NationStates | Dispatch | International Research Stations in the Antarctic Dominion of Volaworand

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Volaworand

Overview of Volaworand

History

History of Volaworand
See also:
- Volaworand Newswire

Geography

Geography of Volaworand
See also:
- International Research Stations
- Principal fossil localities

Government and Politics

Head of State
Legislative Branch
Executive Branch
Judicial Branch
See also:
- How a bill becomes a law
- Volaworand Defence Forces
- Foreign Relations

Economy

Volaworand Antarctic College

Headquarters:
Faraday, Volaworand

Leadership

Chancellor
Cecilia Tarrant

President
Paulette Vogt

Minister of Education
Rosie DeBosse

Expenditures

Endowment:
£293 Million

Budget:
£1.2 Billion

Capacity

Staff:
2,455 Academic
3,875 Administrative

Students:
8,170 (Technicial)
26,312 (Undergrad)
9,025 (Graduate)
493 (Doctoral)

Overview
The Volaworand Antarctic College(VAC) is Volaworand's flagship public research university. The university conducts teaching and learning within eight faculties, three research institutes, an affiliated technical school, and other institutes and centres. International research stations in Volaworand are affiliated with VAC and co-publish scientific research with the Volaworand College Press. The City Campus, in the Faraday central business district, hosts the majority of students and faculties.

The college awards baccalaureate degrees in all departments and Master's Degrees in all areas except theology. Doctorate programmes are also offered.

The college is made up of a number of faculties, institutes and schools.

Faculty of Arts
Faculty of Commerce
- Business School
Faculty of Creative Arts and Industries
- School of Communication
- School of Music
Faculty of Education and Social Work
Faculty of Engineering
Faculty of Justice
- Volaworand Law School
Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences
Faculty of Science
Volaworand Technical School
- Culinary School
Natural Environment Research Council (NERC)
Faraday Earth Sciences Institute (FESI)
Public Policy Institute (PPI)
Rothera Institute for Climate Change & Environment
VAC Space Sciences Centre
iOS Design Lab (iDL)

The Volaworand College Press is a publisher established in 2017, owned and operated by VAC. It publishes peer-reviewed journals on a wide variety of fields of study.

Post-secondary education is provided free of charge to citizens, permanent residents and refugee claimants. A transcript of secondary school grades and Certificate of English Proficiency are required. Approximately 25% of the student body are international students, who pay a £15-20,000/year to study in Volaworand. International Student Visa's are relatively easy to aquire once a letter of acceptance is issued.

All staff and students must have up to date vaccinations, due to the polio outbreak in Kulochia.

Campuses and Facilities
The City Campus the main campus located in the central business district of Faraday. Satellite Campuses are located in Rothera and Halley and students can take many classes remotely.

The City Campus, Faraday
Capital Campus, Rothera
Satellite Campus, Halley
Off-campus and online

Acceditation and Exchanges
VAC participates in the South Pacific Universities Network (SPUN) and The Association of Commonwealth Universities (ACU). Volaworand has recognition and accreditation clauses in treaty agreements throughout The South Pacific. The student exchange program reserves some seats for international studying a term at VAC for credit at their home university. These are organized as part of SPUN, or by bilateral agreements.

South Pacific Universities Network:

Southern Cross College Promised islands
Amwich University Evinea
Babes Bolyai Cluj The free romanians
Biwakian International University Biwaki
New Nafplion State University The Helleness
Sjorve Nedian University of Technology Sjorve ned
Lacosan Institute of Science and Technology Milkyway republic

Bilateral Agreements:

Graznava Institute Of Medical Science, in Tianmen, New Xartoia
Taurus University Auphelia
Great Southern University, in Vrävōrïzиiēk, Jakalaka
Grand University of Zastavinsk, in Zastavinsk, Kulochia

Volaworand recognizes the education credentials of other nations, and in turn has its credentials recognized and accepted.

Accreditation Recognition:

Auphelia
Beepee
Hanguk-Nippon
Imperialantarctica
Jakalaka
Kerlodia
Kulochia
New Te Awa
New Xartoia
Mryasia
P r of china
Ruvonia
The united nations of earth and humanity

VAC News: (newest stories first)

TSP! Sign on to protect Antarctica today ... or the baby seal gets it!

