60 replies to this topic

[Magnus]

Moms' Favoritism Tied to Depression in Adulthood

ScienceDaily (July 10, 2010) — Whether mom's golden child or her black sheep, siblings who sense that their mother consistently favors or rejects one child over others are more likely to show depressive symptoms as middle-aged adults, finds a new study by Cornell gerontologist Karl Pillemer.

Prior research has shown that parental favoritism among siblings negatively affects mental health and often triggers behavioral problems in children, teens and young adults, but the survey of 275 Boston-area families, co-directed by Purdue sociologist Jill Suitor, is the first to show that such harmful effects persist long into adulthood.

"Perceived favoritism from one's mother still matters to a child's psychological well-being, even if they have been living for years outside the parental home and have started families of their own," said Pillemer, the Hazel E. Reed Professor in the Department of Human Development and associate dean for extension and outreach in the College of Human Ecology, about his paper in the Journal of Marriage and Family (April 2010).

"It doesn't matter whether you are the chosen child or not, the perception of unequal treatment has damaging effects for all siblings," he added. "The less favored kids may have ill will toward their mother or preferred sibling, and being the favored child brings resentment from one's siblings and the added weight of greater parental expectations."

Favoritism may be difficult for mothers to avoid, however, as the researchers found that 70 percent of moms surveyed named a child to whom they felt closest and only 15 percent of children saw equal treatment by their mothers. Similarly, 92 percent of children and 73 percent of mothers specified a child with whom the mother battled most frequently.

The study, which controlled for family size, race and other factors, drew on interviews with 275 mothers in their 60s and 70s with at least two living adult children and also surveys of 671 offspring of the women. In addition to questions about emotional closeness or excessive conflict with a particular child, mothers and children were asked about the mother's expectations for who will care for her when she becomes ill or disabled. When mothers designated a child as her caregiver, all children suffered greater depressive symptoms, though the children's perceptions of their mother's preference did not relate to their mental health.

The findings could lead to new therapies for practitioners who work with later-life families, Pillemer said. "We have a powerful norm in our society that parents should treat kids equally, so favoritism can be something of a taboo topic. If counselors can help older parents and adult children bring some of these issues into the open, it may help prevent family conflict from arising."

In addition to Suitor, other co-authors include Charles Henderson, senior research associate in human development, and Ph.D. student Seth Pardo, both of Cornell.

[Magnus]

Marijuana Derivative Could Be Useful for Pain Treatment
A new compound similar to the active component of marijuana (cannabis) might provide effective pain relief without the mental and physical side effects of cannabis, according to a study in the July issue of Anesthesia & Analgesia, official journal of the International Anesthesia Research Society (IARS).

The synthetic cannabinoid (cannabis-related) compound, called MDA19, seems to avoid side effects by acting mainly on one specific subtype of the cannabinoid receptor. "MDA19 has the potential for alleviating neuropathic pain without producing adverse effects in the central nervous system," according to the study by Dr Mohamed Naguib of The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center.

MDA19 Works on a Single Cannabinoid Receptor

The researchers performed a series of experiments to analyze the pharmacology and effects of the synthetic cannabinoid MDA19. There are two subtypes of the cannabinoid chemical receptor: CB1, found mainly in the brain; and CB2, found mainly in the peripheral immune system. Dr. Naguib's group has been doing research to see if the cannabinoid receptors -- particularly CB2 -- can be a useful target for new drugs to treat neuropathic pain. Neuropathic pain is a difficult-to-treat type of pain caused by nerve damage, common in patients with trauma, diabetes, and other conditions.

MDA19 was designed to have a much stronger effect on the CB2 receptor than on the CB1 receptor. In humans, MDA19 showed four times greater activity on the CB2 receptor than on the CB1 receptor. In rats, the difference was even greater. The experiments also showed that MDA19 had "protean" effects, so-called after the shape-shifting Greek sea god Proteus -- under different conditions, it could either block or activate the cannabinoid receptors.

In rats, treatment with MDA19 effectively reduced specific types of neuropathic pain, with greater effects at higher doses. At the same time, it did not seem to cause any of the behavioral effects associated with marijuana.

Potential to Develop Effective Pain Drugs that Avoid Side Effects The "functional selectivity" of MDA19 -- the fact that it acts mainly on the CB2 receptor and has a range of effects under differing conditions -- could have important implications for drug development. "[W]ith functionally selective drugs, it would be possible to separate the desired from the undesired effects of a single molecule through a single receptor," Dr. Naguib and colleagues write.

This means that MDA19 could be a promising step toward developing medications that have the pain-reducing effect of cannabinoids while avoiding the mental and physical side effects of marijuana itself. However, more research will be needed before MDA19 or other agents that act on the CB2 receptor are ready for testing in humans.

"These elegant studies by Professor Naguib demonstrate remarkable analgesic properties for this synthetic cannabinoid," comments Dr. Steven L. Shafer of Columbia University, Editor-in-Chief of Anesthesia &Analgesia. "The studies suggest a novel mechanism for this protean agonist. Although preliminary, these studies suggest that synthetic cannabinoids may be significant step forward for patients suffering from neuropathic pain."

[Magnus]

You blink 15 000 times a day

The muscle that lets your eye blink is the fastest muscle in your body. It allows you to blink 5 times a second. On average, you blink 15 000 times a day. That’s about 10 times per minute, or more than five million times a year. Women blink more than men.

Jean-Dominique Bauby, a French journalist suffering from “locked-in” syndrome, wrote the book “The Driving Bell and the Butterfly” by blinking his left eyelid – the only part of his body that could move.

Animals blink too, of course. Some bird species, usually flightless birds, have only a lower eyelid, whereas pigeons use upper and lower lids to blink. Fish and insects do not have eyelids – their eyes are protected by a hardened lens.

To care for your eyes, eat carrots. They really do make you see better. Vitamin A is known to prevent “night blindness,” and carrots are loaded with Vitamin A. Deficiency of Vitamin A actually is a significant world problem, comparable to that of protein deficiency and second only to caloric deficiency.

Carrots also contain fiber, potassium, vitamin C, and beta-carotene, which may reduce the risk of heart disease and cancer. Carrots have zero fat content. One carrot provides more than 200% of recommended daily intake of Vitamin A.

Carrots were first cultivated in 500 BC in the Mediterranean regions. The first carrots were purple, white, and yellow. They were introduced in Europe in the 1600s. Orange carrots – the ones we know today – were first grown in Japan in the 17th century, and later made popular by the Dutch.

Mel Blanc, who played the voice of Bugs Bunny, was allergic to carrots.

[sobank]

Sorry I cant paste the whole blog but here is the link.
http://blogs.denverp...sa-photos/2434/

[sobank]

Giz Explains: Why Everything Wireless is 2.4GHz

You live your life at 2.4GHz. Your router, your cordless phone, your Bluetooth earpiece, your baby monitor and your garage opener all love and live on this radio frequency, and no others. Why? The answer is in your kitchen.
What We're Talking About

Before we charge too far ahead here, let's run over the basics. Your house or apartment, or the coffee shop you're sitting in now, is saturated with radio waves. Inconceivable numbers of them, in fact, vibrating forth from radio stations, TV stations, cellular towers, and the universe itself, into the space you inhabit. You're being bombarded, constantly, with electromagnetic waves of all kind of frequencies, many of which have been encoded with specific information, whether it be a voice, a tone, or digital data. Hell, maybe even these very words.

On top of that, you're surrounded by waves of your own creation. Inside your home are a dozen tiny little radio stations: your router, your cordless phone, your garage door opener. Anything you own that's wireless, more or less. Friggin' radio waves: they're everywhere.

Giz Explains: Why Everything Wireless is 2.4GHzReally, it's odd that your cordless phone even has that 2.4GHz sticker. To your average, not-so-technically-inclined shopper, it's a number that means A) nothing, or B) something, but the wrong thing. ("2.4GHz? That's faster than my computer!")

What that number actually signifies is broadcast frequency, or the frequency of the waves that the phone's base station sends to its handset. That's it. In fact, the hertz itself just a unit for frequency in any context: it's the number of times that something happens over the course of a second. In wireless communications, it refers to wave oscillation. In computers, it refers to processor clock rates. For TVs, the rate at which the screen refreshes; for me, clapping in front of my computer right now, it's the rate at which I'm doing so. One hertz, slow clap.

The question, then, is why so many of your gadgets operate at 2.4GHz, instead of the ~2,399,999,999 whole number frequencies below it, or any number above it. It seems almost controlled, or guided. It seems, maybe, a bit arbitrary. It seems, well, regulated.

A glance at FCC regulations confirms any suspicions. A band of frequencies clustered around 2.4GHz has been designated, along with a handful of others, as the Industrial, Scientific, and Medical radio bands. "A lot of the unlicensed stuff—for example Wi-Fi—is on the 2.4GHz or the 900Mhz frequencies—the ISM bands. You don't need a license to operate on them." That's Ira Kelpz, Deputy Chief, Office of Engineering and Technology at the Federal Communications Commission, explaining precisely why these ISM bands are attractive to gadget makers: They're free to use. If routers and cordless phones and whatever else are relegated to a small band 2.4GHz, then their radio waves won't interfere with, say, cellphones operating at 1.9GHz, or AM radio, which broadcasts between 535 kHz and 1.7 MHz. The ISM is, in effect, a ghetto for unlicensed wireless transmission, recommended first by a quiet little agency in a Swiss office of the UN, called the ITU, then formalized, modified and codified for practical use by the governments of the world, including, of course, our own FCC.

The current ISM standards were established in 1985, and just in time. Our phones were one the cusp of losing their cords, and in the near future, broadband internet connections would come into existence and become magically wireless. All these gadgets needed frequencies that didn't require licenses, but which were nestled between the ones that did. Frequencies that weren't so high that they sacrificed broadcast penetration (through walls, for example), but weren't so low that they required foot-long antennae. In short, they needed the ISM bands. So they took them.
Why 2.4?

Now, there are many, many frequencies that qualify as "unlicensed," but only a handful get used in our phones, routers, and walkie talkies.

In the case of something like phones, which are sold paired with a specific base station, choosing the right unlicensed frequency is a pretty straightforward calculation: A 900MHz system will be more easily able to broadcast through a multi-floor house, but a 2.4 GHz system will generally require a smaller antenna, which keeps the phone's size down.
Giz Explains: Why Everything Wireless is 2.4GHz
Wi-Fi routers started as proprietary, paired systems operating on all manner of frequencies, only settling on a standard—5GHz—with the codification of 802.11a. Then the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers agreed that 2.4GHz, with its wide channel selection and range/penetration/cost potential, was a safer bet. Today, some Wireless N routers can operate on both 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands concurrently. Routers could function just as well at 2.3 or 2.5GHz, but they're not allowed. It's the rules. The 2.4GHz band, which runs from about 2400 to 2483.5Mhz, is where routers have to live.

For this, they can thank the microwave.

Microwave ovens heat food by blasting it with, literally, microwaves. (It bears mentioning that in terms of electromagnetic waves, microwaves, the wavelengths of which range from a millimeter all the way up to a meter, aren't particularly "micro".) At certain frequencies, such waves cause something call Dielectric Heating in water and fat, while passing straight through other materials, like plastic or glass, without exciting them much at all. (Metal, on the other hand, gets too excited.) For a full explanation of how dielectric heating works, click here, but for the purposes of this article, just know this: Only certain materials are susceptible, and particularly when bombarded with waves of a certain frequency and power. One of the commonly used frequencies is 915MHz. Others fall at 5.8 GHz and 24GHz, though creating microwave ovens using the latter would be quite expensive. But a frequency that proved to be both effective and relatively cheap to achieve was 2.45GHz. That's the frequency emitted by your microwave, right there in the kitchen.
Giz Explains: Why Everything Wireless is 2.4GHz
So, when the FCC got around to establishing just which frequencies unlicensed gadgets could broadcast on, they had a lot of things to think about. First, they had to consider which frequencies were already in use by stuff like radio and TV. Those would be off-limits. Then, of the remaining, usable, unallocated frequencies, they sought out the ones that were already being used by existing equipment. One thing they noticed? Microwaves were popular! They'd been around commercially since 1947. And generally, they operated at a specific frequency: 2.45GHz. Despite heavy shielding, microwave ovens' powerful emissions could sometimes interfere with neighboring frequencies, so it was decided that they should be given a few megahertz of space in both directions. And so the 2400 to 2483.5Mhz ISM band was born.

That these free-for-all frequencies could one day get overcrowded was always a possibility. But the FCC's primary concern is minding the frequencies it licenses; everyone working in ISM frequencies, then, must fend for themselves. And they do! Your microwave and your router might emit waves in the same frequency range, and this might screw with your router's connectivity a little bit. Generally, though, the router companies have been able to minimize interference by boosting signal strength and writing more intelligent firmware. And outward emissions of microwaves are at least supposed to be minimized. (That perforated metal shield in the glass door of your microwave? It's a shield—the holes in it are smaller than the physical width of the 2.4GHz wave.) In the end, things work.

That's not to say that the 2.4GHz band isn't getting crowded. Many routers operate at least in part on the 5GHz band, and a quick survey of your local Best Buy will find wireless phones at 900MHz, 1.9GHz and 5GHz. But the King of Frequency mountain, the band loved by billions of wireless connections around the world, be they Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, or nonstandard RF remotes, is my band, your band, our band, 2.4. And all because we wanted to cook our food a little faster.

Updated for clarification: Microwave ovens could conceivably work across the electromagnetic spectrum, and there aren't any sharp resonances at any particular point; other industrial and regulatory pressures helped drive the standard frequency to 2.45GHz, as well as the aforementioned engineering conveniences. Further, some commenters are claiming that 2.4GHz is the "resonant frequency" of water as an alternative explanation. This is a common misconception.—Thanks, Jake!

Original art by guest artist Chris McVeigh (AKA powerpig). You can catch all his work at flickr.com/powerpig, and follow him on Twitter. (@Actionfigured)

Still something you wanna know? Send questions about That Thing That Doesn't Make Sense here, with "Giz Explains" in the subject line.

http://gizmodo.com/5...reless-is-24ghz

[sobank]

Spirit Of Islam by Syed Ali

A brief history of islam and its several aspects. This is a must read book.
http://www.archive.o...age/n5/mode/2up

[sobank]

Could every one please post all the historic documents they can find into this thread ...

