Something in Common With Trees and Human: Change to Adapt

Bahar Elif Akyuz
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Something in Common With Trees and Human: Change to Adapt

Something is common in Trees and Human: Change to Adapt

As we know the cell is the basic structural, functional, and biological unit of all known living organisms. The number of cells in plants and animals varies from species to species but humans contain about 100 trillion cells.

Since our bodies are huge masses of atoms we can generate electricity. Protons have a positive charge, neutrons have a neutral charge, and electrons have a negative charge. When we talk about the nervous system sending ‘signals’ to the brain, or synapses ‘firing’ or the brain we’re talking about electricity. It is the electrical signal which carries messages between point A and point B.




(Craig Zuckerman/Visuals) http://health.howstuffworks.com/human-body/systems/nervous-system/human-body-make-electricity.htm

According to the scientists we are not the only one who uses electrical signals to communicate between cells inside the organism.

Humans aren’t the only one in electrical signalling

When Mimosa leaf induces electric signals, many other plant cells surprisingly realize this communication. Regulating the electrical charges in order to adapt the new situations is very common amongst plants.

There is tactile signalling (externally circumstanced) makes the plant to adapt the current conditions. Prof. Daniel Chamovitz explains that phenomenon as: “plant responses to tactile signalling over 2% of the 25.000. Arabidopsis (thaliana) genes are activated when you touch a plant. When an animal brushes up against it or even when the wind shakes its leaves as well. A plant rooted in the soil has to respond to multiple ways in order to modulate its growth, its own physiology. It’s an adaptation to survive in a changing environment is impressive” Also in Venus flytraps, closes when a pray gets in, by the help of electrical charges in the membrane. That helps the plant to depolarize ions. The release of calcium ions in response to the depolarization is very similar to what happens in neural communication in humans.” The electrical mechanism allows plants for short term memory and our brains work also electrical potentials one of which involves also in human short term memory.

Thigmomorphogenesis

Jovanov and Alexander G. Volkov has mentioned in their article on Plant Electrostimulation and Data Acquisition a similar thing. ‘‘Monitoring the electrical signaling in higher plants represents a promising method to investigate fast electrical communication during environmental changes.’’

Plants are known specifically sensitive even for a small change of temperature like cold, warm or any type of weather conditions.

Trees also adopts to its nature thanks to electrical signalling (Coursera Professor Daniel Chamovitz)

In that picture simply we see two same types of a tree. The first one lives in the valley has relatively shorter branches. The one on the left side, top of a mountain, find ways to sustain its own survival. The one which is relatively longer branches exposed to a strong wind. It must have adapted some skills by transforming the mechanic sensitive stimulations into information by leaning branches to one side.

Sometimes natural changes effects on animal behaviours too. Like changing day length affects a bird’s pituitary gland causing it to secrete hormones that control avian behaviour. Short autumn days elicit a ‘wanderlust’, ultimately leading to migratory behaviour.

Plant Biology To a Complex Human Structure

Electrical Signalization in Plants and Brain Neuron Synapses In Humans

That signalization contextual transfers the information of external conditions is much more complex in animal cells than in plant cells. How these adaptation skills have been developed in order to make the survival possible is still a subject of researches.  

The information transfer by the help of genes and chemicals makes humans also to survive in different circumstances. The scientists have discovered that there is a big connection to human responses like in plant cells. Calcium regulates electrical charge and communication between the cells of a plant by binding a very important protein called calmudilin. In plant cells Calmodulin activates electrical charges simply by touching it such as by wind shaking.

The Importance of Calcium

Calcium is equally important for animal cells for memory, for information, for muscle function and for nerve growth. Without any doubt, human anatomy is more complex than plant anatomy. As we know in our bodies Neurons communicate with each other using electricity and chemicals. The nervous system consists of the brain, spinal cord, and a complex network of neurons. This system is responsible for sending, receiving, and interpreting information from all parts of the body. The nervous system monitors and coordinates internal organ function and responds to changes in the external environment. This system can be divided into two parts. First the central nervous system second the peripheral nervous system. Motor neurons carry information from the central nervous system to organs, glands, and muscles. Sensory neurons send information to the central nervous system from internal organs or from external stimuli. Interneurons relay signals between motor and sensory neurons.

Instantly, the structure of our Brain Changes

Whenever we dream, laugh, think, see, or move tiny chemical and electrical signals are racing between these neurons. That happens along billions of tiny neuron highways. Countless messages zip around inside it every second like a supercharged pinball machine. Our neurons create and send more messages than all the phones in the entire world. While a single neuron generates only a tiny amount of electricity, all our neurons together can generate enough electricity to power a low-wattage bulb. Signals along certain pathways of neurons over and over. They are forming new connections. In fact, the structure of our brain changes every time we learn, as well as whenever we have a new thought or memory.

