News & Comment

Edward King and colleagues towed a radar system over Antarctic ice, and whiled away Christmas in a tent, in their quest to understand glacier sliding.

Humans have been responding to fluctuating sea levels for millennia. Adapting to future change will require a swift start on developing innovative infrastructure while keeping the option to adjust in the long term.

The Netherlands has a long and varied history of coastal and river flood management. The anticipation of sea-level rise during the twenty-first century has renewed the push for sustainable solutions to coastal vulnerability.

Changes in continental water stores, largely human-induced, affect sea level. Better hydrological models and observations could clarify the land's role in sea-level variations.

Homer's Ithaca had been viewed as a work of poetic licence and imprecise geography. However, as recent research shows the island's form may have been disguised over the past two millennia by catastrophic rockfalls, co-seismic uplift events and relative sea-level change.

William Wilcock and a team of scientists and engineers drilled holes in the sea floor, and inadvertently provided a breeding ground for octopuses, in their attempt to understand deep-ocean hydrothermal venting.

Paolo Gabrielli and colleagues dug deeply — and extremely cautiously — into Antarctic ice, to see whether the poles acted as a sink for mercury in the geological past.

Hermann M. Fritz and colleagues travelled by cargo boat through the Ayeyarwady delta in Myanmar to document the damage after cyclone Nargis.

In the world of Web 2.0, the variety of channels for communicating science is exploding. Technology can help to generate images that attract attention, but there is much more to reaching the public than pretty pictures.

Anna Armstrong reviews Encounters at the End of the World by Werner Herzog, Discovery Films: 2007. UK release date: 24 April 2009.

Paradoxically, as the International Polar Year ends we enter its most important phase. Now we must decide — and quickly — which mix of observations to sustain, based on what we have learnt.

Kerri Pratt and colleagues stayed calm under pressure and made friends with 'Shirley' as they flew through the clouds over Wyoming.

Susannah Porter, Carol Dehler and colleagues hiked miles in burning heat and braved unforgiving river rapids to sample rocks in the Grand Canyon.

John West and colleagues struggled with widely held misconceptions and computer hackers in their attempt to explain mantle processes beneath the Great Basin in the United States.