|
In 10
years Darwinism will be history, says scholar
Spread
over 800 glossy pages and weighing 5.4 kg, tens of thousands of
copies of the
book Atlas of Creation, which claims to scientifically challenge
Darwin’s theory, have
been sent to schools, colleges, academic institutions the world over. The
book is now
being translated into several languages for massive distribution in
the coming months
By Lalit
K Jha in Istanbul |
|
Adnan Oktar
|
|
|
A
CONTROVERSIAL Turkish scholar has created ripples in the scientific
world by challenging Darwin’s theory of evolution and claiming there
are nearly 100 million fossils to prove that the world came into
being as a result of God’s creation. “In 10 years’ time, Darwinism
will be history and people will only read about Darwinism as a piece
of history,” Adnan Oktar, who writes under the name pen name of
Harun Yahya, said in an interview.
In Atlas of Creation, the latest book authored by him, Oktar claims
to scientifically challenge Darwin’s theory, which says all forms of
life are related and have descended from a common ancestor. Spread
over 800 glossy pages and weighing 5.4 kg, tens of thousands of
copies of this book have been sent to schools, colleges, academic
institutions the world over, the US and Europe in particular.
The book is now being translated into several Indian languages,
including Hindi and Urdu, for massive distribution in India in the
coming months. “Darwinism experiences a solid collapse all over the
world,” says Oktar, who has been widely interviewed after the
publication of his latest book in the past few months, including BBC
and Al Jazeera.
He has been published extensively around the world and major
European dailies. The Italian newspaper, La Stampa, in a recent
article used the heading Fair-well Darwin, while French daily Le
Point said Save Darwin. Oktar and his group of around 30 scholars
claim they have offered supporters of Darwin’s theory 100 million
fossils which can prove that this world came into being as a result
of God’s creation and not because of evolution.
“Darwin wrote in his books that people have to find transitional
forms to prove the theory of evolution, but nobody has been able to
find a single transitional form. Darwinists claim that the first
cell came into being as a coincidence. But it is impossible
for even a single protein to be formed by chance. “We have proved
that the skulls that were displayed as evidence of evolution are
fake. Darwinism cannot explain how we can see or hear or sense with
the support of our brain,” Oktar claims.
In September, Oktar challenged the scientific community, offering 10
million Turkish lira to anyone who produces a single intermediate
fossil demonstrating evolution. His theory has been rejected by the
scientific community. Scholars in the US and Europe say the
arguments used by Oktar to undermine evolution are not logical.
Eminent evolution biologist Kevin Padian has said Oktar has no
understanding of the basic evidence for evolution.
However, Oktar and his Scientific Research Foundation (SRF) claim
his theory is gaining ground. “When you look at the impact of Atlas
Of Creation, for example, as far as Turkey is concerned, 90 per cent
of the Turkish population no longer believes in Darwinism and that
rate is 80 per cent in Europe,” he said. “With the publication of
Atlas Of Creation, there has been a huge revolution all around the
world,” he claims. “In Turkey, for example, it will be very
difficult for you to find a professor who advocates Darwinism,” he
said.
But people in Turkey and Europe say that is because they fear him
and his supporters. Oktar is known to have been instrumental in
Turkish courts banning several popular websites in Turkey including
that of a leading daily, Vatan, which are critical of him. Early
this year, Google Groups too were ordered to be blocked by a Turkish
court at his appeal. “I support freedom of speech, not freedom of
insult. In the case of an insult, courts will certainly intervene
and do what is necessary. There cannot be freedom of insult in the
world,” he says in defence.
— IANS |
|
Assisted suicide film stokes right
to die debate in Britain
On September 30,2006, Ewert bid a final goodbye to his wife of 37 years. As
Mary
told him that she loved him, he bit down on a timer to switch off his
ventilator
and then drank a lethal dose of sodium phenobarbital through a straw, with
Beethoven’s
Ninth Symphony playing in the background. The entire sequence is on film,
recorded
by John Zaritsky, the Oscar-winning Canadian director
By Venkata Vemuri in London |
|
|
|
A man watches an
internet clip of a film about
terminally-ill 59-year-old Craig Ewert (right)
in London, yesterday. — AFP |
FOR
the first time in Britain, a television channel will show a
terminally ill man ending his life in a case of assisted suicide.
