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A Glimpse into the Cosmos with Dr. Nahar

Aniqa Mazhar
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A Glimpse into the Cosmos with Dr. Nahar

Dr. Sultana Nurun Nahar is a Bangladeshi-American physicist and a research scientist at the Department of Astronomy at Ohio State University. Her research is on atomic processes of photoionization, electron-ion recombination, photoexcitation, and collision. Khwarizmi Science Society (KSS) brings an inspiration-filled webinar series “Muslim Women in Science and Technology” that celebrates the brilliance of Muslim women scientists from around the world. In its second episode, Nimra Khurram, a Science Communicator, had a conversation with Astrophysicist Dr. Sultana N Nahar. Our Team Member Aniqa Mazhar compiled this interview for astronomy lovers. Here are some excerpts from this conversation.

Dr. Nahar
Dr. Sultana Nurun Nahar is a Bangladeshi-American physicist and a research scientist at the Department of Astronomy at Ohio State University.

Nimra: What kind of work does an atomic astrophysicist like yourself undertake? 

Dr. Nahar: Astronomy is the study of celestial objects. There are three kinds of people who study Space outside the Earth. This is not a proper definition or characterization, but these people include:

  • Observers are the scientists who work through telescopes, which can be space-based or ground-based. They see celestial objects, take the image, picture, or spectrum of the object, leave it, and identify whatever they can.
  • Then come to the modelers, who take that observation and try to find out more lines like the objects’ physical and chemical conditions and composition. They put a lot of atomic modulators into it and modulate.
  • The third group is actually the astrophysicists; they provide atomic or molecular data. They go to modelers or also to the observers. They also study physics and the underlying science of these observations.

I am an atomic astrophysicist and I study the dominant atomic processes in the astrophysical plasmas. All the stars are made up of plasma. In fact, the entire Universe, the whole matter, 99 percent of the matter is plasma. When I say plasma, it means the atoms are not entirely neutral. Some of their electrons have been stripped off, so they are charged and they may be in a gaseous state.

Nimra: How many atomic processes have you studied so far?

Dr. Nahar: There are four atomic processes that I study right now. The atoms are excited by photons, which is the unit of light. So, from a star, light is coming and it hits an atom in the plasma. The atom gets excited, which means it absorbs the photon. When it comes back down, it gives out a photon. These excitations are brought about by electrons, which can heat up an atom and excite it. But no atom can stay excited for a long time. It has to come down, and when it does, it gives out the photon, which we catch through telescopes and study. The other processes include ionization by photon, which means that the atom which has electrons around it, one of the electrons will free the atom, so the atom will be charged. It will have a more positive charge than the atom, which is actually neutral. So we call it ionization, or photon ionization.

Dr. Sultana Nurun Nahar received John Wheatley award from the American Physical Society. The picture is with the President of APS.

Another process is electrons recombining to an atom by giving out a photon. When an electron is attached to an atom, it has negative energy and when it is free we say it has positive energy. Where there is a vacancy, it has to give out energy in terms of photons to combine with that atom. So all these processes, either absorbed photons or give-out photons, are the processes I study.

Nimra: Why does a layman need to be excited about this field?

Dr Nahar: You have asked why this subject is exciting to study. Okay, so here is a picture of our Milky Way galaxy at night. It is so beautiful, so fast and so big. It has 200 to 400 billion stars and it is vital to study the Space because it is fascinating with all its beauty and its bounty.

For example, the reason we should study Space or Astronomy is demonstrated by this simple story. 65 million years ago, dinosaurs ruled the Earth. They were happy doing so when an asteroid came and hit the Earth. It was a huge one, reduced to a lot of dust, and the air circulated the dust around the Earth and blocked the sunlight coming down to the surface. So the surface became cold, the Earth became cold.

Everything alive froze to death, including the dinosaurs. Asteroids have since then kept hitting the surface of the Earth and external meteorites at various places. The last big one was in December 2018 and it fell in Siberia on a river, so there were no human casualties. A lake in Tajikistan, up in the mountains, was created by a hit by an asteroid.

The water is very salty now. We can see that we are not very much protected. Even though we are studying, we still don’t know how to protect ourselves from these kinds of disasters.

Nimra: How can we detect asteroids? 

Dr. Nahar: We do have many ideas, though. There is a laser tractor beam that we use to deflect the asteroid. Asteroids have very less gravity acting on them so this is possible. Right now, we are doing fine, but what will happen in the future?

Nimrah: Why is the search for life beyond Earth or our solar system so important? 

Dr. Nahar: Five to seven million years from now, the sun will expand and become a Giant Red Star. All the hydrogen in it will become helium, which means its fuel is gone, things will collapse and then it will expand. Our Earth will be engulfed by this formation and we all will die.

We have been looking for planets, and we are finding lots of them outside our Solar system. We call such planets exoplanets. We had a feeling that exoplanets existed, but we did not actually physically see them until 2004. We have found 4000 exoplanets but our objective is to find

habitable exoplanets where we can go. The surface has to be solid so we can walk, it has to have oxygen to breathe and water. And we cannot be too close to the star because the radiation will cause cancer in humans.

Nimra: Would you like to share an interesting experience of yours? 

Dr. Nahar: One of my exciting projects was (titled “Phosphorus Puzzle, we are made biosignatures of stardust.”) This clearly extrapolates that we are made from stardust. Whenever we are interested in exoplanets and we search for extraterrestrial life, we search for biosignatures e.g., we have water in our body so we look for water molecules on that exoplanet. Does it have oxygen; does it have methane and such things? We have been looking for these in several places.

APS Physics | FIP | India Connection 2
Dr. Nahar’s research is on atomic processes of photoionization, electron-ion recombination, photoexcitation, and collision

Strangely we couldn’t find Phosphorus. We found very little of that but in contrast to that our solar system is abundant in Phosphorus. Phosphorus is also present in our DNA and is important in signal passing and information passing. So the question is why we can’t see Phosphorus in other places in Space. Does it mean we do not have any form of life out there? I have this project with some students and a postdoc and we created a spectrum. We matched the energies of photons and tallied them with that of Phosphorus. The purpose of this work was to predict what to look for to identify Phosphorus.

Nimra: Would you please brief us about multidisciplinary aspects of astronomy like how black holes could be helpful for cancer treatment?

Dr. Nahar: What is common between black holes and cancer treatment is that Black holes have x-rays and cancer patients are treated by x-rays. We have high energy x-rays in black holes. When atoms move towards the black hole, the electrons and the nucleus don’t have the same speed because the pool is so strong that by the time the atom gets there, it may be stripped of most of its electrons. It may have only two left. Those are very tightly bound electrons. The super-hot ions start to give out very high energy x-rays.

