The Selection of Tenured Astronomers in France

The organization of the recruitment of tenured astronomers and astrophysicists in France is presented and compared with the setup in other countries. The ages for getting tenure have increased from 27-28 in 1980 to 31 today. Foreign scientists constitute at least 11% of the recruits and the delay in their hiring is quantified. The large reliance on national tenure committees is justified, while the increased targeting of positions is questioned and a compromise proposed.Comment: Final refereed version. One sentence added plus several other modifications. 20 page

DENIS Observations of Multibeam Galaxies in the Zone of Avoidance

Roughly 25% of the optical extragalactic sky is obscured by the dust and stars of our Milky Way. Dynamically important structures might still lie hidden in this zone. Various surveys are presently being employed to uncover the galaxy distribution in the Zone of Avoidance (ZOA) but all suffer from (different) limitations and selection effects. We illustrate the promise of using a multi-wavelength approach for extragalactic large-scale studies behind the ZOA, i.e. a combination of three surveys -- optical, systematic blind HI and near-infrared (NIR), which will allow the mapping of the peculiar velocity field in the ZOA through the NIR Tully-Fisher relation. In particular, we present here the results of cross-identifying HI-detected galaxies with the DENIS NIR survey, and the use of NIR colours to determine foreground extinctions.Comment: Accepted for publication in PASA. Proceedings of workshop "HI in the Local Universe, II", held in Melbourne, Sept. 1998. 9 pages, LaTeX2e, 2 encapsulated PS figures, 3 JPEG figures, Full resolution figures 2, 3 and 4 and full resolution paper are at ftp://ftp.iap.fr/pub/from_users/gam/PAPERS/HICONF