Category: Sci/Tech

  • Degerli Dostlarimiz – Turkish forum’un Yeniden Dogusu ….  sizden destek beklemekde   ..Donation (bagislar) ve Kurucu Uye Sertifikalari

    Degerli Dostlarimiz – Turkish forum’un Yeniden Dogusu …. sizden destek beklemekde ..Donation (bagislar) ve Kurucu Uye Sertifikalari

    Degerli Arkadaslarim ve Çok Değerli Turkish Forum Üyeleri

    Turkish Forum’un yeniden doğuşu için çalışmalarımız sonuç vermeye başladı  – Turkish Forumun Türkçe ve İngilizce sayfalarına girebilirsiniz – Turkish forum yazar kadrosu (Editorial Board) bilgilendirici yayınları deposit etmeye başladı  …  Almanca ve Rusça sayfalarımız henüz aktif değil – Son durumda çalışmalarımızı dağıtım programları üzerine yapmaktayız  *  onlar kurtarıldıktan sonra PKK Ermeni Batı Trakya ve Kıbrıs Azerbaycan Turkmenler …..ile ilgilı sayfaların üzerine eğileceğiz   Kurtarma operasyonu  yavaş gözükmesine rağmen  Değerli Uzman ve Gönüllü kadromuz tarafından büyük bir fedakarlıkla yürütülmektedir …. Hepsine ve bağısda bulunmuş olan  dostlarımıza (liste sonda verilmiştir) çok büyük bir teşekkür borçluyuz

    Lütfen bağışlarınız devam ettiriniz …  onlarsız operasyonun maddi tarafını ki bu durumda en önemli tarafını karşılamak durumunda değiliz.

    CANDAN TEŞEKKURLERLE

    Dr. Kayaalp Büyükataman – Başkan

    Turkish Forum Yönetim Kurulu

    www.turkishnews.com


    ***WITH STATUS UPDATE ***

    GÜNCELLENMİŞ BİLGİLER İLAVE EDİLMİŞDİR

    KURUCU ÜYE BİLGİLERİ İLAVE EDİLMİŞDİR

    BAGIŞ LİSTESİ  GÜNCELLEŞTİRİLMİŞDİR.

    SYSTEM RECOVERY DEVAM ETMEKTEDİR

    LUTFEN BAGIŞLARINIZI BUGÜN YAPINIZ * DAHA COK UZUN BIR YOLUMUZ VAR

    VERİ TABANINI TAM OLARAK KURTARAMADIK * BU MESAJI ALAN UYELERİMİZ

    Lütfen bu mesajı Sizde e-maili olan diğer Turkish Forum üyelerine ve Turkiye ye hizmeti hayatlarında ön plana almış dostlarınıza ulaştırınız.  Bu konuda yardım ve desteğiniz. Kısa zamanda uzun bir yolu kat etmemize büyük bir Yardım olacak.

    TURKISH FORUMUN DEĞERLİ ÜYELERİ, TURKISH FORUM’UN

    İNTERNET SİSTEMLERİ ÇÖKDÜ

    DESTEĞİNİZE İHTİYACI BÜYÜK

    2010 YILI ÜYE AİDATLARI VE İLAVE BAĞIŞLARINIZ  TURKISH FORUM’UN DEVAMI VE  PROGRAMLARIMIZ İÇİN BİR HAYAT KAYNAĞI OLACAKDIR.

    SONDA VERİLEN BAGLANTI, SİZİ AİDATLAR VE BAGIŞLAR SAYFASINA HIZLI BİR ŞEKİLDE İLETECEKDİR.

    Değerli Dostlarımız,

    TURKİSH FORUM (TF) Kükresel Anlamda ve 5 kıtada faaliyet gösteren yerel Türk kuruluşlarının bir araya gelmesine hizmet eden tek çatı kuruluşudur. Genel hatlarıyla özetlemek gerekirse, TF’in üstlenmiş olduğu en temel görev hangi ülkede olursa olsun Türk toplumunu mümkün olan en iyi Şekilde temsil etmek, Türk kökenli vatandaşları ve Türk iyenin dostlarını siyasi alanda ve sivil toplumda daha etkin bir rol oynamaya teşvik etmek ve ülkelerin  siyasetinde, yazılı ve görsel basında ve kamu alanında yer alan kişi ve kurumları Türkiye hakkında bilgilendirerek çeşitli ülkelerde köklenmiş Türk topluluklarına ortak değerlerimiz ölçülerinde hizmet etmektir.