Black holes absorb light, and we can detect one by looking at the surrounding spectrum. We are now studying gold (Au) nanoparticles for cancer treatment in the lab. We are working with a purely physical technique called RNPT (Resonant Nano-Plasma Theranostics) to kill cancer cells. 

Nimra: How does astronomy contribute to making our life better?

Dr. Nahar: In the article in an Astronomy Magazine in May 2012, titled ‘What has Astronomy done for you lately?’ The first of the four things discussed is the Global Positioning System (GPS) used for navigation in everyday routine, with the second being wireless internet, which NASA discovered while trying to find connections in Space. The third is RNPT for cancer treatment, and the fourth is the JWS telescope used in hospitals for laser eye surgery. All these technologies came from Astronomy.   

Interviewer: Nimra Khurram (KSS)

Transcribe By: Aniqa Mazhar (Scientia Pakistan)

Also Read: A conversation with Dr. Nidhal Guessoum on underlying problems in Universities of the Muslim World

Goddard’s Legacy on Space Exploration

Saadeqa Khan
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Goddard’s Legacy on Space Exploration

Space has frequently been called the last frontier. Certainly, this is true in the sense of physical frontiers, since humankind has now explored the entire land area of the earth, and our sway is rapidly being extended to the oceans and the air as well. Thus, our species has reached a fundamental turning point in history, imposed by the finite size of the earth itself. Either we are to remain an earth-bound civilization, working out our future confines of this single planet, or else we will expand into the solar system and perhaps someday even beyond.

The dream of space is more than a century old, dating from the pioneer writings of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky of Russia and Hermann Oberth of Germany, and from the inspired backyard engineering carried out by Robbert H Goddard, Wernher Von Braun, and others in the private space and rocket organization.

In the early 20th century, American physicist Robert H Goddard came across the idea of liquid fuel propellant while he was conducting a series of practical experiments in rocketry.  Goddard, at least figuratively, was over the moon.

Goddard’s fascination with space flight tracked back to his college days at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. He was actually interested in achieving higher altitude but it was a daunting task to build a liquid fuel rocket than solid –propellant rockets. Despite a lack of resources and sufficient funding, Goddard was able to build a liquid-propellant rocket by 1926. This was game-changing. 

But the euphoria of Goddard’s discovery did not leave everyone in awe. 

Some thought he was a charlatan, others believed science could not have such a leap of discovery in the 1920s. Such was the disbelief in Goddard’s work that the New York Times in an editorial not just ridiculed Goddard’s intellect and integrity but, also accused him of not understanding Newton’s third law of motion. 

“Professor Goddard with his chair at Clark College and countenancing of Smithsonian Institution [from where he held the grant to continue his research independently] does not know Newton’s third law of motion,” read the editorial, “and the relationship between action and reaction, and of a need of something better than a vacuum against which to react. Of course, he only seems to lack the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools.”

In the same year, a similar campaign simultaneously sparked out another controversy when Goddard published one of his research works in Scientific American that intensified the prevailing wave of harsh criticism. This propelled other science outlets also arguing that space travel is nearly impossible. Some even claimed that rocketry can be traced back to more than 2,000 years and never had anyone been able to do the unthinkable: travel to space. 

But Goddard was a scientist and such criticism by non-scientists was mere noise to him. 

Perhaps the greatest influence and the lifelong gift of Goddard to humanity was his deep understanding of rocketry, inspiration, and celebration that space travel would be a reality in a few decades or so later. It was actually Goddard who initially outlined an uncrewed mission to the moon. Little did he realize that this work would become instrumental in American foreign and defense policy. Goddard’s legacy has arguably quietly been absorbed by engineers and scientists at NASA and the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, who worked frantically on Vostok, Gemini, and Apollo space programs. 

In 1919, Goddard published his research work entitled “A method of reaching high extreme altitude”, condensation February 1920, Scientific American and Nature August 1920. The paper thoroughly explained the method of attaining a high altitude around 20 miles, beyond the range for surrounding balloons and developed a theory of rocket propulsion taking into account the air resistance and gravity.

Goddard concluded with the statement that if most of the mass of the rocket consists of propellant, its superiority will increase enormously. 

Fifty years after, when NASA’s mission “Apollo 11” successfully landed on the moon with Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins on July 1969, those who doubted that space travel was a possibility were left stunned. Those in scientific communities who had belligerently opposed the idea of a small capsule being able to land on the moon could not believe the images. 

But it was the New York Times who first came to realize its biggest mistake — dismissing the notion of rocket propulsion and the scientist behind it.

“Further investigation and experimentation have confirmed the findings of Isaac Newton in the 17th century and it is now definitely established that a rocket can function in a vacuum as well as in an atmosphere. The Times regrets the error.”

 Though this correction was made 24 years after Goddard’s death, history absolved him.

Also read: Robert H Goddard: From Moon man to father of Rocketry

A pocketful of stars brought to you by Hubble

Scientia
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A pocketful of stars brought to you by Hubble

A new image has been revealed by NASA that was taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. It shows the globular cluster NGC 1805 which has many colorful stars packed close together. There is a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way called the Large Magellanic Cloud near the edge of which this tight grouping of stars is present. They tend to move around each other in an orbital manner which NASA has compared to “bees swarming around a hive.” The planetary systems around these stars are also speculated to be unlikely because, in the dense center of one of these clusters, the stars are 100 to 1000 times closer together than the nearest stars are to our Sun.

This image combines different types of life and thus illustrates the sharp difference in star colors. Blue stars, shining brightest in near-ultraviolet light, and red stars, illuminated in red and near-infrared. As the Hubble telescope is positioned above the atmosphere of the Earth, it can observe ultraviolet. The atmosphere itself absorbs UV, so the telescopes on the ground are unable to visualize that.

NASA also says that “this young globular cluster can be seen from the Southern Hemisphere, in the Dorado constellation, which is Portuguese for dolphinfish.”

Most of the time, globular clusters contain stars that are born at the same time. But NGC 1805 is different as it appears to have two varying star populations which have a difference of million years in ages. The study of this type of phenomenon can aid researchers and astronomers to understand the evolution of these bodies and determine how the end their lives.

Recently, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope also captured an image featuring the blue and orange stars of the galaxy called NGC 2188. On a closer first look, the galaxy appears to be made up of a narrow band that produce a mesmerizing look. The astronomers have classified it to be a barred spiral galaxy.

