A MODEST review

We present an account of the state of the art in the fields explored by the research community invested in 'Modeling and Observing DEnse STellar systems'. For this purpose, we take as a basis the activities of the MODEST-17 conference, which was held at Charles University, Prague, in September 2017. Reviewed topics include recent advances in fundamental stellar dynamics, numerical methods for the solution of the gravitational N-body problem, formation and evolution of young and old star clusters and galactic nuclei, their elusive stellar populations, planetary systems, and exotic compact objects, with timely attention to black holes of different classes of mass and their role as sources of gravitational waves. Such a breadth of topics reflects the growing role played by collisional stellar dynamics in numerous areas of modern astrophysics. Indeed, in the next decade, many revolutionary instruments will enable the derivation of positions and velocities of individual stars in the Milky Way and its satellites and will detect signals from a range of astrophysical sources in different portions of the electromagnetic and gravitational spectrum, with an unprecedented sensitivity. On the one hand, this wealth of data will allow us to address a number of long-standing open questions in star cluster studies; on the other hand, many unexpected properties of these systems will come to light, stimulating further progress of our understanding of their formation and evolution.Comment: 42 pages; accepted for publication in 'Computational Astrophysics and Cosmology'. We are much grateful to the organisers of the MODEST-17 conference (Charles University, Prague, September 2017). We acknowledge the input provided by all MODEST-17 participants, and, more generally, by the members of the MODEST communit

Television is happening: methodological considerations for capturing digital television reception

The more fragmented that engagements with the media become, the more important it is to understand changing audience practices for theories of social shaping. However, capturing the ways in which audiences respond to television is challenging when current technology makes new demands on the viewer: digital television packages offer 'interactive choices coterminous with computer interfaces. This article proposes a new methodology and demonstrates the kind of data that it makes available for studying digital television audiences. It suggests adapting the traditional metaphor of 'flow and combining an understanding of television-as-text with television-as-technology to explore the social contexts of new textual possibilities against the backdrop of claims made about 'new media. This is achieved by allowing the phenomenological aspects of television to inform an empirical study of television in sociocommunicative contexts. Locating mediated communication within everyday social interaction invites questions about what is new about the social shaping of the digital TV interface