    SON BIR KAÇ AYDIR SISTEMLERİMİZİN YENİLENMESİ İÇİN İHTİYACIMIZ OLAN NAKİT MİKTARININ MADDİ GÜCÜMÜZÜN ÜSTÜNDE OLDUGUNU BELİRTİR MESAJLARIMIZI SİZE UYGUN BİR ŞEKİLDE ULAŞTIRMAYA CALIŞDIK. PEKDE İSRAR ETMEDİK ÇÜNKÜ SİSTEMLER CALIŞMAKDA İDİ…   AMA ARTIK ZAYIFLAMIŞ OLAN SİSTEM BİR TEKNİK DİKKATSİZLIK SEBEBİ NETİCESİNDE 17 ARALIKDA TAMAMİYLE ÇÖKMÜŞ DURUMDA.

    BİR HAFTAYI AŞAN BİR SUREDİR. GÖNÜLLÜ UZMAN ARKADAŞLAR VE MAAŞLI TEKNİSYENLER SİSTEMDEN KALAN PARÇALARI DERLEMEYE CALISIYORLAR…

    DİGER BİR GURUP UZMAN ARKADAŞ VE TEKNİSYENLER İSE  YENİDEN KURULACAK SİSTEMİN ESKİSİNDEN DAHA İYİ OLMASI VE SİZE DAHA ÇABUK ULAŞMASI İÇİN GEREKLİ PROGRAMLARI DEĞİSTİRMEK VE YENİDEN YAZMAKTALAR.

    Sizin yardımınızla bu safhayı da atlatacağız ve eskisinden çok daha kuvvetli olarak Türk toplumuna hizmete devam edeceğiz. Bu bir sözdür. Bu bizlerin yoludur.

    Sistemin Back*Up ları ile birlikte Çökmesi herhangi bir saldırı sonucu değildir. Geçtiğimiz seneler içimde. Sistemlerimize yapılan binlerce saldırı tümüyle etkisiz kılındı.

    Çöküş Tümüyle Bakım teknisyen hatasıdır.  Sistemi Re*Boot etmek için arıza yapmış olan disk kullanılmış (bir kaç defa üst üste) sağlam AYNA VAZIFESI GÖREN (BACK*UP) disklerde çökmüş. Sistemi en kısa zamanda çalışır duruma getireceğiz. TEKNİK BAKIMDAN YARDIM EDEBİLECEK ARKADAŞLAR LÜTFEN İLERİ ÇIKSINLAR. HER BİRİNE İHTIYACIMIZ BÜYÜK.

    EKİBİMİZDEN GELEN ARA RAPOR DEMEKTEDİRKİ:

    Su anda disklerden biri yazılım olarak, mekanik arizalı disk ise donanımsal müdahaleler ile kurtarılmaya çalışılmaktadır.

    Bu işlemlerin maliyeti ise 4.000 USD’ ların üstünde gözükmektedir. Öte yandan sunucu teknik altyapısının minimum 2009 yılına eşit kapasite de kurulabilmesi için gerekli bütçe ise 20.000 dolar civarındadır.

    TAHMİN EDECEGİNİZ GİBİ: MADDİ BAKIMDAN’DA BUYUK BİR DESTEĞE İHTIYACIMIZ BELİRLENDİ. SİSTEMİ YENİDEN CANLANDIRACAK VE HAREKETE GEÇIRECEK YARDIM VE DESTEKLERİNİZİ  BİR AN ONCE GÖNDERMENİZİ VEYA YAPMANIZI RİCA EDİYORUZ.