According to Dr. Pascale Michelon Neuro­plasticity (brain plasticity) refers to the brain’s ability to change throughout life. The brain has the amazing ability to reorganize itself by forming new connections between brain cells. New connections can form and the internal structure of the existing synapses can change. In 2007 Psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Norman Doidge, M.D. wrote a book on that matter. It is called The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science.

Adaptation to change is inevitable

‘‘Environmental effects on human physiology are numerous. One of the most carefully studied effects is the alterations in thermoregulation in the body due to outside stresses. This is necessary because in order for enzymes to function, blood to flow, and for various body organs to operate, the temperature must remain at consistent, balanced levels.’’

‘‘Living things need to ‘fit’ into their surroundings, to ensure survival. An adaptation is an inherited characteristic that helps an organism survive and reproduce in its environment. Sometimes adaptations are learned during the organism’s lifetime.’’ Animals inherit many kinds of adaptive behaviour. ‘‘In general, adaptations can be structural (meaning an organism undergoes bodily changes to survive). Or it is also known as behavioural (when a specific behaviour increases an organism’s chances of survival).’’ Animal migration is an example of a behavioural adaptation.

Mutation

In nature adaptations usually occur because a gene mutates or changes by accident. Some mutations can help an animal or a plant to survive better than others in the species without the mutation. An example of a structural adaptation is the way some plants have adapted to life. In the desert hot and dry places especially. For plants called succulents, for instance, have adapted to this climate by storing water in their thick stems and leaves.

According to one aspect of cause to adaptation in humans is mainly thanks to using the technology. We design and build better air conditioners, warmer parkas, better diving suits, and lights to see in the dark. Technology lets us adapt quickly to changes in our environment. However, for other animals, adaptation is a slow, steady process which may take hundreds of thousands of years to accomplish.

Mindfulness Based Meditations & impacts on Human Brain

Thanks to the Electro-encephalogram (EEG) today we can make experiments on how the brain works. For instance, 128 sensors pick up tiny electrical signals emitted as brain cell works less when we are relaxed and the eyes closed. The pattern that the brain produces by the help of all this small activity of doing nothing we can clearly see that the brain is still active. As soon as we open our eyes this time the brain leaps into a big action mode which makes it work much more sophisticatedly.

Every one of us needs short breaks during the day. That helps our brain to breath. Some type of meditation also help. If you start exercising, your brain recognizes this as a moment of stress. As your heart pressure increases, the brain thinks you are either fighting the enemy or fleeing from it. To protect yourself and your brain from stress, you release a protein called BDNF (Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor). This BDNF has a protective and also reparative element to your memory neurons and acts as a reset switch. Sometimes we need to reset or other words switch off our brain activity. Just feeling calm and quiet is enough. We need to simply sit and try doing nothing.

Psychology and Human Brain

There are a lot of tools available for us to protect our brain health and psychology. In particular against daily unwanted loads. Daily routines happen in highly rapid changes in our surrounding. Mindfulness type meditation practices would be very useful to grow and survive. Meditations need our full attention. Our minds simply observe what sort of tendencies it makes. This observatory position is the essence of acceptance. Like my trainer, Vin Harris has mentioned the fact that ‘‘mind has its own life’’. It charges electrical activity all the time.

By the nature of the human brain carries or accumulates different electrical charges during the day. These charges may have given negative or positive impulses to our body. Neuropsychiatric disorders associated with early life adversity may involve neural changes. It is reflected in EEG power as a measure of brain activity and disturbed sleep.

8-week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) Program at the University of Massachusetts gets some results on Meditation groups. Participants reported spending an average of 27 minutes each day practising mindfulness exercises indicated significant improvements compared with the control group. The analysis of MR images focused on areas where meditation-associated differences. It is found that the brain increased grey-matter density in the hippocampus. This part is known to be important for learning and memory, self-awareness, compassion and introspection. 

Meditation helps

Participant-reported reductions in stress and decreased grey-matter density in the amygdala. This part is known to play an important role in anxiety and stress. 

According to Psychiatry Research Journal Anatomical magnetic resonance (MR) images from 16 healthy meditation-naïve participants, grey matter concentration was high. It is investigated in using voxel-based morphometry, compared with a waiting list control group of 16 individuals. Grey matter concentration within the left hippocampus shows that the brain increases cingulate cortex and grey matter concentration. Some brain regions involved in learning and memory processes, emotion regulation, self-referential processing, and perspective-taking. At least 20 more other scientific effects you may find thanks to meditation. That includes pain management, better sleep, control of emotions etc. None of these changes was seen in the control group.

Conclusion

Having difficulties or behaving in social changes impacts us deeply and we end up with a big need for adaptation skills. Adaption is vital to surviving as we see in all living things.

It would be important also to underline the fact that the human brain which is charged many times higher than a less sophisticatedly structured plant, needs more manoeuvres to improve its skills to discharge in order to adapt its days and environments. But we are not the only one who charges electrical signalling and search for change to adapt better.

How Deep-sea mining destroys ocean floor?

