The promise of recent and future observatories and instruments

The identification of the carrier(s) of diffuse interstellar bands (DIBs) is one of the oldest mysteries in stellar spectroscopy. With the advent of 8-10m-class telescopes substantial progress has been made in measuring the properties of DIBs in the optical and near-infrared wavelength domain, not only in the Galaxy, but also in different environments encountered in Local Group galaxies and beyond. Still, the DIB carriers have remained unidentified. The coming decade will witness the development of extremely large telescopes (GMT, TMT and E-ELT) and their instrumentation. In this overview I will highlight the current instrumentation plan of these future observatories, emphasizing their potential role in solving the enigma of the DIBs.Comment: Talk presented at IAU Symposium 297 "The Diffuse Interstellar Bands", CUP proceedings editors: Jan Cami and Nick Co

On M-functions and their application to input-output models

Models;econometrics

Bifurcating vortex solutions of the complex Ginzburg-Landau equation

It is shown that the complex Ginzburg-Landau (CGL) equation on the real line admits nontrivial $2\pi$-periodic vortex solutions that have $2n$ simple zeros (``vortices'') per period. The vortex solutions bifurcate from the trivial solution and inherit their zeros from the solution of the linearized equation. This result rules out the possibility that the vortices are determining nodes for vortex solutions of the CGL equation.Comment: To appear in Discrete and Continuous Dynamical Systems (1999); 10 pages, 2 figure

The radial velocity curve of HD153919 (4U1700-37) revisited

We have re-analysed all available high-resolution ultraviolet IUE spectra of the high-mass X-ray binary HD153919/4U1700-37. The radial velocity semi-amplitude of 20.6 +/- 1.0 km/s and orbital eccentricity of 0.22 +/- 0.04 agree very well with the values obtained earlier from optical spectra. They disagree with earlier conclusions for the same data reduced by Heap & Corcoran (1992) and by Stickland & Lloyd (1993).Comment: 6 pages, latex, figure included, Astronomy & Astrophysics, in pres