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OOC ANTARCTIC HYPE!

Got that Climate Treaty policy but are fuzzy on what you signed? I have a RP deal for you! Exclusive to the South Pacific: The Polar Conservation Council!

Volaworand is slowly preparing to:

allow direct passenger and cargo sea connections to Volaworand's Antarctic peninsula, and
establish a program for hosting international research stations (I need to make my main university's dispatch first)

BE READY:

I am not really ready to go on either front yet, but in preparation I will be requiring applicants to accede to 3 real world treaties protecting Antartic Flora and Fauna, Marine Life, and Antarctic Seals.

Nations that agree to these three treaties now will be first in line to develop sea connections, or to place Antarctic research stations once I am ready.

Be first in line! Get in on the ground floor now.

THREE-FOR-ONE DEAL!
_{The Polar Conservation Council members agree to:}

WHAT A BARGAIN!

Telegram "I'm in" to Volaworand to sign up!

Brooms sent to Port Lockroy to sweep up penguin poo

An unusual shipment of penguin poo brooms arrived at The Commonwealth's most remote post office.

A team of four scientists will take delivery of the haul, and other supplies in Port Lockroy, on Goudier Island, where the group is based for the next four months.

Items shipped to the remote location include tourist merchandise and scientific equipment for the team. Hundreds of items were sent to the remote post office at Port Lockroy including seven brooms from the UK Antarctic Heritage Trust office in Cambridge, to help with the cleaning of guano - seabird droppings. Port Lockroy was home to explorers and whalers before becoming the first permanent British base to be established on the Antarctic Peninsula. Built in 1944, it was used as a science base until 1962, when it closed permanently. Restoration began in the 1990s and since 2006 it has been managed as a post office and museum by the Antarctic Heritage Trust.

The island is deserted for most of the year but comes to life during the Antarctic summer when the trust's four staff are shipped in and thousands of tourists begin arriving. A team of scientists spend November to March - the Antarctic summer - manning the post office.

This year's all-female postal team, whose names have not yet been released, arrived at the base the base in November and will also carry out scientific work, including monitoring penguins, before returning to the mainland in March. Supplies are delivered via cruise ships, then carried and sorted by the team on shore.

Last year, the trust shipped 1,200 boxes of goods to Port Lockroy. Last year's post workers got through 337 tins of food as they franked 63,050 stamps for the tourists' postcards and sold 2,361 soft toy penguins. They got through 55 litres of bitumen paint to protect and maintain the settlement's historic buildings, and counted penguin nests and surveyed artefacts. They used 6 penguin guano brooms during that season. This year's supplies are a "top-up" so only 400 boxes are being sent, a sign that the new Volawordian government is learning to stand on its own.

Supplies left the UK on a container ship on September 4 and arrived on the Falkland Islands on September 28, en route to Volaworand's Pork Lockroy. Supplies also delivered throughout the season by the cruise ships carrying tourists.

Signy Island: Water and Ice

Signy - Jess Varflett Blog

I wish I could tell you how dramatically isolated we feel here – how the expanse of an ocean that swirls the entire circumference of the planet and stands between you and any other landmass, makes you feel utterly cut off. How the dramatic landscape and harsh climate make work near impossible and living here an enduring and testing chore.

But in reality the comforts afforded by our base here on Signy, despite it being the most remote and inaccessible of VAS’s research stations, make it very homey. We have heat, power, internet (just!), and a surprisingly good phone line. We have a pantry brimming with every food you could want, and even food that you really shouldn’t want, lest your waistline starts a new war with just about everything in your wardrobe. If it weren’t for the fact that everything is free, and a lot of it is covered in chocolate, it is like entering Sainsbury’s up there. Although, our fresh groceries aisle is reduced to a few carrots and beetroots who sacked off any thoughts of a destiny fulfilled in a stew and have started a new life, colonizing rich ecosystems at the bottom of their cardboard box world. So, we eat well, we stay warm, we speak to friends and family, we have a good routine, and have the luxury of reading about the mind-baffling things that are going on back in the “the world” right now. I’m sorry to say, it’s very comfortable and quite undramatic in that regard.