Bahar Elif Akyuz
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How Deep-sea mining destroys ocean floor?

Everything has started after the 1960’s book called “J. L. Mero’s Mineral Resources of the Sea“. After the idea of descending to the inner waters, many countries sent out their research vessels for the discovery of nodule deposits. It is true, the underground sea basin has vents that create massive sulfide deposits. The valuable metals such as silver, gold, copper, manganese, cobalt, and zinc are just some elements they contain. But what about the biodiversity which is dependent on these deposits?

Papua New Guinea became the first country to approve a permit for the exploration of minerals in the deep seabed. It is followed by China, the United Kingdom, Belgium, Germany, France and Japan.

The international law–based regulations on deep sea mining are protected by the United Nations Conventions on the Law of the Sea. From 1973 to 1982, the strict laws came into force in 1994. But the damages are still increases day by day.

cdn.sci-news

Today, the ISA (International Seabed Authority), a UN institution, is the only body delivering the reseach certifications to companies. Greenpeace reported that 30 exploration licenses had been granted worldwide by ISA before 2018. But according to campaigners, deep-sea mining should stay as exploration. It shouldn’t be used as a commercial-scale mining. If the research pod can descend 3,000 meters to reach the seabed, drillings performed at this depth causes too much harm. For example, the scaly-foot snail has been put under the highly endangered species.

ScienceFocus, scaly foot snail

According to the evolutionary biologist Julia Sigwart “the iron that precipitates out of the vent fluid is incorporated into the shell and the scales of the scaly foot. It hasn’t grown an iron shell, but the available environmental iron on the surface has integrated into it” (The Guardian Weekly, 6 March 2020, pg27)

For other endangered animals please look at this page.

Unfortunately, deep-sea animals are no longer untouched

Recent technological advancements have given rise to the use of remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) to collect mineral samples from prospective mine sites. Using drills and other cutting tools, the ROVs obtain samples to be analysed for precious materials. 

According to Halfar, J.; Fujita removing parts of the seafloor might disturb the habitat of benthic organisms with unknown long-term effects. Some of these animals are sea anemones, sponges, corals, sea stars, sea urchins, worms, bivalves and crabs. Aside from the direct impact of mining the area, some researchers and environmental activists have raised concerns about leakage, spills and corrosion that could alter the mining area’s chemical makeup (Danger of Deep-Sea Mining”. Science, 316(5827): 987).

For Bigelow, Laboratory for Ocean Sciences’ facts “Microbes across the seafloor” are responsible for essential ecosystem services. These services start from fueling the food web to powering global nutrient cycles. Environments that are promising for mining are also often the sites of globally-important microbial processes and unusual animal communities — and they are very slow to recover from disturbance.”

We, as human beings, should feel responsible for the destruction of the marine eco-system. For the sake of uncovering new industrial frontiers, we shouldn’t risk the deep-sea lives. There is no return if we do so and even without mentioning the human-caused climate change.

What questions to ask before Starting a Campaign Management?

Bahar Elif Akyuz
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What questions to ask before Starting a Campaign Management?

Europe’s priorities can be influenced by strong campaigns. With campaigns, we can create awareness in the society. If you want to learn the general technics on how to boost your organisational image and gain the necessary confidence to implement campaigns you need to first make your points clear.  

The Dandelion Group in Brussels offers six different types of communication workshops for eurocrats, civil society organisations, public affair leaders and for students (more info please look). One of those workshops is called European Campaign Management. If you learn how to craft an impactful campaign in a short time you need to tell the right stories to the right people.

But first, what is a campaign? And how can you easily take attention?

BE THE CHANGE YOU WANT TO SEE IN THE WORLD

Gandhi
campaign management

What is a Campaign?

Sometimes traditional means are not working to transform the hearts and the minds of people in our society because of belief systems and traditions. Or, sometimes the target groups are so powerful and difficult to influence that it is out of our limits of time and budget. In that point, change agents want to make a point, but let’s imagine that the change is still not happening then campaigns are one way of fixing social problems.

First, you need to take the mass society on your side. Making the public talk about the problem is half of the solution. Next, you need to address the right problem at the right time. It is very important to be ready for the next level in advance. Here are some necessary steps to design the right questions even before going into effective campaigning:

Ask 5 Questions Before Starting Your European Campaign Management

1. The first question that you suppose to know is: Does your message universal enough thus you don’t offend some other parts of the society? Trying not to shame or offend any minority or fragile part of society is very important.

2. The second question is: Are you addressing the right issue? You need to know the specific change you want to see around you. Getting the right issue addressed is the biggest step before even started the campaign.

3. Thirdly, does the communication material vibrant enough so that you don’t bore people? Depending on the budget, the communication materials need to be dynamic to catch the attention.

4. The fourth important question is: Are you using the right channel to reach your audience? Every audience differs from each other. If you understand the character and the temperament of your audience it will become very easy for you to handle the right messages.

