored throughout the conference:

Researchers and explorers will probe the Gakkel Ridge during expedition that begins on July 1. They will be using new robotic vehicles to hunt for life and hydrothermal vents on the Arctic seafloor. Researchers will use two new autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs)--Puma and Jaguar--in tandem to locate hydrothermal vent sites on the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean. (Illustration by E. Paul Oberlander, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution) More information can be found on the project website. ...