Neurodegenerative diseases are a pathologically, clinically and genetically diverse group of disorders without effective disease-modifying therapies. Pathologically, these disorders are characterised by disease-specific protein aggregates in neurons and/or glia and referred to as proteinopathies. Many neurodegenerative diseases show pathological overlap with the same abnormally deposited protein occurring in anatomically distinct regions, which give rise to specific patterns of cognitive and motor clinical phenotypes. Sequential distribution patterns of protein inclusions throughout the brain have been described. Rather than occurring in isolation, it is increasingly recognised that combinations of one or more proteinopathies with or without cerebrovascular disease frequently occur in individuals with neurodegenerative diseases. In addition, complex constellations of ageing-related and incidental pathologies associated with tau, TDP-43, Aβ, α-synuclein deposition have been commonly reported in longitudinal ageing studies. This review provides an overview of current classification of neurodegenerative and age-related pathologies and presents the spectrum and complexity of mixed pathologies in community-based, longitudinal ageing studies, in major proteinopathies, and genetic conditions. Mixed pathologies are commonly reported in individuals >65 years with and without cognitive impairment; however, they are increasingly recognised in younger individuals (<65 years). Mixed pathologies are thought to lower the threshold for developing cognitive impairment and dementia. Hereditary neurodegenerative diseases also show a diverse range of mixed pathologies beyond the proteinopathy primarily linked to the genetic abnormality. Cases with mixed pathologies might show a different clinical course, which has prognostic relevance and obvious implications for biomarker and therapy development, and stratifying patients for clinical trials.

HAT-South is a network of six identical, fully automated wide field telescopes, to be located at three sites (Chile: Las Campanas, Australia: Siding Springs, and Namibia: HESS site) in the Southern hemisphere. The primary purpose of the network is to detect and characterize a large number of extra-solar planets transiting nearby bright stars, and to explore their diversity. Operation of HAT-South is a collaboration among the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA), Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA) and the Australian National University (ANU). The network is expected to be ready for initial science operations in 2009. The three sites will permit near round-the-clock monitoring of selected fields, and the continuous data-stream will greatly enhance recovery of transits. HAT-South will be sensitive to planetary transits down to R≈14 across a 128 square-degrees combined field of view, thereby targeting a large number of dwarfs with feasible confirmation-mode follow-up. We anticipate a yearly detection rate of approximately 25 planets transiting bright stars.

HATNet is a network of six identical, fully automated wide field telescopes, four of which are located in Arizona, and two at Hawaii. The purpose of the network is to search for transiting extrasolar planets around relatively bright stars (8 < I < 12). The longitudinal coverage of 3.5 hours greatly enhances transit detection efficiency. HATNet has been operational since 2004, and has taken more than 1/2 million science frames at 5-min integrations, covering about 7% of the sky. Photometric precision reaches 3mmag rms at 5.5 min cadence at I ≈ 8, and is 1% at I ≈ 11.3. Hundreds of transit candidates have been detected in the data, and have been subject to vigorous follow-up by various 1m-class facilities, both spectroscopy and follow-up photometry. A fraction of the candidates that have survived these steps as not being false alarms have been observed by high resolution and precision spectrographs (primarily Keck/HIRES), to confirm their planetary nature and characterize their properties. So far nine transiting planets have been reported, making HATNet a very successful survey.