The development, background and nature of the Greenland model of home rule are discussed. Over a ten-year period this model has proved pragmatic and worked well, creating a high degree of autonomy and allowing considerable economic development. Contemporary problems and advantages are outlined and a draft strategy for the future is presented.

In June and July 1914 DiamondJenness.amember of Stefansson's Canadian Arctic Expedition 1913–18, excavated 103 archaeological features in three abandoned native villages originally inhabited 400 to 550 years ago on Barter Island and nearby Arey Island, northern Alaska. His notes, diagrams, and some 3300 specimens for long remained unstudied. Recently they have been shown to provide much of the available information on the prehistoric occupation of the western Beaufort Sea coast.

Activity patterns of native people in the Northwest Territories include a complex mixture of employment in the modern economy, full-time or part-time engagement in traditional pursuits, and leisure. This study identifies characteristics of participants in each activity which assist in interpreting the allocation of time among employment in the modern economy, the pursuit of traditional activities, and leisure. Three hypotheses—traditionalist, modernist and culturalist — were identified from current literature and tested statistically, using data collected in interviews held with 11,164 NWT residents in 1984. The hypotheses were: (1) engagement in the traditional sector is preferred to holding a job in the modem economy; thus, wage employment primarily facilitates pursuit of traditional activities; (2) engagement in the modern economy is preferred; those unable to work in it turn to traditional activities, which are easier to enter; (3) the traditional sector is an arena in which a cultural heritage can be maintained, a preferred sustenance obtained, or where one can demonstrate his prowess apart from any material gain that might be realized. The data do not unequivocally support any of the hypotheses, but this study suggests an alternative approach to the interpretation of activity patterns, based upon an analysis of individual preference functions.

Henry James Snow hunted marine mammals in the sub-Arctic Kuril Islands and adjacent areas of the North Pacific between the years 1873 and 1896. His success resulted from careful study of the animals hunted, in particular the sea otter. He had continual difficulties with the governments of Japan and Russia, which had sovereignty over the land and territorial waters of the region, some of the encounters involving violence. At the same time, Snow was a careful observer of the wildlife and surveyor of the natural features, especially of the Kuril Islands. His works represented the most accessible source of information about the islands as late as the start of the Pacific War in 1941.

It was noted in Table 3 of the first paper that the failure rate of common types of valves is about one half per cent per thousand hours of operation. Some other components are as unreliable as this, but they are not employed in such large numbers in typical electronic equipment so that (at least until very recently) valves are much the commonest cause of electronic equipment failure. The mechanical and electrical tests which valves are required to pass before the Armed Services grant type approval are given in Joint Service Specification K1001, Ministry of Aviation, June 1958. In an analysis of failure reports made in 1953 in the Royal Navy, the Royal Air Force, civil aviation, and under typical laboratory conditions, the proportion of faults traced to valves ranged from 45 to 55 per cent of the total. Under conditions of rough handling the average life of valves is likely to be further reduced, more so than for any other common component, so that the number of faults and the proportion of faults due to valves, will be even higher.

Griffith Taylor (1880–1963) was a scientific member of the Terra Nova expedition. Although he published initially on his geomorphological, glaciological and meteorological research, conducted between 1910 and 1912, he was also a teacher, lecturer, publicist and later political commentator on Antarctica. Initially a loyal ‘Britisher’ he developed an internationalist perspective on Antarctica without compromising his self-promotional ambitions. Through his professional career in Australia, the US and Canada over the early to mid twentieth century Antarctica's shifting scientific, cultural and political history can be mapped. Just as self-interest permeated the Antarctic Treaty of 1959, so Taylor's ambitions persisted as he fashioned himself into a scientific prophet for peace. Taylor's Antarctica, an amalgam of sentiment and science, rivalry and cooperation, imperialism and internationalism, popular culture and global politics, was the twentieth century's Antarctica.