The European Astronomical Society (EAS) is a society of professional astronomers working in Europe, with currently around 2500 members. It is supported by a network of affiliated societies: close to 30 national societies in most countries in Europe. Among other activities, the EAS organises an annual meeting which attracts well over 1000 participants and provides a forum for both scientific discussions and collaborations, and discussions about issues of science policy. The EAS Council formally adopted, in January 2018, the report produced by the EAS Ethics Working Group entitled EAS Ethics Statement and Guidelines for Good Practice. It is being used by organisers and participants of the EAS Annual Meeting, and is promoted as a tool for discussion and good practice throughout our field. The Ethics Statement covers a very wide range of topics, including Conduct towards others, Research, Publication and authorship, Peer review, Conflicts of interest, Organisation of and professional conduct at conferences and meetings, Fair recruiting, Widening access to our profession, Recommendations for fair employment practices, and Ethics in publishing. We will outline the history and contents of the EAS Ethics Statement and how it will be further developed, and thus illustrate how a scientific society can provide guidance.

For students with visual impairments (VI), the possibility of a future in astronomy, or any science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) field, seems daunting. In order to bolster astronomy and STEM opportunities for high school students with VI (ages 14 – 20) in the United States, we developed the STEM Career Exploration Lab (CEL). Our STEM CEL methodology employs tactile astronomy instruction via 3D printing technologies and unique 3D-printed models, professionals with VI acting as role models, and partnerships with local STEM industries that provide insights into possible career paths. In partnership with the South Carolina Commission for the Blind (SCCB) and the Michigan Bureau of Services for Blind Persons (MBSBP), to date we have held four week-long CELs (June 2017, June and July 2018, August 2019) and a 3D printer build workshop (September 2018), thus far serving about fifty students with VI. We gathered pre- and post-intervention data via student surveys, assessments of students astronomy knowledge, and video recordings of the CEL activities in order to study to what extent the CEL model can enhance the students attitudes towards, interests in, and capacities to participate in astronomy and STEM careers. Once fully tested and refined, we will make our 3D model files and activities freely available for further use and study. This work serves as a testbed for an expanded CEL program aimed at helping increase the representation of persons with VI in astronomy and STEM fields.

The Helping Hands Network, a Liberian non-profit organisation, conducted a workshop for 61 science teachers in August 2019 in collaboration with the University of Liberia. The country has suffered two civil wars and an Ebola crises in the last 30 years with severe consequences for Liberia’s educational sector: less than 10% of physics teachers have a corresponding degree and the only physics department in the country does not offer graduate education. We discuss the challenges and our proposed approach to support science education in Liberia.

We performed an Internet-based questionnaire survey of the opinions of German-speaking psychiatrists regarding the experiences with the 10th revision of the international classification of mental disorders (chapter F of ICD-10). We received 304 completed questionnaires including more than 500 free-text comments. The responding group was characterized by professionally experienced middle-aged psychiatrists. German-speaking psychiatrists were comparatively content with ICD-10. Most diagnostic categories received a “satisfied” or “very satisfied” rating by the majority of respondents. Negative “goodness of fit” ratings – a possible indicator of the need for revision – were not higher than 50% for any category. Based on free-text entries, neurasthenia was the single diagnostic category most often suggested for deletion in ICD-11. Changes were considered necessary mainly for dementias and personality disorders. Adult attention deficit disorder and narcissistic personality disorder were the two diagnostic categories most frequently suggested to be added as new categories. This study provides valuable information related to perceived clinical utility of the classification, though with a narrow sample. Information about clinicians’ experiences should be combined with scientific evidence for the revision process of ICD-11.

Girls’ under-representation in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education is deep rooted and puts a detrimental brake on progress towards sustainable development. Both education and gender equality are an integral part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 2015, as distinct Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The UNESCO Report: Cracking the code: Girls’ and women’s education in STEM provides a global snapshot of this underrepresentation and the factors behind it. The fight against stereotypes to ‘crack the code’, or to decipher the factors that hinder or facilitate girls’ and women’s participation in STEM (and particularly in Astronomy) education must take into account the persisting dichotomy between the so called two cultures.

The IAU is like an old house: Each of the IAU General Secretaries brings her/his individual skills, trying to fix it up. After the collective efforts of several General Secretaries, the house is hopefully kept in reasonable overall shape. But each General Secretary is also in principle responsible for everything, which means that priorities for the way you spend your time must be set – remembering that surprises may occur at any moment.

In my case, I’d like to single out five major initiatives taken during my term, which have probably proved useful in the longer term.