    BAGIS YAPAN VE TEKNİK DESTEKDE BULUNAN ARKADAŞLARIMIZI VE BAGIŞ MIKTARLARINI (aksini istemedikleri takdirde) ARA YAYINLARIMIZDA BELİRTECEK VE AYRICA KURULACAK OLAN YENİ WEB SITEMİZDE ‘Turkish Forum KURUCU üyeleri arasında olarak daimi bir teşekkürle yer vereceğiz. AYRICA… Yönetim Kurulumuzun Kararına Dayanarak Desteğe en fazla ihtiyaç olan bu devrede……

    “ TURKISH FORUM KURUCU ÜYE SERTİFİKALARI “

    TURKISH FORUMUN  YENİDEN DOGUŞUNA BAGIŞ YAPARAK DESTEK VEREN  ARKADAŞLARIMIZA VE ÜYELERİMİZE ÖZEL OLARAK GÖNDERİLECEKDİR

    Yürürlükte olan iç-tüzüğümüze Göre Kurucu Üyeler  Gerek Danışma Kuruluna , gerekse Yönetim Kuruluna Bağlı Arzu ettikleri Komite veya organlardaki seçkin arkadaşlarımızla*uzmanlarımızla yan yana çalışma ve Turkish Forumu etkiliyebilecek her bir karara iştirak etme hakkına sahiptir.

    BAĞIŞLARINIZ İÇİN:

    TURKIYEDE BANKA ADRESI * TC ZİRAAT BANKASI  -İSTANBUL*TAKSIM SUBESI

    Hesap Sahibi: Turkish Forum Inc.

    Hesap:       USD   –

    USD Hesap No:    5761628-5001

    SWIFT= TC2BTR2A

    IBAN = TR09 0001 0008 4305 7616 2850 01

    ————

    Hesap:       TL   –

    TL Hesap No:     5761628-5002

    SWIFT= TC2BTR2A

    IBAN = TR79 0001 0008 4305 7616 2850 02

    —————

    AMERIKADA POSTA ADRESI * çekleriniz için

    Turkish Forum

    PO BOX 1104

    Marblehead: MA 01945 * USA

    ————————————————————-

    INTERNET UZERINDEN

    bu yazinin veya asagidaki yazinin uzerine tiklayiniz.

    Fehler! Es wurde kein Dateiname angegeben.
    Press the above button to pay.
    Inter uzerinden erismekde gucluk cekiyorsaniz lutfen buraya tiklayiniz  click here .
    If you can not see the payment button, please click here .

    Üyelik aidatlarından ve bağışlarınızdan temin ettiğimiz maddi kaynak, toplumumuzun müşterek hedeflerine ulaşabilmemiz için en temel dayanağımızdır.  Sizin desteğiniz ve TF’ a olan güvenceniz devam ettiği sürece kükresel anlamda Türk toplumu için çalışmaya devam edebileceğiz.  Kar amacı gütmeyen örgütler için tanımlanmış sınırlar çerçevesinde, bizlere yapacağınız maddi destek ödediğiniz vergilerden düşülebilir. “Internal Revenue Code 501(c) (3)”.

    Turkish Forum – Dünya Türkleri Birliğine inandığınız, ilginiz ve desteğiniz için size teşekkür eder, daha da başarılı bir yılda esenlikler dileriz.

    Saygılarımızla,
    Kayaalp Büyükataman                              Metin Kaşka

    Dr. Kayaalp Büyükataman, Başkan                Metin Kaşka, Mütevelli heyeti Başkanı
    Turkish Forum- Dünya Türkleri Birliği

    Lütfen bu mesajı Sizde e-maili olan diğer Turkish Forum üyelerine ve Turkiye ye hizmeti hayatlarında ön plana almış dostlarınıza ulaştırınız. Veri tabanını henüz tümüyle kurtaramadık… Bu konuda yardım ve desteğiniz. Kısa zamanda uzun bir yolu kastetmemize büyük bir Yardım olacak.

