We simulate the characteristics of the Galactic population of radio and gamma-ray pulsars using Monte Carlo techniques. At birth, neutron stars are spatially distributed with supernova-kick velocities in the Galactic disk and randomly dispersed in age back to 109 years. They are evolved in the Galactic gravitational potential to the present time.

Over the past years observations of young and populous star clusters have shown that the stellar initial mass function (IMF) appears to be an invariant featureless Salpeter power law with an exponent α=2.35 for stars more massive than a few Msolar. A consensus has also emerged that most, if not all, stars form in stellar groups and star clusters

The last decade has seen an amazing transformation in our ideas about the central bulges of disk galaxies. We are probably only half-way through this change. In this talk I give an overview of three areas of my specific interest; all are presented as ingredients for further refining our concept of bulge. First, I discuss whether the inner few

We investigate the nuclear and global structure of early-type galaxies, and the apparent disparity between the Nuker and Sersic models for radial light profiles. We show that the so-called "power-law" galaxies in fact have Sersic r1/n profiles over their entire observed radial range. Consequently, only three (Sersic-profile) parameters are required

We report the discovery of a radio-quiet type 2 quasar (SDSS J165315.06+234943.0 nicknamed the `Beetle' at z = 0.103) with unambiguous evidence for active galactic nucleus (AGN) radio-induced feedback acting across a total extension of ˜46 kpc and up to ˜26 kpc from the AGN. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first radio-quiet system where

We present a multi-wavelength study of the gas dynamics and star formation in the grand-design spiral galaxy NGC 5248, illustrating how coupled dynamical mechanisms can generate spiral structures from tens of kpc to hundreds of pc, drive disk evolution, and fuel star formation on progressively smaller scales. Although to date NGC 5248 has been