I'll start with the most recent.

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Text of draft Nizam-e-Adl Regulation 2009

The NWFP Government on March 9, 2009 released the text of the Nizam-e-Adl (Shariat) Regulation to the media, after the provincial Chief Minister Amir Haider Khan Hoti began the approval process by signing a draft of the document. The following is the complete text of the regulation:


A: Regulation to provide for Nifaz-e-Nizam-e-Shariat through Courts in the Provincially Administered Tribal Areas of the North-West Frontier Province, except the Tribal Area adjoining Manshera district and the former State of Amb.

Preamble: Whereas it is expedient to expedient to provide for Nifaz-e-Nizam-e-Shariat through Courts in the Provincially Administered Tribal Areas of the North-West Frontier Province, except the Tribal Areas adjoining Mansehra district and the former State of Amb; and whereas Clause (3) of Article 247 of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan provides that no Act of Majlis-e-Shoora (parliament) or a provincial assembly shall apply to a Provincially Administered Tribal Areas, or any part thereof, unless the Governor of the Province in which the Tribal Area is situated, with the approval of the President, so directs, and in giving such direction with respect to any law, the Governor may direct that the law shall, in its application to a Tribal Area, or to a specified part thereof, have effect subject to such exceptions and modifications as may be specified in the direction; and whereas clause (4) of Article 247 of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan provides that the Governor of a Province, with the prior approval of the President, may, with respect to any matter within the legislative competence of the Provincial Assembly, make regulations for the peace and good governance of Provincially Administered Tribal Areas or any part thereof; now, therefore, in exercise of the powers aforesaid, the governor of the North-West Frontier Province, with the approval of the President, is pleased -

(i) to direct that the laws specified in column 2 of Schedule-I shall

(ii) apply to the Provincially Administered Tribal Areas as aforesaid; and

(iii) (ii) to make the following regulation:

1. Short title, extent and commencement:

This regulation may be called the Nizam-e-Adl (Sharia'h) Regulation, 2009

(2) It shall extend to the Provincially Administered Tribal Areas of the North-West Frontier Province, except the Tribal Area adjoining Mansehra district and the former State of Amb, hereinafter referred to as the said area

(3) It shall come into force at once and shall be deemed to have taken effect on 16th day of February, 2009

2. Definitions:

(1) In this Regulation, unless there is anything repugnant in the subject or context -

(a) "Dar-ul-Dar-ul-Qaza" means the final appeallate/revisional court, in the said area, designated as such, under this Regulation, in pursuance of clause (2) of Article 183 of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan;

(b) "Dar-ul-Qaza" means appellate/revisional Court constituted by Government in the said area, under clause (4) of the Article 198 of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan;

© "Government" means the Government of the North-West Frontier Province;

(d) "paragraph" means a paragraph of this Regulation;

(e) "prescribed" means prescribed by rules made under this Regulation;

(f) "Qazi" means a duly appointed Judicial Officer as specified and designated in column 3 of Schedule-II;

(g) "recognized institution" means the Shariah Academy established under International Islamic University Ordinance, 1985 (Act XXX of 1985) or any institution imparting Sharia'h training and recognized as such by Government;

(h) "Schedule" means a Schedule to this Regulation; and

(i) "Shariah" means the injunctions of Islam as laid down in Quran Majeed, Sunnah-e-Nabwi (Sallallaho Alaihe Wasallam), Ijma and Qiyas;

Explanation.-In the application of this clause to the personal law of any Muslim sect, the expression Quran Majeed and Sunnah-e-Nabvi (Sallallaho alaihe wasallam) shall mean the Quran Majeed and Sunnah-e-Nabvi (Sallallaho alaihe wasallam) as interpreted by that sect.

(2) All other expressions, not expressly defined in this Regulation, shall have the same meanings as assigned to them in any other law for the time being in force, in the said area to which this Regulation applies.

3. Application of certain laws to the said area:

(1) The laws specified in column 2 of Schedule-I, as in force in the North-West Frontier Province immediately before the commencement of this Regulation, and so far as may be, all rules, notifications and orders made or issued thereunder, shall apply to the said area

(2) All the laws applicable to the said area, including the laws mentioned in sub-paragraph (1), shall so apply subject to such exceptions and modifications as specified in this Regulation

4. Certain laws to cease to operate:

If immediately before the commencement of this Regulation, there was in force in the said area any law, instrument, custom or usage having the force of law not corresponding to the Injunctions of Quran Majeed and Sunnah-e-Nabvi (Sallallaho alaihe Wasallam) or provisions of any of the laws applied to the said area by this Regulation, such law, instruments, custom or usage, as the case may be, shall upon such commencement, cease to have effect in the said area

5. Courts:

Besides, Dar-ul-Dar-ul-Qaza and Dar-ul-Qaza, there shall be following courts of competent jurisdiction, in the said area:

(i) Court of Zilla Qazi;

(ii) Court of Izafi Zilla Qazi;

(iii) Court of Aala Illaqa Qazi;

(iv) Court of Illaqa Qazi; and

(v) Court of Executive Magistrate

6. Qazis and their powers and functions:

(1) Any person to be appointed as Illaqa Qazi, in the said area shall be a person who is a duly appointed Judicial Officer in the North-West Frontier Province. Preference shall be given to those Judicial Officer who have completed Shariah course from a recognized institution

(2) In relation to proceeding with and conducting the criminal or civil cases, all powers, functions and duties concerned, assigned or imposed on Judicial Officer in the North-West Frontier Province under any law for the time being in force, shall, subject to application of such law in the said area and established principles of Sharia'h, be exercised, performed or discharged by them as designed in column 3 of Schedule-II.

(3) Subject to the general superintendence of the principal seat of Dar-ul-Qaza, a Zilla Qazi shall supervise the work of subordinate courts, and, through the District Police Officer concerned, the process serving staff, within the local limits of his jurisdiction.

7. Executive Magistrate:

(1) In each district or protected area, there shall be a District Magistrate, Additional District Magistrates, Sub-Divisional Magistrates and other Executive Magistrates, as the Government deems necessary.

(2) The District Magistrate and the Executive Magistrates shall discharge their responsibilities and exercise their powers according to the established principles of Sharia'h and other laws for the time being in force, in the said area

(3) The District Magistrate shall supervise the work of other Executive Magistrates in the District

(4) Keeping peace, maintaining order, enforcing the executive authority of the Government and "Sadd-e-Zara-e-Jinayat" shall be the duty, responsibility and power of the Executive Magistrate

For this purpose he can take action against an individual, under the established principles of Shariah.

Explanation.-The phrase "Sadd-e-Zarr-e-Jinayat"( ) means and includes all actions and steps taken under the Sharia'h laws and any other law enforced for the time being for the control of crimes.

8. Submission of Challan to Qazi or Executive Magistrate:

(1) It shall be the duty of every officer-in-charge of a police station to ensure that complete challan in each criminal case is submitted to the concerned Court within fourteen days from the date of lodging in the first information report, except in a case in which the concerned Qazi or Executive Magistrate has granted special extension of time for a specified period for the reasons to be recorded:

Provided that if any officer-in-charge of police station or investigating Officer fails to submit complete challan within specified period, the Qazi or Executive Magistrate concerned shall refer the matter to competent authority for disciplinary action against the police officer responsible for such delay, upon which necessary action shall be taken against him forthwith and shall be duly communicated to the referring Qazi or Executive Magistrate

(2) The officer-in-charge of a police station shall submit a copy of the first information report to concerned Qazi or Executive Magistrate, within twenty four hours of its lodging

9. Proceedings to be in accordance with Shariah:

(1) A Qazi or Executive Magistrate shall seek guidance from Quran Majeed, Sunna-e-Nabvi (Sallalllaho Alaihe Wasallam), Ijma and Qiyas for the purposes of procedure and proceedings of conduct and resolution of cases. While expounding and interpreting the Quran Majeed and Sunna-e-Nabvi (Sallalllaho Alaihe Wasallam), the Qazi shall follow the established principles of expounding and interpreting Quran Majeed and Sunna-e-Nabvi (Sallallaho Alaihe Wasallam), and, for this purpose, shall also consider the expositions and opinions of recognized Fuqaha's of Islam

(2) No Court shall entertain a suit unless the plaintiff/complainant verifies that copies of plaint alongwith supporting documents have been sent, through registered post with acknowledgment due to all the defendants, except in case of a suit for perpetual injunction accompanied by an application for temporary injunction.

(3) The pleadings shall be accompanied by copies of all relevant documents and affidavits of all the unofficial witnesses duly attested by an oath commissioner. The affidavits so submitted shall be treated as examination-in-chief of such witnesses:

Provided that if, after submission of pleadings, in the opinion of court, new issue arises, party to pleadings may be allowed to submit afresh copies of relevant documents and affidavits of unofficial witness attested in the manner aforesaid, for arriving at just conclusion of case

(4) In all cases of civil nature written statement shall be submitted within seven days and where the defendant fails to do so his defence shall be struck off Provided that the court may extend time for filling of written statement in extra ordinary circumstances. The time so allowed shall not be extended further on any ground whatsoever

(5) After completion of evidence, the court shall ask the parities to argue, either verbally or in writing, on the adjourned date, and, if either of the party fails to do so, the court shall pronounce judgment on merits, without any further adjournment for arguments:

Provided that it shall be the duty of the court to make list of relevant reported judgments, referred to by any party as precedent, which shall form part of judicial record

(6) No adjournment shall be granted to either party in any civil or criminal proceedings, except where the court is satisfied that adjournment is unavoidable. In such case the requesting party shall deposit the costs in court which shall not be less than two thousand rupees

10. Observance of time schedule:

(1) A period of not more than six months for disposal of a civil case, and a period of not more than four months for disposal of a criminal case, shall be standard time schedule, excluding the time spent for sulh proceedings

(2) A Qazi shall finalize a case within the time schedule prescribed under sub-paragraph (1) and, in case of any delay in disposal of any case beyond such schedule, shall report the cause and reasons of such delay to the Zilla Qazi or, as the case may be, to the presiding officer of the principal seat of the Dar-ul-Qaza, and shall act on the directions issued by such court in that behalf

(3) An Executive Magistrate shall also finalize a case within the time schedule prescribed under sub-paragraph (1) and, in case of any delay in disposal of any case beyond such schedule, shall report the cause and reasons of such delay to the District Magistrate and shall act on the directions issued by District Magistrate, in that behalf

(4) If the Zilla Qazi or, as the case may be, the presiding officer of the principal seat of the Dar-ul-Qaza, in relation to proceedings in the Court of Qazi, upon examination of causes of delay, is of the opinion that the delay has been caused due to the delaying tactics of a party, it shall fix a penalty or cost to be recovered from the defaulting party and direct the court concerned to dispose of the case within an extended period of not more than one month.

(5) If the District Magistrate, in relation to proceedings in the Court of Executive Magistrate, upon examination of causes of delay, is of the opinion that the delay has been caused due to the delaying tactics of a party, it shall fix a penalty or cost to be recovered from the defaulting party and direct the court concerned to dispose of the case within an extended period of not more than one month.

(6) If in the opinion of Zilla Qazi or, as the case may be, of the presiding officer of the principal seat of the Dar-ul-Qaza, the Qazi or Executive Magistrate, dealing with the case or proceedings, is responsible for delay in its disposal, the Zilla Qazi or, as the case may be, the presiding officer of the principal seat of Dar-ul-Qaza may,

(i) in the case of Qazi, deliver upon him a letter of displeasure. If a Qazi is served with three letters of displeasure in a year, then the Zilla Qazi or as the case may be, the presiding officer of the principal seat of Dar-ul-Qaza, after providing him an opportunity of being heard, may make an entry in his service record; and

(ii) in the case of Executive Magistrate, inform the District Magistrate about such delay and recommend for disciplinary action, provided in clause (i) of sub-paragraph (6) of paragraph 9.The District Magistrate shall act on the recommendations accordingly.

(7) In criminal cases, the Investigating Officer shall prepare copies of the case file in triplicate, in addition to judicial file, so that the trial court may retain the judicial file for regular trial, and the remaining two files, may be sent to the court concerned when requisitioned

(8) An appeal or revision under this Regulation shall be filed within thirty days from the date of the decision in the respective case, after sending its copies, through registered post with acknowledgement due, to the opposite party, and the appellate or revisional court shall decide the same within thirty days, without remanding it on any ground whatsoever

Provided that such court shall have the power to rectify any illegality or irregularity of omission which, in the opinion of he said court, may result injustice to any of the parties.

(9) Any decree shall be executed, either by the court which passed it, or by the court to which it is sent for execution, within two months

11. Establishment of Courts:

(1) Soon after the commencement of this Regulation, Government shall take necessary steps to establish as many courts to ensure expeditious dispensation of justice within prescribed time schedule.

(2) Where the number of pending cases at a time exceeds more than one hundred and fifty in a court of Zilla Qazi, District Magistrate, or, as the case may be, Izafi Zilla Qazi, or exceeds more than two hundred cases in a court of Aa'la Ilaqa Qazi, Executive Magistrate, or, as the case may be, Ilaqa Qazi, it shall be necessary for Government to establish a new court and provide it all related facilities to ensure dispensation of justice within prescribed time schedule.

12. Appeal and Revision:

Subject to the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, appeal/revision against the Orders/Judgments/Decree of the Dar-ul-Qaza shall lie to the Dar-ul-Dar-ul Qaza, for the purpose of this Regulation.

13. Power to appoint musleh:

(1) Any civil or criminal case, subject to mutual consent of parties, may be referred to Musleh or, as the case may be, musleheen before recording of evidence, either on the agreement of the parties regarding the names of such musleh or musleheen, or in case of their disagreement, to such musleh or musleheen whose names appear on the list maintained by the court for such purpose: Provided that the cases falling within the purview of Hudood laws and cases by or against the Federal or Provincial Government or any statutory body or persons under legal disabilities shall not be referred for sulh

(2) The musleheen shall record their opinion with regard to a dispute referred to them with reasons therefore

(3) Where a musleh or, as the case may be, musleheen, to whom a dispute has been referred for resolution, either fail or refuse to resolve it, or the Court is of the opinion that unnecessary delay has been caused, without sufficient reason, in resolving it, the Court, may, on the application of a party or suo moto, for reasons to be recorded, withdraw the order of such reference, and, after such withdrawal, it shall resolve the dispute in accordance with Sharia'h as if it were not referred for sulh:

Provided that, in no circumstances, a case shall remain with a musleh or, as the case may be, musleheen for a period of more than fifteen days, but the court may, in extraordinary circumstances, for reasons to be recorded in writing, extend the time for fifteen days and, on the expiry of the aforesaid period, it shall stand withdrawn to the court for further proceedings.

