At this meeting we presented a spinfoam model in which the fundamental "bubble amplitudes" (the analog of the one-loop corrections in QFT) are finite as the cutoff is removed. The model is a natural variant of the field theoretical formulation of the Barrett-Crane model. As the last, the model is a quantum BF theory plus an implementation of the

Non-axisymmetric features (such as bars and spirals) as well as general triaxialities (such as those of the bulge and halo) drive the dynamical and secular evolution of disk galaxies by exerting gravitational torques which redistribute mass and angular momentum. While most (> 70 %) spirals are barred in the local Universe, early studies of the HDF

We present simultaneous and continuous observations of H_alpha, H_beta, NaI D_1, D_2 and HeI D_3 lines of the chromospherically active binary HR 1099. We have observed HR 1099 for more than 3 weeks almost continuously and monitored two flares. An increase in H_alpha, CaII H & K, H_beta, HeI D_3 and HeI lambda6678 and a strong filling-in of the NaI

We describe new methods of analysis that have been developed in order to make optimal use of the stellar spectral data obtained during the course of follow-up medium-resolution observations of color-selected stars from the ``Century Survey.'' The initial selection of stars in the stellar component of the Century Survey is based on broadband V and R

A further fundamental modification needs to be made to the Freeman (1970) law, such that not only do LSB galaxies possess fainter central surface brightnesses than the canonical Freeman value, but the upper limit is in fact an upper (bright) `envelope' of points in the central disk surface-brightness - log(scale-length) diagram, with slope ~2.

We describe the progress of a large optical and near-infrared imaging study of a complete sample of 57 spiral galaxies. We have obtained B, I, K' and Hα imaging to map stellar populations and massive star formation (SF) across the arm and interarm regions, in order to study the distribution of mass and SF in these different and distinct