Craig Ewert, 59, a former professor suffering from a motor neuron
disease, died by his own hands at a Swedish clinic on September 30,
2006. But the filming of his death is only being broadcast now, when
Britain is in the midst of a debate on assisted suicides.
The country’s television watchdog, Mediawatch-UK has criticised Sky
Television’s Real Lives channel for planning to broadcast the film.
But Ewert’s wife Mary is firmly supporting the broadcast. An
American by birth, Ewert came to Britain after an early retirement.
He was diagnosed with the disease in April 2006 and was told he
would not live long. But the disease progressed so quickly that he
even needed assistance to breathe. |
|
He consulted his family, the couple has two children, and arranged
for his death at Dignitas clinic in Switzerland, the world’s only
country where assisted suicide is legal for non-residents. The
clinic has helped more than 700 people from 25 countries to die
since 1999. Ewert paid £3,000 ($4,400) to Dignitas for the expenses
to cover his death and cremation. In September 2006, Ewert left his
North Yorkshire home with wife Mary and arrived at Dignitas. The
couple did not want their children to see their father take his own
life.
Final goodbye
On September 30, Ewert bid a final goodbye to his wife of 37 years.
As Mary told him that she loved him, he bit down on a timer to
switch off his ventilator and then drank a lethal dose of sodium
phenobarbital through a straw, with Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony
playing in the background.
A Dignitas representative says: “I wish you good travelling.” His
wife, who earlier told him: “I love you sweetheart, so much, have a
safe journey and see you sometime,” holds his hand and kisses him
after a machine which aids his breathing switches off with a loud
beep.
He died 45 minutes later.
The entire sequence is on film, recorded by John Zaritsky, the
Oscar-winning Canadian director. He was granted unprecedented access
to the right-to-die organisation Dignitas to film Ewert’s last
moments. The only time the cameras were switched off was when
Mary asked them to withdraw, soon after Ewert’s death, to cry for
him in privacy.
Mary Ewert wrote in the Independent newspaper that allowing the
cameras in to film her husband’s last moments “was about facing the
end of life honestly.” “He was keen to have it shown because when
death is hidden and private, people don’t face their fears about it.
They don’t acknowledge that it is going to happen, they don’t
reflect on it, they don’t want to face it,” she added
Britons will see Ewert talking about his decision. It was not that
he wanted to die, but he did not care to live the life of a
vegetable, reports the Times. “You can watch only so much of
yourself drain away before you look at what is left and say, ‘This
is an empty shell’. Once I become completely paralysed, then I am
nothing more than a living tomb that takes in nutrients through a
tube in the stomach. It’s painful,” Ewert says in the recording.
Mary can be heard telling the crew minutes after the death that her
husband hoped that the film would dispel a taboo about death. “Craig
had been a teacher and you could say he made this film with his
educative hat on.” Barbara Gibbon, head of Sky Real Lives, said it
was important for broadcasters to stimulate debate on the subject.
Political issue
“By any standards, the decision to take your own life takes a great
deal of courage. To share this moment with a TV audience, as Craig
Ewert did, and manage to remain articulate right up until the end,
takes exceptional courage. The result is a powerful piece of
television,” she said. John Beyer of Mediawatch-UK said: “This
subject is quite an important political issue at the moment and my
anxieties are that the programme will influence public opinion.
Broadcasters must always remain impartial, otherwise they could
influence the public or other sufferers into making a similar
action. That’s my anxiety.”
The Ewert broadcast comes at a time when Britons are debating on the
morality and legality of assisted suicide, particularly after the
assisted suicide of 23-year-old paralysed rugby player Daniel James
of Worcester in Switzerland on September 12 this year. It may be a
first telecast for Britain, but not so in the US where in 1994 ABC’s
Prime Time Live telecast part of a Dutch documentary in which a man
with Lou Gehrig’s disease was killed by a physician’s injection. ABC
did not show the moment when the man died, the Post reported at that
time.
On November 22, 1998, American network CBS, in its 60 Minutes
programme, broadcast a video provided by the controversial
assisted-suicide practitioner John Kevorkian. It showed him
injecting Thomas Youk of Waterford, Michigan, with drugs. The video
then showed Youk in the process of dying. Youk, 52, had Lou Gehrig’s
disease.
When Kevorkian was asked on 60 Minutes if he killed Youk, he said:
“I did”, according to a report in The New York Times. It was a case
of euthanasia, not assisted suicide, Kevorkian said. The film
has split opinion in Britain, where assisted suicide is a
controversial topic following a string of recent cases.