What are the interests of your audience? Which platforms are they more visible? What do they read?

5. Lastly, does your campaign-specific enough such that it becomes measurable, achievable, realistic and time-wise? You need to do one campaign at a time. Dreaming is all good in the beginning but the campaign needs to fit into some measurable criteria.

change agent

How to sub-question the problematic?

These additional questions will help you to invest in your idea. Start asking these questions as well. What is the actual problem? Is change possible in that sector? Who is responsible for it?

  • What is the solution? Define a clear proposal of what needs to be done.
  • What is the benefit? Don’t do what’s already being done. Search for an added value in your proposal.
  • What do we have to do? Define one clear problem and propose one single solution. There is no one size of solution fits all the problems of the world.
LGBTQI

Asking the right questions before delivering a complete media plan is essential for campaign management. Right campaign management tools will allow your organisation to have a better campaign performance and outcome.

Astronomers Capture First Image of a Black Hole

Müfit Yılmaz Gökmen
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Astronomers Capture First Image of a Black Hole

ESO, ALMA, and APEX contribute to paradigm-shifting observations of the gargantuan black hole at the heart of the galaxy Messier 87

The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) — a planet-scale array of eight ground-based radio telescopes forged through international collaboration — was designed to capture images of a black hole. Today, in coordinated press conferences across the globe, EHT researchers reveal that they have succeeded, unveiling the first direct visual evidence of a supermassive black hole and its shadow.

This breakthrough was announced today in a series of six papers published in a special issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters. The image reveals the black hole at the centre of Messier 87, a massive galaxy in the nearby Virgo galaxy cluster. This black hole resides 55 million light-years from Earth and has a mass 6.5 billion times that of the Sun.

The EHT links telescopes around the globe to form an unprecedented Earth-sized virtual telescope. The EHT offers scientists a new way to study the most extreme objects in the Universe predicted by Einstein’s general relativity during the centenary year of the historic experiment that first confirmed the theory.

“We have taken the first picture of a black hole,” said EHT project director Sheperd S. Doeleman of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian. “This is an extraordinary scientific feat accomplished by a team of more than 200 researchers.”

8 telescopes were used to capture the image

Black holes are extraordinary cosmic objects with enormous masses but extremely compact sizes. The presence of these objects affects their environment in extreme ways, warping spacetime and superheating any surrounding material.

“If immersed in a bright region, like a disc of glowing gas, we expect a black hole to create a dark region similar to a shadow — something predicted by Einstein’s general relativity that we’ve never seen before,” explained chair of the EHT Science Council Heino Falcke of Radboud University, the Netherlands. “This shadow, caused by the gravitational bending and capture of light by the event horizon, reveals a lot about the nature of these fascinating objects and has allowed us to measure the enormous mass of M87’s black hole.”

Messier 87 Captured by ESO’s Very Large Telescope
Messier 87 Captured by ESO’s Very Large Telescope

Multiple calibration and imaging methods have revealed a ring-like structure with a dark central region — the black hole’s shadow — that persisted over multiple independent EHT observations.

“Once we were sure we had imaged the shadow, we could compare our observations to extensive computer models that include the physics of warped space, superheated matter and strong magnetic fields. Many of the features of the observed image match our theoretical understanding surprisingly well,” remarks Paul T.P. Ho, EHT Board member and Director of the East Asian Observatory. “This makes us confident about the interpretation of our observations, including our estimation of the black hole’s mass.”

The Halo of Galaxy Messier 87
The Halo of Galaxy Messier 87.

“The confrontation of theory with observations is always a dramatic moment for a theorist. It was a relief and a source of pride to realise that the observations matched our predictions so well,” elaborated EHT Board member Luciano Rezzolla of Goethe Universität, Germany.

The EHT observations use a technique called very-long-baseline interferometry (VLBI) which synchronises telescope facilities around the world and exploits the rotation of our planet to form one huge, Earth-size telescope observing at a wavelength of 1.3mm. VLBI allows the EHT to achieve an angular resolution of 20 micro-arcseconds — enough to read a newspaper in New York from a café in Paris.

The EHT, a Planet-Scale Array
The EHT, a Planet-Scale Array.

The telescopes contributing to this result were ALMA, APEX, the IRAM 30-meter telescope, the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope, the Large Millimeter Telescope Alfonso Serrano, the Submillimeter Array, the Submillimeter Telescope, and the South Pole Telescope. Petabytes of raw data from the telescopes were combined by highly specialised supercomputers hosted by the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy and MIT Haystack Observatory.

European facilities and funding played a crucial role in this worldwide effort, with the participation of advanced European telescopes and the support from the European Research Council — particularly a €14 million grant for the BlackHoleCam project.

How Can You Prevent Google From Tracking Your Every Move?

Müfit Yılmaz Gökmen
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How Can You Prevent Google From Tracking Your Every Move?

