Advances in media technology have made it technically possible to meet pressing worldwide demands for language and literacy training by means of distance instruction. Knowledge gained from a substantial body of experience in distance instruction is available to guide educators in combining technology with effective pedagogical programs. Each medium and each associated technology has unique capabilities and limitations and all media have been applied to distance instruction in varying combinations and with varying degrees of success. Most recently, computers and electronic networking, with their capabilities and their limitations, are making an impact on language instruction (Susser 1993, Warschauer, Turbee and Roberts 1994). Lessons learned from past experience in distance instruction are applicable to new technologies. A common reason for failure has been allowing a fascination with a new media technology to obscure the need for sound pedagogical design; a second reason has been a failure to consider socioeconomic factors (Schramm, Nelson, and Betham 1981).

A major goal of contemporary astrophysics is understanding the origin of the most massive galaxies in the universe, particularly nearby ellipticals and spirals. Theoretical models of galaxy formation have existed for many decades, although observational evidence at both low and high redshifts is only beginning to put constraints on different ideas. We briefly describe these observations and how they are revealing the methods by which galaxies form by contrasting and comparing fiducial rapid collapse and hierarchical formation model predictions. The available data show that cluster ellipticals must have rapidly formed at z > 2, and that up to 50% of all massive galaxies at z ~ 2.5 are involved in major mergers. While the former is consistent with the monolithic collapse picture, we argue that hierarchical formation is the only model that can reproduce all the available observations.

New GSC-II proper motions of RR Lyrae and Blue Horizontal Branch (BHB) stars near the North Galactic Pole are used to show that the Galactic Halo 5 kpc above the Plane has a significantly retrograde galactic rotation.

We summarize results from the first year of the Lenses Structure and Dynamics Survey (LSD). Using the Echelle Imager and Spectrograph at the Keck-II Telescope, we have measured spatially resolved velocity dispersion profiles of a sample of distant (up to z=1) early-type galaxies that are gravitational lenses. By combining lensing and dynamical analyses we can set firm limits on the dark matter density profile, the controversial inner slope of the dark matter halo, the mass-to-light ratio of the luminous component, the total mass distribution, and on the velocity ellipsoid by breaking the mass anisotropy-relation. The implications of these measurements in terms on the epoch and mechanism of formation of E/S0 galaxies and of the value of the Hubble constant are briefly discussed.

We use the method of statistical parallaxes to construct the rotation curve of the Milky Way spanning the Galactocentric distance interval from 2 to 14 kpc based on observational data for young disk populations and refine the distance scales of the objects belonging to young disk populations (classical Cepheids, young open clusters, blue supergiants, HII regions, and HI).

We obtain ages and metallicities of four open clusters from characteristics of SB2 eclipsing binary members of these clusters. In addition, we present similar estimates obtained with a modification of the color-magnitude diagram method for six open and globular clusters.

A sample of nearly 400 stars, selected from the Tycho-2 catalog, has been observed towards the North Galactic Pole with the high resolution echelle spectrograph Elodie. Combining those data with a local sample from the Hipparcos catalog, a detailed study of the disk components is done. A dynamical analysis is also performed, enabling us to put new constraints on the local mass density.

We investigate the orbital behavior in a class of analytic potentials in order to isolate the families of orbits which lead to the appropriate appearance of boxy/peanut features. This is the first step towards understanding the orbits of particles in N-body simulations of barred galaxies. Our final goal is to find out which dynamical mechanisms determine the peanut or boxy shapes.

A capture scenario of the origin of ω Centauri is studied numerically. We show that the most serious problem of this scenario - how to move a progenitor of ω Cen from a typical dwarf orbit to the current position of ω Cen - can be solve for a nucleated dwarf galaxy with Hernquist density profile.

Recent progress on the structure and dynamics of bulges is reviewed. Those aspects that link galaxy bulges either to oblate spheroids akin to elliptical galaxies or to rapidly-rotating, flattened systems more nearly resembling the products of disk internal transformations, are highlighted. The analysis of surface brightness profiles derived from HST data is reviewed to show that unresolved nuclear components detected by HST have biased the determination of surface brightness profiles obtained from the ground; r1/4 profiles are virtually nonexistent in galaxy bulges. Predictions from accretion N-body models on the shape of surface brightness profiles are discussed. The position of bulges on the Fundamental Plane (FP) of elliptical galaxies is examined to infer clues on bulge population ages and bulge dynamical structure. Kinematic diagnostics on the internal dynamics of bulges are examined. Finally, a new approach to the kinematic analysis of galaxies, based on the use of synthetic spectra of single stellar population models instead of the standard stellar templates, is presented.

We use a Fourier analysis method to study the spiral structure of the disc galaxies in the Frei et al. (1996) sample. We show that m=1 components are more often associated with asymmetries between the two arms of an m=2 spiral than with global lopsidedness of the disc. The power in the m=2 components is correlated with the arm class. The majority of galaxies with arm class 9 or 12 show clear signs of modulation in their spiral arms, suggesting the action of an amplification mechanism like the Swing amplification. Finally we report new detections of underlying large-scale bisymmetric components in flocculent spiral galaxies.

A simple model for the evolution of an isothermal disk has been developed. It combines both the chemical evolution (through the Age-Metallicity Relation) and dynamical evolution (through the age-dispersion relation). Applying this model to a sample of Red Clump Stars from the Tycho-2 catalog, observed with the high resolution echelle spectrograph Elodie at the Observatoire de Haute Provence, we derive the underlying Star Formation History and compare it with local determinations using chromospheric activity survey by Rocha-Pinto et al. (2000b).