(4) The Musleh or, as the case may be, the musleheen, appointed for such resolution of the dispute, after hearing the parties and their witnesses, if any, perusing the relevant document, if any, and inspecting the spot, if need be, shall form opinion about resolution of the dispute, with reasons therefor, and submit a report of their opinion to the concerned court without delay:

Provided that, in case the opinion is not unanimous, the opinion of the majority members and the opinion of each dissenting member, separately or jointly, with reasons therefore, shall be so submitted

(5) The Court shall, if it is satisfied that the opinion in a case referred to for sul'h under sub-paragraph (1) is in accordance with Sharia'h, make it the rule of the Court, and shall announce it as such, but, if the court comes to the conclusion that the opinion is not in accordance with Sharia'h, it shall declare the opinion, for reasons to be recorded, as null and void and shall start its proceedings for decision of such dispute in accordance with Sharia'h as if it were not referred for sulh

(6) The court shall, before proceeding further, provide an opportunity to the parties to submit objections, if any, to such report, and, if any, objections are so made, the court shall, after hearing the parties, decide about the correctness or otherwise of the objections.

(7) The court shall, keeping in view the actual expenses incurred by the musleh or musleheen, on traveling to, an stay at, the place other than the place of his or, as the case may be, their residence, and the time spent in dealing with the case, in particular circumstances of each case, fix the remuneration of such musleh or musleheen, to be paid by each party in such proportion as may be determined by the court.

14. Conduct of Judicial Officers and Executive Magistrates:

(1) The conduct and character of each Judicial Officer and Executive Magistrate shall be in accordance with the Islamic principles

(2) Notwithstanding anything contained in any law for the time being in force, all cases, suits, inquires, matters and proceedings in courts, pertaining to the said area, shall be decided by the courts concerned in accordance with Shariah provided that cases of non-Muslims in matters of adoption, divorce, dower, inheritance, marriage, usages and wills shall be conducted and decided in accordance with their respective personal laws

(3) Government may, from time to time, take such measures for the purposes of sub-paragraph (1), as it may deem necessary

15. Aid and assistance to courts:

All executive authorities in the said area, including members of law enforcing agencies and members of other services of Pakistan, shall act in aid and assistance of the Courts, and shall implement their judicial orders and decisions.

16. Directions to law enforcing agencies:

Government may, where necessary, issue such directions to any law enforcing agency as are necessary in relation to the service of Courts Processes on the parties, witnesses or any other person, and, for any general or specific purposes, in order to ensure the conduct of such law enforcing agency in aid and assistance of the Courts.

17. Language of the Court and its record:

All the processes and proceedings of the court, including the pleadings, evidence, arguments, orders and judgments shall be recorded and conducted in Urdu, Pushto or in English and the record of the Court shall also be maintained in the said language.

18. Powers to make rules:

Government may, make rules for carrying out the purposes of this Regulation.

19. Regulation to override other laws:

The provisions of this Regulation shall have overriding effect notwithstanding anything to the contrary contained in any other law for the time in force in the said area.

20. Repeal:

(1) The Provincially Administered Tribal Areas Shariaa'h Nizam-e-Adl Regulation, 1999 (N.-W.F.P. Reg. I of 1999), and rules framed thereunder are hereby repealed

(2) The Code of Criminal Procedure (Amendment) Ordinance, 2001 (Ord. No. XXXVII of 2001), applied to the said area vide Notification No. 1/93-SOS-II(HD)/2001, dated 27th April, 2002, is hereby repealed

(3) Notwithstanding the repeal of the Regulation under sub-paragraph (1), or cessation of any law, instrument, custom or usage under paragraph 4, the repeal or cessation, as the case may be, shall not -

(a) revive anything not in force or existing at the time at which the repeal or cessation take effect;

(b) affect the previous operation of the law, instrument, custom or usage or anything duly done or suffered thereunder;

© affect any right, privilege, obligation or liability acquired, accrued or incurred under the law, instrument, custom or usage;

(d) affect any penalty, forfeiture or punishment incurred in respect of any offence committed against the law, instrument, custom or usage; or

(e) affect any investigation, legal proceeding or remedy in respect of any such right, privilege, obligation, liability, penalty, forfeiture or punishment; and any such investigation, legal proceeding or remedy may be instituted, continued or enforced, and any such penalty, forfeiture or punishment may be imposed, as if the law, instrument, custom or usage had not been repealed or ceased to have effect, as the case may be.

Text of the North West Frontier Province Government’s agreement with the Taliban May 21, 2008

1: Taliban of Swat will accept the writ of the provincial and central governments of Pakistan and will remain in the ambit of that


2: Shariat-e-Muhammadi will be implemented in Malakand Division


3: No one will attack other’s religion


4: Prisoners will be released after reviewing the cases against them


5: Government machinery, law enforcement agencies, government officials, buildings and installations, police stations, policemen, police lines, army, Frontier Corps, Frontier Constabulary, bridges, roads, and electricity installations will not be attacked; there will be a complete ban on keeping private militias, there will be no suicide attacks, there will be no blasts in personal or governmental buildings, and there will be no remote-controlled bomb blasts


6: Army withdrawal will be gradual keeping in view the security situation in the area


7: Non-local militants will be immediately handed over to the government. Attacks on barber shops and markets visited by women should be stopped


8: Government will compensate the deserving people affected by the operation in Swat


9: There will be no ban on health teams administering vaccination or drops to children against diseases like polio. There will be no ban on girls’ education


10: There will be complete ban on display of arms and only arms having licence would be allowed


11: Kidnapping and car lifting should be condemned and eliminated. All centres used for training militants and use of explosives must be eliminated


12: Speeches will be allowed only on that FM radio having licence


13: Local Taliban will cooperate with government in investigations of cases against those involved in murders, dacoities and kidnapping


14: The government will take action against thieves, dacoits, kidnappers and others involved in such crimes


15: Imam Dheri will be converted into an Islamic university under the management of a committee comprising representatives of government and Taliban


16: Minister for Environment Wajid Ali Khan, Dr Shamsher Ali Khan, DIG of Malakand, and DPO of Swat from the government’s side and Muhammad Amin, Ali Bakht, Muslim Khan, Mehmood Khan and Nisar Khan from Taliban side are members of the committee to oversee implementation of the agreement.








Durand Line Agreement November 12, 1893

Whereas certain questions have arisen regarding the frontier of Afghanistan on the side of India, and whereas both His Highness the Amir and the Government of India are desirous of settling these questions by friendly understanding, and of fixing the limit of their respective spheres of influence, so that for the future there may be no difference of opinion on the subject between the allied Governments, it is hereby agreed as follows:


The eastern and southern frontier of his Highness’s dominions, from Wakhan to the Persian border, shall follow the line shown in the map attached to this agreement.


The Government of India will at no time exercise interference in the territories lying beyond this line on the side of Afghanistan, and His Highness the Amir will at no time exercise interference in the territories lying beyond this line on the side of India.


The British Government thus agrees to His Highness the Amir retaining Asmar and the valley above it, as far as Chanak. His Highness agrees, on the other hand, that he will at no time exercise interference in Swat, Bajaur, or Chitral, including the Arnawai or Bashgal valley. The British Government also agrees to leave to His Highness the Birmal tract as shown in the detailed map already given to his Highness, who relinquishes his claim to the rest of the Waziri country and Dawar. His Highness also relinquishes his claim to Chageh.


The frontier line will hereafter be laid down in detail and demarcated, wherever this may be practicable and desirable, by joint British and Afghan commissioners, whose object will be to arrive by mutual understanding at a boundary which shall adhere with the greatest possible exactness to the line shown in the map attached to this agreement, having due regard to the existing local rights of villages adjoining the frontier.


With reference to the question of Chaman, the Amir withdraws his objection to the new British cantonment and concedes to the British Governmeni the rights purchased by him in the Sirkai Tilerai water. At this part of the frontier the line will be drawn as follows:


From the crest of the Khwaja Amran range near the Psha Kotal, which remains in British territory, the line will run in such a direction as to leave Murgha Chaman and the Sharobo spring to Afghanistan, and to pass half-way between the New Chaman Fort and the Afghan outpost known locally as Lashkar Dand. The line will then pass half-way between the railway station and the hill known as the Mian Baldak, and, turning south-wards, will rejoin the Khwaja Amran range, leaving the Gwasha Post in British territory, and the road to Shorawak to the west and south of Gwasha in Afghanistan. The British Government will not exercise any interference within half a mile of the road.


The above articles of' agreement are regarded by the Government of India and His Highness the Amir of Afghanistan as a full and satisfactory settlement of all the principal differences of opinion which have arisen between them in regard to the frontier; and both the Government of India and His Highness the Amir undertake that any differences of detail, such as those which will have to be considered hereafter by the officers appointed to demarcate the boundary line, shall be settled in a friendly spirit, so as to remove for the future as far as possible all causes of doubt and misunderstanding between the two Governments.


Being fully satisfied of His Highness’s goodwill to the British Government, and wishing to see Afghanistan independent and strong, the Government of India will raise no objection to the purchase and import by His Highness of munitions of war, and they will themselves grant him some help in this respect. Further, in order to mark their sense of the friendly spirit in which His Highness the Amir has entered into these negotiations, the Government of India undertake to increase by the sum of six lakhs of rupees a year the subsidy of twelve lakhs now granted to His Highness.


H. M. Durand,

Amir Abdur Rahman Khan.


Kabul, November 12, 1893.

Charter of Democracy

On May 14, 2006, Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharief, former Prime Ministers of Pakistan, signed a Charter of Democracy in London. Presented below is the full text of the Charter:

We the elected leaders of Pakistan have deliberated on the political crisis in our beloved homeland, the threats to its survival, the erosion of the federation's unity, the military's subordination of all state institutions, the marginalisation of civil society, the mockery of the Constitution and representative institutions, growing poverty, unemployment and inequality, brutalisation of society, breakdown of rule of law and, the unprecedented hardships facing our people under a military dictatorship, which has pushed our beloved country to the brink of a total disaster;


Noting the most devastating and traumatic experiences that our nation experienced under military dictatorships that played havoc with the nation's destiny and created conditions disallowing the progress of our people and the flowering of democracy. Even after removal from office they undermined the people’s mandate and the sovereign will of the people;


Drawing history’s lesson that the military dictatorship and the nation cannot co-exist – as military involvement adversely affect the economy and the democratic institutions as well as the defence capabilities, and the integrity of the country - the nation needs a new direction different from a militaristic and regimental approach of the Bonapartist regimes, as the current one;


Taking serious exception to the vilification campaign against the representatives of the people, in particular, and the civilians, in general, the victimisation of political leaders/workers and their media trials under a Draconian law in the name of accountability, in order to divide and eliminate the representative political parties, to Gerrymander a king's party and concoct legitimacy to prolong the military rule;


Noting our responsibility to our people to set an alternative direction for the country saving it from its present predicaments on an economically sustainable, socially progressive, politically democratic and pluralist, federally cooperative, ideologically tolerant, internationally respectable and regionally peaceful basis in the larger interests of the peoples of Pakistan to decide once for all that only the people and no one else has the sovereign right to govern through their elected representatives, as conceived by the democrat par excellence, Father of the Nation Quaid-i-Azam Mohammed Ali Jinnah;


Reaffirming our commitment to undiluted democracy and universally recognised fundamental rights, the rights of a vibrant opposition, internal party democracy, ideological/political tolerance, bipartisan working of the parliament through powerful committee system, a cooperative federation with no discrimination against federating units, the decentralisation and devolution of power, maximum provincial autonomy, the empowerment of the people at the grassroots level, the emancipation of our people from poverty, ignorance, want and disease, the uplift of women and minorities, the elimination of klashnikov culture, a free and independent media, an independent judiciary, a neutral civil service, rule of law and merit, the settlement of disputes with the neighbours through peaceful means, honouring international contracts, laws/covenants and sovereign guarantees, so as to achieve a responsible and civilised status in the comity of nations through a foreign policy that suits our national interests;

Calling upon the people of Pakistan to join hands to save our motherland from the clutches of military dictatorship and to defend their fundamental, social, political and economic rights and for a democratic, federal, modern and progressive Pakistan as dreamt by the Founder of the nation; have adopted the following, “Charter of Democracy”;


A. CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENTS




1. The 1973 Constitution as on 12th October 1999 before the military coup shall be restored with the provisions of joint electorates, minorities, and women reserved seats on closed party list in the Parliament, the lowering of the voting age, and the increase in seats in parliament and the Legal Framework Order, 2000 and the Seventeenth Constitutional Amendment shall be repealed accordingly.

2. The appointment of the governors, three services chiefs and the CJCSC shall be made by the chief executive who is the prime minister, as per the 1973 Constitution.

3. (a) The recommendations for appointment of judges to superior judiciary shall be formulated through a commission, which shall comprise of the following: i. The chairman shall be a chief justice, who has never previously taken oath under the PCO.


ii. The members of the commission shall be the chief justices of the provincial high courts who have not taken oath under the PCO, failing which the senior most judge of that high court who has not taken oath shall be the member


iii. Vice-Chairmen of Pakistan and Vice-Chairmen of Provincial Bar Association with respect to the appointment of judges to their concerned province


iv. President of Supreme Court Bar Association


v. Presidents of High Court Bar Associations of Karachi, Lahore, Peshawar, and Quetta with respect to the appointment of judges to their concerned province


vi. Federal Minister for Law and Justice


vii. Attorney General of Pakistan


(a-i) The commission shall forward a panel of three names for each vacancy to the prime minister, who shall forward one name for confirmation to joint parliamentary committee for confirmation of the nomination through a transparent public hearing process.


(a-ii) The joint parliamentary committee shall comprise of 50 per cent members from the treasury benches and the remaining 50 per cent from opposition parties based on their strength in the parliament nominated by respective parliamentary leaders.