One of the most common advice you hear from cybersecurity analysts is to keep your location turned off unless it is necessary. For most, this may not come as an important warning. But in an era where data is more valuable than oil, you should know firms of any size and sector is invading your privacy, every day. You don’t need to be a genius to know that all your personal information is being processed in several types of AI experiments.

Just to give a simple example, I can mention a chess application I downloaded a few months back. After installation, the app asked permission to access my microphone and camera.” Why would a chess game which has nothing to do with cameras and microphones would ask permission to access them, especially when it didn’t ask this the first time I downloaded the same app one year ago? Furthermore, no explanation is provided for these confusing requests. Well, let me tell you why the app wants to access your mic and camera: To record visual and sound and sell all these data to Big Data companies along with all the information they gather.

Here, a big question must emerge for “at least slightly aware” consumers about their rights: Who gives all these developers and companies to access any kind information on our devices without a clear explanation? The answer is no one. At the moment you receive a request directly challenging your privacy, the decision is up to you. You can either don’t care whatever that question means and just go on playing the game or you can choose to spend a few more minutes to uninstall the app and try another one. But let me tell you what it means to accept this cheeky request: First, you are permitting an app to violate your permission. Second, your personal information ends in the hands of countless, unknown third parties (other developers and companies except for the app producer you are using and you as the consumer). Third, you let all these third parties and the app developer you permitted to profit from your data, while you gain nothing.

While you consider the privacy issue in regards to Google, the picture you are looking at is much more confusing. There’s no way to escape from the arms of the giant octopus but at least you can make yourself harder to detect among other people. What I always do is to keep my location turned off all the time except I need to use it. Despite this habit, I realized that something was wrong when Google sent me a “monthly travel map” out of nowhere. I looked at the places I’ve been the last month with perfect precision of time and location. The map which included even all the regular streets I just stopped by was the clear evidence by Google, that it was following me all the time. Another sign was the appearance of the information regarding the traffic even though I was not using the GPS.

Eventually, a report by AP in August 2018 provided insight into how Google gathers data on your “Location History” even though your GPS is turned off. Google was following me while my location was turned off, and recorded every single detail through my phone while I was travelling. Systematically recording every move of its users is a violation of the Terms of Use declared by Google.

So, what is going to happen now?

We can’t be sure if any authority will interfere with Google’s “actually I shouldn’t do it but whatever” attitude. Yet the new regulations being prepared by the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the General Data Protection Regulation (GRPR) of the European Union (EU) which came into effect in May 2018 can make a remarkable change. Europe’s top court gave a landmark decision in 2014, giving the internet users the right to have the unwanted search results removed from Google. There may be positive signs against the unethical use of personal information by the tech giants. But it shall be the consumers who resist the violation of privacy rights. To do this, here are a few little adjustments to increase your invisibility on the internet.

What Do You Need To Turn Off?

First, open the Settings panel of your smartphone and simply turn off the location. Technically speaking, this will prevent Google to track your location via GPS satellites. While it became clear this very simple and naive adjustment is not enough to make Google go away, you need to a few things on the browser too.

Go to myactivity.google.com. There, if you have not signed in yet do it and then click on “Activity Controls.” Out of the three options you see there, turn of “Web and App Activity” and “Location History.”

After completing these steps, go back to the main page to make an extra check. Here, you can see your browsers history in “Group view” or “Item view.” In some pages, you will see that even though your location was off it was recorded. You shall delete them one by one.

Another option you will see on the main page is “Event deletion criteria.” You can use this option to delete all the activities between particular dates.

It is hard to know how much these steps would prevent Google from seeing you. At least you can get a grip on your privacy on the internet to become more successful in managing your visibility.

Hubble captures the image of rare active asteroid 6478 Gault

Supugti Mupugti
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Hubble captures the image of rare active asteroid 6478 Gault

Thanks to an impressive collaboration bringing together data from ground-based telescopes, all-sky surveys and space-based facilities — including the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope — a rare self-destructing asteroid called 6478 Gault has been observed.

Clear images from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have provided researchers with new insight into asteroid Gault’s unusual past. The object is 4–9 kilometres wide and has two narrow, comet-like tails of debris that tell us that the asteroid is slowly undergoing self-destruction. Each tail is evidence of an active event that released material into space.

Gault was discovered in 1988. However, this observation of two debris tails is the first indication of the asteroid’s instability. This asteroid one of only a handful to be caught disintegrating by a process known as a YORP torque. When sunlight heats an asteroid, the infrared radiation that escapes from its warmed surface carries off both heat and momentum. This creates a small force that can cause the asteroid to spin faster. If this centrifugal force eventually overcomes gravity, the asteroid becomes unstable. Landslides on the object can release rubble and dust into space, leaving behind a tail of debris, as seen here with asteroid Gault.

“This self-destruction event is rare”, explained Olivier Hainaut (European Southern Observatory, Germany). “Active and unstable asteroids such as Gault are only now being detected by means of new survey telescopes that scan the entire sky, which means asteroids such as Gault that are misbehaving cannot escape detection any more.”