    BU GÜNE KADAR BAĞIŞ YAPAN ÜYE VE DOSTLARIMIZ (*)

    Kayaalp BUYUKATAMAN ABD 500
    Taner ERTUNC ALMANYA 500
    ERKAN  ESMER ABD 300
    OZER AKSOY KANADA 250
    ATA TURSUCU ABD 250
    SUKRU MUVAFFAK UZUMERI KANADA 250
    BULENT BASOL ABD 250
    BIROL KILIC AVUSTURYA 200
    DEMITAS BAYAR ABD 200
    ALİ ÜSTÜN TR 200
    SUAT MELIH DURUSAN TR 150
    FATMA ORAN KANADA 100
    MEHMET ALI KORPINAR TR 100
    ZEKI ASLAN KANADA 100
    AFET ERIMER JACQUEMOUD ABD 100
    FEVZIYE MANIZADE ABD 100
    SEVIL AKMAN ABD 75
    TANJU & GULAY KIRISCIOGLU ABD 50
    TULAY LUCIANO ABD 50
    IBRAHIM GOKCEK ABD 50
    IBRAHIM TANSEL ABD 50
    CONECTICUTT TURK DERNEGI ABD 50
    ALI KESKINER ABD 50
    OMER SABUNCU ABD 30
    OMER KALAYCIOGLU TR 15

    *Bankaya yatırılan fonları lütfen e*maille bize bildiriniz

    DATA RECOVER TEKNİK DESTEK VEREN ÜYE VE DOSTLARIMIZ

    (İsimler ve Şirketler ‘Emniyet sebebi ile’ İşlem sonunda acıklanacakdır)

    YENİDEN YAPILANMAYA DESTEK/FİKİR VEREN ÜYE VE DOSTLARIMIZ

    TANER ERTUNÇ                                       ALMANYA

    ERGUN KIRLIKOVALI                            ABD

    MUZAFFER KARASULU                         ABD

    SEFER ÖZDEMİR                                      ABD

    FATİH ÇULHA                                           ABD

    SİNAN BORULDAY                                  TR

    EVREN CÖMERT                                       TR

    HALUK DEMİRBAĞ                                  İNGİLTERE

    TOLGA CAKIR                                           İNGİLTERE

    Abdullah Bozgeyik                                         TR

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  • ‘Iranian Cyber Army’ hacks Twitter

    ‘Iranian Cyber Army’ hacks Twitter

    18 December 2009

    A hacker group called ‘Iranian Cyber Army’ hacked Twitter for an hour early on 18 December, redirecting users to a website containing a green flag and Arabic writing.

    Graham Cluley at Sophos, said in his blog: “Fortunately there isno indication at this point that the page was carrying malicious code, and this attack appears to have had political motivations rather than designed to steal confidential information from users.”

    INfo security

    Cluley pointed out that although the hacker group calls itself the Iranian Cyber Army, this does not necessarily mean they are from Iran. However, he pointed out that Twitter was widely used by anti-government protesters in Iran earlier this year, and that Twitter delayed planned maintenance to allow Iranians to continue to share information over the service.

    Part of the hacker message from the Iranian Cyber Army read: “The USA thinks they control and manage internet access, but they don’t. We control and manage the internet with our power, so do not try to the [sic] incite Iranian people.”

    Cluley expressed relief, however, that ‘all’ that happened was that Twitter users were taken to a site displaying a political message: “Just imagine what could have occurred if they had pointed people to a phishing site posing as Twitter (designed to steal login names and passwords) rather than a political message?”

    In a brief blog entry, Twitter’s Biz Stone said that the Twitter DNS records were compromised by an unauthorised party.

    Cluley explained that this does not necessarily mean that the Twitter servers were breached by the ‘Iranian Cyber Army’, but that someone managed to somehow change the DNS look-up for twitter.com.

    Although this of course raises the question of how the hackers managed to change the Twitter DNS records…

    Infosecurity (UK)

  • Far From a Lab? Turn a Cellphone Into a Microscope

    Far From a Lab? Turn a Cellphone Into a Microscope

    Turkish-Americans in the news:

    Novelties

    By ANNE EISENBERG

    Published: November 7, 2009

    MICROSCOPES are invaluable tools to identify blood and other cells when screening for diseases like anemia, tuberculosis and malaria. But they are also bulky and expensive.