(b) No judge shall take oath under any Provisional Constitutional Order or any other oath that is contradictory to the exact language of the original oath prescribed in the Constitution of 1973.


© Administrative mechanism will be instituted for the prevention of misconduct, implementation of code of ethics, and removal of judges on such charges brought to its attention by any citizen through the proposed commission for appointment of Judges. (d) All special courts including anti-terrorism and accountability courts shall be abolished and such cases be tried in ordinary courts. Further to create a set of rules and procedures whereby, the arbitrary powers of the chief justices over the assignment of cases to various judges and the transfer of judges to various benches such powers shall be exercised by the Chief Justice and two senior most judges sitting together.


4. A Federal Constitutional Court will be set up to resolve constitutional issues, giving equal representation to each of the federating units, whose members may be judges or persons qualified to be judges of the Supreme Court, constituted for a six-year period. The Supreme and High Courts will hear regular civil and criminal cases. The appointment of judges shall be made in the same manner as for judges of higher judiciary.


5. The Concurrent List in the Constitution will be abolished. A new NFC award will be announced.


6. The reserved seats for women in the national and provincial assemblies will be allocated to the parties on the basis of the number of votes polled in the general elections by each party.


7. The strength of the Senate of Pakistan shall be increased to give representation to minorities in the Senate.


8. FATA shall be included in the NWFP province in consultation with them.


9. Northern Areas shall be developed by giving it a special status and further empowering the Northern Areas Legislative Council to provide people of Northern Areas access to justice and human rights.


10. Local bodies election will be held on party basis through provincial election commissions in respective provinces and constitutional protection will be given to the local bodies to make them autonomous and answerable to their respective assemblies as well as to the people through regular courts of law.


B. CODE OF CONDUCT

11. National Security Council will be abolished. Defence Cabinet Committee will be headed by prime minister and will have a permanent secretariat. The prime minister may appoint a federal security adviser to process intelligence reports for the prime minister. The efficacy of the higher defence and security structure, created two decades ago, will be reviewed. The Joint Services Command structure will be strengthened and made more effective and headed in rotation among the three services by law. 12. The ban on a ‘prime minister not being eligible for a third term of office’ will be abolished.


13. (a) Truth and Reconciliation Commission be established to acknowledge victims of torture, imprisonment, state-sponsored persecution, targeted legislation, and politically motivated accountability. The commission will also examine and report its findings on military coups and civil removals of governments from 1996.


(b) A commission shall also examine and identify the causes of and fix responsibility and make recommendations in the light thereof for incidences such as Kargil.


© Accountability of NAB and other Ehtesab operators to identify and hold accountable abuse of office by NAB operators through purgery and perversion of justice and violation of human rights since its establishment.


(d) To replace politically motivated NAB with an independent accountability commission, whose chairman shall be nominated by the prime minister in consultation with the leader of opposition and confirmed by a joint parliamentary committee with 50 per cent members from treasury benches and remaining 50 per cent from opposition parties in same manner as appointment of judges through transparent public hearing. The confirmed nominee shall meet the standard of political impartiality, judicial propriety, moderate views expressed through his judgements and would have not dealt.


14. The press and electronic media will be allowed its independence. Access to information will become law after parliamentary debate and public scrutiny.


15. The chairmen of public accounts committee in the national and provincial assemblies will be appointed by the leaders of opposition in the concerned assemblies.


16. An effective Nuclear Command and Control system under the Defence Cabinet Committee will be put in place to avoid any possibility of leakage or proliferation.


17. Peaceful relations with India and Afghanistan will be pursued without prejudice to outstanding disputes.


18. Kashmir dispute should be settled in accordance with the UN Resolutions and the aspirations of the people of Jammu and Kashmir.


19. Governance will be improved to help the common citizen, by giving access to quality social services like education, health, job generation, curbing price hike, combating illegal redundancies, and curbing lavish spendings in civil and military establishments as ostentious causes great resentment amongst the teeming millions. We pledge to promote and practice simplicity, at all levels.


20. Women, minorities, and the under privileged will be provided equal opportunities in all walks of life.


21. We will respect the electoral mandate of representative governments that accepts the due role of the opposition and declare neither shall undermine each other through extra constitutional ways.


22. We shall not join a military regime or any military sponsored government. No party shall solicit the support of military to come into power or to dislodge a democratic government.


23. To prevent corruption and floor crossing all votes for the Senate and indirect seats will be by open identifiable ballot. Those violating the party discipline in the poll shall stand disqualified by a letter from the parliamentary party leader to the concerned Speaker or the Chairman Senate with a copy to the Election Commission for notification purposes within 14 days of receipt of letter failing which it will be deemed to have been notified on the expiry of that period.


24. All military and judicial officers will be required to file annual assets and income declarations like Parliamentarians to make them accountable to the public.


25. National Democracy Commission shall be established to promote and develop a democratic culture in the country and provide assistance to political parties for capacity building on the basis of their seats in parliament in a transparent manner.


26. Terrorism and militancy are by-products of military dictatorship, negation of democracy, are strongly condemned, and will be vigorously confronted.


C. FREE AND FAIR ELECTIONS

27. There shall be an independent, autonomous, and impartial election commission. The prime minister shall in consultation with leader of opposition forward up to three names for each position of chief election commissioner, members of election commission, and secretary to joint parliamentary committee, constituted on the same pattern as for appointment of judges in superior judiciary, through transparent public hearing process. In case of no consensus, both prime minister and leader of opposition shall forward separate lists to the joint parliamentary committee for consideration. Provincial election commissioner shall be appointed on the same pattern by committees of respective provincial assemblies.


28. All contesting political parties will be ensured a level playing field in the elections by the release of all political prisoners and the unconditional return of all political exiles. Elections shall be open to all political parties and political personalities. The graduation requirement of eligibility which has led to corruption and fake degrees will be repealed.


29. Local bodies elections will be held within three months of the holding of general elections.


30. The concerned election authority shall suspend and appoint neutral administrators for all local bodies from the date of formation of a caretaker government for holding of general elections till the elections are held.


31. There shall be a neutral caretaker government to hold free, fair, and transparent elections. The members of the said government and their immediate relatives shall not contest elections.


D. CIVIL - MILITARY RELATIONS


32. The ISI, MI and other security agencies shall be accountable to the elected government through Prime Minister Sectt, Ministry of Defence, and Cabinet Division respectively. Their budgets will be approved by DCC after recommendations are prepared by the respective ministry. The political wings of all intelligence agencies will be disbanded. A committee will be formed to cut waste and bloat in the armed forces and security agencies in the interest of the defence and security of the country. All senior postings in these agencies shall be made with the approval of the government through respective ministry.


33. All indemnities and savings introduced by military regimes in the constitution shall be reviewed.

34. Defence budget shall be placed before the parliament for debate and approval.


35. Military land allotment and cantonment jurisdictions will come under the purview of defence ministry. A commission shall be set up to review, scrutinise, and examine the legitimacy of all such land allotment rules, regulations, and policies, along with all cases of state land allotment including those of military urban and agricultural land allotments since 12th October, 1999 to hold those accountable who have indulged in malpractices, profiteering, and favouritism.


36. Rules of business of the federal and provincial governments shall be reviewed to bring them in conformity with parliamentary form of government.

Legal Framework Order, 2002

On August 22, 2002, the President of Pakistan, Gen. Pervez Mir Mir Musharraf, had issued the Legal Framework Order 2002 amending constitutional provisions, ahead of the general election of October 2002 and the subsequent transfer of power to an elected, civilian government. The Order did not revoke all the provisions of the 1973 Constitution that was suspended after Gen. Mir Mir Musharraf seized power in a coup in October 2000. Presented below is the text of the Order.


Chief Executive's order no. of 2002


Legal Framework Order, 2002


(Gazette of Pakistan, Extraordinary, August, 2002)


The following Order made by the Chief Executive is hereby published for general information;-


WHEREAS general elections to the National Assembly and the Provincial Assemblies are scheduled to be held on October 10,2002, and to the Senate on November 12, 2002;


AND WHEREAS it is necessary to provide for a smooth and orderly transition;


NOW, THEREFORE, in pursuance of the Proclamation of Emergency of the fourteenth day of October, 1999, read with the Provisional Constitution Order No. 1 of 1999, and in pursuance of the powers vested in him by and under the judgement of the Supreme Court of Pakistan, dated the 12th May, 2000, and in exercise of all the powers enabling him in that behalf; to revive the CONSITUTION with the amendments made herein, the Chief Executive of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is pleased to make the following Order:-

1. Short title and commencement




This Order may be called the Legal Framework Order, 2002.


It shall come into force at once.




2. First meetings of National Assembly, Senate and Provincial Assemblies



The first meeting of the National Assembly shall be held on a day to be specified by the President for the election of the Speaker and Deputy Speaker, the members of the Senate from the Federal Capital, and for the transaction of such other business as the President may specify.



The National Assembly shall meet on a day to be specified by the President to ascertain which one of the members of the Assembly commands the confidence of the majority of the members for the purposes of clause (2A) of Article 91 of the Constitution and the President shall invite such member to be the Prime Minister.



The first meeting of a Provincial Assembly shall be held on a day to be specified by the President for the election of the Speaker and Deputy Speaker, the members of the Senate and for the transaction of such other business as the President specify.



Every Provincial Assembly shall meet on a day to be specified by the President to ascertain which one of the members of the Assembly commands the confidence of the majority of the members for the purposes of clause (2A) of Article 130 of the Constitution and the Governor shall invite such member to be the Chief Minister.



The first meeting of the Senate shall be held on a day to be specified by the President for the election of the Chairman and Deputy Chairman and for the transaction of such other business as the President may specify.
3. Amendment of the Constitution and removal of difficulties



The Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, 1973, referred to in this Order as the Constitution, is hereby amended to the extent and in the manner specified in column (3) of the Schedule.



If there is any necessity for any further amendment of the Constitution or any difficulty arises in giving effect to any of the provisions of this Order, the Chief Executive may make such provisions and pass or promulgate such orders for amending the Constitution or for removing any difficulty as he may deem fit.



The validity of any provision made, or orders passed, under clauses (1) and (2) shall not be called in question in any court on any ground whatsoever.


4. Revival of Constitution of 1973


The provisions of the Constitution, as amended by this Order and by such other Orders as may be promulgated hereinafter, shall stand revived on such day as the Chief Executive may, by notification in the official Gazette, appoint; and different days may be so appointed in respect of different provisions.

5. Order to override other laws



The provisions of this Order shall have effect notwithstanding anything contained in the Constitution or any other Order or law for the time being in force.


THE SCHEDULE


(See Article 3) Serial Article/ Amendments made No. Chapter (1) (2) (3)


1. 17. (1) In clause (2).-


(a) after the words "integrity of Pakistan", occurring twice, the words "or public order" shall be inserted; and


(b) for the full stop at the end a colon shall be substituted and there after the following proviso shall be added, namely:-


"Provided that no political party shall promote sectarian, ethnic, regional hatred or animosity, or be titled or constituted as a militant group or section." and


(2) after clause (3), the following new clause shall be added, namely:-


"(4) Every political party shall, subject to law, hold intra-party elections to elect its office-bearers and party leaders."


2. 41. For clause (7) the following shall be substituted, namely:


"(7) The Chief Executive of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan-


(a) shall relinquish the office of Chief Executive on such day as he may determine in accordance with the judgement of the Supreme Court of Pakistan of the 12th May, 2000; and


(b) having received the democratic mandate to serve the nation as President of Pakistan for a period of five years shall, on relinquishing the office of the Chief Executive, Notwithstanding anything contained in this Article or Article 43 or any other provision of the Constitution or any other law for the time being in force, assume the office of President of Pakistan forthwith and shall hold office for a term of five years under the Constitution, and Article 44 and other provisions of the Constitution shall apply accordingly.".


3. 51. (1) For clause (1) the following shall be substituted, namely:-


"(1) There shall be three hundred and forty-two seats of the members in the National Assembly, including seats reserved for women and non-Muslims.


(1A) The seats in the National Assembly referred to in clause (1), except as provided in clause (2A), are allocated to each Province, the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and the Federal Capital as under-



Province
General Women Total
Balochistan
14 3 17
NWFP
35 8 43
Punjab
148 35 183
Sind
61 14 75
FATA
12 0 12
Federal Capital
2 0 2
TOTAL
272 60 332


(2) in clause (2), in paragraph (b), for the word "twenty-one " the word "eighteen" shall be substituted;


(3) for clause (2A) the following clause shall be substituted. namely:-


"(2A) In addition to the number of seats referred to in clause (1A), there shall be, in the National Assembly, ten seats reserved for non-Muslims.": (4) for clause (4) the following shall be substituted, namely:-


"(4) For the purpose of election to the National Assembly,-


(a) the constituencies for the general seats shall be single member territorial constituencies and the members to fill such seats shall be elected by direct and free vote in accordance with law:



each Province shall be a single constituency for all


the constituency for all seats reserved for non-Muslims shall be the whole country;



members to the seats reserved for women which are allocated to a Province under clause (1A) shall be elected in accordance with law through proportional representation system of political parties' lists of candidates on the basis of total number of general seats secured by each political party from the Province concerned in the National Assembly;



members to the seats reserved for non-Muslims shall be elected in accordance with law through proportional representation system of political parties lists of candidates on the basis of total number of general seats won by each political party in the National Assembly;


Provided that a political party securing less than five per centum of the total number of seats in the National Assembly shall not be entitled to any seat reserved for women or non-Muslims." and


(5) Clauses(4) to (6) shall be omitted.


4. 58. In clause (2), after paragraph (a), the following new paragraph shall be added, namely:-


"(b) a situation has arisen in which the Government of the Federation cannot be carried on in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution and an appeal to the electorate is necessary."


