ZODIAC LIGHT DETECTION BASED ON SKY QUALITY METER (SQM) DATA: PRELIMINARY STUDY

Zodiacal light is a night sky phenomenon that can occur before or after dusk. Additionally, zodiacal light is referred to as false dawn (fajar kadzib) or false dusk. Zodiacal light is emitted by the dust leftovers of asteroids, comets, and other extraterrestrial objects colliding along the planet Mercury's orbit to Mars. This remaining material orbits the Sun in the same direction as the four planets. When the Sun illuminates the leftover dust, it appears as a zodiacal light in the hemisphere that experiences dawn or dusk. By using linear fittings we detect the presence of zodiacal light on the light curve of the night skybrightness. The Observations were made using a digital camera and SQM. From a number of observational data obtained at six locations, it shows that there is an identical linear pattern. From this linear model, it can be seen that the zodiacal light has been observed since the sun's position at -60 degrees below the horizon. Recognizing the presence of the zodiacal light is very important to know the time of the appearance of true dawn which is the beginning of the time for the dawn prayer

ZODIAC LIGHT DETECTION BASED ON SKY QUALITY METER (SQM) DATA: PRELIMINARY STUDY

Zodiacal light is a night sky phenomenon that can occur before or after dusk. Additionally, zodiacal light is referred to as false dawn (fajar kadzib) or false dusk. Zodiacal light is emitted by the dust leftovers of asteroids, comets, and other extraterrestrial objects colliding along the planet Mercury's orbit to Mars. This remaining material orbits the Sun in the same direction as the four planets. When the Sun illuminates the leftover dust, it appears as a zodiacal light in the hemisphere that experiences dawn or dusk. By using linear fittings we detect the presence of zodiacal light on the light curve of the night skybrightness. The Observations were made using a digital camera and SQM. From a number of observational data obtained at six locations, it shows that there is an identical linear pattern. From this linear model, it can be seen that the zodiacal light has been observed since the sun's position at -60 degrees below the horizon. Recognizing the presence of the zodiacal light is very important to know the time of the appearance of true dawn which is the beginning of the time for the dawn prayer

Airport noise predicts song timing of European birds

Anthropogenic noise is of increasing concern to biologists and medical scientists. Its detrimental effects on human health have been well studied, with the high noise levels from air traffic being of particular concern. However, less is known about the effects of airport noise pollution on signal masking in wild animals. Here, we report a relationship between aircraft noise and two major features of the singing behavior of birds. We found that five of ten songbird species began singing significantly earlier in the morning in the vicinity of a major European airport than their conspecifics at a quieter control site. As birds at both sites started singing before the onset of air traffic in the morning, this suggests that the birds in the vicinity of the airport advanced their activity to gain more time for unimpaired singing before the massive plane noise set in. In addition, we found that during the day, chaffinches avoided singing during airplane takeoffs, but only when the noise exceeded a certain threshold, further suggesting that the massive noise caused by the airport can impair acoustic communication in birds. Overall, our study indicates that birds may be adjusting their mating signals and time budgets in response to aircraft noise

Designing the Born-Digital Archive

Light spoke generally about the major issues facing archivists who manage born digital records and how the UCI Libraries responded when providing access to the Richard Rorty papers. She discussed the challenges, such as dealing with rapid technological change, ensure present and future accessibility of legacy files, managing privacy and copyrights, guaranteeing the authenticity and integrity of files, preventing loss and destruction, and selecting the most important material for preservation. She also discussed numerous decisions archivists make that impact the future archive, such as emulation or preservation of the original computing environment, the organization of files, the migration of materials to new formats, and human or machine-generated description of the materials. She concluded with a description of the UCI Libraries\u27 Digital Scholarship Service, which endeavors to help faculty manage their digital research for future generations

Fixing the image : re-thinking the 'mind-independence' of photographs

It has been argued that photographs are unsuitable or inferior candidates for art because they are not intimately bound to the mind of an artist. I believe that we can address scepticism in the philosophy of art only if we recognise that it is linked to dogmatism in the epistemology of photography. This is the motivation for the present article. I argue that the epistemic debate is dogmatic when mind-independence is treated as a defining feature of photographs. I argue for a better understanding of the photographic process, and show how with this mind-independence need not be a defining feature of photographs

