There is a growing body of neurological, cognitive and social psychological research to suggest the possibility of positive transfer effects from structured musical engagement. In particular, there is evidence to suggest that engagement in musical activities may impact on social inclusion (sense of self and of being socially integrated). Tackling social exclusion and promoting social inclusion are common concerns internationally, such as in the UK and the EC, and there are many diverse Government ministries and agencies globally that see the arts in general and music in particular as a key means by which social needs can be addressed. As part of a wider evaluation of a national, Government-sponsored music education initiative for Primary-aged children in England (‘Sing Up’), opportunity was taken by the authors, at the request of the funders, to assess any possible relationship between (a) children’s developing singing behaviour and development and (b) their social inclusion (sense of self and of being socially integrated). Subsequently, it was possible to match data from n=6087 participants, drawn from the final three years of data collection (2008-2011), in terms of each child’s individually assessed singing ability (based on their singing behaviour of two well-known songs to create a 'normalised singing score') and their written responses to a specially-designed questionnaire that included a set of statements related to children’s sense of being socially included to which the children indicated their level of agreement on a seven-point Likert scale. Data analyses suggested that the higher the normalized singing development rating, the more positive the child’s self-concept and sense of being socially included, irrespective of singer age, sex and ethnicity.

Knowledge of the Earth’s atmospheric optical turbulence is critical for astronomical instrumentation. Not only does it enable performance verification and optimisation of existing systems but it is required for the design of future instruments. As a minimum this includes integrated astro-atmospheric parameters such as seeing, coherence time and isoplanatic angle, but for more sophisticated systems such as wide field adaptive optics enabled instrumentation the vertical structure of the turbulence is also required. Stereo-SCIDAR is a technique specifically designed to characterise the Earth’s atmospheric turbulence with high altitude resolution and high sensitivity. Together with ESO, Durham University has commissioned a Stereo-SCIDAR instrument at Cerro Paranal, Chile, the site of the Very Large Telescope (VLT), and only 20 km from the site of the future Extremely Large Telescope (ELT). Here we provide results from the first 18 months of operation at ESO Paranal including instrument comparisons and atmospheric statistics. Based on a sample of 83 nights spread over 22 months covering all seasons, we find the median seeing to be 0.64” with 50% of the turbulence confined to an altitude below 2 km and 40% below 600 m. The median coherence time and isoplanatic angle are found as 4.18 ms and 1.75” respectively. A substantial campaign of inter-instrument comparison was also undertaken to assure the validity of the data. The Stereo-SCIDAR profiles (optical turbulence strength and velocity as a function of altitude) have been compared with the Surface-Layer SLODAR, MASS-DIMM and the ECMWF weather forecast model. The correlation coefficients are between 0.61 (isoplanatic angle) and 0.84 (seeing).

The MASS (Multi-Aperture Scintillation Sensor) instrument consists of a 14-cm off-axis reflecting telescope and a detector unit which measures the scintillations of single stars in four concentric zones of the telescope pupil using photo-multipliers. Statistical analysis of these signals yields information of the vertical turbulence profile with a resolution of dh/h=0.5. We describe the instrument and present the results of its first field tests, including comparisons with DIMM seeing monitor and generalized SCIDAR. MASS will be used to obtain the extensive statistics of turbulence profiles at potential sites of future giant telescopes, as needed to predict the quality of adaptive seeing compensation.

The atmospheric turbulence and meteorology of the Maidanak Observatory in Uzbekistan are reviewed. Night time seeing was measured during the period August 1996-November 1999 with the ESO Differential Image Motion Monitor. The median zenith seeing (FWHM) for the entire period of observations is 0.69 at 0.5 µm. A maximum clear sky season for Maidanak is July-September, with about 90% of possible clear time and a median seeing of 0.69. The best monthly median seeing, 0.62 , is observed in November. The winter maximum of clear time is usually observed in February (up to 50%) with a FWHM of 0.77. During an additional site testing campaign (9 nights) organized in July 1998, the median wavefront outer scale L 0 of 25.9 m and a median isoplanatic angle θ 0 of 2.48 were measured with the Generalized Seeing Monitor developed at the University of Nice. The temporal evolution of the wavefront can be described by several layers moving at slow velocities with predominant direction from the West. This corresponds to a remarkably large atmospheric time constant. No correlation between wavefront velocity and the wind velocity at ground level was found. The good seeing, large isoplanatic angle and, especially, slow wind, place Maidanak Observatory among the best international astronomical sites for high angular resolution observations by interferometry and adaptive optics.