Phil Willis, the Liberal Democrat lawmaker for Harrogate, the
northern English town where Ewert lived, told BBC radio the film was
trying to “promote assisted suicide” and should not be shown. The
right-wing Daily Mail newspaper said in an editorial: “What sort of
society have we become when the killing of a man is broadcast on
prime time TV in the name of entertainment?” But Barbara Gibbon,
head of Sky Real Lives, the channel which will show the film, said
it was important to “stimulate debate about this issue through
powerful, individual and engaging stories.” — IANS/AFP |
|
|
|
Queen cutting
costs to survive, told to save more
By Venkata Vemuri in London |
|
|
|
SHE’S
facing the pinch of recession like everyone else in Britain.
Her home is badly in need of repair. She’s checking her
mounting gas and power bills. She has even stopped using the
phone unless necessary. And her pension hasn’t gone up in a
decade. The only factor setting her apart from the rest is
the scale of her poverty, measured in millions of pounds and
not pennies. After all, she is the queen.
The latest report of Britain’s National Audit Office (NAO)
reveals Queen Elizabeth has had to adopt stringent
cost-cutting measures across all her palaces in the last one
year. The attempts to reduce the household’s maintenance
budget include cutting back on repairs, letting more
properties and reducing the phone bill by more than 20 per
cent. |
 |
|
|
The queen’s annual maintenance grant of £15 million from the
Department of Culture, Media and Sport had not changed since
2000-01, a reduction of 19 per cent in real terms. In an attempt to
deal with the shortfall, the royal household has more than doubled
the number of properties it lets to 36, increasing the annual rent
by nearly 100 per cent to £1 million. The number of residents living
in rent-free accommodation has been reduced since 2000 from 70 to
42.
While the cost of utilities, in particular gas and electricity, has
risen recently, the household reduced its utilities bill by 12 per
cent in 2007-08.
The measures taken included energy-saving initiatives such as
combined heat and power plants that provide hot water as well as
generating electricity. The new generation of units have helped to
reduce the electricity consumption by seven per cent.
A result of the shortfall, now standing at £32 million, has been
cutting back on palace repairs. The result has been a growing
backlog of repairs at the occupied royal palaces, which comprise
Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle, St James’s Palace and parts of
Kensington Palace, Hampton Court Mews and Windsor Home Park.
The backlog includes £2.8 million of conservation work to the
Victoria and Albert Mausoleum near Windsor, which was identified as
in need of repair 14 years ago and has been named by English
Heritage as being at serious risk from lack of attention. All the
palaces also require urgent repair to the woodwork. The furniture is
worn out, even the drapes need changing. Buckingham Palace is
suffering from heat leaks all over. The maintenance of the gardens
surrounding the palaces has been tawdry.
Yet, there is no one hearing the royal pleas. The Times has reported
that despite the royal household’s attempts to save money, the NAO
and the Commons Public Accounts Committee said that it could do
better. Edward Leigh, the committee chairperson, is quoted as
saying: “The royal household has become more efficient in how it
plans and manages its maintenance of the occupied royal palaces, in
the face of real terms cut in funding, though more could yet be
done.” — IANS
|
|
|
Kishore Kumar partly financed
Pather Panchali: Shoojit Sircar
By Subhash K
Jha in Mumbai |
|
Kishore
Kumar loved to see himself
as a patron of the arts and would often say that
Satyajit Ray’s critically acclaimed Pather Panchali
would not have been made without his help |
KISHORE
Kumar loved to see himself as a patron of the arts
and would often say that Satyajit Ray’s critically
acclaimed Pather Panchali would not have been made
without his help. This is just one of the
interesting anecdotes film-maker Shoojit Sircar
chanced upon while researching for his biopic on the
legendary singer-actor-director.
Do any of Kishore Kumar’s fans know he had partly
financed Satyajit Ray’s career-making Pather
Panchali? A fact Kishore Kumar never tired of
reminding Ray about whenever they bumped into each
other in Kolkata, said Sircar.
“Kishore Kumar never stopped preening about this
fact to close friends, ‘Do you know India’s greatest
film Pather Panchali could’ve never been made if it
wasn’t for me’? He loved to see himself as a patron
of the fine arts. In fact, some of the films that
Kishore Kumar directed, like Door Gagan Ki Chaon
Mein, reflected the sensitivities of Ray,” Sircar
said.
