Science in the Muslim world Of Asean

The one great theme sold forever about the Muslim world and its history is the idea that it somehow was a cradle of science as policy during a large part of its history.  I find the idea to be an exaggeration.  What is true is that science and mathematics progressed continuously from its initiation in the Greco Roman world through to the present.

Until the advent of the the Scottish enlightenment in particular, this progress rested in the hands of a very few scholars who copied sources and assembled libraries and contributed new work

These scholars were gifted individuals who attracted sponsorship from wealthy patrons.  When there was a shortage of wealthy patrons the scholarship was naturally diminished.  Thus under the Ottomans who were at heart a nomadic people without a scholarly tradition or natural respect, it becomes unsurprising that scholarship languished, though the tradition of patronage continued but in competition with a far more robust Western system.

Salam, who is mentioned here, is merely a late example of such traditions.

Islam captured the entire developed world of its time and place and controlled its wealth.  In the process they monopolized any form of patronage and thus the livelihoods of scholars.  Scholarship advanced largely in spite of this form of civilization rather than because of it.

Great minds are scattered pretty evenly about.  Preparatory education and patrons are not.  Just how many great minds do you think survive the educational niceties of present Islamic education today?

The real breakthrough came with the invention of the modern university concept in eighteenth century Scotland.

Air Strike on Iran Nuclear Assets Possible Now

When I posted two or three weeks ago that an American supported Israeli air strike was possibly eminent because the necessary assets had moved in place, I still lacked the reason as to why just now.  This tells us why it will happen now.  Assume Russia will arrange to be standing by for this one and to also be in the know.  They may be selling a reactor, but they want a nuclear weapon in these fool’s hands no more than we do.  Think of the rich targets for Islam in Russia.

A surgical strike is likely to happen this week.  The purpose will be to smash up the reactor itself.  The only interesting question is how the Iranian air force will be neutralized while the attack goes in, particularly if they wish to have a back up wave.  I assume the US will not be visible.

Iran’s reaction will be of serious interest.  The most damaging thing that they could do in the short term is to suspend oil shipments to the extent that they can.  This could precipitate a jump in oil prices to the $150 mark and generate a sharp decline in stock prices.  That though should be the most effect their actions may have.

In the medium term, regime control of the population will likely spiral out of control because the population will immediately blame the regime for bringing this attack on to themselves.  Discontent is also likely to become visible in the armed forces because of the regime’s reckless behavior and proven futility.  In short, the regime will be destabilized.

Beyond what we have just described, they have no creditable response.

I note from this map that the reactor is on the Persian Gulf itself.    Any attack seems way more difficult and may target the secondary assets instead.  In the event, we have reached a decision point.

John Bolton: Russia's Loading of Nuke Fuel Into Iran Plant Means Aug. 21 Deadline for Israeli Attack

http://www.newsmax.com/Headline/John--Bolton--Iran--Nuclear--israel/2010/08/13/id/367449

Friday, 13 Aug 2010 01:41 PM

By: David A. Patten

News that Russia will load nuclear fuel rods into an Iranian reactor has touched off a countdown to a point of no return, a deadline by which Israel would have to launch an attack on Iran's Bushehr reactor before it becomes effectively "immune" to any assault, says former Bush administration U.N. Ambassador John R. Bolton. 

Once the fuel rods are loaded, Bolton told Fox News on Friday afternoon, "it makes it essentially immune from attack by Israel. Because once the rods are in the reactor an attack on the reactor risks spreading radiation in the air, and perhaps into the water of the Persian Gulf." 

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin declared in March that Russia would start the Bushehr reactor this summer. But the announcement from a spokesman for Russia's state atomic agency to Reuters Friday sent international diplomats scrambling to head off a crisis. 

The story immediately became front-page news in Israel, which has laid precise plans to carry out an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities while going along with President Obama's plans to use international sanctions and diplomatic persuasion to convince Iran's clerics not to go nuclear. 

Bolton made it clear that it is widely assumed that any Israeli attack on the Bushehr reactor must take place before the reactor is loaded with fuel rods.

"If they're going to do it that's the window that they have," Bolton declared. "Otherwise as I said before, once the rods are in the reactor, if you attack the reactor you're going to open it up and radiation will escape at least into the atmosphere and possibly into the waters of the Persian Gulf.

"So most people think that neither Israel nor the United States, come to that, would attack the reactor after it's been fueled."

Bolton cited the 1981 Israeli attack on Saddam Hussein's Osirak reactor outside Baghdad and the September 2007 Israeli attack on a North Korean reactor being built in Syria. Both of those strikes came before fuel rods were loaded into those reactors.

"So if it's going to happen in Bushehr it has to happen before the fuel rods go in," Bolton said. 

The conversation that touched off the de facto deadline for Israeli military action was a telephone conversation with wire services involving Sergei Novikov, a spokesman for Rosatom, the Russian Energy State Nuclear Corp. 

Novikov said: "The fuel will be loaded on Aug 21. This is the start of the physical launch” of the reactor.

"From that moment the Bushehr plant will be officially considered a nuclear-energy installation," Novikov said, adding that the head of Rosatom, Sergei Kiriyenko, will visit Bushehr Aug. 21 to conduct a ceremony for the event.
According to Bolton, once the reactor is operational, it is only a matter of time before it begins producing plutonium that could be used in a nuclear weapon.

"And in the normal operation of this reactor, in just a fairly short period of time, you could get substantial amounts of plutonium to use as nuclear weapons," Bolton told Fox. 