Astronomers estimate that among the 800,000 known asteroids that occupy the Asteroid Belt between Mars and Jupiter, YORP disruptions occur roughly once per year. The direct observation of this activity by the Hubble Space Telescope has provided astronomers with a special opportunity to study the composition of asteroids. By researching the material that this unstable asteroid releases into space, astronomers can get a glimpse into the history of planet formation in the early ages of the Solar System.

Unstable for 10 million years

Understanding the nature of this active and self-destructive object has been a collaborative effort involving researchers and facilities around the world. The asteroid’s debris tail was first detected by the University of Hawaiʻi/NASA ATLAS (Asteroid Terrestrial-Impact Last Alert System) telescopes in the Hawaiian Islands on 5 January 2019. Upon review of archival data from ATLAS and UH/NASA Pan-STARRS (Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System), it was found that the object’s larger tail of debris had been observed earlier in December 2018. Shortly thereafter, in January 2019, a second, shorter tail was seen by various telescopes, including the Isaac Newton, William Herschel, and ESA OGS Telescopes in La Palma and Tenerife, Spain; the Himalayan Chandra Telescope in India; and the CFHT in Hawaiʻi. Subsequent analysis of these observations suggested that the two events that produced these debris trails occurred around 28 October and 30 December 2018, respectively. These tails will only be visible for only a few months, after which the dust will have dispersed into interplanetary space.

Follow-up observations were then made by various ground-based telescopes. These data were used to deduce a two-hour rotation period for Gault, which is very close to the critical speed at which material will begin to tumble and slide across the asteroid’s surface before drifting off into space.

“Gault is the best ‘smoking-gun’ example of a fast rotator right at the two-hour limit”, explained lead author Jan Kleyna (University of Hawaiʻi, USA). “It could have been on the brink of instability for 10 million years. Even a tiny disturbance, like a small impact from a pebble, might have triggered the recent outbursts.”

Hubble’s sharp imaging provided valuable detail regarding the asteroid’s activity. From the narrow width of the streaming tails, researchers inferred that the release of material took place in short episodes lasting from a few hours to a couple of days. From the absence of excess dust in the immediate vicinity of the asteroid, they concluded that the asteroid’s activity was not caused by a collision with another massive object. Researchers hope that further observations will provide even more insight into this rare and curious object.

The team’s results have been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

GRAVITY instrument breaks new ground in exoplanet imaging

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GRAVITY instrument breaks new ground in exoplanet imaging

Cutting-edge VLTI instrument reveals details of a storm-wracked exoplanet using optical interferometry

The GRAVITY instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) has made the first direct observation of an exoplanet using optical interferometry. This method revealed a complex exoplanetary atmosphere with clouds of iron and silicates swirling in a planet-wide storm. The technique presents unique possibilities for characterising many of the exoplanets known today.

This result was announced today in a letter in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics by the GRAVITY Collaboration, in which they present observations of the exoplanet HR8799e using optical interferometry. The exoplanet was discovered in 2010 orbiting the young main-sequence star HR8799, which lies around 129 light-years from Earth in the constellation of Pegasus.

Pegasus takımyıldızında HR 8799’un konumu. [ESO/Digitized Sky Survey 2. Acknowledgement: Davide de Martin]

Today’s result, which reveals new characteristics of HR8799e, required an instrument with very high resolution and sensitivity. GRAVITY can use ESO’s VLT’s four unit telescopes to work together to mimic a single larger telescope using a technique known as interferometry. This creates a super-telescope — the VLTI — that collects and precisely disentangles the light from HR8799e’s atmosphere and the light from its parent star.

HR8799e is a ‘super-Jupiter’, a world unlike any found in our Solar System, that is both more massive and much younger than any planet orbiting the Sun. At only 30 million years old, this baby exoplanet is young enough to give scientists a window onto the formation of planets and planetary systems. The exoplanet is thoroughly inhospitable — leftover energy from its formation and a powerful greenhouse effect heat HR8799e to a hostile temperature of roughly 1000 °C.

A planet hit by violent storms

This is the first time that optical interferometry has been used to reveal details of an exoplanet, and the new technique furnished an exquisitely detailed spectrum of unprecedented quality — ten times more detailed than earlier observations. The team’s measurements were able to reveal the composition of HR8799e’s atmosphere — which contained some surprises.

“Our analysis showed that HR8799e has an atmosphere containing far more carbon monoxide than methane — something not expected from equilibrium chemistry,” explains team leader Sylvestre Lacour researcher CNRS at the Observatoire de Paris – PSL and the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics. “We can best explain this surprising result with high vertical winds within the atmosphere preventing the carbon monoxide from reacting with hydrogen to form methane.”

