The automated classification of objects from large catalogues or survey projects is an important task in many astronomical surveys. Faced with various classification algorithms, astronomers should select the method according to their requirements. Here we describe several kinds of decision trees for finding active objects by multiwavelength data, such as REPTree, Random Tree, Decision Stump, Ra...

This talk describes a proposal to set up a series of international institutions in different parts of the world to serve as nodes in a network that links astronomers from the developing nations worldwide. This network, along with its nodes is visualized as an economic way of upgrading the facilities for teaching, research and development of astronomy in the Third World countries. By way of illu...

Expanding upon Pimbblet’s informative 2011 analysis of career h-indices for members of the Astronomical Society of Australia, we provide additional citation metrics which are geared to a) quantifying the current performance of b) all professional astronomers in Australia. We have trawled the staff web-pages of Australian Universities, Observatories and Research Organisations hosting professiona...

Weighing something that is partially invisible is very challenging. But this is exactly what astronomers contend with when estimating masses of galaxies and their clusters. These structures contain significant amounts of still-mysterious dark matter residing in a “halo” extending beyond the standard, baryonic (and mostly luminous) matter. Gravitational lensing allows astronomers to get around t...

Thus, an approach which provides these tools in a way that scales to these datasets is not just desirable, it is vital. The expertise required spans not just astronomy, but also computer science, statistics, and informatics. As a computer scientist and expert in machine learning, Alex’s contribution of expertise and a large number of fast algorithms designed to scale to large datasets, is extre...

Astronomers have always sought the very best locations for their telescopes. From observatories in city centres, astronomers moved first to nearby mountain tops, then to remote sites in distant countries, to aircraft, and into space. In the past decade we have come to realise that the best astronomical observing conditions on the surface of the earth are to be found on the Antarctic plateau. Th...

It is argued that Canadian astronomers, in particular, will require access to more large telescope time than currently being planned and that French astronomers will require access to Northern facilities. It is also argued that it is probable that the new 8m class telescopes will out-perform CFHT in delivered image quality and be more cost-eeective in operation, so that CFHT will eventually hav...

The process that produces electromagnetic wave harmonics and heterodynes are assumed to be well understood. The textbook definitions of these terms are being tagged herein as cargo cult science because they are incomplete. The effects these term describe occur when electromagnetic waves, singularly or in combination, interact within a non-linear medium. The textbook descriptions of these terms ...

56% were left-brain oriented. However, when the same methods were applied to 180 students in various, specialized upper-level courses, the range of left brain students ranged from 38% to 65%. This difference indicated that something about a person's brain hemispheres was associated with spreading students out over a variety of college degrees and interests. Second, and more revealing, Morton em...