Also Read: Hubble captures a peculiar cosmic image

Let’s talk about Mental Health in Pakistan

Isna Maqsood
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Let’s talk about Mental Health in Pakistan

In every society and culture, there are certain words or phrases that, when being said out loud, consequently turn heads. These are the words that often have a particular stigma attached to them. Hence, the topics associated with the words are never talked about in open spaces. Mental health is one such example in Pakistan, among the many more. 

What exactly are mental disorders? Mental disorders are defined as the psychological and behavioral disorders that lead to impairment in critical areas of functioning in everyday life. These include a wide range of illnesses such as anxiety, depressions, several personality disorders, eating disorders, schizophrenia, and many more. Contrary to popular belief, these are not only caused by one’s life experience. Genetics, traumatic exposures, the stress in early life, and your surroundings all play a role in the development of these disorders. Mental healthcare practitioners, including psychiatrists and psychologists, diagnose these disorders mostly by using the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fifth edition (DSM-5). According to the World Health Organization (WHO), up to 450 million people suffer from mental disorders in the world. However, a large proportion of them do not seek help.  

The overall scenerio in Pakistan is not so different from the rest of the world. In fact, the mental health sector is probably the most neglected sector in Pakistan. In 2016, Dawn Newspaper published that there are 50 million people in Pakistan suffering from mental disorders and that the number of trained psychiatrists is only 400. This statistics that shows the number of people with mental disorders is probably much higher considering the fact that most people are not diagnosed due to the scarcity of psychiatrists and social norms.   

State of Mental Healthcare System in Pakistan

The scarcity of clinical psychiatrists is not the only reason that Pakistan’s mental healthcare system is flawed. The last time any legislation regarding mental disorders was passed was in 2001. The latest policy change occurred in 2006. Mental health was made a provincial topic rather than owned by the federal government, and currently, only Sindh and Punjab have mental health acts in place (Tareen & Tareen, 2016). Moreover, there is no policy regarding the conviction of a mentally ill person. In fact, schizophrenia – a disorder that leads to hallucination, delusion, and disordered thinking – was removed from the list of mental disorders as it did not fall in the legal definition of such disorders in Pakistan. Therefore, any schizophrenic convict may be up for execution in case of murder (Janjua, 2020). Only 0.4% of the healthcare expenditure of the country is allocated to mental health, and there are only five mental hospitals currently operating in Pakistan as compared to hundreds of hospitals for the other sectors. 

The stigma; What will people say?

One of the primary reasons that people prevent themselves or their families from seeking mental health advice is due to the stigma associated with the term ‘mental health.’ There are many definitions of stigma. Still, to put it simply, it is a sign of shame related to an event, quality, or person. In rural areas of Pakistan, people would believe their loved ones are possessed rather than just ill and used to take them to the shrines instead of hospitals due to poverty, stigma, and superstitions (BBC, 2016).  People are also afraid to hear what others might say if they consult a psychiatrist or psychologist. This fear leads them to ignore any symptoms present around them and disregard them completely. Furthermore, this inevitably leads to the formation of an ignorant society. In fact, anyone who decides to go for a career in mental health is constantly discouraged by others and sometimes even to the point that they are forced to go with another profession. 

mental health
There is immense stigma associated with the term ‘mental health’

Another reason for this negligence is a severe lack of education regarding mental health in Pakistan. Since we are young, we are taught about the importance of nutrition and the effects of malnutrition on our physical health. What schools fail to teach us is the importance of our mental wellbeing. Is it appropriate to completely disregard mental health as long as we are physically healthy? Moreover, no counseling facility is provided to the students at school to help them deal with stress which is leading to an increase in anxiety, depression, and an overwhelming suicide rate in Pakistan, especially in students. 

Susceptibility 

Some people are more susceptible to mental disorders than others, and these are the ones who require interventions by mental health professionals to get back on track with their lives. Pakistan is a developing country with a long history of terrorist attacks being conducted in it. The people who come in direct contact with the destruction and tragedy of these attacks need help from professionals to overcome and move on. Psychological first aid should be provided to reduce the occurrence of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). One such example includes the students, teachers, and their families who bore the brunt of the terrorist attack on Army Public School, Peshawar, in 2014. The proper way for them to deal with the trauma would have been through therapies, but unfortunately, there were not enough mental health professionals who could help them. 

Since getting independence in 1947, Pakistan has faced multiple wars and tensions on her borders. The soldiers who come back from these missions often suffer from PTSD but they wouldn’t be provided with the help they need. Additionally, there are other issues that pave the path for the rise of mental disorders such as domestic abuse – an endemic on the rise in Pakistan – which is not only harmful for the victim but also the other family members. 

Other than that, several students suffer from depression, anxiety, and stress in school and university life. These are caused due to the burden of studies, peer pressures, and the need to maintain a cheery personality with others at all times. Such instances are often disguised so well that if that person ends up committing suicide, his/her peers say that ‘He/She was happy all the time’. This is why we need mental health education so that we, as a community, may learn to recognize the symptoms and patterns, eventually guiding anyone suffering, for getting help. 

Even in the current situation, the COVID-19 pandemic, people have become more vulnerable to mental disorders. Constant checking of the rising COVID-19 cases and deaths, being quarantined in their homes for long periods of time, not being able to meet with their families for months, witnessing a plane crash in a residential area of Karachi, and many people losing their jobs due to lockdown has taken a toll over the whole country. 

It is beyond time that we start realizing that mental health is just as important as physical health. 

Psychotherapies 

In Pakistan, the lack of knowledge and awareness regarding the mental health sector is so extreme that we still believe there are only 2 ways a psychiatrist or a psychologist helps a person and those are either talk therapy or medicine. Different disorders require different types of therapies and ‘talking’ is not the cure for all. In this advanced world, several different types of therapies have been introduced that are used according to the disorder and the patient. For example, we do not have Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) mostly used to treat depression and anxiety. This is used to change the patterns of thoughts and behaviors that cause difficulties. Moreover, there is Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) in which seizures are electrically induced to treat mental disorders. It is an extreme form of therapy and only used when other methods fail to provide results. 

Process and components of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) | Download Scientific Diagram
CBT is used to treat depression and anxiety. Credit: Neelesh Rastogi

These two are not the only types of psychotherapies available around the world. However, they show the great differences present in the modern methods of treatment of mental disorders. A wide range of treatments are known to mental health professionals but in Pakistan, there are not enough professionals who might be specialized in these methods. 

What do professionals have to say?

For a better understanding of the ongoing state of mental health in Pakistan, I reached out to a couple professionals. Iqra Nasir, a behavioral therapist, said that there are a lot of people suffering from mental disorders in Sindh but they cannot afford the treatment as there are no such hospitals in close proximity. Contrary, , in several cities there are no schools for children with special needs such as down syndrome and autism. She believes that the government needs to get involved and make more governmental hospitals for the mentally ill people and establish at least one special needs school in each city. 