    Skip to next paragraph

    Ozcan Research Group at U.C.L.A.

    An engineer at U.C.L.A. has adapted cellphones to do the work of microscopes in screening for diseases.

    Ozcan Research Group at U.C.L.A.

    The process creates holograms that can show, for example, a stained white blood cell.

    Now an engineer, using software that he developed and about $10 worth of off-the-shelf hardware, has adapted cellphones to substitute for microscopes.

    “We convert cellphones into devices that diagnose diseases,” said Aydogan Ozcan, an assistant professor of electrical engineering and member of the California NanoSystems Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles, who created the devices. He has formed a company, Microskia, to commercialize the technology.

    The adapted phones may be used for screening in places far from hospitals, technicians or diagnostic laboratories, Dr. Ozcan said.

    In one prototype, a slide holding a finger prick of blood can be inserted over the phone’s camera sensor. The sensor detects the slide’s contents and sends the information wirelessly to a hospital or regional health center. For instance, the phones can detect the asymmetric shape of diseased blood cells or other abnormal cells, or note an increase of white blood cells, a sign of infection, he said.

    Dr. Ozcan’s devices provide a simple solution to a complex problem, said Ahmet Yildiz, an assistant professor of physics and molecular cell biology at the University of California, Berkeley.

    “This is an inexpensive way to eliminate a microscope and sample biological images with a basic cellphone camera instead,” he said. “If you are in a place where getting to a microscope or medical facility is not straightforward, this is a really smart solution.”

    Neven Karlovac, the chief executive of Microskia in Los Angeles, said that some of the company’s products would be adaptations of regular cellphones. For phones without cameras, or phones too compact to modify, the company has different designs, including a simple box with a sensing chip that can be plugged into a cellphone or laptop with a USB cord, he said.

    “The idea is to commercialize this low-cost cell imaging and diagnostic platform and apply it to a number of different products,” Dr. Karlovac said. The price of the devices has not been set.

    Dr. Ozcan’s devices are compact in part because they have eliminated the central element in a microscope — its lenses — said David J. Brady, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Duke University and director of its Imaging and Spectroscopy Program.

    “There’s no need for lenses in these devices because the magnification can be done electronically,” he said. “You don’t need optics at all.”

    For this electronic system of magnification, inexpensive light-emitting diodes added to the basic cellphone shine their light on a sample slide placed over the phone’s camera chip. Some of the light waves hit the cells suspended in the sample, scattering off the cells and interfering with the other light waves.

    “When the waves interfere,” Dr. Brady said, “they create a pattern called a hologram.” The detector in the camera records that hologram or interference pattern as a series of pixels.

    The holograms are rich in information, Dr. Ozcan said. “We can learn a lot in seconds,” he said. “We can process the information mathematically and reconstruct images like those you would see with a microscope.”

    Dr. Ozcan’s system may someday lead to a rapid way to process blood and other samples, said Bahram Jalali, an applied physicist and professor of electrical engineering at U.C.L.A. “It is potentially much faster than a microscope,” he said. “You don’t have to scan mechanically” as people must with a microscope with its small field of view.

    “Instead you capture holograms of all the cells on the slide digitally at the same time,” he said, so that it’s possible, for example, to see immediately the pathogens among a vast population of healthy cells. “It’s a way of looking quickly for a needle in a haystack,” he said.

    THE cellphone systems may be particularly helpful in screening for malaria, said Yvonne Bryson, a professor and chief of the pediatric infectious diseases division at the David Geffen School of Medicine at U.C.L.A. She has collaborated with Dr. Ozcan on several grants. “Right now you need a microscope, and you need trained people,” Dr. Bryson said. “But this device would allow you to work without either in a remote area.”

    M. Fatih Yanik, an assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said, “This makes it possible for ordinary people to gather medical information in the field just by

    using a cellphone adapted with cheap parts.”

    E-mail: novelties@nytimes.com.