Paranal Gözlemevi’denki VLT Interferometresinin havadan görünümü. Tüneller çizgiyle belirtilmiş. [ESO]

The team found that the atmosphere also contains clouds of iron and silicate dust. When combined with the excess of carbon monoxide, this suggests that HR8799e’s atmosphere is engaged in an enormous and violent storm.

“Our observations suggest a ball of gas illuminated from the interior, with rays of warm light swirling through stormy patches of dark clouds,” elaborates Lacour. “Convection moves around the clouds of silicate and iron particles, which disaggregate and rain down into the interior. This paints a picture of a dynamic atmosphere of a giant exoplanet at birth, undergoing complex physical and chemical processes.”

This result builds on GRAVITY’s string of impressive discoveries, which have included breakthroughs such as last year’s observation of gas swirling at 30% of the speed of light just outside the event horizon of the massive Black Hole in the Galactic Centre. It also adds a new way of observing exoplanets to the already extensive arsenal of methods available to ESO’s telescopes and instruments — paving the way to many more impressive discoveries.

My Directing Tips while Filming an Interview

Bahar Elif Akyuz
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My Directing Tips while Filming an Interview

Experience is key in filmmaking. As a director, you need to be in control of the artistic and technical aspects of the screenplay. In this case, we are in an alive interview called “More Than Violin”. My subject Gözde Sevdir, violinist, tells about her story after she comes to Brussels. I need to find the best ways to film Gözde and make connections with her. But how should I do that?

Feel It

When the camera starts rolling, remember two things: first, you are in control of the technical aspect of the film. Which means that you need to stand as close to the screen as possible. Try finding the best elements to frame differently. But don’t try to use different shutter speeds or gain levels. You need to know the limits of your camera beforehand. Base yourself on the other people’s experiences and use the standard recommendations in the technical points.

Secondly, make emotional contact with your subject. Especially during the interview, your relationship with the interviewer is very important. Put yourself into your guest’s shoe, you would like to know what’s going on right? Try to feel what the camera is recording and how your subject feels about it.


Bahar Elif Akyuz films “More Than Violin”

As Director, you must not only decide on the placement of the camera but also you must spend some time explaining exactly what you want to record now. Don’t forget to talk to your guest. It will make the shooting smoother.

Gözde Sevdir, Violinist, in the studio for “More Than Violin” Interview

Trust Your Crew

You’d be surprised how much your crew wants to do their bests even though it is the Director’s creation in the first place. Enthusiastic super team is a team who likes to create something special together. The trust will allow your crew to be more helpful.

For me conducting a crew means, allowing your crew to share their opinions. For example: while you are so much concentrated on how the lights make an effect on the screen, ask your DP to get a better sense of where to place the lights. Don’t hesitate to ask again and again until you get the best feeling of where to fix the lights.

We all know that the human eye and camera iris doesn’t receive the same amount of color information. When it comes to light, be in charge of what you really want to take out of it. That’s why you should allow your crew to help you.

Vital Coordination with your Sound Engineer

Filmmaking is, after all, a technical art. Although, a director could easily leave the technical understanding entirely to another crew member. Personally, I suggest you better be knowing some essentials. Every role behind the scene is vital. But understanding the technical vocabulary of each role of your crew members is vital. Imagine, you record film images without a sound. All the work goes to the trash. Therefore, listen to the needs of your sound engineer.


Keep this secret sentence in your mind and use it. Press recording and shout “Camera turns”. Then get a confirmation from your sound engineer who says “sound turns”.

Focus vs blur

While recording your subject, always make sure of your focus adjustments. Look at your rushes after your test shot. But always do a zoom in before setting the focus. This is the difference between photography and video. You need to be in control of your image. Don’t compromise on your creative expectations. Sometimes a blur reflects the deep emotions of your subject. But sometimes the opposite. The worse is when you forget arranging your focus and instead of getting a sharp movie you end up with a blur.

Do compromise only if it aligns with your inspiration

We all know that art and style come with restrictions. It is hard to keep your own bar down. However, you don’t have unlimited resources, time or money while filming. As soon as your inspirational expectations are satisfied you should know where to stop.

Being Lighting Director in the set of Filming the ‘Poetry’

Bahar Elif Akyuz
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Being Lighting Director in the set of Filming the ‘Poetry’

As a Lighting Director I was in the set of Ilja Sircenko’s interview with Maria Alkova from St.Petersbourg. Briefly, for Maria poetry is a passion. She wanted to share her love with us through her own written poem.

Director Ilja Sircenko in “Poetry” film set
Poet Maria Alkova reads her own poem

The light preference of Ilja was dominantly on blue color in order to give the reflect on snow and cold weather of Russia. The background lighting is also selected based on that personal choice.

In the ‘Poetry’ interview we worked as a team of five.


Daniel Colin (Director of Photography), Pascaline Crevecoeur (Scripte)

What are the responsibilities of Lighting Director in the cinema?