We have compiled a new catalogue of open clusters in the Galaxy which updates the previous catalogues of Lyngå (1987) and of Mermilliod (1995) (included in the WEBDA database). New objects and new data, in particular, data on kinematics (proper motions, radial velocities) that were not present in the old catalogues, have been included. Virtually all the clusters (1622) presently known were included, which represents an increment of about 450 objects relative to the Lyngå (1987) catalogue. The catalogue is presented in a single table containing all the important data (positions, reddenings, distances, ages, kinematics) which makes it easy to use. The catalogue includes mean absolute proper motions for hundreds of open clusters (Dias et al. 2001, 2002a) obtained using the Tycho2 proper motions. Unpublished mean radial velocities of several dozens of clusters are also presented in this work. The catalogue is being constantly updated and the latest version can be accessed on-line at http://www.astro.iag.usp.br/~wilton/ were more data such as membership probabilities for individual stars can also be accessed.

As the first step in our study of the spiral structure of disk galaxies in the Frei sample, we determine the values of their deprojection angles. We introduce two methods based on the analysis of the spiral structure. These two methods behave as well as the rest of the methods used normally in the literature.

The kinematical parameters of the local field RR Lyrae population and the zero-point of the log $P-\langle M_K\rangle$ relation for these variables are inferred by applying the statistical parallax (maximum-likeli-hood) technique to a sample of 182 RR Lyraes with known periods, radial-velocities, metallicities, K-band photometry, and absolute proper motions on the ICRS system. Hipparcos, Tycho-2, SPM, UCAC, NPM1, and the Four-Million Star Catalog (Volchkov et al. 1992) were used as the sources of proper motions; the proper motions of the last two catalogs are reduced to the Hipparcos (ICRS) system (Dambis & Rastorguev 2001). The K-band magnitudes were adopted from the list of Fernley et al. (1998) and supplemented by the data of the 2MASS Second Incremental Data Release. The parameters of the velocity distribution are found to be: ($U_0 = -10 \pm 10$, $V_0 = -51 \pm 8$, $W_0 = -14 \pm 5)$ km s-1; ($\sigma_U = 62 \pm 10$, $\sigma_V = 45 \pm 8$, $\sigma_W = 28 \pm 6$) km s-1: and ($U_0 = -23 \pm 13$, $V_0 = -213 \pm 12$, $W_0 = -5 \pm 8$) km s-1; ($\sigma_U = 157 \pm 12$, $\sigma_V = 98 \pm 8$, $\sigma_W = 91 \pm 7$) km s-1 for the thick-disk (41 stars) and halo (141 stars) objects, respectively. The zero-point of the infrared PL relation of Jones et al. (1992) (based on the results obtained using the Baade-Wesselink method) is confirmed: we find $\langle M_K\rangle = -2.33 \cdot \log P_{\rm F}-0.82 \pm 0.12$ compared to $\langle M_K\rangle = -2.33 \cdot \log P_{\rm F}-0.88$ as inferred by Jones et al. (1992). A conversion of the resulting log $P-\langle M_K\rangle $ relation to V-band luminosities yields the metallicity-luminosity relation $\langle M_V\rangle = +1.04 + 0.14 \cdot [$Fe/H$] \pm 0.11$. Our results imply a solar Galactocentric distance of $R_0 = 7.6 \pm 0.4$ kpc and an LMC distance modulus of $DM_{\rm LMC} = 18.18 \pm 0.12$ (cluster RR Lyraes) or $DM_{\rm LMC} = 18.11 \pm 0.12$ (field RR Lyraes), thereby favoring the so-called short distance scale.

We present the first determination of fundamental parameters (positions, reddenings, distances, ages and kinematics) for a sample of 22 open clusters in the solar vicinity. A systematic search for unknown open clusters using the astrometric and photometric data included in the Tycho2 catalogue has resulted in the identification of several candidates. In this work, we introduce 11 of the most promising open cluster candidates. The reality of the stellar aggregates is supported by the analysis of proper motions, colour-magnitude diagrams, stellar density distributions, and by the visual inspection of the Digitised Sky Survey (DSS) plates. The proper motion data included in the Tycho2 catalogue has also allowed us to identify members in 11 open clusters for which no information, besides their positions and estimates of their apparent diameters, was previously available. Reddenings, distances and ages were determined for most objects using colour-magnitude diagrams for cluster members, built using the photometry included in Tycho2, complemented by spectral types found in the literature. We find that the majority of the aggregates are nearby (closer than ~500 pc) open clusters.

We have examined the spectroscopic properties of a sample of 19 optically bright, low luminosity core-dominated radio sources; this sample was expected to contain a high fraction of objects observed at small angles to the line-of-sight (blazar-like objects). Our study focuses on the properties - stellar populations and optical emission-line spectra - of such nuclei. Stellar population synthesis shows that their nuclear populations are composed, in a general way, of old stars of solar metallicity or lower; the dust content is weak. After subtraction of the stellar contribution, we are left with a set of nuclear emission-line spectra; their analysis shows that most of the objects harbour a Low Ionisation Nuclear Emission Region (or LINER), whose contribution was highly diluted by the host galaxy starlight. Such a low ionisation spectrum is in agreement with the black hole mass values and sub-Eddington accretion rates published for some BL Lacs; also, the stellar populations derived in this study are in agreement with those usually found in LINERs. Our findings give strength to a unifying picture involving low luminosity blazar-like objects and FR I radio-galaxies (which usually display LINER-type spectra).