“Urania” is a popular Polish astronomy magazine, one of the oldest in the world among present journals of this type. The first official issue was published in 1922, but the origins of “Urania” are even older, as in 1919 and 1920 there were published a few issues of a predecessor of “Urania” with the same title. So we can say that “Urania” and the IAU are of the same age. The role of “Urania” has been changing during these 100 years, but the magazine has been always a very important entity for the astronomical community in Poland, both professional and amateur. Thousands of pages contain an historical record of astronomy in Poland, as well as the progress of astronomy in the world, including IAU activities.

The first hundred years of the IAU have witnessed scientific and technological progress in astronomy beyond anything imagined at the time the IAU was founded in 1919. What will the next hundred years bring? How do we engage with other sciences, now that our field is becoming more multidisciplinary? How do we convince governments to continue funding our field, in particular the ever more powerful telescopes? And how do we continue to inspire and involve people worldwide in our exciting adventure through space? A brief forward look into the next decade and beyond is presented, with some challenges highlighted.

“Columba-Hypatia: Astronomy for Peace” is a joint astronomy outreach project by GalileoMobile and the Association for Historical Dialogue and Research (AHDR) which takes place on the divided island of Cyprus. The project aims to inspire young people, through astronomy, to be curious about science and the cosmos, while also using astronomy as a tool for promoting meaningful communication and a Culture of Peace and Non-violence. We conduct educational astronomy activities and explore the cosmos with children and the public, bringing together individuals from the various communities of Cyprus ‘under the same sky’ to look beyond borders and inspire a sense of global citizenship.

This summary captures, in the broadest sense, some of the achievements, challenges and spirit of the astronomy for development community at the 30th General Assembly of the IAU.

The calibration hardware system of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) is designed to measure two quantities: a telescope’s instrumental response and atmospheric transmission, both as a function of wavelength. First of all, a “collimated beam projector” is designed to measure the instrumental response function by projecting monochromatic light through a mask and a collimating optic onto the telescope. During the measurement, the light level is monitored with a NIST-traceable photodiode. This method does not suffer from stray light effects or the reflections (known as ghosting) present when using a flat-field screen illumination, which has a systematic source of uncertainty from uncontrolled reflections. It allows for an independent measurement of the throughput of the telescope’s optical train as well as each filter’s transmission as a function of position on the primary mirror. Second, CALSPEC stars can be used as calibrated light sources to illuminate the atmosphere and measure its transmission. To measure the atmosphere’s transfer function, we use the telescope’s imager with a Ronchi grating in place of a filter to configure it as a low resolution slitless spectrograph. In this paper, we describe this calibration strategy, focusing on results from a prototype system at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO) 0.9 meter telescope. We compare the instrumental throughput measurements to nominal values measured using a laboratory spectrophotometer, and we describe measurements of the atmosphere made via CALSPEC standard stars during the same run.

The Virtual Observatory (VO) is an international astronomical community-based initiative. VO aims to allow global electronic access to the available astronomical data archives of space and ground-based observatories and other sky survey databases. VO for education is a project developed within the framework of the European Virtual Observatory (EuroVO) with the aim of diffusing VO data and software to the public, in particular students, teachers and astronomy enthusiasts. VO for education offers use cases, pedagogical units, and simplified professional software that will allow a taste of the emotion of scientific research even to those approaching astronomy for the first time or simply wishing to wander between stars.

We explore the properties of sound and human sound recognition as a means to enhance and accelerate visual-only data analysis methods. The aim of this work is to enable and improve the analysis of large data sets, data requiring rapid analysis, multi-dimensional data, and signal detection in data with low signal-to-noise ratio. We present a prototype tool, StarSound, to sonify data such as astronomical transient light curves, spectra, and power spectra. Stereophonic sound is used to ‘visualise’ and localise the data under examination, and 3-D sound is discussed in conjunction with virtual reality technology, as a means to enhance analysis efficiency and efficacy, including rapid data assessment and training machine learning software. In addition, we explore the use of higher-order harmonics as a means to examine simultaneously multi-dimensional data sets. Such an approach can allow the data to be interpreted in a holistic manner and facilitates the discovery of previously unseen connections and relationships. Furthermore, we exploit the capability of the human brain for selective or focused hearing that enables the identification of desired signals in noisy data, or amidst similar or more significant signals. Finally, we provide research examples that benefit directly from data sonification. The work presented here aims to help tackle the challenges of the upcoming era of Big Data and help optimise, speed up and expand aspects of data analysis requiring human interaction.

The author - with his collaborators - already in years 1995-96 have shown - purely from the analyses of the observations - that the gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) can be till redshift 20. Since that time several other statistical studies of the spatial distribution of GRBs were provided. Remarkable conclusions concerning the star-formation rate and the validity of the cosmological principle were obtained about the regions of the cosmic dawn. In this contribution these efforts are surveyed.