Film adaptation for knowing audiences: analysing fan on-line responses to the end of Breaking Dawn – Part 2 (2012)

Critics of film adaptations of literary works have historically evaluated the success or failure of the movie on the grounds of its fidelity to the original book. In contrast popular arguments for medium specificity have questioned whether fidelity is possible when adapting one medium to another. This article follows recent academic work which has focused awareness on the processes of adaptation by examining evidence of reading and viewing experience in online and social media forums.      The broader research project explored the online Twilight fan community as an example of a ‘knowing audience’ acquainted with both novel and film. Here we focus on the strong response within fan forums to the surprise ending of the final film adaptation Breaking Dawn – Part 2 (2012). The research uses the forum, blog and facebook page as sites for evidence of reading experience as defined by the Reading Experience Database (RED). The analysis sheds new light on the tensions that exist between fidelity and deviation and the article positions fan audiences as intensive readers who gained unexpected pleasure from a deviation from a canon. It argues that fans are also collaborators within the adaptation process who respect authorial authority and discuss the author’s, scriptwriter’s and director’s interpretation of the novel for the screen. The research identifies the creative and commercial advantages to be gained from a collaborative and open dialogue between adaptors and fans.  Keywords: Adaptation, fandom, online fan communities, Twilight, reading experience, film, audiences, fidelity, canon, collaboration, screenwriting, franchise, Stephenie Meyer, Melissa Rosenberg, Bill Condo

The Possible Role of Extra-ocular Photoreceptors in the Entrainment of Lobster Circadian Rhythms to Light:Dark Cycles

The American lobster, Homarus americanus, is a decapod crustacean whose daily nocturnal rhythms of activity are driven, in part, by an internal biological clock. While this circadian clock is capable of producing a rhythm of approximately 24 hours on its own, it can also be entrained to light:dark cycles. Recent findings in our laboratory suggest that lobsters have photosensitive neurons throughout their nervous system (extra-ocular photoreceptors). The objective of this research was to test the hypothesis that these extra-ocular photoreceptors aid in entraining their daily rhythm of activity. First, the locomotion of juvenile American lobsters was measured in trials under a normal 24 hour light:dark cycle. Then, after this “control” period, the lobsters’ eyes were painted with black nail polish and their activity was monitored under the same conditions. The lobsters were also exposed to DD conditions with their eyes covered in one of the trials. During the control LD cycle, lobsters expressed increased locomotion at night, demonstrating their daily rhythm. The DD cycle had a consistent rhythm with an elongated period of activity. Interestingly, half of the lobsters continued to follow the same pattern of activity despite the visual impairment and half expressed a diurnal rhythm. Although there was variation in the locomotor activity, a periodicity of ~24 hours was maintained throughout the LD cycles. This indicates that H. americanus receives photoperiod input from both their eyes and extra-ocular photoreceptors that help synchronize their locomotor activity to LD cycles

Quantitative analysis of regulatory flexibility under changing environmental conditions

The circadian clock controls 24-h rhythms in many biological processes, allowing appropriate timing of biological rhythms relative to dawn and dusk. Known clock circuits include multiple, interlocked feedback loops. Theory suggested that multiple loops contribute the flexibility for molecular rhythms to track multiple phases of the external cycle. Clear dawn- and dusk-tracking rhythms illustrate the flexibility of timing in Ipomoea nil. Molecular clock components in Arabidopsis thaliana showed complex, photoperiod-dependent regulation, which was analysed by comparison with three contrasting models. A simple, quantitative measure, Dusk Sensitivity, was introduced to compare the behaviour of clock models with varying loop complexity. Evening-expressed clock genes showed photoperiod-dependent dusk sensitivity, as predicted by the three-loop model, whereas the one- and two-loop models tracked dawn and dusk, respectively. Output genes for starch degradation achieved dusk-tracking expression through light regulation, rather than a dusk-tracking rhythm. Model analysis predicted which biochemical processes could be manipulated to extend dusk tracking. Our results reveal how an operating principle of biological regulators applies specifically to the plant circadian clock