In cinema, Lighting Director is responsible for setting up and operating equipment. This profession is also known as ‘gaffer’. This time, I oversaw rigging up lighting equipment, carrying out filter tests and positioning lights during the shoots of ‘Poetry’.

Camille Vercruysse (sound engineer).
Bahar Elif Akyuz (Light Director)

As we know studio lighting is all about creating an environment of control that you place your subject in. Isolating your subject from the fluctuating of light that creates shadows sometimes takes hours to fix. We preferred using three-point lighting for this interview.

What is a 3-point lighting ?

Three point lighting is a basic lighting strategy. It was a classical of Hollywood. The first light calls: The key light (attaque or la lumière clé in French). It is the direct light shines upon the subject. It serves as a principal lighting source. The key light is placed at a 30–60° angle.

Step by step 3 point Lighting

In outdoor daytime shots, the Sun often serves as the key light. But in our case the filming was inside. Therefore we needed to set the light in the exact position to shot the best capture the subject took a little bit of time.

The fill light (compensation in French) We compensate the shadows on the subject’s face by creating a second light. Fill light also shines on the subject, but from a side angle relative to the key light. It is often placed at a lower position than the key.

The back light (the rim, hair, or shoulder light) is also another way to compensate light. In French it is called dechrochage or contre. Generally, this light comes on the subject from behind. It gives the subject a rim of light, serving to separate the subject from the background. Depending on the level this source can highlight the contours of the shoulders.

What is chiaroscuro effect?

Takes its name from high contrast-dark style light used in Renaissance painting. Sometimes without fill light chiaroscuro effect appears by a person’s nose upon the rest of the face.

The preferred way to use it is just the level of the subject’s face. It helps to balance the key by illuminating shaded surfaces.

Colour Filters

To conclude, there are three basic types of gels when it comes to photo and video. Diffusion gels are used to diffuse light. If you want a soft light you can use those ones. Second group is corrector gels (CTB,CTO, +Green,-Green)

Bahar Elif Akyuz (Light Director) in the set of “Poetry”

In this particular shooting, we preferred both diffusion and corrector gels. This type of filters softens subjects’ image and generates a less dramatic vision of the person.

Hubble helps uncover origin of Neptune’s smallest moon Hippocamp

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Hubble helps uncover origin of Neptune’s smallest moon Hippocamp

Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, along with older data from the Voyager 2 probe, have revealed more about the origin of Neptune’s smallest moon. The moon, which was discovered in 2013 and has now received the official name Hippocamp, is believed to be a fragment of its larger neighbour Proteus.

A team of astronomers, led by Mark Showalter of the SETI Institute, have used the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope to study the origin of the smallest known moon orbiting the planet Neptune, discovered in 2013.

“The first thing we realised was that you wouldn’t expect to find such a tiny moon right next to Neptune’s biggest inner moon,” said Mark Showalter. The tiny moon, with an estimated diameter of only about 34 km, was named Hippocamp and is likely to be a fragment from Proteus, Neptune’s second-largest moon and the outermost of the inner moons. Hippocamp, formerly known as S/2004 N 1, is named after the sea creatures of the same name from Greek and Roman mythology [1].

A moon also was stolen from Kuiper Belt

The orbits of Proteus and its tiny neighbour are incredibly close, at only 12 000 km apart. Ordinarily, if two satellites of such different sizes coexisted in such close proximity, either the larger would have kicked the smaller out of orbit or the smaller would crash into the larger one.

Instead, it appears that billions of years ago a comet collision chipped off a chunk of Proteus. Images from the Voyager 2 probe from 1989 show a large impact crater on Proteus, almost large enough to have shattered the moon. “In 1989, we thought the crater was the end of the story,” said Showalter. “With Hubble, now we know that a little piece of Proteus got left behind and we see it today as Hippocamp.”

Hippocamp is only the most recent result of the turbulent and violent history of Neptune’s satellite system. Proteus itself formed billions of years ago after a cataclysmic event involving Neptune’s satellites. The planet captured an enormous body from the Kuiper belt, now known to be Neptune’s largest moon, Triton. The sudden presence of such a massive object in orbit tore apart all the other satellites in orbit at that time. The debris from shattered moons re-coalesced into the second generation of natural satellites that we see today.

Later bombardment by comets led to the birth of Hippocamp, which can therefore be considered a third-generation satellite. “Based on estimates of comet populations, we know that other moons in the outer Solar System have been hit by comets, smashed apart, and re-accreted multiple times,” noted Jack Lissauer of NASA’s Ames Research Center, California, USA, a coauthor of the new research. “This pair of satellites provides a dramatic illustration that moons are sometimes broken apart by comets.”

Notes

[1] The mythological Hippocampus possesses the upper body of a horse and the lower body of a fish. The Roman god Neptune would drive a sea-chariot pulled by Hippocampi. The name Hippocamp was approved by the International Astronomical Union (IAU). The rules of the International Astronomical Union require that the moons of Neptune are named after Greek and Roman mythology of the undersea world.

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