5. 59. (1) For clause (1) the following shall be substituted, namely:-



fourteen shall be elected by the members of each Provincial Assembly;



eight shall be elected by direct and free vote from the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, in such manner as the President may, by Order, prescribe;



two on general seats, and one woman and one technocrat including aalim shall be elected from the Federal Capital in such manner as the President may, by Order, prescribe;



four women shall be elected by the members of each Provincial Assembly;



four technocrats including ulema shall be elected by the members of each Provincial Assembly."; and


(2) In clause (3),-


(a) for paragraph © the following shall be substituted, namely:-


"© of the members referred to in paragraph © of the aforesaid clause,-



one elected on general seat shall retire after the expiration of the first three years and the other one shall retire after the expiration of the next three years, and



one elected on the seat reserved for technocrat shall retire after first three years and the one elected on the seat reserved for woman shall retire after the expiration of the next three years;"; and


(b) for paragraph (d) the following shall be substituted, namely:-


"(d) of the members referred to in paragraph (d) of the aforesaid clause, two shall retire after the expiration of the three years and two shall retire after the expiration of the next three years; and


(e) of the members referred to in paragraph (e) of the aforesaid clause, two shall retire after the expiration of the first three years and two shall retire after the expiration of the next three years:".


6. 62. For clause (b) the following shall be substituted, namely:-


"(b) he is, in the case of the National Assembly, not less than twenty -five years of age and is enroled as a voter in any electoral roll in-



any part of Pakistan, for election to a general seat or a seat reserved for non-Muslims; and



any area in a Province from which he seeks membership for election to a seat reserved for women."


7. 63. (1) In clause (1):-


(a) for paragraphs (h), (i) and (j) the following shall be substituted, namely:


(h) he has been convicted by a court of competent jurisdiction on a charge of corrupt practice, moral turpitude or misuse of power or authority under any law for the time being in force; or

(i) he has been dismissed from the service of Pakistan or service of a corporation or office set up or controlled by the Federal Government, Provincial Government or a Local Government on the grounds of misconduct or moral turpitude; or


(j) he has been removed or compulsorily retired from the service of Pakistan or service of a corporation or office set up or controlled by the Federal Government, Provincial Government or a Local Government on the grounds of misconduct or moral turpitude; or"; and


(b) for paragraph (p) the following shall be substituted, namely:-


"(p) he has been convicted and sentenced to imprisonment for having absconded by a competent court under any law for the time being in force; or


(q) he has obtained a loan for a an amount of two million rupees or more, from any bank, financial institution, cooperative society or cooperative body in his own name or in the name of his spouse or any of his dependents, which remains unpaid for more than one year from the due date, or has got such loan written off; or


® he or his spouse or any of his dependents has defaulted in payment of government dues and utility expenses, including telephone, electricity, gas and water charges in excess of ten thousand rupees, for over six months, at the time of filing his nomination papers.";


(2) for clause (2) the following shall be substituted, namely:-


"(2) If any question arises whether a member of Majlis-e-Shoora (Parliament) has become disqualified from being a member, the Speaker or, as the case may be, the Chairman shall, within thirty days from raising of such question refer the question to the Chief Election Commissioner."; and


(3) after clause (2), substituted as aforesaid, the following new clause shall be added, namely:-


"(3) Where a question is referred to the Chief Election Commissioner under clause (2), he shall lay such question before the Election Commission which shall give its decision thereon not later than three months from its receipt by he Chief Election Commissioner."


8. 63A. For Article 63A the following shall be substituted, namely:-


"63A. Disqualification on grounds of defection, etc. (1) If a member of a Parliamentary Party composed of a single political party in a House-



resigns from membership of his political party or joins another Parliamentary Party; or



votes or abstains from voting in the House contrary to any direction issued by the Parliamentary Party to which he belongs, in relations to-


(i) election of the Prime Minister or the Chief Minister; or


(ii) a vote of confidence or a vote of no-confidence; or


(iii) a Money Bill;


he may be declared in writing by the Head of the Parliamentary Party to have defected from the political party, and the Head of the Parliamentary Party may forward a copy of the declaration to the Presiding Officer, and shall similarly forward a copy thereof to the member concerned:


Provided that before making the declaration, the Head of the Parliamentary Party shall provide such member with an opportunity to show cause as to why such declaration may not be made against him.

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[Simpleton]

The Physics of Terror
After studying four decades of terrorism, Aaron Clauset thinks he’s found mathematical patterns that can help governments prevent and prepare for major terror attacks. The U.S. government seems to agree.

Last summer, physicist Aaron Clauset was telling a group of undergraduates who were touring the Santa Fe Institute about the unexpected mathematical symmetries he had found while studying global terrorist attacks over the past four decades. Their professor made a comment that brought Clauset up short. “He was surprised that I could think about such a morbid topic in such a dry, scientific way,” Clauset recalls. “And I hadn’t even thought about that. It was just … I think in some ways, in order to do this, you have to separate yourself from the emotional aspects of it.”

If the professor’s remark gave Clauset pause, it was the briefest instant of hesitation in a still-unfolding scientific career marked by a string of self-assured, virtuoso performances. At 31, he has published in fields as diverse as paleobiology, physics, computer science, artificial intelligence and statistics, spent four busy years as a research fellow at the Santa Fe Institute and secured a spot at a University of Colorado think tank.

He also has the unusual distinction (at least for a scientist) of having once been a cast member on a reality television show.

But it is his terrorism research that seems to be getting Clauset the most attention these days. He is one of a handful of U.S. and European scientists searching for universal patterns hidden in human conflicts — patterns that might one day allow them to predict long-term threats. Rather than study historical grievances, violent ideologies and social networks the way most counterterrorism researchers do, Clauset and his colleagues disregard the unique traits of terrorist groups and focus entirely on outcomes — the violence they commit.

Call it the physics of terrorism.

“When you start averaging over the differences, you see there are patterns in the way terrorists’ campaigns progress and the frequency and severity of the attacks,” he says. “This gives you hope that terrorism is understandable from a scientific perspective.” The research is no mere academic exercise. Clauset hopes, for example, that his work will enable predictions of when terrorists might get their hands on a nuclear, biological or chemical weapon — and when they might use it.

It is a bird’s-eye view, a strategic vision — a bit blurry in its details — rather than a tactical one. As legions of counterinsurgency analysts and operatives are trying, 24-style, to avert the next strike by al-Qaeda or the Taliban, Clauset’s method is unlikely to predict exactly where or when an attack might occur. Instead, he deals in probabilities that unfold over months, years and decades — probability calculations that nevertheless could help government agencies make crucial decisions about how to allocate resources to prevent big attacks or deal with their fallout.

“I would really like to be able to get some broad sketch of what the next 50 years of conflict is going to look like, because that’s what the long-term planners need to know,” he says.

This comprehensive approach explains why Clauset — more of a friendly, super-smart hipster than a Dr. Strangelove — has been invited to consult with the Department of Defense, the Department of Homeland Security and other government agencies. “His is some of the most important research in the statistics of complex adaptive systems being done today,” says Ken Comer, a deputy director of the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization, or JIEDDO, which is leading the defense department’s all-out effort to combat IEDs. Because Clauset has shown that terrorism obeys the arcane laws that seem to govern complex systems, it follows that ordinary predictive tools are useless for guessing when and where terrorists might strike. That knowledge saves the government critical time and resources, Comer says: “He keeps me from going down some blind alleys.”

We’re sitting on a shaded porch at the hilltop campus of the Santa Fe Institute, the fabled theory shop set up in 1984 by a band of researchers from nearby Los Alamos National Laboratory. On this warm, clear summer afternoon, it seems like we can see half of northern New Mexico, with rugged mountain ranges 50 or 60 miles away standing out in stark relief against blue sky. In such a serene setting, it seems surreal to be comparing the lethal tactics and timing of the Tamil Tigers with those of the Taliban, Hamas and the Irish Republican Army, but that is how Clauset has spent much of his time over the past seven years.

After mapping tens of thousands of global terrorism incidents, he and his collaborators have discovered that terrorism can be described by what mathematicians call a power law. Unlike the familiar bell curve — where most events tend to cluster around the average, with only a small number at the margins — a power law distribution produces a wide range of highly dissimilar events.

A graph comparing the severity of terrorist attacks — how many die — and their frequency produces an L-shaped relationship that mathematicians often describe as having a “long” or “heavy” tail. One would expect to see thousands of small attacks that kill no one or at most a handful of people, a few hundred events that kill a dozen people, a few dozen events that kill a hundred, and a handful of 9/11-scale attacks.

Using this power law relationship — called “scale invariance” — the risk of a large attack can be estimated by studying the frequency of small attacks. It’s a calculation that turns the usual thinking about terrorism on its head. “The conventional viewpoint has been there is ‘little terrorism’ and ‘big terrorism,’ and little terrorism doesn’t tell you anything about big terrorism,” Clauset explains. “The power law says that’s not true.”

Massive acts of violence, like 9/11 or the devastating 1995 bombing of the U.S. embassy in Nairobi, obey the same statistical rules as a small-scale IED attack that kills no one, Clauset’s work suggests. “The power law form gives you a very simple extrapolation rule for statistically connecting the two,” he says.

Although the U.S. and European nations have remained for years in a semipermanent state of high alert, the majority of terrorist attacks actually occur in the developing world, the data show — yet they are not the most severe. “Terrorist attacks happen less often in the developed world, but when they do happen, they’re often bigger than in the developing world,” Clauset says. “That was striking. We have no explanation for why that was the case.”

The size of terrorist groups is also an important variable. “The bigger they are, the faster they attack,” he says. “Most groups probably start small. They attack, they gain notoriety, they get some recruits and they get bigger. Once they reach a certain size, they can last longer.”

Yet gaining experience in committing violence doesn’t necessarily make terrorists more lethally efficient. “The severity of attacks for groups that have done a hundred attacks, versus the severity of attacks in groups that have done 10 attacks is no different,” he says. “They don’t actually get any better at killing people. They just try more often.”

When terror attacks are broken down by weapon types, explosives are responsible for 44 percent of the deaths, while firearms account for 36 percent, their study shows. The remaining 20 percent include unconventional weapons, chemical or biological weapons, fire and knives.

Why, I ask, should there be these regular patterns in terrorist attacks among unrelated groups, irrespective of geography or ideology? It is a question Clauset gets asked frequently.

“It may be that there is something fundamental at play, that a notion like self-organized criticality is somewhere lurking underneath,” he responds. “I’m skeptical of that hypothesis for terrorism, in particular, but it may be the answer in the end. I don’t know.” If terrorist attacks really are power-law distributed, he says, a more likely possibility is that “there might be some kind of fundamental social or political process underneath that creates this very special kind of pattern.”

“My childhood wasn’t one of these stereotypical scientist childhoods where I was taking things apart,” says Clauset, who grew up in Winston-Salem, N.C., the child of two scientifically minded educators. He did embrace computers at a young age, learning to program on an Apple IIc. Later, he discovered physics, astrophysics and cosmology with an early CD-ROM.

At Haverford College, he hoped to double major in physics and sociology, but he grew disenchanted with the latter after taking only two courses. “Even Newtonian mechanics is more advanced than the best social theory we have, and Newtonian mechanics is 300 years old,” he says.

Clauset’s love affair with computer modeling began when he tried simulating evolution with algorithms. “I was fascinated by the idea that I could have an ecosystem inside my computer,” he says. “I could leave in the evening and come back the next morning, and something weird would have happened overnight.” He moved on to the University of New Mexico for his doctorate, drawn in part by its proximity to the Santa Fe Institute, a place where he could hone his skills in evolutionary computation.

On a trip to New York in 2004, he happened to visit an actress friend who worked for an agency that was casting Average Joe, an NBC reality series. “She got tickled with the idea of me going on it, and after a couple of days, convinced me to try,” he says. After an audition, he was invited to join the cast.

The premise: A group of regular-looking guys would compete for the heart of a beautiful, unattached woman (a redheaded car-show model, in this case). Clauset — tall, on the skinny side, with gold-rim glasses framing his wide-set blue eyes — fit the bill as the wonky computer scientist wading into the deep end of the dating pool. He made it through two episodes of competition before being eliminated.

He still gets teased about it, yielding a scientific insight of a different order: “I learned a very valuable lesson, which is that a little bit of embarrassment on your part leads to a lot of enjoyment on your friends’ part.” Romance won out in the real world, though. Last year, he married Lisa Mullings, a nutrition educator who, until recently, worked for the state of New Mexico. “I often joke that Lisa’s having a more important impact on the world than I am,” he says.

In December 2006, Clauset took a postdoctoral fellowship at the Santa Fe Institute, an incubator for big ideas that brings together scholars with vastly different backgrounds — from computer scientists and physicists to linguists, economists and anthropologists. “You’re encouraged to think outside the box and interact with people from other disciplines — to find new ways of attacking old questions and to come up with new questions that no one had thought of before,” he says.

That may be as good a description as any of what goes on inside the notoriously hard-to-define institute, which is housed in a 1950s Santa Fe Territorial-style mansion with a new wing grafted on to provide quarters for nearly 100 faculty, fellows, visitors and staff. Visitors commonly encounter major-league science talent, like Murray Gell-Mann, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist who helped found the institute, but on this afternoon I notice novelist-in-residence Cormac McCarthy shyly mingling at the 3 p.m. tea, a daily ritual meant to draw people out of their offices. Valerie Plame Wilson, whose career as a covert CIA officer was torpedoed by I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby‘s indiscretion, works in the development office.

One of Clauset’s first projects at the institute was an effort to tease out simple evolutionary rules governing mammalian body size. He saw a tradeoff between the survival advantages of animal species that grow larger — and thus better able to regulate body temperature, control food sources and avoid predation — and the disadvantages, which include smaller population, lower birth rate and increased sensitivity to environmental changes. “You have a few really big things, like elephants and whales, and many, many small things, like mice and other kinds of rodents,” Clauset says. “This tradeoff is what generates this asymmetric pattern.”

Over the past two years, Clauset has published a series of papers calculating the effects of macro-evolutionary forces with a simple model that intentionally omits many of the classic processes recognized in evolution, such as competition among species, geography, predation and population dynamics. “It all comes back to this idea that you don’t have to know all the details of processes in order to understand how the interactions lead to patterns,” he says.

His computer model generates a curve that nicely matches the real-world size distributions for some 4,000 recent mammalian species. “You don’t often see models do that,” he says. “They usually require more tinkering.” Clauset, who claims he hasn’t taken a biology course since the 10th grade, expects to deepen his understanding of biology in his new role as an assistant professor at the Colorado Initiative in Molecular Biotechnology, an interdisciplinary research center at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

He and some collaborators there are trying to see if genetic algorithms can be used to shape bacterial evolution, with the admittedly ambitious hope that their metabolism could be coaxed into reversing the combustion cycle, turning carbon dioxide back into fuel. It’s classic Clauset, careering between abstract theoretical questions and real-world threats as imminent as terrorism and global climate change. “I like to have one foot in both worlds,” he says. “I like to do things that increase understanding, but I want to do things that have an impact as well.”

