We present results of integral field optical spectroscopy of five luminous blue compact dwarf galaxies. The data were obtained using the fiber system INTEGRAL attached to the William Herschel Telescope. The galaxies Mrk 370, Mrk 35, Mrk 297, Mrk 314, and III Zw 102 were observed. The central 33.6''×29.4'' regions of the galaxies were mapped with a

The paper describes an application of the tree classification method Random Forest (RF), as used in the analysis of data from the ground-based gamma telescope MAGIC. In such telescopes, cosmic gamma-rays are observed and have to be discriminated against a dominating background of hadronic cosmic-ray particles. We describe the application of RF for

With the recent discoveries of hundreds of extrasolar planets, the search for planets like Earth and life in the universe is quickly gaining momentum. In the future, large space observatories could directly detect the light scattered from rocky planets, but they would not be able to spatially resolve a planet's surface. Using reflectance models and

This is the second part of an Hα kinematics follow-up survey of the Spitzer Infrared Nearby Galaxies Survey (SINGS) sample. The aim of this paper is to shed new light on the role of baryons and their kinematics and on the dark/luminous matter relation in the star-forming regions of galaxies, in relation with studies at other wavelengths. The data

HELAS is a Coordination Action funded under the European Commission's Sixth Framework Programme (FP6) since April 1st, 2006 till March 31st, 2010. The HELAS Consortium includes 10 partner institutions that host researchers active in helio- and asteroseismology. This initiative offers a unique chance to advance the field further by coordinating the

Convective instability has been a mechanism used to explain the formation of solar photospheric flux tubes with kG field strength. However, the turbulence of the Earth's atmosphere has prevented ground-based observers from examining the hypothesis with precise polarimetric measurement on the subarcsecond scale flux tubes. Here we discuss