Inamullah Ansari, the Director of Mental Health Emergency and Human Resilience Solicitors Drug Crimes Criminal Defense Lawyer, says that we need to implement psychiatry facilities in teaching hospitals where consultant psychiatrists are available. More public awareness programs should be launched on the media platforms (Ansari, 2015). 

Muhammad Tahir Khalily, Senior Clinical Psychologist, believes that mental healthcare needs to be incorporated as a core service in primary care and supported by specialist services. There is a strong need to provide adequate training for general practitioners and postgraduate training for mental health professionals to meet the current demands. A collaborative network between stakeholders in the public and private sector, as well as non-governmental organizations, are required that promote mental health care and advocate for changes in mental health policy (Khalily, 2011).

Solutions

Involvement of government

The government needs to provide the country with an up to date mental health legislation and a refined legal definition for mental disorder. A person with a mental disorder needs the help of a psychiatrist and does not need to be locked up for a crime that he/she does not even understand. On the other hand, prisons should be seen as a correctional facility and the convicts should be helped to become better by the time they have served their sentence, thus forensic psychologists should be present in these facilities at all times. 

In Pakistan, people encourage their children to follow professions like medicine, engineering, or finance. Children are primed from the beginning to believe that these are the only areas of study one should pursue. We need to let children know that there are multiple options out there for them to consider instead of just these. The government should also encourage the study of psychiatry and psychology by providing incentives that would make youngsters willing to pursue these fields as it has become prominent that Pakistan needs many more mental health professionals working in the country to help all the people who might need them. 

Provision of hospitals and services

We are in dire need of more mental hospitals across the country. The five that are currently operating are located in major cities – Lahore, Rawalpindi, Islamabad, Peshawar, and Quetta – which makes them inaccessible to a lot of people who are not willing to travel long distances or cannot manage to find the time for travelling. Mental health treatments should be available to people easily, which is why more hospitals need to build on immediate notice and the inside workings of the old ones should be updated to provide humane treatment to all the patients. 

Conversely, there should be online treatment facilities which could be used to educate parents. People who are unable to travel to the nearest hospital should have access to psychiatrists online. Multi-stakeholder collaboration should be promoted among the private hospitals, pharmaceutical agencies, and international companies to advance local, national and global efforts in favor of good mental health.

In recent years data and technology has played a vital role in treating mental illness and avoiding crisis. By using cell phones and health apps, data can be used to monitor a patient’s progress, behavior patterns, and activities to signal it out  that help is needed before a crisis, such as a panic attack, occurs. Moreover, mental health care applications should be advertised and encouraged such as 7Cups, which is an app run mostly by volunteers who are trained to listen to people and then refer them to professionals associated with the app. 

New Site, 7 Cups of Tea, Allows You to Talk to Someone Anytime, Before Crisis – Accidental Bear
7Cups is an app run mostly by volunteers who are trained to listen to people and then refer them to professionals

Mental health Education in Schools

We cannot ignore the significant role that education plays in spreading awareness about a matter and helping in stemming the stigma surrounding something. Psychology should be integrated in the curriculum of schools, either as a permanent subject or a small mandatory course for all students to take. Along with this, every school should have at least one counsellor available on the campus during school hours to help students through any difficulty they might be facing in school or at their homes. Workshops should also be held for the teachers and other staff which educates them in distinguishing symptoms present in students and helping them. 

Moreover, mental health workers from Pakistan and other countries should be invited to schools with the help of the government to come forward and raise awareness regarding the matter. Such events should be hosted regularly and have compulsory attendance for the students and their parents along with the school teachers. There are a variety of ways in which these events could run. The visiting professional could use recent articles regarding a problem that is common in Pakistan and explain to the audience how important it is to solve the issue. They could hold a question and answer session with everyone to clear any doubts in the minds of the audience and help them better understand mental health. 

Special Need Schools

As mentioned by the psychaitrist Iqra Nasir, Pakistan also needs to invest in schools that are trained to provide education to students with special needs. Most of the schools that fall under this category in Pakistan are for the visually impaired and serve no purpose for the children who suffer from mental disorders such as autism or ADHD. Due to the lack of special need schools, children with mental disorders are prevented from getting the education that is their basic right. There are children with learning disabilities such as dyslexia who fail to get diagnosed and are admitted in normal schools where they lag behind. Unless such children get specially trained teachers and environment to express themselves in other ways and learn in unique styles, they will always be seen as less than other children. These reasons alone should be enough to help establish special educational institutes all over Pakistan.

The role of the NGOs

NGOs are playing a significant role in spreading awareness about mental health and providing help. Their numbers, too, are low but even with their limitations, NGOs could lead in creating more awareness and transforming the mental health status in Pakistan. 

Having mental disorders is not a choice or a lifestyle disease, unlike many physical diseases that could be prevented by correcting your lifestyle. Mental health is a grave concern in Pakistan and should be regarded as one. We must have more educated conversations on it so that we can finally break free from the toxic stigma placed on us by our ancestors.

Also, Read: OPINION: We need to talk about mental health

New image by Hubble shows a tilted galaxy

Scientia
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New image by Hubble shows a tilted galaxy

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured an image featuring the blue and orange stars of the galaxy called NGC 2188. On a closer first look, the galaxy appears to be made up of a narrow band of stars that produce a mesmerizing look. The astronomers have classified it to be a barred spiral galaxy.

Its tilted shape appears like that from our viewpoint on Earth as the center and the spiral arms are farther away from us. Only the outer edge of the disk, which is comparatively narrower, is visible to us. It can be understood by the example of having a dinner plate in your hands and turning it at a certain angle so that only its outer edge is visible. Scientists found out the true shape of the galaxy when studies were done on the distribution of the stars in the inner central bulge and outer disk and by observing the stars’ colors.

NGC 2188 is thought to be approximately half the size of our galaxy (The Milky Way). It is located in the constellation of Columba (the Dove) at 50,000 light-years across. The constellation itself is named after the prophet Noah’s dove in the biblical stories and is relatively small but has many alluring astronomical objects.

Every now and then, we are blessed with beautiful images from the outer space, courtesy of the Hubble Space Telescope. And we can expect many more amazing images in the near future. The James Webb Space Telescope is all set to receive the stardom of being the most magnificent and multifarious orbital observatory to be launched into space. It has seven times the capability of collecting light as Hubble, along with modern infrared imaging technology. With it, scientists mean to find out about distant celestial masses from an unmarred perspective. It is set to launch in 2021.

References: NASA.gov

Intel Scientist is updating Hawking’s Communicator With AI And GPT-2.