Ever since the retired Athenian general Thucydides sat down to ponder the catastrophic, nearly 30-year-long war that enveloped the Hellenic world 2,400 years ago, people have sought to comprehend human conflict. Why do wars arise, and why do they persist? What determines who wins and who loses?

For the most part, these questions have been addressed by social scientists — historians, political scientists, sociologists, economists and the like. But 60 years ago, Lewis Fry Richardson, a British physicist, mathematician and pacifist who had served as an ambulance driver in World War I, published Statistics of Deadly Quarrels, in which he compiled data on most of the wars from 1820 to 1950, classifying them by their magnitude. Among other things, Richardson found there were many more small conflicts than large ones.

Clauset had never heard of this research when he and a computer scientist friend named Maxwell Young started talking about modeling terrorism in 2003, about the time the U.S. invaded Iraq. Clauset realized he could apply the same simplified, data-averaging technique to terrorism as he had to mammalian body sizes. “It all comes back to this idea that you don’t have to know all the details of processes in order to understand how the interactions lead to patterns,” Clauset says. “It turns out no one had really thought about taking this approach to thinking about terrorism — looking at the big patterns.”

Standard counterterrorism research approaches its subject in essentially human terms: Why do people resort to violence or join terrorist groups? Are they poor, disenfranchised or uneducated? “They’re really interested in the ‘why’ questions,” Clauset says. “I said to myself, ‘I don’t care why people do it. I want to know how. Given that they’re going to do it, what do they do? When do they do it? How big do they do it?’”

Clauset and Young (later joined by University of Essex political scientist Kristian Gleditsch) found a database of worldwide terrorist attacks that had been maintained by the Oklahoma City-based Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism. A U.S. Department of Homeland Security training partner, MIPT recorded 36,018 terrorist events in 187 countries from 1968 to 2008, of which 13,407 attacks had killed at least one person.

Plotting the frequency of the 13,000 lethal attacks against their severity yielded an unexpected pattern: The more frequent attacks resulted in relatively fewer deaths, while the infrequent big attacks killed the most people, Clauset found. Such scale-invariant patterns can be detected in many phenomena that follow power laws: the variety of global languages, urban populations, financial markets and earthquakes, for example.

The researchers tried slicing the data in different ways, cataloguing attacks in industrialized versus nonindustrialized countries, as well as by the kind of weapon used, and were surprised to find that the most severe attacks were clustered in the developed world. Clauset has a theory about why that might be. “On the one hand, you have the physics of population density fluctuation — where people go, when they’re there and how many people are there at that time,” he says. “Then you have targeting, which is strategic. The terrorists can choose where they put the bomb and when it goes off.”

Because terrorists aim for high-density (hence high-visibility) targets, “the bombs are attracted to where the people are” — trains and airplanes, for example.

Clauset finds this model intellectually satisfying. “It’s bridging this world between the physics side of things and the social-science, motivation-behavioral side of things,” he says, “and it’s the combination of those two effects that gives you what we see.”

Where the identity of the perpetrators could be determined, he has also found that contemporary “fourth wave” terrorism fueled by religious extremism differs in a critical respect from earlier waves — 19th-century anarchism, the anti-colonialist insurgencies of the early 20th century and Cold War-era revolutionary movements. “Religious groups accelerate their attacks faster than secular groups,” Clauset explains. “We come back to this growth dynamic: Religious groups grow faster than secular groups, and this may be because of that pool of people that are sympathetic to the rationale.”

Clauset soon came to realize that his findings about terrorist groups were an extension of Richardson’s broader research into human conflicts. “He really started all this,” he says. “I draw a line from what I’m doing right back to him. He was an inspiration in many ways.”

This is all fascinating, I tell Clauset, but I have to ask: Just how significant are these findings? After all, most counterterrorism researchers are grappling in real time with the most urgent of problems — how to avert mass carnage in the next terror attack. “I can’t tell you whether next Tuesday there’s going to be an attack somewhere, or who’s going do it, or why they’re going do it,” he concedes. “I can tell you about the overall patterns, which allows me to do some interesting things, like ask, ‘What’s the risk of events the size of 9/11? How often do they happen? Are there patterns in the past that let us paint a broad picture about what might happen in the future?’”

With information on frequency and patterns, decision-makers can better allocate resources to deal with serious long-term threats, he says. There is, for example, a “very real” danger of an attack even more devastating than the 9/11 plane hijackings, in which nearly 3,000 died. “The danger comes from nuclear, primarily,” he says. “It’s well within the realm of possibility within the next 50 years that a low-yield nuclear bomb is detonated as a terrorist attack somewhere in the world.” Such a bomb could kills tens of thousands of people, depending on when and where it goes off.

Clearly, that is an eventuality society might want to be prepared for.

On the other hand, Clauset’s findings might also take some of the terror out of terrorism, which draws its power from its shadowy, unpredictable nature. For example, knowing a group’s size should enable governments and law enforcement to gauge the true threat it poses (because the power law proves that size determines the frequency with which it can attack).

“It tells you that while a lot of things are flexible — different terrorist organizations are very different — there are a couple of things that they can’t change,” Clauset says. “That means that even if they know that we know this, they can’t do anything about it.”

Yet he has learned the hard way to be wary of claiming too much. In a 2005 draft of their paper, Clauset and his collaborators projected that another 9/11-magnitude attack would occur within seven years, a finding that sparked newspaper headlines (“Physicists Predict Next 9/11 In Seven Years”). Clauset now says there were too many uncertainties in the data to make such a specific prediction. “What we had said was, if the future is exactly like the past and the assumptions of the model are correct, this is what you would expect,” he says. “But that number I don’t trust.”

Comer, deputy director of the government’s anti-IED effort, says Clauset’s new approach to modeling terrorism arrived at the right time. “The interesting part of it all is we didn’t commission Aaron to start working that topic,” Comer says. “We were looking for researchers doing an advanced statistical reconstruction of our kinds of data and came upon his research.” But, Comer says, Clauset clearly grasped the import of his own work: “When we did finally show up at Santa Fe Institute to chat with him, he said, ‘I was wondering how long it would take the Department of Defense to look me up.’”

The war in Afghanistan, where NATO troops have suffered hundreds of casualties in IED attacks, represents a model of asymmetrical warfare in which the “enemy” might be farmers by day — or even government policemen — and Taliban fighters by night. Leadership structures are less important to the overall movement because individuals or small cells are making their own tactical decisions, so analysis based on the model of opposing armies tackling one another head-on is nearly useless, Comer says. “This is so far beyond the typical quantitative analysis that the DOD has done for decades,” he says, “[that] we’d better be talking to the Aaron Clausets of the world.”

Gary LaFree, who directs the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism at the University of Maryland, says his center is considering funding one of Clauset’s projects. A criminologist by training, LaFree calls the discovery of power-law distributions in terrorism a “paradigm shift” that extends to other kinds of criminal behavior. “You don’t get the ‘aha’ moments very often in the business,” he says, “but this is one of them.”

LaFree notes that ever since 9/11, policymakers have focused their planning on preventing another epic attack, spending billions of dollars, but that response is based on a distorted view of the threat. “The typical terrorist attack involves zero casualties, occurs in Latin America and involves groups in existence for less than a year,” he says. “If you base public policy around 9/11, most of the time you’re wasting your energy.”

LaFree predicts Clauset’s work will change the way social scientists look at crime and terrorism — eventually. “I think it’s going to take some time,” he says, “because it’s a pretty big departure from the way people think about these things.”

Some people in the counterterrorism establishment are politely skeptical about Clauset’s work. Walter L. Perry, a senior information scientist at RAND Corporation who has worked with battlefield commanders in Iraq to make next-day predictions of when and where insurgents might mount IED attacks, says the predictive power of mathematics-based forecasts improves when more is known. “We talk about getting inside the enemy’s decision-making loop,” he says. With the Iraq project, “we looked at more recent historical data. What happened six months ago was of no use to us. We looked at what took place within the last month.”

Their model achieved 35 percent accuracy, Perry says, information for which the commanders were grateful. It’s a classic example of applied operations research, a field that RAND in its earliest incarnation helped develop during World War II.

The level of abstraction used by Clauset and other researchers makes Perry uncomfortable. “If they could do it, it would be useful,” he says of their long-range forecasting. “I’m a little bit skeptical that something like that can actually be done. The groups that do these terrorist attacks are loose cannons: There’s no two alike, and it’s all very localized and depends on local grievances.” Inevitably, he says, such long-term modeling implicitly assumes that the past is prologue to the future — and that’s a big assumption.

Clauset finds such objections familiar; after all, reviewers for some academic journals have rejected his papers, and analysts trained in the social sciences often deny that there might be impersonal patterns to human behavior. He finds the reliance on social-dynamic analysis in much of the counterterrorism establishment “discouraging.”

“There’s a sort of belief that if we can map the friendship network of Afghanistan, we’ll know who to kill,” he says. “I think that’s misguided.”

Clauset has his own theories about why common patterns emerge among global terrorist groups, one of which involves organizational dynamics. “There are fundamental constraints on the behavior of terrorist organizations that look very similar to the kinds of constraints that startup companies face — that all social groups in some ways face,” he says. “This limit is manpower.”

Like small companies, Clauset says, terrorist groups are made up of highly motivated people looking to make a product — terror attacks. “Both of these face the problem that they need to grow, or they’re going to die,” he says. With small groups, if a key member leaves, it’s a major blow; with a larger work force, one person’s departure doesn’t matter as much.

That’s why the U.S. decapitation strategy has failed to subdue insurgent groups, he believes. “Someone was joking a few years back about how we’ve killed the No. 3 al-Qaeda guy in Iraq 20 times,” he says. “They keep replacing him with somebody else. We need to understand the phenomenon, not the network. The network is the manifestation of the phenomenon.”

These ideas were given powerful expression in a high-profile paper published by Army Maj. Gen. Michael T. Flynn and several collaborators in January 2010. Called “Fixing Intel: A Blueprint for Making Intelligence Relevant in Afghanistan,” the paper argued that military intelligence units are fixated on identifying the individuals responsible for IED attacks without probing the larger social context within which those people operate.

“Analysts painstakingly diagram insurgent networks and recommend individuals who should be killed or captured,” they wrote. While aerial drones scan the countryside 24/7 in the hope of spotting insurgents burying bombs, “relying on them exclusively baits intelligence shops into reacting to enemy tactics at the expense of finding ways to strike at the very heart of the insurgency.

“These labor-intensive efforts, employed in isolation, fail to advance the war strategy and, as a result, expose more troops to danger over the long run.”

One measure of the seriousness with which the defense establishment regards Clauset’s research is the number of entities for whom he has consulted. In addition to the anti-explosive device group JIEDDO and START, the University of Maryland’s terrorism study consortium, they include the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the U.S. Naval War College’s Strategic Studies Group and the science and technology office of the Department of Homeland Security.

He has also collaborated with The MITRE Corporation, a McLean, Va., nonprofit that oversees highly classified research contracts for the Defense Department and other national security agencies. Brian F. Tivnan, chief engineer in MITRE’s modeling and simulation department, says he followed the work of Clauset and Neil Johnson, a University of Miami physicist who has published his own mathematical model of terrorism, for some time before convening a meeting of top researchers and defense officials at the Santa Fe Institute in August 2009. Along with Clauset, Johnson and Comer, the participants included Peter Dodds and Chris Danforth, University of Vermont computational social scientists who have developed tools for measuring the collective mood of a population based on Internet data, Tivnan says.

There’s one not necessarily obvious benefit to this type of data-driven terrorism research: It is less prone to the ideological distortion that accompanies more subjective analyses, says Tivnan, who emphasizes he can speak for himself and MITRE, but not for government agencies. “When we start thinking about the implications for national security, it first broadens the perspective beyond Sept. 11, 2001, in the United States,” he says. “Analytically, we’ve looked at other kinds of conflict and terrorism itself for several decades. Aaron did a magnificent job in characterizing the dynamics of terrorism over the better part of four decades. From a scientific standpoint, it forces the conversation to remain analytical and apolitical, which is very important.”

Working as he does almost within sight of the Los Alamos lab where the first atomic weapon was designed, Clauset is aware of the real-world implications of his research, and he says that scientists working in and around national security need to be careful. Johnson, for example, has speculated that his own model might indicate whether small teams of peacekeeping troops should be deployed to fight individual terrorist cells, Clauset says. “Many of the things he suggests are not things the model predicts at all,” he says. While such a suggestion might be reasonable and echo established counter-insurgency doctrine, it’s also advice that, if acted upon, could get troops killed.

“That’s where I would exercise caution,” Clauset says. “Some people make strong claims about what their models show. I don’t know if policymakers are sensitive to these issues. Like many people, they trust scientists to be conservative and cautious. Scientists trust the policymakers to be conservative and cautious.

“The end result is that probably, over the last eight years, a lot of people have been killed that didn’t need to be killed — whether on our side or on everybody else’s side.”

In regard to his own research, he says, any timeline of prediction is so long that no one would be directly targeted for elimination as a result of his advice. Still, there are times when he sets aside the abstractions with which he is most comfortable.

“It is weird when you step back and say, ‘There are thinking, social beings in these organizations, they have families and causes and ideals and so on.’ And I’m thinking about them as being a little bit like particles.

“But,” he says, “the patterns speak for themselves.”

[sobank]

Rare Photo of the Mushroom Cloud Over Hiroshima Discovered in a Former Japanese Elementary School

By Rebecca J. Rosen

inShare9

Jan 11 2013, 7:47 AM ET
150
Taken just minutes after the bomb fell, as incomprehensible horror unfolded below.

Honkawa Elementary School
In the center of Hiroshima, in a part of the city totally destroyed by the explosion and ensuing fires, a long-lost photograph taken shortly after the blast has been discovered among a collection of articles about the bombing.
The picture is a rare glimpse of the bomb's immediate aftermath, showing the distinct two-tiered cloud as it was seen from Kaitaichi, part of present-day Kaita, six miles east of Hiroshima's center. Reprints of the image did appear in a 1988 Japanese-language publication, but the whereabouts of the original were unknown. There are only a couple of other photos in existence (two, possibly three) that capture the cloud from the vantage point of the ground; and, according to the Japanese paper Asahi Shimbun, there is only one other photograph that provides as clear a picture of the separated tiers of the cloud, and that is a photo taken from the Enola Gay as it zipped away.

