During the summer of 1952, investigations were carried out in the town of Aklavik to assess its possibilities for expansion through the addition of educational, health, and administrative facilities, and the construction of an airstrip to serve the community. The unsatisfactory local conditions uncovered by those investigations led the Advisory Committee on Northern Development to recommend that Aklavik should be moved to a new and more stable site. This recommendation was accepted in December 1953 and the Advisory Committee was given the responsibility of selecting a new site.

James Weddell is celebrated in polar history for his voyage of 1822–24 during which he penetrated the then unknown Weddell Sea as far as lat. 74° S., in the brig Jane and the cutter Beaufoy. This note sheds light on some other events in his life and records where the source material is to be found.

Surface winds are responsible for the two main types of feature observed on the Antarctic plateau: (a) sastrugi, produced by katabatic (gravity) winds, and (b) snow dunes, which are raised by blizzard winds. The two are often associated in the sense that the severest patches of sastrugi seem to be eroded out of dunes deposited by a previous blizzard. However, sastrugi are by no means limited to this; they may occur more or less continuously, merging one into the next over a wide area of plateau.

With the release of somewhat fuller information on the results of the Soviet census of January 1959 it is now possible to gain a more complete picture of the population of the northern parts of the USSR. Figures are available for major administrative areas down to the level of oblast' and natsional'nyy okrug, for all towns of over 50,000 inhabitants and for certain smaller ones. There is, however, no generally agreed definition on the extent of “the north”, and, furthermore, none of the definitions which are used for specific cases (e.g. labour law, building regulations) follow the boundaries of major administrative areas. It is possible, therefore, to obtain an accurate figure only for an arbitrary definition of the north, in the case when its southern limit coincides with major administrative boundaries. But rough approximations are now available for certain areas defined as “the north”, and it is also possible to make a more accurate guess than before of the population within the boundaries of some of the other defined areas.