The NRAO 43m telescope has been refurbished and begun regular observations in the frequency range 170 - 1700 MHz. The 43 m operations support a Bi-Static Radar Collaboration to measure the Earth's ionospheric turbulence. Researchers from Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden have designed and built a unique design wide-band feed, 150 - 1700 MHz. Lincoln Laboratories/MIT has packaged the feed with room temperature low noise amplifiers. Lincoln Laboratories has installed a high-dynamic range RF system together with a wide-band sampler system. The NRAO operates the 43 m telescope according to schedules authored by Lincoln Laboratories. Currently the 43 m telescope is tracking spacecraft 48 hr a week. The tracking antenna operation is completely automated. A group at MIT/Haystack have installed a second radar experiment at the 43 m as well as an array of 6 ‘discone’ antennas. Their experiment is testing the use of reflected FM radio stations as probes of the ionosphere.

We dicuss new Galactic ISM results and progress towards low-frequency spectroscopy

Clusters of galaxies contain several types of diffuse radio sources with very steep radio spectra which are associated with the cluster environment, including central radio bubbles, cluster radio relics, and cluster radio halos. Radio halos and relics are found only in merging clusters. Cluster radio relics may be produced by particle acceleration in merger shocks, while radio halos, may result from electron re-acceleration by turbulence produced by mergers. Secondary production of electrons and positrons by hadronic interactions also plays a role. If cluster radio halos and relics are related to mergers, then deep low frequency radio surveys could detect 1000's of clusters. Long-wavelength radio observations have a great potential to help us understand clusters and large scale structure, and can provide a diagnostic of cluster mergers, which affect the use of clusters in cosmological and dark energy studies.

The energetic shock waves associated with the violent large-scale structure formation process are able to accelerate relativistic electrons and protons. The induced non-thermal emission, especially at long radio wavelength, provides a fascinating perspective into structure formation, the relativistic Universe, and cosmic magnetic fields.

The particle reaceleration model is one of the most promising possibilities to explain the Mpc-scale diffuse radio emission detected in a number of galaxy clusters. Ongoing and future radio observations at low frequencies may help in constraining and testing this model.

We study giant radio sources at long wavelengths.

I review the potential for observing cosmic re-ionization using the HI 21 cm line.

With the advent in the near future of radio telescopes such as LOFAR and the SKA, a new window on the high-redshift Universe will be opened. In particular, it will be possible, for the first time, to observe the 21-cm signal from the diffuse IGM prior to its complete re-ionization and thus probe the ‘dark ages’. I discuss the theoretical modelling of the re-ionization process and its observability through the 21-cm signal and the CMB anisotropies.

Radio galaxies are identified with the most massive host galaxies known out to z = 5 and can put strong constraints on galaxy evolution models, provided their space density is accurately determined. Here, I present the important role low-frequency radio surveys will have in this by selecting the highest redshift radio galaxies using the steepness of their radio spectra.

We have observed the Spitzer extragalactic First Look Survey (xFLS) region with the Giant Meterwave Radio Telescope (GMRT), near Pune, India, at 610 MHz. Seven pointings were observed with the GMRT, one central and six in a surrounding hexagon. Each field was observed with an integration time of ~ 200 min., in a series of scans spread over a range of LST to improve u – v coverage. Two sidebands, each of 16 MHz with 128 channels – to allow narrow band interference to be excised efficiently – were observed. The synthesised beam of the images is ~ 5″ and as the primary beam of the GMRT at 610 MHz is ~ 43′, these seven pointings cover most of the xFLS region.

We present a few results of a low-frequency southern sky survey carried out using the Mauritius Radio Telescope (MRT).