  • Creationism, Minus a Young Earth, Emerges in the Islamic World

    Creationism, Minus a Young Earth, Emerges in the Islamic World

    By KENNETH CHANG

    ORIGINS Darwin's finches on the Islamic symbol in art work used at a conference in Massachusetts about the acceptance of evolution among Muslims.
    ORIGINS Darwin's finches on the Islamic symbol in art work used at a conference in Massachusetts about the acceptance of evolution among Muslims.

    AMHERST, Mass. — Creationism is growing in the Muslim world, from Turkey to Pakistan to Indonesia, international academics said last month as they gathered here to discuss the topic.

    But, they said, young-Earthcreationists, who believe God created the universe, Earth and life just a few thousand years ago, are rare, if not nonexistent.

    One reason is that although the Koran, the holy text of Islam, says the universe was created in six days, the next line adds that a day, in this instance, is metaphorical: “a thousand years of your reckoning.”

    By contrast, some Christian creationists find in the Bible a strict chronology that requires a 6,000-year-old Earth and thus object not only to evolution but also to much of modern geology and cosmology, which say the Earth and the universe are billions of years old.

    “Views of scientific evolution are clearly influenced by underlying religious beliefs,” said Salman Hameed, who convened the two-day conference here at Hampshire College, where he is a professor of integrated science and humanities. “There is no young-Earth creationism.”

    But that does not mean that all of evolution fits Islam or that all Muslims happily accept the findings of modern biology. More and more seem to be joining the ranks of the so-called old-Earth creationists. They do not quarrel with astronomers and geologists, just biologists, insisting that life is the creation of God, not the happenstance consequence of random occurrences.

    The debate over evolution is only now gaining prominence in many Islamic countries as education improves and more students are exposed to the ideas of modern biology.

    The degree of acceptance of evolution varies among Islamic countries.

    Research led by the Evolution Education Research Center at McGill University, in Montreal, found that high school biology textbooks in Pakistan covered the theory of evolution. Quotations from the Koran at the beginning of the chapters are chosen to suggest that the religion and the theory coexist harmoniously.

    In a survey of 2,527 Pakistani high school students conducted by the McGill researchers and their international collaborators, 28 percent of the students agreed with the creationist sentiment, “Evolution is not a well-accepted scientific fact.” More than 60 percent disagreed, and the rest were not sure.

    Eighty-six percent agreed with this statement: “Millions of fossils show that life has existed for billions of years and changed over time.”

    The situation in Turkey is different and changed only in the past couple of decades. One of the conference participants, Taner Edis, said he never encountered creationist undertones when he was growing up in Turkey in the 1970s. “I first noticed creationism when I came to America for graduate school,” said Dr. Edis, now a professor of physics at Truman State University in Missouri. He thought it an American oddity.

    Some years later, while browsing a bookstore on a visit to Turkey, Dr. Edis found books about creationism filed in the science section. “It actually caught me by surprise,” he said.

    In Turkey, officially a secular government but now ruled by an Islamic party, the teaching of evolution has largely disappeared, at least below the university level, and the science curriculum in public schools is written in deference to religious beliefs, Dr. Edis said.

    Harun Yahya, a Turkish creationist of the old-Earth variety, has gained prominence in Turkey and elsewhere. A quarter of a world away, most of the biology teachers in Indonesia use Mr. Yahya’s creationist books in their classrooms, the McGill researchers found, although some said they did that to provide counterarguments to materials their students were reading anyway.

    In the McGill research, fewer students in Indonesia than in Pakistan thought evolution a well-accepted scientific fact, yet 85 percent agreed that fossils showed that life had existed for billions of years and changed over time.

    The quality of biology education “varies highly depending on what country you’re in and what school you’re in,” said Jason R. Wiles, a professor of biology at Syracuse Universityand associate director of the McGill center.

    In addition, the situation in countries with a Shiite majority may be far different than in places where Sunnis are more numerous. There is no single leader, like the Roman Catholic pope, who can dictate an official view that holds for all Muslims.

    Even finding out how different countries teach evolution can be difficult, Dr. Hameed said. Saudi Arabia, for example, does not let foreigners see the biology textbooks. “We don’t have much information,” he said.

