Using the almost all-sky 2MASS Photometric Redshift catalogue (2MPZ) we perform for the first time a tomographic analysis of galaxy angular clustering in the local Universe (z < 0.24). We estimate the angular auto-and cross-power spectra of 2MPZ galaxies in three photometric redshift bins, and use dedicated mock catalogues to assess their errors. We measure a subset of cosmological parameters, having fixed the others at their Planck values, namely the baryon fraction f b = 0.14 +0.09 −0.06 , the total matter density parameter Ω m = 0.30 ± 0.06, and the effective linear bias of 2MPZ galaxies b eff , which grows from 1.1 +0.3 −0.4 at z = 0.05 up to 2.1 +0.3 −0.5 at z = 0.2, largely because of the flux-limited nature of the dataset. The results obtained here for the local Universe agree with those derived with the same methodology at higher redshifts, and confirm the importance of the tomographic technique for next-generation photometric surveys such as Euclid or LSST.

The metric outside an isolated object made up of ordinary matter is bound to be the classical Schwarzschild vacuum solution of General Relativity. Nevertheless, some solutions are known (e.g. Morris-Thorne wormholes) that do not match Schwarzschild asymptotically. On a phenomenological point of view, gravitational lensing in metrics falling as 1/r q has recently attracted great interest. In this work, we explore the conditions on the source matter for constructing static spherically symmetric metrics exhibiting an arbitrary power-law as Newtonian limit. For such space-times we also derive the expressions of gravitational redshift and force on probe masses, which, together with light deflection, can be used in astrophysical searches of non-Schwarzschild objects made up of exotic matter. Interestingly, we prove that even a minimally coupled scalar field with a power-law potential can support non-Schwarzschild metrics with arbitrary asymptotic behaviour.

The aim of this study is to analyze secondary school students’ career interests in STEM subjects. This survey-based quantitative research is provided to gain insight into the STEM career interests of 398 students (7–11 graders), in the Almaty region of the Kazakhstan Republic. Through parametric and non-parametric test analysis, the relationship between students’ STEM career interest and their gender, their parents’ occupation, parents’ education, family size, school type, and school location were revealed. Results indicated that, on average, participant students showed positive interest in STEM careers. In particular, boys’ and girls’ responses were equally positive in many sub-scales of STEM. Additionally, great interest in STEM careers was shown by village students, whereas, for private school students who are living in the city, STEM career interests were the lowest in our sample. We also found that students’ family size, parents’ education, and occupation does not relate to students’ STEM career interest. Implications for STEM education in Kazakhstan are further discussed in this study.

For all exoplanet candidates, the reliability of a claimed detection needs to be assessed through a careful study of systematic errors in the data to minimize the false positives rate. We present a method to investigate such systematics in microlensing data sets using the microlensing event OGLE-2013-BLG-0446 as a case study. The event was observed from multiple sites around the world and its high magnification (A max ∼ 3000) allowed us to investigate the effects of terrestrial and annual parallax. Real-time modeling of the event while it was still ongoing suggested the presence of an extremely low-mass companion (∼3M ⊕ ) to the lensing star, leading to substantial follow-up coverage of the light curve. We test and compare different models for the light curve and conclude that the data do not favor the planetary interpretation when systematic errors are taken into account.