AP
The Asahi Shimbun and AFP reports about the recently recovered photo point to a bit of confusion over when, exactly, it was taken. On the back of the photo, a note puts the time at two minutes after the blast. But in the 1988 book in which the picture was reprinted, the editors placed it 20 to 30 minutes later. Would it be possible to assess the validity of these conflicting figures based solely on the evidence in the picture?
I reached out to American Institute of Physics nuclear historian Alex Wellerstein to see if a more definite answer were possible. He compared the image to other photos whose timestamps we more or less know, as well as to a chart prepared by Manhattan Project scientists depicting the cloud's progression. "In looking at those," he said, "it looks like it was taken slightly after another photo which is supposed to be the cloud at about 20,000 feet." That elevation -- 20,000 feet -- would have been reached about two to three minutes after the explosion, and this picture was taken slightly after that.
"There are photos taken about 10 minutes after, which show that the cloud is a really different shape at that point," he continued. Based on that timeline, he places this picture somewhere within the two-to-five-minute window, and rules out the 20-to-30-minute window.

Appendix to a report, "The Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki," prepared by the Manhattan Engineer District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, June 29, 1946. (Alex Wellerstein)
As you look at the photo, your mind inevitably turns to the people below. What was it like in those first few minutes after the bomb? I asked Wellerstein and he replied:

Most of the direct effects of the bomb are going to be delivered in the first 10 seconds or so -- and a lot of them faster than that. You've already got the first thing that happens, which is this huge amount of radiation and heat: Anybody who's exposed to radiation might not die instantly, but they're going to die to pretty soon, within a week or so. The heat is going to give people third-degree burns within a fairly wide radius.
A few seconds later there's this huge pressure blast. It's like a big puff of air. It blows in all the windows; it tips over the little stoves that they use for cooking breakfast. This happens at 8:15 or so in the morning, so it tips over all those little, tiny charcoal stoves. So by a couple of minutes, you've got the beginnings of a very large fire. It's not yet at a firestorm -- that happens pretty soon afterward -- but you've got all these little tiny fires, started either by the heat of the bomb itself or by the fact that all of these fire sources are knocked over and these Japanese houses are all made out of wood and paper.

And, as bad as that is, the worst was yet to come: "From a couple of minutes after and continuing for several hours, everything is on fire, everyone is confused. A lot of people are dead. A lot of people are dead but don't know it yet -- they've been exposed to fatal amounts of radiation. So it's pretty bad on the ground at that time." As the fire spreads, the winds pick up, creating tornado-like conditions which, as Father John A. Siemes -- a Catholic priest living at Novitiate of the Society of Jesus in Nagatsuke, about two kilometers away -- later remembered, "begins to uproot large trees, and lifts them high into the air."

Wikimedia Commons
For people trapped in that chaos, no one possibly could have understood that all of this destruction came from one single bomb. Everyone thought they themselves must have been very close to where the bomb hit. Father Siemes, who was two kilometers away, recalled seeing a flash of light, then hearing an explosion. Then, about 10 seconds after the light, "I am sprayed by fragments of glass. The entire window frame has been forced into the room. I realize now that a bomb has burst and I am under the impression that it exploded directly over our house or in the immediate vicinity."
Yet even given the delay between the flash of light, the sound, and the explosion, Siemes and his colleagues went to the front of the house to see where the bomb landed. All of the survivors he later encountered had the same impression "that the bomb had burst in their immediate vicinity." The fact that one massive bomb, kilometers away, could cause this sort of force and devastation defied belief.
"Everybody is running around saying, 'Oh, it's weird, my house randomly got hit by a bomb,' Wellerstein describes it. "When the answer is, no, no, no -- you guys are actually fairly far away from the bomb and it was only one bomb. It was huge."
"I've always thought that that was a powerful illustration of how long it takes your brain to wrap around something that is just so unfamiliar," he continued.
The person who took this photo would have been among the first to look out there and realize that this wasn't just your run-of-the-mill bomb. It wasn't the air raid that the citizens of Hiroshima had been anticipating for months. This was the beginning of a new world, one with a bomb unlike anything anyone had ever experienced before, something so new and fearsome that at first no one could understand what it was.

[Mughal1]

Has humnaity understood the Quran properly?

 

http://www.jangforum...v3&topic=5206.0

[Metanoia]

Major discovery bolsters Big Bang theory of universe

 

 

WASHINGTON:Waves of gravity that rippled through space right after the Big Bang have been detected for the first time, in a landmark discovery that adds to our understanding of how the universe was born, US scientists said Monday.

 

The waves were produced in a rapid growth spurt 14 billion years ago, and were predicted in Albert Einstein's nearly century-old theory of general relativity but were never found until now.

 

The first direct evidence of cosmic inflation - a theory that the universe expanded by 100 trillion trillion times in barely the blink of an eye - was announced by experts at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

 

The detection was made with the help of a telescope called BICEP2, stationed at the South Pole, that measures the oldest light in the universe. If confirmed by other experts, some said the work could be a contender for the Nobel Prize.

 

The waves that move through space and time have been described as the “first tremors of the Big Bang.” Their detection confirms an integral connection between Einstein's theory of general relativity and the stranger conceptual realm of quantum mechanics.

 

NASA said the findings “not only help confirm that the universe inflated dramatically, but are providing theorists with the first clues about the exotic forces that drove space and time apart.”John Kovac, leader of the BICEP2 collaboration at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said years of observations using the telescope at the South Pole preceded Monday's announcement.

 

“Detecting this signal is one of the most important goals in cosmology today. A lot of work by a lot of people has led up to this point.”

 

'Mind-boggling' find

 

The telescope targeted a specific area of sky known as the “Southern Hole” outside the galaxy where there is little dust or extra galactic material to interfere with what humans could see with the potent sky-peering tool.

 

By observing the cosmic microwave background, or a faint glow left over from the Big Bang, small fluctuations gave scientists new clues about the conditions in the early universe. The gravitational waves rippled through the universe 380,000 years after the Big Bang, and these images were captured by the telescope.

 

“It's mind-boggling to go looking for something like this and actually find it,” Clem Pryke, associate professor at the University of Minnesota, told reporters at an event in Boston to announce the findings. Rumors of a major discovery began to circulate Friday, when the press conference was first announced.

 

However, scientists said they spent three years analyzing their data to rule out any errors. “This has been like looking for a needle in a haystack, but instead we found a crowbar,” said Pryke.

 

New insights to why we exist

 

Harvard theorist Avi Loeb said the findings provide “new insights into some of our most basic questions: Why do we exist? How did the universe begin?"

 

“These results are not only a smoking gun for inflation, they also tell us when inflation took place and how powerful the process was,” Loeb said.

 

John Womersley, chief executive of the Science and Technology Facilities Council, which funds British research into cosmology, said the advance adds to our knowledge of one of the three key pillars of modern cosmology -- inflation, dark matter and dark energy.

 

“Without inflation we would not be here,” he said.

 

According to theoretical physicist Alan Guth, who proposed the idea of inflation in 1980, described the latest study as “definitely worthy of a Nobel Prize.”Chris Lintott, an astrophysicist at the University of Oxford, said that finding evidence of this super-fast inflation the would be considered “most significant cosmological discovery in nearly two decades, and a huge triumph for physics.”

 

"It's like all our Christmases at once," he said. “I doubt many cosmologists will get much sleep tonight.” Science-US-space-history AFP _171913 GMT MAR 14

[Metanoia]

‘Living materials’ could revolutionize solar panels and biosensors

 

 

Researchers are working to create “living materials” that are a combination of bacterial cells and nonliving materials that conduct electricity, which could create more efficient solar panels or biosensors.

 

A team at MIT used E. coli – which produces biofilms, or coalesced bacteria that organizes to survive – to grow proteins on a surface. Different protein fibers chose to interact with various nonliving molecules, Quartz reported on the team’s ongoing study first published in the journal Nature Materials.

 

The MIT researchers first introduced gold nanoparticles into a biofilm with compatible protein fibers. Bacteria took to the fibers and worked to create functioning circuits. They believe other nonliving matter, like some metals or possibly “organic conductors of electricity like grapheme” could be incorporated using the same method.

 

“When you look around the natural world, you can see that biology has done a great job of designing unique materials,” researcher Timothy Lu told Quartz. “But in our day-to-day lives, we use materials that aren’t alive in any way.”

 

For instance, plastics take a considerable amount of energy to produce and use, Lu said.

 

“The goal is to find a way to engineer living cells so you can make them into materials you might not find naturally,” he said.

 

In the process, biofilms could also build their own nonliving components.

 

“Think of how bone works: you eat certain minerals, and they get formed into a structure in the body,” Lu said. “We could give the bacteria the precursors, and let them build the materials themselves.”

 

Offering biofilms various materials in order to evolve, the bacteria communities could select desirable traits that help find the best way to utilize proteins and nonliving entities to conduct a certain function.

 

Lu says an adhesive may be a jumping-off point for the method.

 

“We can imagine having glues that are alive, where the glue could sense if its seal broke and self-repair. That’s a longterm goal, of course,” he said.

 

Successfully marrying living and nonliving cells could work particularly well with solar panels or biosensors, the researchers said.

 

“We’re using E. coli now, but there’s no reason why we couldn’t use photosynthetic cells in the future,” Lu said. “And then, you could just stick it in the sun and grow all the material you want!”

[Metanoia]

Discovery of ‘alien’ DNA hailed by scientists, raises ethical concerns

 

 

American scientists have for the first time ever made it possible for an organism to survive with artificial DNA, making it more likely new medicines can be developed, while raising ethical concerns among some advocates.

 

For researchers at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California the breakthrough, published Wednesday in the Nature science journal, was 15 years in the making.

 

The announcement is so remarkable because, for billions of years, all life has been made up of DNA subunits categorized by four letters: A, T, C and G. Scientists have now added two new DNA building blocks to E. coli bugs, which then reproduced as normal with the two extra letters in their genetic code.

 

The research could eventually lead to the production of completely new proteins that could be used either for medicinal purposes or industrial products. It also lends credibility to the theory that life in outer space could exist entirely without the DNA found on Earth.

 

“What we have now is a living cell that literally stores increased genetic information,” said Floyd Romesberg, the Scripps chemical biologist who led the study. “This shows that other solutions to storing information are possible and of course, takes us closer to an expanded-DNA biology that will have many exciting applications – from new medicines to new kinds of nanotechnology.”

 

Romesberg said that because the new building blocks, dubbed X and Y, are infused with simple bacteria they would not constitute a danger if they somehow left the laboratory and were spread among the public. He added that his company, Synthorx, is exploring what possibilities could be in the future for X and Y, especially when they are combined with the thousands of amino acids to develop new vaccines.

 

“This is just a beautiful piece of work,” Martin Fussenegger, a synthetic biologist at ETH Zurich, told the Guardian. “DNA replication is really the cream of the crop of evolution which operates the same way in all living systems. Seeing that this machinery works with synthetic base pairs is just fascinating.”

 

The optimism was not shared by all. This research could eventually inspire critics to call for increased restrictions on synthetic biology, a field primarily devoted to the design and construction of biological devices for useful purposes.

 

“The arrival of this unprecedented ‘alien’ life form could in time have far-reaching ethical, legal, and regulatory implications,” Jim Thomas of the ETC Group, a Canadian advocacy organization, told theNew York Times. “While synthetic biologists invent new ways to monkey with the fundamentals of life, governments haven’t even been able to cobble together the basics of oversight, assessment or regulation for this surging field.”

 

Opposition has increased as synthetic biology has made progress. The ETC Group, an international organization devoted to “the conservation and sustainable advancement of cultural and ecological diversity and human rights,” has called for a global moratorium on scientific development until the ethical ramifications of synthetic biology can be fully examined.

 

Romesberg, perhaps not surprisingly, implied this week that such self-imposed restrictions when the field’s potential is so exciting.

 

“If you read a book that was written with four letters, you’re not going to be able to tell many interesting stories,” he said. “If you’re given more letters, you can invent new words, you can find new ways to use those words and you can probably tell more interesting stories.”

[Metanoia]

Scientists find way to turn light into matter

 

 

 

 

Researchers in London have found a way to make matter from light, using high powered lasers. The idea behind the theory was first thought up 80 years ago by two physicists, who were to work later on creating the world’s first atomic bomb.

 

In 1934, US physicists Gregory Breit and John Wheeler worked out that, on very rare occasions, two particles of light (photons) could combine to produce an electron and a positron. They were never able to carry out their theory in practice as they believed it would be almost impossible.

 

However, Steve Rose, who is professor of physics at Imperial College London, says, “today, nearly 80 years later, we proved them wrong.” Rose went on to add, "despite all physicists accepting the theory to be true, when Breit and Wheeler first proposed the theory, they said that they never expected it be shown in the laboratory.”

 

“What was so surprising to us was the discovery of how we can create matter directly from light using the technology that we have today in the UK. As we are theorists we are now talking to others who can use our ideas to undertake this landmark experiment,” Rose continued.

 

They have managed to create a machine called a photon-photon collider, which would turn light into matter. However, the type of matter they are looking to create will be invisible to the naked eye.

 

Oliver Pike, the lead researcher of the study, said that the experiment would be the most elegant demonstration of Einstein's famous formula. "The Breit-Wheeler process is the simplest way matter can be made from light and one of the purest demonstrations of E=mc2," he told The Guardian.

 

The process works something like this. Firstly, the scientists would use an extremely powerful laser to speed up the electrons to travel almost at the speed of light. These electrons would then be fired at a slab of gold. This would create a beam of photons, which are a billion times more powerful than visible light.

 

The next stage sees a high energy laser being fired into a hohlraum, which is the German for an ‘empty room.’ As a consequence, light as bright as that emitted by stars is produced and in the final stage, the first beam of the photons is directed towards the hohlraum, where the two streams collide, which forms electrons and positrons.

 

The study has been published in the journal Nature Photonics.

 

The scientists hope that the process will be demonstrated over the next 12 months, and if it is successful, it will encourage physicists to study how subatomic particles behave. Pike stated, "such a collider could be used to study fundamental physics with a very clean experimental setup: pure light goes in, matter comes out. The experiment would be the first demonstration of this.”