    For many Muslims, even evolution and the notion that life flourished without the intervening hand of Allah is largely compatible with their religion. What many find unacceptable is human evolution, the idea that humans evolved from primitive primates. The Koran states that Allah created Adam, the first man, separately out of clay.

    Pervez A. Hoodbhoy, a prominent atomic physicist at Quaid-e-Azam University in Pakistan, said that when he gave lectures covering the sweep of cosmological history from the Big Bang to the evolution of life on Earth, the audience listened without objection to most of it. “Everything is O.K. until the apes stand up,” Dr. Hoodbhoy said.

    Mentioning human evolution led to near riots, and he had to be escorted out. “That’s the one thing that will never be possible to bridge,” he said. “Your lineage is what determines your worth.”

    Biology education, even in places like Pakistan that otherwise teach evolution, largely omits the question of where humans came from.

    Some academics at the conference worried that the rejection of some aspects of evolution might leave Islamic countries at a disadvantage in scientific education. Dr. Hameed said a negative reaction to evolutionary theory could reflect a struggle to retain cultural traditions and values against Western influences, even though Islamic creationists readily borrowed many of the arguments from Western creationists, just removing the young-Earth aspects.

    There is some indication that in the West, where non-Islamic influences are strongest, Islamic creationism may be stronger in reaction to the outside pressure. For example, high school students at Islamic schools in and near Toronto were far more doubting of evolution than students in Indonesia or Pakistan, the McGill researchers found. A majority of the students at the Canadian Islamic schools disagreed that a significant body of data supported evolution and that all life came from the same common ancestors.

    At the same time, many of the Canadian Muslims even acquired young-Earth creationist beliefs, which are thoroughly Western in origin. Only half the students surveyed at the Islamic schools in the Toronto area thought fossils showed that life had existed for billions of years and had changed over time, compared with the 86 percent of the students in Pakistan.

    In a study financed by the National Science Foundation, Dr. Hameed and his colleagues will survey the beliefs of Muslim doctors in five Muslim countries — Egypt, Iran, Malaysia, Pakistan and Turkey — and compare them with Muslim doctors in non-Muslim countries — Turkish doctors in Germany, Pakistani doctors in Britain, and Turkish and Pakistani doctors in the United States.

    “We actually expect, especially in Europe, where they have a harder time merging in the culture,” Dr. Hameed said, “harsher rejection of evolution in England and Germany” than in Muslim countries.

    Source:  www.nytimes.com, November 2, 2009

  • EU launches digital library at Frankfurt Book Fair

    EU launches digital library at Frankfurt Book Fair

    (FRANKFURT) – The European Union used the world’s biggest book fair to launch the EU Bookshop’s digital library, making more than 50 years of documents in about 50 languages available for free on the Internet.

    Individuals, companies and isolated libraries from Australia to Zambia can download files dating back to 1952 when six countries created what is now the 27-member EU.

    “With the digital library, we have total transparency” of EU legislative and cultural publications, Commissioner for Multilinguism Leonard Orban told AFP on Sunday.

    The project also underpins “the commitment of the European Union to preserve and encourage the history of the union in its linguistic diversity,” he added.

    The library’s oldest document is a speech by Jean Monnet to inaugurate the High Authority of the Coal and Steel Community, the EU’s precursor.

    From four official languages at its start, the union now counts 23, but some publications are also available in Chinese, Russian and around 20 other languages.

    Orban voiced hope that the digital library would be “an additional tool for combating prejudices.”

    On a practical level he added: “No one can complain now of problems consulting legislative texts and associated documents.”

    Roughly 110,000 publications or 12 million pages — the equivalent of four kilometres (2.5 miles) of bookshelves — were scanned from EU archives from February 2008 at a cost of about 2.5 million euros (3.75 million dollars).

    The library counts around 140,000 publications today, and 1,500 “born digital” ones are added each year. More pre-digital documents will also be scanned into the system.

    Topics covered by EU institutions, agencies and other bodies include education, the environment, health and transport, an EU statement released at the Frankfurt Book Fair said.

    Official statistics from 1953 to the present are also available.

