Spectroscopic Analysis in the Virtual Observatory Environment with SPLAT-VO

SPLAT-VO is a powerful graphical tool for displaying, comparing, modifying and analyzing astronomical spectra, as well as searching and retrieving spectra from services around the world using Virtual Observatory (VO) protocols and services. The development of SPLAT-VO started in 1999, as part of the Starlink StarJava initiative, sometime before that of the VO, so initial support for the VO was necessarily added once VO standards and services became available. Further developments were supported by the Joint Astronomy Centre, Hawaii until 2009. Since end of 2011 development of SPLAT-VO has been continued by the German Astrophysical Virtual Observatory, and the Astronomical Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. From this time several new features have been added, including support for the latest VO protocols, along with new visualization and spectra storing capabilities. This paper presents the history of SPLAT-VO, it's capabilities, recent additions and future plans, as well as a discussion on the motivations and lessons learned up to now.Comment: 15 pages, 6 figures, accepted for publication in Astronomy & Computin

The role of South Africa in global structural policy

"In the immediate post-Apartheid period many commentators gave the country, and the newly elected African National Congress (ANC) government, short shrift. Whilst there was a predominant air of hope an underlying 'Afro-pessimism' was prevalent. Now, after more than 10 years of sustained - albeit fairly sedentary - economic expansion and a recent acceleration in the growth trajectory opinions are being revised. This re-evaluation is naturally supported by the government. But significant domestic problems remain. These problems play out in South Africa's approach to global economic and political relations, and underpin the analysis in this report. How might these dynamics play out in specific 'global structural domains' in the future? This report is structured as follows: Part two considers South Africa in the global and African contexts. It begins by reviewing South Africa's integration into and prospects in the global economy. Then it considers the domestic socio-economic dynamics within which economic and social policy is formulated and charts the broad contours of economic policy since 1994. It then considers South Africa's environmental challenges and policy responses as a distinct set of challenges. It ends with a brief assessment of the country's domestic political institutions in light of the policy challenges outlined in the previous sections. Part three considers the South African government's views on and stances towards key global governance issues. It begins with a substantive overview of the country's evolving foreign policy in general, then considers a number of different issues in the global governance terrain. It then focuses specifically on global trade governance via the World Trade Organization, and situates this within a discussion of South Africa's broader trade strategy encompassing regional dynamics and bilateral negotiations. Part four briefly outlines the contours of German-South African relations and highlights some challenges in the relationship moving forward. Part five identifies key risk factors facing the South African government and, via a simple scenario exercise indicates possible avenues for deployment of German development assistance in order to assist the South African government to address those challenges." (excerpt

“Funerals aren’t nice but it couldn’t have been nicer”. The makings of a good funeral

There is growing comment in both academic and popular writing about the shape and content of funerals today, with general agreement that we are seeing marked changes with a growing trend towards secularisation and personalisation. Despite this, there is as yet relatively little systematic research on the topic. This article reports on a study funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council UK into spirituality in contemporary funerals. This qualitative study centred around case studies of 46 funerals in the north of England and gathered data from observations of funeral arrangement meetings as well as the funeral and semi-structured interviews with bereaved families and funeral professionals. The way both sets of participants engaged with the funeral and its constituent elements in an active process of meaning-seeking, meaning-creating and meaning-taking was closely aligned with contemporary understandings of humanistic spirituality. There was, however, little evidence of adherence to formal religious belief systems or wider philosophical frameworks amongst the bereaved families but considerable evidence of drawing on religious tradition and specific beliefs to locate personal meaning-making. The authors conclude that the funeral remains a significant ceremonial event which is psycho-social-spiritual in character and purpose

Stratigraphy of lower Cambrian and unconformable lower Carboniferous beds from the Valls unit (Catalonian coastal ranges)

The Palaeozoic rocks outcropping around Valls are divided into two stratigraphic units. The boundary between both is an unconformity. The lower unit is composed by nearshore platform sediments and a Lower Cambrian age is indicated according to ichnotaxa content. The upper unit consists of pink nodular limestones and dark limestones, and it is followed by siliciclastic Culm Facies rocks. These limestones contain conodonts of the uppermost Tournaisian at its base (anchoralis-latus Zone) and lower Bashkirian (Namurian B) in the upper part. This condensed carbonate sequence was coeval with the thick siliciclastic Culm sedimentation in the surrounding areas.Consejo Interinstitucional de Ciencia y Tecnología; AMB94-0953-CO2-01Consejo Interinstitucional de Ciencia y Tecnología; DGE-PB95-1047Consejo Interinstitucional de Ciencia y Tecnología; PB98-155

The geodesic Gauss map of spheres and complex projective space

For an isometrically immersed submanifold, the spherical Gauss map is the induced immersion of the unit normal bundle into the unit tangent bundle. Compact rank one symmetric spaces have the distinguishing feature that their geodesics are closed with the same period, and so we can define the manifold of geodesics as the quotient of the unit tangent bundle by geodesic flow. Through this quotient we define the geodesic Gauss map to be the Lagrangian immersion given by the projection of the spherical Gauss map. In this thesis we establish relationships between the minimality of isometrically immersed submanifolds of the sphere and complex projective space and the minimality of the geodesic Gauss map with respect to the Kähler-Einstein metric on the manifold of geodesics. In particular, we establish that for an isometrically immersed holomorphic submanifold of complex projective space, its geodesic Gauss map is minimal Lagrangian if it has conformal shape form

Südafrika als "Tor nach Afrika"?

Auf dem 4. BRICS-Gipfel in Neu Delhi vom 28. bis 29. März 20012 bezeichnete Südafrikas Präsident Jacob Zuma sein Land als "Gateway", sprich als "Tor" nach Afrika. Es stehe an der Spitze der wirtschaftlichen Integration Afrikas und biete Unternehmen aus Übersee den besten Zugang zum Kontinent. Südafrika bindet zahlreiche andere afrikanische Länder an weltwirtschaftliche Handels- und Finanzströme an. Doch weder ist der gesamte Kontinent über Südafrika global verknüpft, noch ist Südafrika als wirtschaftliches Scharnier zwischen regionaler und globaler Ebene alternativlos. Südafrikas Lage am südlichen Zipfel des afrikanischen Kontinents und naturräumliche Barrieren – schmale, für Häfen ungünstige Küstentreifen, die Große Randstufe, das Kongobecken und der Ostafrikanische Graben – schränken die Gateway-Funktion ein. Seit der Kolonialzeit bindet die Verkehrsinfrastruktur die Staaten des südlichen Afrikas eng an Südafrika. Südafrikas Häfen sind nicht nur erheblich größer, sondern auch regional und global besser verknüpft als Häfen in Angola, Mosambik, Namibia und Tansania – sie erschließen daher die Region. Ferner verwalten viele transnationale Unternehmen ihre Geschäfte im subsaharischen Afrika von Johannesburg und teils auch von Kapstadt aus. Dort profitieren sie von einem für Unternehmen sehr günstigen Umfeld, den ausgezeichneten Verbindungen des Johannesburger Flughafens und regionalen Unternehmensnetzwerken. Die südafrikanische Regierung verfolgt kein Gesamtkonzept, um ihr Land besser als Tor nach Afrika zu positionieren. Ihre industriezentrierte Politik steht dem Gateway-Gedanken teils entgegen. Transnationale Unternehmen koordinieren ihre Afrikageschäfte zunehmend von anderen Standorten auf dem Kontinent. Der Ausbau von Eisenbahnlinien, Straßen und Häfen in Angola, Mosambik und Tansania eröffnet Alternativen zu Südafrika