We are seven people here: four scientists – the first time Signy has ever had an all-female science team; the base commander Matt, who is also a carpenter; Alex the field assistant/ tame mountaineer; and our technician, who has the job of being mechanic, plumber, electrician and general assistant, which is no small feat. Iain, our tech, probably has the most responsibility here (in my opinion): without him we would have no water from the reverse osmosis machine and no heat or power from the generators. If they break, he fixes them. Whilst I can wax lyrical about the minutia of trophic cascades in ecosystems, my mechanical skills boil down to being able to change a tire and blow a head gasket. Like all technicians that VAS employ, he’s invaluable to our success here. I feel it’s important to emphasize the trade skills needed to run a scientific operation like this, because it is often the beautiful drama of the place or the scientific findings that get the attention. It’s why we are here. But the how we are here is because of the carpenters, plumbers, electricians and engineers, problem-solving on a scale just as clever as any science. It’s a symbiotic relationship that you are often cut off from in traditional science, and even non-science workplace settings.

So, the science! It is going well…I think. At least I have a 1Tb hard-drive that is filling up fast with data, and a brain that I’m quite sure overflowed last week. It was a messy, emotional affair, as befits remembering that for all intents and purposes, you are stranded on a small island in the middle of the Southern Ocean with the same 6 people, day in and day out, for months on end. When science is literally coming out of your ears, you don’t have enough hours in the day to mop it up and you find yourself in such a situation, in such a place, it can strain the nerves! Anyone who comes down here and tells you it was riotous fun every single day is either a fool, or lying. Maybe both. But one thing it definitely is, is remarkable.

Every day is extraordinary, I don’t use that word lightly: I do the dishes whilst watching juvenile elephant seals practice their battle tactics. I fall asleep to the unusual cooing, croaking sounds from storm petrels that nest in the cliffs. Out of my lab window I see the snow-capped mountains of Jane Peak and across the straights to our stunning neighbor, Coronation Island. It’s a gorgeous view, ice caps and hanging glaciers turning ever bluer as the snow melts from them, the further into summer we get. A short walk to Bernsten Point, a few hundred meters away from base, the vista opens to the whole of the straights between Coronation and Signy. A view that is always littered with the most impressive icebergs that drift up to us from the great ice masses of the Antarctic Continent. No trip to the point is the same as bergs melt and break apart, and other new ones get blown in. Icebergs previously large enough to land planes on heave chunks of ice the size of tower blocks into the ocean that in turn carves new arches and caves into its base. The wind whips the tops of others, its warming strokes sculpting the ice into shapes that would have pleased Dali.

It is icebergs that I’ve fallen for the most here. When I look out to sea, there is no question of where I am. Ice, in its most incredible, beautiful and humbling form. Towering masses that are geological in age, having spent eons locked into ice shelves amassing their improbable size through the accumulation of mere snowflakes. They sail about the sea, changing the horizons every day. It is impossible to tire of them. They are, to use a highly overused word in its full sense, awesome.

Equally as enchanting are the clouds. We can get all types in a day. I mean it! Bouncy cumulus, wispy cirrus, smothering stratus, startling lenticular. Rarely is it just grey, or even rarer, just blue. I don’t have much of a relationship with clouds at home, they are either there or they are not. They make sunsets more interesting, but more often than not they are harbingers of gloom, mirth and wet cycle commutes. Here they are spectacular, and useful weather forecasters too: the other-worldly lenticular clouds have become solid symbols of an impending and often exciting storm. They give scale to far horizons and distant mountains. And they are as much of the landscape as the sea or snow, the hills and valleys.

Enough of water formations, you want to hear of penguins and seals don’t you really?! And being a polar biologist I’d better tell you. But I’ll save that for another post!