Scientia
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Intel Scientist is updating Hawking’s Communicator With AI And GPT-2.

“The theme that cuts across all of the different research that I’m doing is how do you amplify human potential and reduce inequity in the society,” said Lama Nachman, the Intel scientist who built Stephen Hawking’s communication system is updating it, adding more artificial intelligence to it. Assistive computing for people with disabilities is one piece of that puzzle. She is trying to help Peter Scott Morgan, another scientist and roboticist. He has advanced Motor Neuron Disease, which is similar to ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease and is losing control of his body. 

Nachman’s goal is to enhanced independence, capability, and empowerment for those who are losing control of their bodies. To build something like an AI-enabled exoskeleton-equipped human being. In short, a cyborg. And along with that, try to figure out some deep and fundamental questions about AI, life, and humans.

Intel Fellow and research scientist Lama Nachman.
Intel Fellow and research scientist Lama Nachman.

Stephen Hawking could control nearly one muscle in his body, his cheek. When Nachman worked on a communicator for Hawking, she placed a proximity sensor next to his cheek, dangling down his glasses. By flexing his cheek, Hawking could push a button or click on the attached mouse. This was how Intel built a hardware component for Hawking. The software component, however, was much harder. That required building a complete software platform on top of Windows so that Hawking could control an entire operating system from just one single button.

The system worked like old-fashioned radar: scanning for a horizontal line, then scanning for a vertical line. The intersection of the two lines was the point where Hawking needed to click the mouse in each of his attempts; it took literally minutes of interaction.

To avoid relapse in communication, Nachman and her team worked to built predictive technology that would anticipate what Hawking needed and automate it.

Now Nachman is working to provide this facility to thousands or millions differently-abled to use quickly and cheaply. Along with her team, she is getting very close to releasing that into open source is essentially utilizing a straightforward set of electrodes that you can have in a cap, very cheap system. This is a high fidelity, gazillion electrodes, will available in a few hundred dollars.

Also, Read: Hawking; The Interstellar Genius

Nergis Mavalvala named as the Dean of MIT of Science

Scientia
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Nergis Mavalvala named as the Dean of MIT of Science

Astrophysicist Nergis Mavalvala has been named the new Dean of MIT’s School of Science, effective Sept. 1. She will succeed Michael Sipser, who will return to the faculty as the Donner Professor of Mathematics, after six years of service.

Mavalvala, the Curtis and Kathleen Marble Professor of Astrophysics, is renowned for her pioneering work in gravitational-wave detection, which she conducted as a leading member of LIGO, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory. She has received numerous awards and honors for her research and teaching, and since 2015 has been the associate head of the Department of Physics. Mavalvala will be the first woman to serve as dean in the School of Science.

Quantum Astrophysicist Nargis Mavalvala in an MIT lab (Photo by Darren McCollester/for MacArthur Foundation)

Dr. Nergis Mavalvala attended the Convent of Jesus and Mary, Karachi, for her O-Level and A-Level. She moved to the United States in 1986 and enrolled at Wellesley College and got a bachelor’s degree in physics and astronomy in 1990. As a graduate student at MIT, she conducted her doctoral work under Dr. Rainer Weiss and developed a prototype laser interferometer for detecting gravitational waves. Before graduation, Nargis with her physics professor, Robert Berg, co-authored a paper in Physical Review B: Condensed Matter.

After graduate school, Dr. Mavalvala served a postdoctoral researcher and a research scientist at the California Institute of Technology, kickstarted her work with cosmic microwave background, and then eventually indulge the LIGO project. Mavalvala mainly focuses on two fields of physics: Gravitational Waves Astrophysics and quantum measurement science. She went on to do her Ph.D. in physics from MIT in 1997.

Dr. Mavalvala joined the MIT physics faculty in 2002 and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2017. Born to a Parsi family, she was the younger of the two children. Her parents highly valued their daughters’ educational experiences and encouraged her to pursue higher education overseas. She was always interested in math and science and believed that she was intrinsically good at it.

Mavalval frequently questioned for gender discrimination and how she was able to break down this barrier. In an interview with the Pakistani newspaper Dawn, she states, “I grew up in a family where the stereotypical gender roles were not really observed. Everyone is capable, and I set benchmarks for all these women willing to pursue a career in STEM.
Mawalwala is often viewed as a role model for aspiring female scientists of South Asian descent. In her childhood, she involved in handy work and was not bound to stereotypical gender roles in South Asian culture.

In a television interview in 2016, She stated that “When everyone has access to education, that’s when all the other things come into place. You’ve got to do what gives you pleasure, got to find a way to do it. People should just do what they enjoy most, and I think for all of society whether it’s in Pakistan or elsewhere we have to create opportunities for young girls to do what they’re good at and do what they love to do must cultivate the sense of wonder in a child.”

Mavalvala was among the team of scientists who, for the first time, observed ripples in the fabric of spacetime called gravitational waves. On February 11, 2016, the detection of gravitational waves confirmed a major prediction of Albert Einstein’s 1915 general theory of relativity. After the announcement of the observation, she became an instant celebrity scientist in her birthplace of Pakistan. Talking to the press, she claimed that “we are really witnessing the opening of a new tool for doing astronomy.”

During an interview with Pakistani newspaper Dawn, after the detection of gravitational waves, she claimed that she was baffled by the public interest in her research in Pakistan. She said, “I really thought of what I want people to know in Pakistan as I have garnered some attention there. Anybody should be able to succeed — whether you’re a woman, a religious minority, or whether you’re gay. It just doesn’t matter.”

Dr. Mavalvala has also worked on the development of exotic quantum states of light, and in particular, the generation of light in squeezed coherent states. By injecting such states into the kilometer-scale Michelson interferometer of the LIGO detectors, her group significantly improved the sensitivity of the detector by reducing quantum noise such squeezed states also have many other applications in experimental physics.

She also worked on laser cooling, where the Optical cooling of mirrors to nearly absolute zero can help eliminate measurement noise arising from thermal vibrations. Part of her work focused on the extension of laser-cooling techniques to optically cool and trap more and more massive objects, both for the LIGO project and for other applications, such as to enable observation of quantum phenomena in macroscopic objects. Prominent results from her group in this area included cooling of a centimeter-scale object to a temperature of 0.8 kelvins and inspection of a 2.7-kilogram pendulum near its quantum ground state. These experiments lay the foundations for observing quantum behavior in human-scale objects.