The director, who’s busy scripting the biopic, is
overjoyed that the legendary singer-actor’s family
shared their experiences and memories with him, but
says he would love some inputs from Lata Mangeshkar
and Asha Bhonsle too.
Anxious to meet the singing geniuses, Sircar said:
“I’ve read so many of Lata’s and Asha’s observations
on Kishore-da. They’d be invaluable in giving shape
to the biopic.” Unfortunately, meeting the sisters,
who have sung innumerable songs with Kishore Kumar,
is not that easy for a director who’s just one-film
old. |
|
|
“But fortunately for me, the Ganguly family — wife Leena
Chandavarkar, sons Amit and Sumeet Kumar — have opened their
hearts and homes to me. I don’t know why. Partly because I’m
Bengali. They’ve shared their rarest of experiences with
Kishore, and unreleased songs and rare footage from his
films,” said Sircar, whose first film Yahaan received much
appreciation.
Sircar intends to incorporate images, songs and the real
voice of Kishore Kumar in the movie based on his life.
Thanks to the unconditional support of the Ganguly family,
Sircar’s biopic, which he starts shooting next year, will
reflect the unknown side of the multi-faceted Kishore Kumar.
“We’ve seen enough of the eccentric side. Now we’ll see the
sensitive side of the man who sang numbers as deeply moving
as Chingari koi bhadke and Mere naina sawan bhadow and who
patronised Satyajit Ray’s cinema,” Sircar said. Asked about
the casting, the director said he was amused and perturbed
by the names doing the rounds in the media. “Please, it’s
not Aamir Khan, Shah Rukh Khan or Hrithik Roshan playing
Kishore Kumar. I don’t know where they got these names from.
I’ll first complete the script before I even think of whom
to cast. For all we know, we may cast a complete newcomer,”
he said. — IANS
|
|
|
|
|
Now a polymer coating that heals cracks, scratches
|
|
|
A
WONDROUS new coating will heal tiny cracks in your
table or the scratch on your new car. They are
designed to better protect materials from the
effects of environmental exposure. Applications
range from automotive paints and marine varnishes to
the thick, rubbery coatings on patio furniture and
park benches.
“Starting from our earlier work on self-healing
materials at University of Illinois
(Urbana-Champaign), we have now created self-healing
coatings that automatically repair themselves and
prevent corrosion of the underlying substrate,” said
Paul Braun, professor of materials science and
engineering and co-author of the study.
To make self-repairing coatings, the researchers
first encapsulate a catalyst into spheres less than
100 microns in diameter (a micron is a millionth of
a metre). They also encapsulate a healing agent into
similarly sized microcapsules. The microcapsules are
then dispersed within the desired coating material
and applied to the substrate, said an Illinois
release. |
A chemical coupling between the
antibiotic
and the polymer results in a stable product |
|
|
“By encapsulating both the catalyst and the healing agent,
we have created a dual capsule system that can be added to
virtually any liquid coating material,” said Braun. When the
coating is scratched, some of the capsules break open,
spilling their contents into the damaged region. The
catalyst and healing agent react, repairing the damage
within minutes or hours, depending upon environmental
conditions.
The performance of the self-healing coating system was
evaluated through corrosion testing of damaged and healed
coated steel samples compared to control samples that
contained no healing agents in the coating. Reproducible
damage was induced by scratching through the
100-micron-thick polymer coating and into the steel
substrate using a razor blade. The samples were then
immersed in a salt solution and compared over time.
The control samples corroded within 24 hours and exhibited
extensive rust formation, most prevalently within the groove
of the scratched regions, but also extending across the
substrate surface, the researchers report. In dramatic
contrast, the self-healing samples showed no visual evidence
of corrosion even after 120 hours of exposure. These
findings will be published in Advanced Materials and posted
on its website. — IANS
|
|
|
|
|
|
A
honeyed option to chemical additives in salads |
|
Salad
dressings are emulsions, they contain
oil and water; and to keep these ingredients together in one phase,
manufacturers rely
on emulsifiers and thickening agents to
avoid thinning of the dressing and
separation of the oil and water phase |
HONEY,
a natural preservative is also a healthy alternative
to chemical additives and refined sweeteners in
salad dressings. “To capitalise on the positive
health effects of honey, we experimented with using
honey in salad dressings,” said Nicki Engeseth,
associate professor of food chemistry at University
of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
“We found that the antioxidants in honey protected
the quality of the salad dressings for up to nine
months while sweetening them naturally.” Engeseth’s
study substituted honey for EDTA, an additive used
to keep the oils in salad dressings from oxidising,
and high-fructose corn syrup, used by many
commercial salad-dressing producers to sweeten their
salad dressing recipes, according to an Illinois
release.
