The Peninsula News Paper
Wednesday, 08 December 2010 00:58
Online forums in the Gulf were ignited in the past few weeks over a story connecting mankind with the other world. The story tells of an alleged “genie” who a court judge claims instigated him to undertake theft and embezzlement of nearly $200m. The defendant’s counsel asked for permission to bring the “genie” to court for a hearing or prosecution. It is strange that there are many who believe in and promote these stories in our part of the world, and even calling those who challenge them “infidels”. At the same time, they deny any scientific discoveries or facts, old or new.
According to conventional scientific methods, there are three revolutions that shook the world — the Copernican, Darwinism, and Freudian revolutions. Today, however, those cannot even compare to the facts and information reached by the tools of modern science and knowledge, which reflect the renewal, growth, and continuous development of scientific knowledge itself.
Salon Magazine states that half of the clinics in the US can now clone human beings and nothing prevents them from doing so except for moral constraints. Only four states are not prevented from such constraints and they are Michigan, Missouri, California and Rhode Island, which are undertaking human cloning experiments. Meanwhile, some private institutions in other states offer intervention services in the inheritance gene. The publication adds that scientists in South Korea announced that they have succeeded in cloning a human cell but stopped the experiment temporarily, most likely due to secret fear of controversy surrounding it, and will probably formally announce their success after a few years in order to be the first to achieve this scientific discovery.
For its part, my alma mater, the University of Leicester, just celebrated the pioneering of a new scientific advancement in January 2010, indicating that the analysis of genes of generations of Europeans has shown that their roots trace back to the Fertile Crescent. The results showed that 4 out of every 5 Europeans of the Caucasian race have genetics tracing to the Near East, while the return of DNA passed from mother to daughter, traces to southern Europe. The study notes that the migration of men the Fertile Crescent who are well known for farming and agriculture came in the Stone Age or after the Ice Age around 10,000 years ago, and settled in Europe. People during that time were dependent on fishing and fruit picking.
The Fertile Crescent is described as a crescent shaped area in South-West Asia. Its history begins within the area of the Mediterranean Sea, stretching between the Tigris and Euphrates, and ending at the Arabian Gulf. In this area, the Sumerians established the first civilizations of the world about 5,500 years ago. James Breasted, an American archaeologist, came up with the name “Fertile Crescent” for the region because the Sumerians and those who came after them in the region made agricultural land irrigated and fertile.
Perhaps several months after that report, the Daily Mail published a quotation pointing out that after nearly 65 years since the death of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, the results of his DNA tests were revealed, tracing his ancestry back to descendants from Jewish and African origins. The reports showed that DNA samples obtained from the relatives of the former German leader that he is linked to the biology of the very people who he sought to destroy. Reports indicate that Hitler is the descendant of Jewish-Moroccan origin from the Arabian Peninsula and has relatives in Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Libya, Austria, Denmark, and even Israel.
Several months ago, in Saudi Arabia, a team of researchers from the University of Michigan discovered pieces of a skull from 29 million years ago that all primates may have descended from, as well as homo sapiens. The discovery shows that old world monkeys took only different hereditary paths and only began doing so millions of years later than scientists had thought of before. The scientists derived the name of this old monkey from the word “Hijaz monkey” derived from Latin name “Saadanius Hijazensis”, in research published in Nature magazine. Dr. William Sanders, who led that research, stated that it is “a wonderful discovery because the old world skull characteristics are common to all apes, but it is close to a group that evolved and led to our creation.” The study indicates that primates descended from the old “Garda World” 29 million years ago, instead of 30 to 35 million, as previously thought.
The biggest shock was ignited by the famous British physicist, Stephen Hawking, in his next book, which is due for release shortly before the end of 2010. The British newspaper, The Times, monopolised a series of extracts from the forthcoming book where Hawking declares the death of philosophy as a science, and suggests that physics is now close to writing the “theory of everything” or “theory of comprehension” as it is in a position to explain the properties of all natural things. Such a theory has been the dream of physicists for a very long time - since the time of Einstein, in fact - but the problem has been the reconciliation between quantum theory and gravity, which explains how objects overlap on a global scale. Hawking says that M-theory is located between the so-called “string theory” that will achieve this goal. He writes, “M-theory is a unified theory, which is what Einstein hoped to find. There is a great victory in the fact that we, human beings, who are just collections of molecules that are essential in nature - are able to come to this proximity to understanding the laws that govern us and control the universe around us “.
Where does the Arab world stand with all of these revolutions? Numbers indicate that Arab scientific publications contribute to no more than 0.7 percent of world production, and this rate is less than seven times the proportion of Arabs to the world’s population, while the share Israeli scientific publication is ten times the share of the world’s population. That is the main reason for the list of the 500 best universities in the world is free of the name of any Arab university. In terms of printing and publishing, the proportion of Arabic publications as a share of the world’s publications do not exceed 1 percent. With all of these challenges and emerging information and facts, it is dire for the Arab world to absorb every movement and change wrought by science and the tools around us.
ليست هناك تعليقات:
إرسال تعليق