On February 20, 2016, Ambassador of Pakistan to the United States, Jalil Abbas Jilani, conveyed the Government of Pakistan’s message of felicitation to Nergis Mavalvala for her outstanding achievement in the field of astrophysics. She won the first Lahore Technology Award launched by Information Technology University on December 17, 2017. In 2017, the Carnegie Corporation of New York honored Mavalvala as one of its Great Immigrants awards recipients. The awards go to “naturalized citizens who have made notable contributions to the progress of American society.” In 2014, NOGLSTP recognized Nergis Mavalvala as the LGBTQ Scientist of the Year. She was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2010.

Also Read: Brilliant Pakistani Women in STEM

China, UAE, U.S all probing Mars. What’s the difference?

Fouz Siddiqui
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China, UAE, U.S all probing Mars. What’s the difference?

Exploring the other celestial bodies for the signs of life and a new home has always been a curiosity for humankind. We have sent hundreds of probes failed and successful in learning more vividly about our solar system. Considering our search, Mars is the only planet after Earth in the habitable zone (Habitable Zone: an orbital zone in a solar/star system, where conditions for life are suitable as it’s not too cold or not hot). In scientific circles, since NASA’s Phoenix Mars lander 2008, confirmed the presence of “Water Ice” on mars, water ice means that the discovery has the same elements of waters, what we have on Earth. Scientists and Space Exploration Agencies are trying to uncover more and possibly the colonization of the neighboring planet shortly.

Humanity has tried different attempts in the past to get information and data about the fellow planet. NASA, ESA, ROSCOSMOS/Russia, CNSA/China, ISRO/India, JAXA/Japan, UAESA agencies are the among who have been trying persistently to reach the red planet through their dozens of missions in the past 50 years. Some of the main interests are to find any evidence for the past or any possible form of life there.

In this article, I will be sharing the different approaches, features, and objectives of the missions sent under different space programs by the CNSA, the UAESA and NASA last month of July. 

UNITED ARAB EMIRATES SPACE AGENCY’s (UAESA) MISSION

The ambition is regarded as the ‘first interplanetary mission’ by the Arab World with the launch support of a private company in Japan. On July 20, 2020, UAESA with the help of Japanese H-IIA rocket, operated by ‘Mitsubishi Heavy Industries’ launched a spacecraft called “Hope” developed by Laboratory of Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) at the University of Colorado Boulder and with the support of Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC). 

Mars spacecraft by UAE
Engineers of the Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre work on the Hope spacecraft. Credits: UAE Space Agency

As per the UAESA, the orbiter will provide us with the first very complete picture of the Martian Atmosphere. More specifically, it will attempt to answer scientific questions such as why the martian atmosphere is losing Hydrogen and Oxygen from its atmosphere, a correlation of upper and lower atmospheric conditions will be made. Further, it will make attempts to understand and structurize a model for weather and seasonal change of the red planet. The gained information will also help scientists to understand more about the patterns and models of Earth’s atmosphere over the past millions of years. 

The entire data of the mission will be shared with over 200 international universities and institutes for research and study purposes.

UAE’s ambition to transform itself from an oil-based economy into a knowledge-based economy will inspire the other rich middle-eastern countries to be a part of the “Elite Club of Space Nations”. 

CHINA NATIONAL SPACE ADMINISTRATION’s (CNSA) MISSION

The People’s Republic of China, the world’s most populated country has sent a globally challenging spacecraft in the scientific race called “Tianwen-1”, this is a marvelous 5000-Kilogram robotic spacecraft consisting of an orbiter, lander, and rover. The mission was successfully launched from Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site on 23 July 2020 and will reach in next year February 2021.

The Chinese orbiter will loop the red planet for an entire Martian year.

The orbiter will study the Martian atmosphere and particular ionosphere. A magnetic field detector will provide us with essential insights about the past magnetic field of the planet.

Interestingly, the orbiter will loop the red planet for an entire Martian year (687 days of Earth), it will act as a communication transmitting linkage between the rover and us, the rover has a lifetime of 90 martian days-typically 93 days on our planet earth.

Here, quoting David Flannery, an astrobiologist at the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia, “The china will share the new data from Tianwen-1 with the scientific community as it shared few data sets of the moon before”. Further added, “Space belongs to everyone.”

NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION’s (NASA) MISSION

An illustration of NASA's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech
An illustration of NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech

As the world’s leading space agency, the “Perseverance” is a part of
the long-term endeavors of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program. This
pioneering, state-of-art, scientific proposal will be two-part: first the
rover, ‘Perseverance’, and a flying drone called “ingenuity”. The mission was launched on 30th July 2020 and expected to reach the Red Planet on 18th February 2021 at the ‘Jezero Crater’ a natural crater on the mars.
The ultimate approach is to explore the planet from an “Astrobiological’’ aspect, searching and trying to identify the environment of the planet in the past to support any form of microbial life.

The rocks will be studied from a geological perspective to seek
signs of habitability, as rocks are particularly known to preserve signs
of life over-ages. Further, it’s core data collection would be “Testing
oxygen production from the atmosphere” for future human landings.
Besides that summing up the payload consists of around seven main
instruments:

  • Mastcam-Z: Zoomable Paranormal Cameras
  • Laser Micro-Imager
  • A Subsurface-Radar
  • X-ray Spectrometer
  • Ultra-violet Spectrometer
  • MOXIE: Produces Oxygen from the Atmosphere
  • MEDA: A Weather Station

The curiously exciting part is the solar-powered Helicopter “Ingenuity,” which is 1.8-Kilogram, the small helicopter is expected to fly no more than 3 minutes per day and not more than five times in its 30-day flight testing period at the planet. It will serve as a foundation of a technology demonstrator for future developments of aerial vehicles for mars and other planetary bodies. 

As we have discussed the aspirations of different magnitudes of Space Programs, from an infant “Hope” of the UAE to a competitive spacecraft “Tianwen-1” by the CNSA and till the end, where we can see “Perseverance” a striving instrument by the leading agency NASA, all putting their money, resources and scientific understandings for an unknown but possibly-promising future for humankind.  

Link to similar posts: Three outstanding missions to Mars are set to launch this month

Here’s what perseids meteor shower looked like around the world

Scientia
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Here’s what perseids meteor shower looked like around the world

The Perseids meteor shower is without a doubt, one of the best showers to observe as it lights up the skies beautifully. They are known for the bright meteors and astronomy enthusiasts seek to capture the stunning phenomenon, this time of the year.

This shower runs annually from July 17 to August 24. This year, it peaked on the night of August 12 and the morning of August 13. At its peak, the display can produce as many as 150 meteors an hour. It takes place when our planet moves through the debris left by Comet Swift-Turtle.

Here are some beautiful images of the Perseids meteor shower captured around the world.

