Wide-field 1-2 GHz research on galaxy evolution - synenergies with multi-wavelenght surveys

In these proceedings I discuss various extragalactic surveys which will be undertaken over the next few years and which will be complementary to any HI and/or continuum surveys with the SKA-precursor telescopes. I concentrate on the near-infrared public surveys which will be undertaken with the Visible and Infrared Survey Telscope for Astronomy (VISTA), and in particular the VISTA Deep Extragalactic Observations (VIDEO) survey which will provide the ideal data set to combine with any deep SKA-precursor observations of the extragalactic sky. After highlighting the links that the SKA precursors have with the various VISTA surveys, I briefly describe two forthcoming Herschel surveys, Herschel-ATLAS survey and HerMES which have a large scientific overlap with the SKA-precursor telescopes. Finally, I present a case study in combining multi-wavelength data sets with radio-frequency surveys to find the highest redshift radio sources with the aim of probing the epoch of reionization.

A citizen-science approach to muon events in imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescope data: the Muon Hunter

Event classification is a common task in gamma-ray astrophysics. It can be treated with rapidly-advancing machine learning algorithms, which have the potential to outperform traditional analysis methods. However, a major challenge for machine learning models is extracting reliably labelled training examples from real data. Citizen science offers a promising approach to tackle this challenge. We present "Muon Hunter", a citizen science project hosted on the Zooniverse platform, where VERITAS data are classified multiple times by individual users in order to select and parameterize muon events, a product from cosmic ray induced showers. We use this dataset to train and validate a convolutional neural-network model to identify muon events for use in monitoring and calibration. The results of this work and our experience of using the Zooniverse are presented.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures, in Proceedings of the 35th International Cosmic Ray Conference (ICRC 2017), Busan, South Kore

Francis Bacon and the practice of painting

This article addresses the question about why painting continues to be relevant in our contemporary cultural climate. A key reason can be located in the means by which the material of paint can be utilized, manipulated, and perceived through entire sensory and bodily mechanisms. As the practice of Francis Bacon (1909–1992) demonstrates, it is within the elusive behaviour and handling of pigment that the full transformative potential of painting can be released. In fact it can activate a whole field of sensory responses on the part of painter and viewer. The painter can manipulate the material to achieve a variety of effects but needs also to acknowledge how the material can potentially assume an independent life of its own, an almost unruly character. The strength and enduring quality of painting which links modern to postmodern practice, lies in its potential to utilise the painter's tacit skills as well as releasing the inherent and ‘unruly’ qualities of the pigment. The potential of painting practice lies within the orbit of the individual painter who can recognize implicitly how to let the paint ‘work’ according to the needs of the image being constructed