b'ASEG newsCommitteesASEG Young Professionals Network: Where to from here?The Young Professionals Network (YPN)scheme. A small committee of senioropportunities outside of conference is primarily a database of two groups ofgeophysicists would oversee the pairingworkshops these days).ASEG Members. Obviously, as the nameprocess, from a database of around 80 suggests, we have a list of those whovolunteers. Im keen to understand what the lack identify as young professionals, or at leastof interest in remote mentoring means. did when they signed up to the mailingSo far, the response has beenHave the states already succeeded in list. The second group consists of not socompletely underwhelming. In fact,allocating mentors to all YPs who would young professionals who, at some point,Ive only received one nomination tolike one? Or are there very few YPs who volunteered to mentor YPs. date. Other YPN emails over the pastare based outside of major Australian few years seem to receive a similar levelcapital cities? Is mentoring valued less With this in mind, the idea of a remoteof engagement. Which is totally fine,than networking? Have most of our mentoring scheme was broached in thisbut begs the question: what shouldYP mailing list become not so young column. And that was the end of itwellthe longer-term purpose of the ASEGprofessionals or have they unsubscribed? almost. The first announcement resultedYPN be? Or put bluntly, why should IIs it worth pushing ahead with new YP in a couple of offers from willing mentorscontinue sending emails to 100 peopleinitiatives and, if so, which ones?and that was about it. Until about onewhen only one person replies?month ago, when I decided to pushId send out a survey to figure out what is ahead and email the ASEG YPN with anWhen the ASEG YPN was established,going on - but for the fact that it wouldnt open invitation to nominate for remotewe set out to focus on networking,receive a statistically significant response. mentoring. training and mentoring. Acting throughSo, may I suggest that if you feel strongly conference committees and someabout anything you read here, then please The idea was simple: if youve fallenstate branches, weve hosted manywrite back, either through ypadmin@aseg.through the cracks of state-basednetworking and mentoring eventsorg.au or as a letter to Preview. Where do mentoring initiatives, then you can ask(often well attended, as regularlyyou think the focus of the YPN should be, to be paired with a suitable mentor,documented in this column). I feelfrom this point on?using videoconferencing, phone, email,weve dropped the ball on training or whatever works for you, to achieve- although the pandemic certainlyJarrod Dunne virtually the same career support as youhasnt helped (I think all would agreeFederal Chair, Young Professionals Network would from an in-person mentoringthat we see very few public trainingypadmin@aseg.org.auHenderson Byte: Equatorial plasma bubbles and volcanoesEquatorial plasma bubbles (EPB) are an ionospheric phenomenon occurring near the Earths geomagnetic equator at nighttime.The plasma bubbles form after sunset when the suns rays no longer ionise the ionosphere and particularly in the F region (150 to 800 km above the surface). The ions then recombine, forming a lower density layer than its surroundings, which rises by convection making the bubble. The bubbles have dimensions of tens to hundreds of kilometres and are turbulent with irregular edges.What effect do they have? They are known to degrade the performance of GPS satellites by delaying the transmission of radio waves which carry the GPS signals. This is especially of concern with precise GPS positioning such as used for autonomous vehicles in mining and agriculture and for self-driving cars.Different times of the year and locations have differing frequencies of occurrence. In Northern Australia, the most common times are February to April and August to October, when a plasma bubble is expected every night.It has been thought that bubbles can also be formed by volcanic activity and proven correlation may just have been found following the huge eruption of the volcano in Tonga in January 2022. (New Scientist, 27 May 2023, p.10). There was degradation of GPS signals at the time and in this case up to thousands of kilometres away from the equator including as far south as Townsville, Queensland. A team of space scientists led by RMIT Universitys Brett Carter not only mapped the extent of the bubble over Australia, but also calculated its influence on navigation systems. (ABC Science, 31 May 2023).The disturbance by the volcano may have been augmented by the geomagnetic storm which occurred at that time. Magnetic field fluctuations can also be associated with EPBs.Of course, future such events related to volcanic action will not be able to be forecast until the prediction of volcanoes is perfected.Roger Henderson rogah@tpg.com.au5 PREVIEW AUGUST 2023'