The shower seen in Gran Sasso d’Italia in L’Aquila, Italy. 
LORENZO DI COLA/NURPHOTO VIA GETTY IMAGES
Over the ancient city of Blaundus in Usak, Turkey, the shooting stars create a beautiful scene. 
ALIBEY AYDIN/ANADOLU AGENCY VIA GETTY IMAGES
A rich night in Slovakia, captured by Tomas Slovinsky
The Perseids shower over a sunflower field in Brihuega, Guadalajara, Spain. MARCOS DEL MAZO/LIGHTROCKET VIA GETTY IMAGES
The Perseids shower over a sunflower field in Brihuega, Guadalajara, Spain.
MARCOS DEL MAZO/LIGHTROCKET VIA GETTY IMAGES
The Perseids meteor shower next to the Milky Way in Antendorf, Germany. OLE SPATA/PICTURE ALLIANCE VIA GETTY IMAGES
The Perseids meteor shower next to the Milky Way in Antendorf, Germany.
OLE SPATA/PICTURE ALLIANCE VIA GETTY IMAGES
At the Gold Butte National Monument, Nevada, the shower raged spectacularly. ETHAN MILLER/GETTY IMAGES
Photographer Marcin Skibiński captured this image in Poland.
The meteor streaks across the sky near the city of Ohrid, Macedonia.
ROBERT ATANASOVSKI/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

Upcoming events

If you missed the shower, don’t worry as there are plenty of astronomy events lined up in the calendar.

Mars Opposition: In 2020 besides sending missions to Mars, we will also have it a bit near to us. On October 13, Mars will be at the closest opposition to Earth and will be well lit.

Solar Eclipse: On December 14, a total solar eclipse is expected. This phenomenon occurs when the moon blocks out the Sun’s outer atmosphere.

Geminids Meteor Shower: It is the best of meteor showers and is able to produce approximately 120 multicolored meteors per hour when it is at its peak. The shower runs annually from December 7-17. It peaks this year on the night of the 13th and morning of the 14th.

Also read: Gazing at the stars and beyond with Dr. Salman Hameed

The Invisible Pandemic

Alina Alamgir
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The Invisible Pandemic

We all are aware of the ongoing pandemic crisis, be that fact or baseless WhatsApp fast forwards. But we know very little of the second pandemic we are going through “Global Mental Health Crisis” that has, to be more specific, affected greatly our healthcare professionals who have been on the frontline for almost half a year now. Unfortunately, this isn’t new to them. For doctors and paramedical staff, depression, burnouts, and excessive workloads is not a unique experience. Studies from the early 1990s found that the risk of suicide was very high among American physicians, specifically female physicians. But this time, it’s very likely for them to have elevated stress levels considering the ongoing situation.

Why are HealthCare workers most dramatically affected?

Everybody is having a hard time dealing with their mental health issues. People stuck at home in abusive relationships, patients suffering from General Health Anxiety and OCD, those who’ve lost jobs, most importantly people who’ve lost their loved ones to Covid-19. Why emphasize on health care workers? 

Not starting from zero

They are not starting from the zero line. Anxiety, high stress and depression has been a part of the medical professions since times unknown. Burnouts and high workloads have already been putting their mental health at stake and a global health crisis where they’ve to endure grueling shifts, increased number of casualties to witness and difficult choices to make. Hence we are definitely not talking about sudden induced stress levels, we are talking about elevated stress levels to a point that could render a person with decreased function and exposed to addictions and drug abuse as failed coping strategies.

“Workload has doubled. I’m stressed out. But the worst was witnessing three of my young patients die of Covid. The youngest is 21, with no underlying medical condition. That took a huge toll on me.”

Difficult choices to make

Most of them had to endure the torment of making difficult choices and painful decisions. Whether that be the common question for every healthcare professional out there; 

“Choosing to care for my health, my family’s health or to serve the critically ill without concerning the former options.” 

Or be that the choice of which patient has to be put on a ventilator and which one can they put into arms of death, considering the shortage of ventilators and other necessary medical devices.

‘I’ve been worried about my critical patients that we can’t do much about.”

He Is a medical officer in HMC, Peshawar who has tirelessly served Coronavirus  patients.

Social stigma & Public Attitude

Social distancing has been the new normal for months now. But that doesn’t necessarily mean adapting humiliating behaviors towards health care staff in your neighborhoods or in general public. This young doctor from Peshawar displayed discomfort on how they’ve been looked at while they put their lives in danger for the people around them:

“People, even close relatives, look at me in disgust only because I have served patients suffering from Covid and got infected myself and later had to go through the torment of seeing my family suffer from Covid too. All because I chose to serve my people.”

On being asked about what he had to say about the public’s attitude towards this grave condition, he enlisted all the factors that were contributing to the severity of the ongoing crisis. But to my surprise he said it had its pros too. Upon being asked he stated;

“Finally the respect has doubled. They know our importance now”.

It’s sad to know that it took us an entire pandemic to stop labeling doctors as “Butchers” and start giving health care professionals there due respect.

“This is not only work but exposure to the already hollow psychology of society, which got more obvious in these times, that makes it hard to find a reason to work out there.”

The endless guilt trips

Those who are fighting on the frontlines suffer from the guilt of putting their families at risk. While those are not on the frontline are guilty about not being there for others. They are guilty of things they don’t even control, to enlist a few; the hurdles in their career growths and job opportunities. A young ambitious doctor from Islamabad, who was about to start her job in the UK and was determined to serve people, is going through high levels of stress as this pandemic proves to be a hurdle in her way and that she has to stay home in a time where hospitals are in dire need of doctors.

“Yes it has been a hurdle. I’ve been applying for jobs in the UK. But due to the pandemic the process is extremely slow. In fact they had stopped taking doctors from outside for almost 2 months. But now the recruitment process has started again. But the uncertainty is really making me go crazy.”

The added guilt of infecting family members has elevated anxiety and doctors complain their brains are constantly in a fight-or-flight mode, which drains you out. Dr Maeeda from Cantonment General Hospital, Rawalpindi had this to say;

“It’s very stressful, worrying about getting it and bringing it home. Being strict with SOPs while a layman doesn’t care about their and our health.”

Distancing from their families

Out of the sheer fear of getting their families infected doctors and nurses had to stay away from their homes, some residing in garages and some at hotels. Not seeing or meeting your loved ones can highly affect one’s mental peace. A young doctor who got infected himself and his family members as well had to say how hard it was to stay away from his little doctors

“Had to stay away from my daughters for 45 days straight. That was very hard.”