    The library’s contents will also be a part of Europeana, a project of prominent national European libraries and archives that Claudia Lux, president of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions called the largest digital library worldwide.

    EU Business

  • Turkey ‘set to sue’ Israel as rift deepens

    Turkey ‘set to sue’ Israel as rift deepens

    îèåñ ììà èééñ - îçõ 1TEL AVIV, Israel, Oct. 19 (UPI) — Turkey’s high-profile rift with its erstwhile strategic ally Israel has deepened with reports that Ankara is ready to sue the Jewish state if it fails to supply 10 unmanned aerial vehicles ordered in 2005.

    Under the $180 million contract, Israel Aerospace Industries, the flagship of Israel’s defense industry, and Elbit Systems, the country’s leading electronics specialist, were expected to deliver four of the Heron UAVs in August, with the series completed by the end of October.

    But they missed the deadline. The Israelis said the delay was caused by problems in upgrading the Heron engines so that Turkish-made electro-optical payloads could be fitted to the UAVs.

    Israel Radio quoted Defense Ministry officials as saying the problem had now been solved.

    It was not clear whether deliveries had taken place. But Turkish publication Today’s Zaman quoted a senior official at the Undersecretariat for Defense Industries as saying Thursday: “Turkey plans to impose a heavy monetary penalty for the delay.

    “If this country refuses to comply with the penalty, then Turkey will head to the International Court of Commercial Arbitration.”

    The Turkish government’s hard-line position underscored the degree to which once-flourishing relations between the two countries, the leading non-Arab military powers in the eastern Mediterranean and the Levant, have deteriorated in recent months.

    In particular, a series of serious diplomatic confrontations over Israeli military actions against Palestinians in recent months, culminating in the Dec. 27-Jan.18 invasion of the Gaza Strip, effectively shattered the alliance that was formalized in a 1996 agreement.

    Trouble has been brewing ever since the Islamist-based Justice and Development Party took power in Ankara in 2002.

    The Turkish move away from Israel has accelerated under Prime Minister Recep Tayyep Erdogan, who has his eyes on restoring Turkey’s leadership role in the Muslim world following the collapse of Ankara’s bid to join the European Union.

    To restore Turkey’s status in the Muslim world, which vanished with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire after World War I, Erdogan had to shed the alliance with Israel.

    Last week NATO member Turkey abruptly excluded Israel from biannual air exercises codenamed Anatolian Eagle, in which U.S., European and Israeli forces regularly participated. The maneuvers were canceled after the United States and Italy subsequently pulled out.

    Ankara cited the delay in the Heron deliveries as one of the main reasons for snubbing Israel over the October exercises.

    The impact of the Turkish action has been heightened by international condemnation of Israel’s massive 22-day military offensive in Gaza, in which some 1,300 Palestinians, most of them civilians, were killed. Israeli fatalities totaled 13, several from friendly fire.

    Israelis feel Ankara is employing a double standard by ignoring that it conducts offensive operations against its Kurdish separatists, including incursions into northern Iraq.

    Turkey’s leading daily newspaper, Hurriyet, has suggested that the “icy new tone” in relations is not likely to ease off any time soon.

    Israelis have been aghast at the deterioration in relations with a country they thought was a close ally and friend. Their concern has been deepened by an upswing in Ankara’s relations withSyria, one of Israel’s main Arab foes, in recent weeks.

    In April, Turkey conducted military exercises with Syria, a country with which it almost went to war in the late 1990s.

    If the Turks decide to take legal action against Israeli defense companies over the Heron issue, relations will undoubtedly be aggravated further. It would also likely mean the end of substantial Israeli arms sales to Turkey.

    According Israeli media reports, the largely state-run defense industries acknowledge that the volume of exports to Turkey has been diminishing in the last couple of years.

    U.S. and European companies, particularly Italian, have been moving in to replace Israeli companies.

    As the crisis has deepened, Israeli defense sources have indicated that the Jewish state might seek to retaliate against Turkey, possibly by cutting off the sale of advanced weapons systems.

    Source:  www.upi.com, Oct. 19, 2009