“We chose clover and blueberry honeys for the study
after an analysis of the sweetening potential,
antioxidant activity, and phenolic profiles of 19
honeys with varying characteristics,” said the
scientist.
The dressings were also compared to a control
dressing that contained ingredients found in current
commercial salad dressings, she said. Engeseth
explained a problem the scientists encountered in
using honey in a salad dressing system. |
|
|
“Salad
dressings are emulsions — they contain oil and water; and to
keep these ingredients together in one phase, manufacturers
rely on emulsifiers and thickening agents to avoid thinning
of the dressing and separation of the oil and water phase,”
she said. When the researchers found that enzymes in the
honey broke the emulsion by attacking the starch that was
used to thicken the dressing, they came up with a new
formulation that used xanthan gum as a thickening agent,
which they then used in all the dressings, she said The
researchers then stored the dressings under various
conditions, including 37 degree Celsius (accelerated
storage) for six weeks and 23 degree Celsius and four degree
Celsius for one year, followed by an evaluation of their
oxidative stability.
“After nine months of storage, both types of honey were as
effective as EDTA in protecting against oxidation or
spoilage. Blueberry honey performed slightly better than
clover,” she said. Engeseth said that many consumers prefer
products with natural ingredients and that salad dressings
made with honey should appeal to these consumers. The study
was published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food
Chemistry.
— IANS
|
|
|
|
|
Scientists discover secret of rainforests survival
|
|
|
A
RARE trace element that helps rainforests trap
nitrogen to support their prodigious growth could be
the secret of their survival. Most of the nitrogen
that supports the rapid, lush growth of rainforests
vital to our eco-system comes from tiny bacteria
that can turn nitrogen in the air into soil
fertiliser.
Until now, scientists had thought that phosphorus
was the key element supporting the vast expansion of
rainforests, according to Lars Hedin, professor of
ecology at Princeton University who led the
research. But an experiment testing the effects of
various elements on test plots in lowland
rainforests on the Gigante Peninsula in the Barro
Colorado Nature Monument in Panama showed that areas
treated with molybdenum withdrew more nitrogen from
the atmosphere than other elements.
“We were surprised,” said Hedin, who is also a
professor at the Princeton Environmental Institute.
“It’s not what we were expecting.” Molybdenum, the
team found, is essential for controlling the
biological conversion of nitrogen in the atmosphere
into natural soil nitrogen fertiliser, which in turn
spurs plant growth. |
Molybdenum
is essential for controlling the biological
conversion of nitrogen in the atmosphere into
natural soil nitrogen
fertiliser, which in turn spurs plant growth. |
|
|
Molybdenum is 10,000 times less abundant than phosphorus and
other major nutrients in these ecosystems. A lustrous,
silvery metal, it is found in soil, rock and sea water and
in a range of enzymes vital to human health. “Just like
trace amounts of vitamins are essential for human health,
this exceedingly rare trace metal is indispensable for the
vital function of tropical rainforests in the larger Earth
system,” Hedin said.
The discovery has implications for global climate change
policy, the scientists said. Previously, researchers knew
little about rainforests’ capacity to absorb the greenhouse
gas carbon dioxide. If molybdenum is central to the
biochemical processes involved in the uptake of carbon
dioxide, then there may be limits to how much carbon that
tropical rainforests can absorb, said a Princeton release.
The biological enzyme, nitrogenase, which converts
atmospheric nitrogen into soil fertiliser, feeds on
molybdenum, the researchers found. “Nitrogenase without
molybdenum is like a car engine without spark plugs,” said
Alexander Barron, co-author of the paper, who was a graduate
student in Hedin’s lab and earned his PhD in ecology and
evolutionary biology from Princeton in 2007 and who now is
working on climate legislation in Congress. The report is
detailed in the December 7 online edition of Nature
Geoscience .— IANS
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