LOFAR (Low Frequency Array) is an innovative radio telescope optimized for the frequency range 30–240 MHz. The telescope is realized as a phased aperture array without any moving parts. Digital beam forming allows the telescope to point to any part of the sky within a second. Transient buffering makes retrospective imaging of explosive short-term events possible. The scientific focus of LOFAR will initially be on four key science projects (KSPs): (i) Detection of the formation of the very first stars and galaxies in the universe during the so-called epoch of reionization by measuring the power spectrum of the neutral hydrogen 21-cm line (Shaver et al. 1999) on the ∼ 5′ scale; (ii) Low-frequency surveys of the sky with of order 108 expected new sources; (iii) All-sky monitoring and detection of transient radio sources such as γ-ray bursts, X-ray binaries, and exo-planets (Farrell et al. 2004); and (iv) Radio detection of ultra-high energy cosmic rays and neutrinos (Falcke & Gorham 2003) allowing for the first time access to particles beyond 1021 eV (Scholten et al. 2006). Apart from the KSPs open access for smaller projects is also planned. Here we give a brief description of the telescope.

The Long Wavelength Array (LWA) will be a new, open, user-oriented astronomical instrument operating in the relatively unexplored window from 20–80 MHz near arcsecond angular resolution and milliJansky sensitivity. Operated by the University of New Mexico on behalf of the Southwest Consortium (SWC) the LWA will provide a unique training ground for the next generation of radio astronomers. Students may also put skills learned on the LWA to work in computer science, electrical engineering, and the communications industry, among others. The development of the LWA will follow a phased build which benefits from lessons learned at each phase. Four university-based Scientific Testing and Evaluation (ST&E) teams with different areas of concentration: (i) high-resolution imaging and particle acceleration; (ii) wide-field imaging and large scale structures; (iii) ionospheric physics; and (iv) radio frequency interference (RFI) suppression and transient detection will provide the feedback needed to assure that science objectives are met as the build develops. Currently in its first year of construction funding, the LWA team is working on the design for the first station (see also Ray et al. 2006).

The Square Kilometre Array SKA is intended to be the centimeter- and meter-wavelength telescope for the 21st century. At long wavelengths, the SKA's key science projects include the search for highly redshifted hydrogen, including the signal from the epoch of re-ionization, and the search for the first supermassive black holes.

This summary of JD13, Exploiting large surveys for Galactic astronomy, is based on the talks that were given during the meeting and/or submitted to the full proceedings which appeared in MemSAI 77 no. 4, 2006. The electronic version of this MemSAI volume also has the abstracts and images of the posters that were displayed and discussed during JD13. Here can only be listed their titles and authors. A panel discussion followed the talks, and a summary of the topics covered is added. Finally, there come the concluding remarks.

Joint Discussion 14 was held at the General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union from August 17 until 23 in the beautiful Bohemian capital, Prague. The blueprints for this meeting were laid out during the MODEST-5 workshop, held in the Canadian city of Hamilton, Ontario in August 2004. We were sitting in a nice cafe with local brew and food, discussing the future of the MODEST community when we posed the idea for this Joint Discussion at the General Assembly. The meeting was then coined MODEST-7.

I provide some background about recent efforts made in modeling dense stellar systems, within the context of the MODEST initiative. During the last four years, we have seen more than fifteen MODEST workshops, with an attendance between twenty and a hundred participants, and topics ranging from very specialized discussions to rather general overviews.

I'll describe the current status of the GRAPE-DR project. The GRAPE-DR is the next-generation hardware for N-body simulation. Unlike the previous GRAPE hardwares, it is programmable SIMD machine with a large number of simple processors integrated into a single chip. The GRAPE-DR chip consists of 512 simple processors and operates at the clock speed of 500 MHz, delivering the theoretical peak speed of 512/226 Gflops (single/double precision). As of August 2006, the first prototype board with the sample chip successfully passed the test we prepared. The full GRAPE-DR system will consist of 4096 chips, reaching the theoretical peak speed of 2 Pflops.

Large scale, direct particle-particle, brute force N-body simulations are required to accurately resolve numerically transport processes of energy and angular momentum due to two-body relaxation, and interactions between supermassive black holes and other particles having a much smaller mass. Direct accurate N-body codes are the widely used tool for such simulations, e.g., NBODY4 or NBODY6 (Aarseth 1999, 2003), see also Harfst et al. (2007) for a less complex code variant, used for benchmarks in this paper. Makino (2002) has presented another direct N-body summation code, which is optimized for a quadratic layout of processor (p required to be a square number).