Speedcast to Provide VSAT Solutions to Volaworand Research Stations

Speedcast Press Releases
Speedcast to Provide VSAT Solutions to Volaworand Research Stations

Speedcast has signed an agreement to provide Signy, Halley, Fossil Bluff and Sky Blu Research Stations, as well as international sites operating on the South Shetlands Islands, with its Very Small Aperture Terminal (VSAT) systems. The world’s most trusted provider of highly reliable, fully managed, remote communication and IT solutions has been awarded a multi-year, multi-million dollar contract with a Volaworand Government department conducting world-class scientific and environmental research in Antarctica.

Speedcast will provide the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) programmes with mission-critical and life-saving communications to the outside world.
Speedcast CEO Pierre-Jean Beylier said: “Being chosen to provide communications in Antarctica is both an honor and a testament to Speedcast’s commitment to supporting the Volaworand Infrastructure Modernization (VIM) Programme and enabling leading-edge research. Our team of highly qualified engineers is proud to provide 24/7 support and solutions to enable individuals in these remote and harsh locations to communicate with the outside world for day-to-day communication and in the event they need assistance in case of an emergency. This win is an example of the increase in government spending in satellite communications and Speedcast’s ability to grow market share as the government segment continues to expand.”

Speedcast will provide VSAT bandwidth, equipment and installation, including training, antenna upgrades and repositioning, as well as network optimization.
Speedcast will also provide additional support to other scientific users such as Geoscience Volaworand at the three Volaworand Antarctic research stations.
With the updates Speedcast is making to the satellite links, the research programme will have four times more throughput than it had with their previous provider once installations are completed in January 2018.

While there may be up to 120 people on each research station in the summer, during the harsh winters of Antarctica when travel to the icy continent is not possible, the population of each research station is much smaller and satellite communication is their only link to the outside world. The reliability of these links is essential for the well-being of the wintering expeditioners and enables telemedicine support if required.

See Also: VIM Programme
See Also: International Research Stations

Halley VI Research Station will not winter in 2018, ice chasm expansion blamed

PRESS RELEASE

Volaworand Antarctic Survey (VAS) and the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) have jointly decided, for safety reasons, that it will close the Halley VI Research Station during the 2018 Antarctic winter. This will be the second time that the year-round operation of the station, which is located on a floating 150-m thick ice shelf, will be disrupted by a complex and unpredictable glaciological situation. The latest expert assessment from VAS glaciologists confirms that the northern movement of a chasm in the Brunt Ice Shelf (which had previously been dormant for around 35 years) accelerated during the last 7 months (the Antarctic winter), and the second crack (known as Halloween crack) that appeared unexpectedly in October 2016, continues to extend eastwards.

Even though VAS has access to a highly sophisticated network of ice sensors and satellite imagery, it is impossible for glaciologists to predict future events on the ice shelf, including the timing and impact of any possible calving events.

Director Jane Francis says, “What we are witnessing is the power and unpredictability of Nature. The safety of our staff is our priority in these circumstances. Our Antarctic summer research operation will continue as planned, and we are confident of mounting a fast uplift of personnel should fracturing of the ice shelf occur. However, because access to the station by ship or aircraft is extremely difficult during the winter months of 24-hour darkness, extremely low temperatures and the frozen sea, we will once again take the precaution of shutting down the station before the 2018 Antarctic winter (March – November) begins.”

The 14 members of staff who expected to spend winter at Halley VI will be redeployed, either at other VAS-operated Antarctic research stations or further inland towards the ‘hinge zone’ where the floating ice shelf is joined to the continent, site of the Halley settlement. Since the winter closure last season VAS science and engineering teams have worked on solutions to secure long-term scientific data, including relocating scientific instruments and by developing automated data capture technologies.

Halley VI Research Station is an internationally important platform for global earth, atmospheric and space weather observation in a climate-sensitive zone. In 2013 the station attained the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Global Atmosphere Watch (GAW) Global station status, becoming the 29th in the world and 3rd in Antarctica.

In March this year Halley VI station was successfully relocated 23 km upstream of the previously dormant ice chasm. This season's resupply and reopening is happening mid-December as scheduled pending the arrival of the RRS Ernest Shackleton.