 

The experiment would recreate a process that was important in the first 100 seconds of the universe and that is also seen in gamma ray bursts - the biggest explosions in the universe and one of the greatest unsolved mysteries of physics.

[Khalqat]

Are finally witnessing another sign of end times? Here is an article posted in The Guardian.

 

=================================================================================

 

A French message to Britain, Get out of Europe before you wreck it

 

June 07, 2014

 

 

 

A French message to Britain, Get out of Europe before you wreck it 

Michel Rocard

There is, between you and us continental Europeans, a disagreement which is turning ugly. Your immense history justifies a limitless admiration for you. You were the inventors of democracy and of human rights, you dominated the world for centuries, first ruling the oceans and after that the world of finance. And when apocalypse threatened, your courage and tenacity – you held on long, American and Russian help arriving late in the day – saved our honour and freedom.

We know this and we have never shied away from saying, including in this commemorative week, that we owe you an immense debt. This should not, however, allow you to treat us with contempt and double-dealing.

You do not like Europe – that is your right and it is understandable. You nevertheless joined 41 years ago, but on a misunderstanding. You never shared the true meaning of the project which Winston Churchill, speaking on your behalf, set out in Zurich in 1946 with his incredible words: “We must build a kind of United States of Europe … Great Britain, the British Commonwealth of Nations, mighty America – and, I trust, Soviet Russia … must be the friends and sponsors of the new Europe and must champion its right to live.” Were you not listening? These were the thoughts of a giant, shared by another giant, Charles de Gaulle.

You wanted trade, and you thought about nothing else. With President de Gaulle gone, you were able to join. But from this point you never, ever allowed even the smallest step towards greater integration, or even the smallest expansion of genuinely joint decisions.

The European community did trade, which suited you, because it defined itself as an economic community, but for those things that should be at the very heart of an economy – taxation, dispute settlement law, social policy – you demanded and imposed the continuation of unanimous decision-making. You wanted paralysis. So many neighbouring countries applauded and envied our achievements and wanted to join. You supported each enlargement; we did too, even though we knew it would dilute the community. But you never allowed the slightest deepening of the union. Europe remained bogged down and badly run, an economic giant, a political dwarf.

Eventually the size and success of the European community meant that it made little sense for it to be involved only in the economic aspects of our shared lives. Diplomacy, defence, justice were all raised. You succeeded in limiting joint political actions to a few narrowly defined circumstances and instances.

Thanks to you, the Maastricht treaty was a failure and only narrowly voted through. You did not have to do much to ensure that the Amsterdam and Nice treaties and the constitutional convention would also be flops because they changed little. Paralysis was guaranteed, because you had already got what you wanted. But you had to make things worse. When you didn’t like the agreed rules, you tore them up by seeking derogations, “I want my money back” agreements such as the British budget rebate, and eventually the right to opt out of policies altogether when they did not suit you.

But your demands became even more outrageous. Amid the paralysis and growing anger the continental desire grew for stronger and more powerful leaders.

The nationalities of the Belgian Jean-Luc Dehaene and the Luxembourger Jean-Claude Juncker could not have bothered you, it was enough that they were federalist in outlook, had strong voices and would not be easily pushed around. Two vetoes in 10 years, that takes some nerve. You dared to do it.

Europe is dying from it. The most recent elections have confirmed this. Even the euro, the only policy that you could not block, yet whose rules you were involved in writing, and which therefore bear your influence, remains weak and suffers from the lack of oversight that you were able to make sure would prevail across the EU.

I know, you are not completely alone in this. The refusal to recognise a common European interest, always putting the national interest first – you reintroduced these ideas and made them contagious. Nobody is perfect. Acknowledge at least that you deserve the prize.

Out of this disaster and ahead of the European elections, the tenacious among us managed to inject more democracy into the rules. So it was agreed that the majority in the European parliament would choose the European commission presidency. It hardly changes the essence, but it is a start, a way to begin restoring public interest and engagement. Personally, I voted for Martin Schulz as it would trouble me to see somebody with a monetarist outlook at the head of the commission. But the people have spoken. It may be relative, but there is a majority and its leader is Jean-Claude Juncker, a bold and courageous federalist. Democracy demands that he become the president of the European commission. But you want to prevent this. You want to break the process by which a more democratic Europe could emerge. You are stopping Europe finding the democratic force and legitimacy that it needs. A leader picked in these circumstances will be weakened. But this is what you want. Without internal democracy Europe is unworthy, and is in the process of dying. And you are sending us back to that Europe, you despise us so much. What right do you have? And beware, this contempt will backfire on you. You will eventually be right.

Now you pretend to want to exit; the majority of your people are in no doubt about it. But you have a banking interest in remaining to capitalise on the disorder that you have helped to create.

So go before you wreck everything.

There was a time when being British was synonymous with elegance. Let us rebuild Europe. Regain your elegance and you will regain our esteem.–Guardian

[Metanoia]

1) How is this all related to Science?!

2) How is this all related to "end of time?"

3) How is "end of time" related to this thread(Science)?

[Khalqat]

If you are defining science with respect to technology, then this will be a different kind of science. Political/Social science.

 

What is being discussed in the article deals primarily with the economics of Europe and the common wealth countries - all of whom have been under a constant stress with the exception of 3-4 major European countries.

 

Everything is Science except religion

[Metanoia]

'God particle' teaches that Universe should have ceased to exist

 

A view of equipment in the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) tunnel during a visit at the Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Meyrin, near Geneva (Reuters / Denis Balibouse)

 

 

A refitted Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is being readied to delve deeper into the secrets of the Universe’s structure, a new British scientists’ model considering Higgs boson data claims the Universe should have collapsed immediately after the Big Bang.

 

Confirmation of the Higgs boson’s existence in July 2012 did not actually add clarity to the general picture of our Universe after all. The information acquired raised new, even more complex, questions.

 

Physicists at King’s College in London claim they have recreated the conditions following the Big Bang, but this time using the new information acquired with the help of the LHC. British scientists maintain now that the new data related to the so-called ‘God particle’ suggests the universe should have expanded excessively fast after the Big Bang and collapsed billions of years ago.

 

“During the early universe, we expected cosmic inflation — this is a rapid expansion of the universe right after the Big Bang,” co-author of the King’s College study Robert Hogan, a Ph.D. student in physics, told Live Science. “This expansion causes lots of stuff to shake around, and if we shake it too much, we could go into this new energy space, which could cause the universe to collapse.”

 

Such a conclusion could mean only one thing: if the universe we see around us is real while it shouldn’t be, then we don’t know something critically important about our 13.8-billion-year home and must move forward to learn it better.

 

A technician stands near 

A technician stands near equipment of the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experience at the Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in the French village of Cessy near Geneva in Switzerland (Reuters / Denis Balibouse)

 

“We have to extend our theories to explain why this didn’t happen,” Hogan said.

 

The scientist shared with Live Science the super-symmetry theory, which says that presently-known particles might have super-partner particles. So the Higgs boson could coexist with four other sibling particles that have similar masses, but different electrical charges.

 

This could serve as a partial explanation to universe’s stability. And just like the Higgs boson, they could be discovered one day, but that would imply the construction of particle accelerators even more powerful than the LHC.

 

So far the stability of the universe is also under scrutiny by another scientific experiment, a Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization (BICEP-2) telescope in the Antarctic, has reportedly managed to register the echo of the cosmic inflation as background microwave radiation permeating our Universe.

 

 

 

Higgs boson opened new horizons

 

The experiments held in 2012 managed to register the elusive ‘God particle’, without which matter as such would fail to exist because the particles would not ‘hold together’.

 

For that discovery, the author of the now-proven theory, British scientist Peter Higgs, won the Nobel Prize in Physics - along with François Englert and Robert Brout, because back in 1964 they independently proposed a theory about the existence of a yet-undiscovered particle that gives mass to other particles.

 

British scientist Peter Higgs poses in front of a photographic image of the Atlas detector at the Science Museum in London (Reuters / Toby Melville)

 

With the Higgs boson existence proven, it became the final ‘brick’ required to verify the Standard Model of particle physics.

 

“In nature, there are two types of particles: fermions and bosons,” a research associate at Fermilab, Ketino Kaadze, shared in a news release. “Fermions, quarks and leptons make up all the matter around us. Bosons are responsible for mediating interaction between the elementary particles.”

 

“We think that the Higgs boson is responsible for the generation of mass of fundamental particles,” Kaadze said, explaining that the electrons acquire their mass by interacting with the ‘God particle’, “the centerpiece that ties it all together.”

 

The $10 billion LHC will be fully ready in early 2015, when it will push two proton beams at a speed nearly that of light in order to collide them, creating conditions similar to those a mere split second after the Big Bang.

 

“The machine is coming out of a long sleep after undergoing an important surgical operation,” Frederick Bordry, director for accelerators and technology at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, told AP.

 

Yet creating Higgs bosons at the European Organization for Nuclear Research required the experts to amplify the center-of-mass energy in the LHC.

 

This time the largest ‘atom smasher’ in the world will get twice as much energy, which would make the proton beam inside a 27km-long underground construction circle it 11,000 times in a matter of a second.

 

 

“It's effectively a new machine, poised to set us on the path to new discoveries,” CERN Director General Rolf Heuer said.

 

CERN staff walk in the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) tunnel during a visit at the Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Meyrin, near Geneva (Reuters / Denis Balibouse)

 

According to Fabiola Gianotti, a particle physicist and former spokesperson for the ATLAS (A Toroidal LHC Apparatus) Experiment, which found the Higgs boson, finding the Higgs was only a “starting point,” National Geographic reported.

Having found Higgs boson, the LHC team will now try to prepare it better for staging next set of experiments, focusing on the search for ‘dark matter’, antimatter and previously-unknown dimensions of space and time.

 

The Higgs boson is not as well-known as the other elementary particles, Gianotti said.

 

So far modern physics have discovered 16 elementary particles, with the Higgs boson becoming number 17 – and it is “completely different than all of the others,” Gianotti, who now works with CERN, said.

 

“With a new friend, you want to know him or her better,” she concluded.

 

CERN Director General Rolf Heuer said that without the Higgs boson “you cannot exist.”

 

On Monday, CERN issued a new study showing that the Higgs boson decays into fermions, the particles that make up the matter itself, which makes the discovery of Higgs "a door to new physics," Gianotti said.

 

“We know that the Standard Model of physics that we have now does not explain some puzzles in nature,”Ketino Kaadze said. “We know there has to be other models that can explain phenomena like dark matter and dark energy, and why we can have different generations of the same particle that are identical except for their mass. Finding the Higgs particle wasn’t the end of the story. It was the starting point on a new horizon.”

 

http://rt.com/news/1...verse-collapse/

[blueazure]

robert greene, 

 

the art of seduction

 

the 33 strategies of war

 

 

==============

 

must read

[Metanoia]

‘Impossible’ space drive tested by NASA foretells future of deep-space travel

 

 

 

NASA has conducted long-awaited experiments to prove that the fabled space drive, capable of generating its own thrust and breaking a fundamental law of physics, works. If the find survives fresh scrutiny, space ship construction will be revolutionized.

 

The drive’s creator, British scientist Roger Shawyer, has been facing criticism since his 2006 claims, based on the premise that thrust can be created without huge thrusters, instead using electricity to direct microwaves inside a special container.

 

Shawyer’s company, SPR Ltd., writes that it has “demonstrated a remarkable new space propulsion technology. [It] has successfully tested both an experimental thruster and a demonstrator engine which use patented microwave technology to convert electrical energy directly into thrust. No propellant is used in the conversion process. Thrust is produced by the amplification of the radiation pressure of an electromagnetic wave propagated through a resonant waveguide assembly.”

 

In short, if the results hold up, humanity can say goodbye to huge energy consumption costs associated with space travel, and say hello to deep-space missions and distant world exploration at a fraction of the cost and at 100 times the speed.

 

But since its inception, the revolutionary drive had appeared to be impossible because it breaks the laws of the conservation of momentum. Put simply, acceleration in any rocket engine is achieved by a large amount of fuel bursting out of the thrusters and pushing the vessel forward. The drive promises to change this forever by creating its own momentum.

 

An independent, peer-reviewed Chinese team was the first to try and replicated the results, and confirmed that their own EmDrive worked in papers published on three occasions between 2008 and 2012. But the skepticism didn’t end there. So, to test the technology on different soil, NASA was brought in.

 

This was needed to reassure the scientific community that past results in which the apparent violations of the laws of physics were side effect of interference from the actual device, which messed with the measuring equipment.

 

Five of the space agency’s researchers set about to replicate the so-called EmDrive with another one they called the Cannae Drive, after they were convinced to put it to the test by its creator, American scientist Guido Fetta. The results were presented on July 30 at the 50th Joint Propulsion Conference.

 

With its paper, entitled ‘Anomalous Thrust Production from an RF [radio frequency] Test Device Measured on a Low-Thrust Torsion Pendulum’, the scientists describe the work carried out over six days, as they set up the equipment, and the two days spent achieving results.

 

To do this, they created a ‘null drive’ – a replica of the real drive, but built in a way that would make it unusable. Another device was then built to simulate the load on the engine.

 

Although the new results produced much less micronewtons (30-50) than the Chinese tests, NASA finally had its confirmation.

 

"Test results indicate that the RF resonant cavity thruster design, which is unique as an electric propulsion device, is producing a force that is not attributable to any classical electromagnetic phenomenon and therefore is potentially demonstrating an interaction with the quantum vacuum virtual plasma," the space agency states in the paper.

 

The one thing the paper does not wish to do is explain how the drive works, instead offering quantifiable results and the procedures used to achieve them.

 

However, given that we now have several tests all confirming that thrust can be generated out of thin air, a radically different future awaits humanity. In it, the immense costs of satellites, space ships and stations could be reduced to a mere fraction of what was previously thought. This should open the world up to exciting deep-space missions and enable us to survive a virtual lifetime in space.

 

Even more amazing, new propulsion technology based on the EmDrive should take space travel to amazing speeds, enabling humanity to reach distant worlds much more quickly.

 

http://rt.com/usa/17...-drive-emdrive/

[blueazure]

anyone has e book ,  my feudal lord by tehmina durrani ?