Russia, which is operating under a $1 billion contract with Iran, has spent more than a decade building the reactor. If Russia moves forward with its plan to fuel the reactor, it could be seen as a major setback to the Obama administration's strategy of engaging Russian leaders in order to win their cooperation.

"The U.S. urged them not to send the Iranian's fuel rods," Bolton said. "They did that. The Obama administration has urged them not to insert the fuel rods in the reactors, but as they've just announced that will begin next week. What that does over time is help Iran get another route to nuclear weapons through the plutonium they could reprocess out of the spent fuel rods."

The developments mean Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu soon may face a stark choice: Attack the Bushehr reactor in the next 8 days, or allow it to become operational despite the certainty it would greatly enhance Iran's ability to create nuclear weapons. 

Russian leaders have said the Bushehr reactor project is being closely monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN's nuclear watchdog group. According to Iran's ISNA news agency, IAEA inspectors will be on hand to observe the fuel-rod loading process that is now scheduled to begin Aug. 21. 

According to Russian officials, Iran has promised in writing to send all spent fuel rods from Bushehr back to Russia for reprocessing, to ensure they cannot be used for nuclear weapons.


Bolton said the reactor has been "a hole" in American foreign policy for over a decade.

The failure to demand it be shut down began in the Bush years, he said, and continues with the Obama administration "under what I believe is the mistaken theory that Iran is entitled to the peaceful use of nuclear energy."

"I don't think Iran is entitled to that, or I don't think we ought to allow it to happen, because they're manifestly violating any number of obligations under the non-proliferation treaty not to seek nuclear weapons. But this has been a hole in American policy for some number of years, and Iran and Russia are obviously exploiting it," Bolton said.

Russia’s move would put Iran "in a much better position overall," he said, adding, "I think this is a very delicate point, as I say, it closes off to the Israelis one possible target for pre-emptive military action.

U.N. sanctions against Iran, he said, "have not had and will not have any material effect on Iran's push to have deliverable nuclear weapons."

Nerve Regeneration Breakthrough

This is the first real news related to regeneration that is really important.  Stem cell work up to now faced the brick wall of nerve recovery.  Now all folks suffering nerve damage can become nervously optimistic and really look forward to leaving their wheelchairs.

 

Nothing is so important.

 

This also makes it possible to completely regenerate a fresh set of teeth sooner or later.

 

In fact all forms of regeneration now become plausible.  This was merely a dream until a nerve generation protocol arose.

 

So we can legitimately hold out hope to anyone hanging on through major physical damage.

 

In breakthrough, nerve connections are regenerated after spinal cord injury

 

Researchers from UCI, UCSD and Harvard deleted a cell growth inhibitor called PTEN

 

—    Irvine, Calif., August 8, 2010 —

http://today.uci.edu/news/2010/08/nr_pten_100808.php

Researchers for the first time have induced robust regeneration of nerve connections that control voluntary movement after spinal cord injury, showing the potential for new therapeutic approaches to paralysis and other motor function impairments.

In a study on rodents, the UC Irvine, UC San Diego and Harvard University team achieved this breakthrough by turning back the developmental clock in a molecular pathway critical for the growth of corticospinal tract nerve connections.

They did this by deleting an enzyme called PTEN (a phosphatase and tensin homolog), which controls a molecular pathway called mTOR that is a key regulator of cell growth. PTEN activity is low early during development, allowing cell proliferation. PTEN then turns on when growth is completed, inhibiting mTOR and precluding any ability to regenerate.

Trying to find a way to restore early-developmental-stage cell growth in injured tissue, Zhigang He, a senior neurology researcher at Children’s Hospital Boston and Harvard Medical School, first showed in a 2008 study that blocking PTEN in mice enabled the regeneration of connections from the eye to the brain after optic nerve damage.

He then partnered with Oswald Steward of UCI and Binhai Zheng of UCSD to see if the same approach could promote nerve regeneration in injured spinal cord sites. Results of their study appear online in Nature Neuroscience.

“Until now, such robust nerve regeneration has been impossible in the spinal cord,” said Steward, anatomy & neurobiology professor and director of the Reeve-Irvine Research Center at UCI. “Paralysis and loss of function from spinal cord injury has been considered untreatable, but our discovery points the way toward a potential therapy to induce regeneration of nerve connections following spinal cord injury in people.”

According to Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation data, about 2 percent of Americans have some form of paralysis resulting from spinal cord injury, which is due primarily to the interruption of connections between the brain and spinal cord.

An injury the size of a grape can lead to complete loss of function below the level of injury. For example, an injury to the neck can cause paralysis of arms and legs, loss of ability to feel below the shoulders, inability to control the bladder and bowel, loss of sexual function, and secondary health risks including susceptibility to urinary tract infections, pressure sores and blood clots due to an inability to move the legs.

“These devastating consequences occur even though the spinal cord below the level of injury is intact,” Steward noted. “All these lost functions could be restored if we could find a way to regenerate the connections that were damaged.”

He and his colleagues are now studying whether the PTEN-deletion treatment leads to actual restoration of motor function in mice with spinal cord injury. Further research will explore the optimal timeframe and drug-delivery system for the therapy.

Kai Liu, Yi Lu, Andrea Tedeschi, Kevin Kyungsuk Park, Duo Jin, Bin Cai, Bengang Xu and Lauren Connolly of Harvard; Jae Lee of UCSD; and Rafer Willenberg and Ilse Sears-Kraxberger of UCI also contributed to the study, which was supported by the Wings for Life Spinal Cord Research Foundation, the Craig H. Neilsen Foundation, the International Spinal Research Trust, the National Institute of Neurological Disorders & Stroke, and a private contribution to the Reeve-Irvine Research Center.