Keeping Up with the stereotypical image

As doctors, there is a certain, stereotypical image of a calm and neutral “hide-away-your-emotions” kind of a person that they must maintain. This leads to bottling up of emotions which can have disastrous effects on doctors’ mental wellbeing. Opening up about your emotions and worries would bring along the risk of being no more a trustworthy doctor for patients. As the social stigma regarding mental health prevails here too where you are labeled crazy and not well enough to deal with patients. A proof to this is that most of the doctors I interviewed chose to stay anonymous because they had to show and portray that they are strong and unaffected and that their families might worry more after reading what they are actually going through.

Moral Injury; borrowing a military term

Moral Injury refers to an injury to an individual’s moral conscience and values resulting from an act of perceived moral transgression, which results in profound emotional guilt, shame and moral disorientation. In context to the field of medicine, it might refer to the Hippocratic Oath that each doctor takes. Moral injury in such times won’t be surprising for doctors. As a business side of the health care system and lack of proper devices e.g., a ventilator might cause doctors to make difficult choices and consequently paving a way to moral injury.

Added torment on getting your religious beliefs questioned

In Pakistan, a problem doctors faced was getting their religious belief and tawakkul questioned because they asked people to avoid congregational prayers and suggested they perform their spiritual practices at home. People refused to isolate socially and made fun of those who did by labeling them cowardly and stating they had a weak belief system. This added to the numerous factors causing distress and social humiliation to the healthcare staff.

Putting labels like weak belief systems were among the numerous factors causing distress and social humiliation to the healthcare staff.

Unhealthy behavioral patterns among healthcare professionals    

Upon asking from different doctors the same question;

“How has this pandemic affected your mental health”?

“Severe insomnia. I can’t sleep at all. I’ve to take sedatives regularly. Secondly, anger issues! I was never this short-tempered. Workload has doubled. Nightmares are now regular. I try to travel to our house in Nathiagali for peace of mind even if I hardly get one day as a break.”

“My brothers, my niece, my sister in law and I myself got infected and seeing the little one suffer has taken a toll on me.”

“I’ve noticed strange behaviors and high levels of stress among my colleagues. I’ve seen some of them coming in mismatched clothes or someone brought a white shirt thinking it was his white coat. Everyone seems to go crazy. The workload is definitely taking a toll.”

“Seeing people die, especially young ones is hard. My colleagues and friends have suffered due to it but the hospitals won’t let out proper data and statistics of the doctors infected or dead.”

“Regarding mental health, it can be divided into ‘Emotional, Psychological and Social’ wellbeing. Talking in context to emotional wellbeing, doctors have emotionally collapsed. It’s not easy seeing your family, friends, and relatives die in front of you while you are unable to do anything. Now talking of psychological and social wellbeing, you can understand a person working double the shifts plus double the workload. He can’t think about spending time with your friends or family. Nobody, even your best friends, don’t want you to visit them because you’ve been assigned to a sampling unit or ICU. It is hard. No place for social or psychological well being.”

One-to-one conversations with Dr Iman Zia & Dr Hibba Noor Vardag

Dr Iman Zia is a young doctor who had the chance to work as a healthcare assistant at Field Isolation Centre at Expo, Karachi. Her sister took to social media and described her plight witnessing her sister go through tough ordeals.

She wrote in an instagram post that;

“In these awfully difficult times, where one wants to be home and safe, my sister was volunteering at the Field Isolation Centre at Expo. Risking her life to treat patients is something that takes a lot of her courage. She has been away from home for almost a month and has spent her time serving the nation.”

( Link to the original post: https://www.instagram.com/p/CBdwx-7JCBo/?igshid=1majyvzk38obn )

On asking Dr. Iman herself about how it has been for her to be on the frontline battling disease and death. She had to say this;

“Working during this pandemic has been a huge responsibility which healthcare workers have dealt with by staying calm, suppressing our emotions, for the sake of humanity. But we have been overburdened with stress, anxiety, and fear during the pandemic crisis.”

What has this pandemic changed?

“It’s surreal how this pandemic has changed people’s perception of death. How fear has replaced grief.”

What do you think about people’s attitude towards such a grave condition?

“Looking at people not following the SOPs feels miserable.”

How has it been for you and your mental health working at Field Isolation Centre Expo?

“There have been sleepless nights thinking about what happens next and feeling cranky after hours of wearing PPE. Mainly there has been a wave of fear, to avoid passing the risk of contracting the virus to our family members.”

Dr. Hibba Noor Vardag is a fresh graduate from Khyber Medical College, Peshawar. She had to start her house job at KTH, Peshawar during this pandemic. She took the start of her career in many unexpected circumstances, which definitely had its effect on her. 

“How did the ongoing health crisis put your life on hold while you were about to start your job?”

“Always having a hectic schedule and then suddenly sitting at home, doing nothing had a not so good impact on my mental health. Got into unhealthy habits, over-sleeping, lesser productivity, and overthinking about every single thing which is emotionally draining.”

“You started your house job in very unexpected circumstances, how has that had an effect on you?”

“Of course it affected our career start very badly, we couldn’t practice that well, the patient influx was very low, missed all the important “busy” morning rounds and suffered from severe OCD due to the pandemic. Most importantly, our excitement got ruined.” 

“How’s your learning experience suffered?”

“Currently I’m working in Gynae, the obstetrical procedures are not affected that much. But the gynecological procedures are totally at pause, so our training has been badly affected. The patients suffer a lot too.”

“How do you see your fellow doctors being affected?”

“Doctors have been exposed to a lot of sufferings during the pandemic. There is always a fear in our minds before approaching the patient who affects our output. Elective procedure on hold, training affected badly, and over our community is mentally and physically exhausted.”

Why is “Hero-worshipping” not enough? How can we help? 

Social media has been flooded with posts that came out in support of our front line “heroes,” people clapping in their balconies and the government “only” appreciating our healthcare staff and numerous other ways where we’ve been hero-worshipping them. But what we need to understand is that there is a significant problem we are missing out on. Calling them heroes and clapping in appreciation is wrong on so many levels. The problem with this narrative is that it’s accentuating valor as “to work in hazardous conditions selflessly.”

While the hazardous conditions shouldn’t have existed in the first place and they exist as a result of the failed responses from government and administration bodies worldwide. This narrative creates a notion that those who are not willing to work in any more hazardous conditions to be looked down upon because they choose their safety and their family’s safety due to the scarcity of PPEs. Appreciating them and acknowledging their sacrifices is no harm, but only sticking to hero-worshipping rather than taking some concrete measures is no good.

Pay heed to what doctors and research scientists tell you. Stay home stay safe. Take care of health care professionals, reach out to them, and diminish the taboo about them being stereotypically calm while there is an entire health crisis going on.

Also, read: CORONAVIRUS; the current catastrophe of our lives

 

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