My most recent visits were to Pakistan and Finland, two countries that on the surface have very few in common, if any, in terms of continent, climate, people, culture, population, economy, politics, stability… you name it. And my conviction was once again confirmed that it is absolutely a necessity to see a country with your own eyes and get firsthand knowledge to be able to see beyond what you have through other means.

The Fountain presentation on media and values was conducted in four universities with great interest and participation. Students and faculties actively joined the discussion with invigorating questions on the universal themes and values The Fountain cherishes. Despite what the Western mind would expect of Pakistan, interestingly, the female ratio in the academia is visibly very high and their voice is no less strong than their counterparts in the West.

Finland has its own texture and character by all means. Although it was mid-April, there were still pockets of muddy snow especially in the northern-facing shades of the landscape and buildings. Hardly anyone in the streets was around, even at the airport terminal, with the exception of those enjoying the spring sun during their lunch break.

However different any given country might be from another, culture of coexistence is inevitably a common theme in both regardless of continent or culture. The Minister of Culture and Sports, Paavo Arhinmäki, who opened the conference organized by Finland Dialog Association and The Fountain in Helsinki on April 24, said “Encountering ethnic and cultural diversity is no longer the experience of just a few. It has become an everyday reality for many more people worldwide. Interactive skills and conflict resolution must become part of everyone’s civil preparedness. The desire to participate and act only becomes greater through personal involvement.”

This quote summarizes the universality of our need for greater awareness of peaceful coexistence and proves that our differences are a richness of diversity. Hence, this is one of the many reasons why The Fountain is actively engaged in different continents and societies and what we try to reflect in the contents. In the same vein, this issue covers themes that are universally relevant, like What It Means to Be Human, food safety, environment, bad memory, and senior citizens. This issue also offers thought-provoking articles on natural sciences, appreciating the compatibility of the type of food animals consume with their digestion system, the perfect physical make-up of birds, and the very interesting balance in the world that is bound with its rotation. Challenges in the gifted education are also separately discussed.

For those of you in the northern hemisphere, we wish you a good summer, and a reasonable winter for those of you in the south.

However, a recent book, Islamic Science and Making of the European Renaissance, by George Saliba calls these arguments into question. This book prompted me to think more critically about this long, accepted argument. Can this prominent scholar of Islam or his famous book, Tahafut al-Falasifah, be held responsible, single handedly, for causing an age of decline in the scientific activities in the Muslim World?

Many orientalists argue that Ghazali’s Tahafut is responsible for the age of decline in science in the Muslim World. This is their key thesis as they attempt to explain the scientific and intellectual history of the Islamic world. It seems to be the most widely accepted view on the matter not only in the Western world but in the Muslim world as well. George Saliba, a Professor of Arabic and Islamic Science at Columbia University who specializes in the development of astronomy within Islamic civilization, calls this view the “classical narrative” (Saliba, 2007). However, interesting discoveries in the second half of the twentieth century by historians of science challenged many of the assertions of this classical narrative. An example of such discoveries is the strong connections between Ibn al-Shatir, a famous Damascene astronomer of the fourteenth century, and the Renaissance astronomer Copernicus (Roberts, 1957). If Ghazali had killed science in Islam in the twelfth century, then al-Shatir’s work from the fourteenth century could not have been so influential on Copernicus’s work. Saliba challenges almost all of the major tenets of the classical narrative on the basis of (1) a critical examination of historical evidence, some of which is quite recent, and (2) the results of his own long-term research in Islamic astronomy.

Saliba’s response to the question

In making his argument, Saliba first notes that most of the orientalists operate under the assumption that there must be a sharp conflict between religion and science. This paradigm is probably based on their European experience. To them, al-Ghazali represents the orthodox tradition in Islam and with Tahafut, written in the late eleventh century (between 1091 and 1095), they assume that orthodox religious thought won a decisive victory over rational, scientific thought. From that point on they assume that science in Islam declined, and the Islamic world did not produce anything significant in terms of scientific advancements.

Saliba argues that both of these assumptions are false. First, the European paradigm of conflict between religion and science does not really apply to the Islamic world. The religion of Islam encourages rational and scientific inquiry. Therefore, Muslims see no insurmountable contradictions between their faith and natural laws. Hence, studying religion and studying natural sciences does not create a conflict for Muslims.

Secondly, many of the scientists in the Islamic world were also religious authorities at the same time. A few examples among such scholars are Ibn al-Nafis, Nasir al-Din al-Tusi, Qutb al-Din al-Shirazi ,and Ibn al-Shatir who lived in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and made important contributions to such diverse scientific disciplines as mathematics, astronomy, medicine, physics and philosophy. In fact, these scholars were regarded primarily as religious figures by the general public with side interests in sciences. Early Muslim scholars did not hesitate to acquire scientific knowledge wherever they could find it, whether it be in Indian civilization, in Greek civilization, or in Persian civilization. Not only did they acquire these sciences through translation, but they also critically examined them in a comprehensive way. Making corrections and improvements and even introducing new disciplines, they showed a high degree of ownership and maturity. This led to a remarkable period of creativity and rapid advancements in many scientific disciplines in the Islamic world beginning as early as the eighth century (Saliba, 2007).

Contrary to the classical narrative, scientific advancements in the Islamic world did not stop or even slow down after Ghazali. Saliba gives many examples of sophisticated scientific achievements in the Islamic world well after Ghazali. Based on his life-long research in the area, he concludes that the golden age of Islamic astronomy was in the post-Ghazali period from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century. Discoveries by Western historians of science in the second half of the twentieth century show that there are surprisingly strong connections between Copernicus (sixteenth century) and Muslim astronomers from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, such as Nasir al-Din al-Tusi and Ibn al-Shatir (Roberts, 1957; Saliba, 2007). These discoveries were shocking to many in the scholarly community who did not expect to find any transfer of knowledge from the Islamic civilization to Europe in the post-Ghazali period. Unfortunately, this new information has not been sufficiently digested by today’s scholars and does not yet generally appear in secondary sources.

Saliba also provides examples from other disciplines, such as medicine, that show that a high level of scientific production took place in more than one discipline in the Islamic world in the post-Ghazali period. How is it that such important scientific materials could have been overlooked by the experts? According to Saliba a major reason for modern historians of science to have missed the large amount of scientific production in Islamic world in the post-Ghazali period is the damage caused by the classical narrative. Most historians simply weren’t looking for it because the classic narrative stipulated that science in Islam was dead after Ghazali. Even though some new discoveries have been made, there are still many scientific works waiting to be studied from that period. As an example of these omissions, Berggren, the author of Episodes in the Mathematics of Medieval Islam, says that he used this title for his book as opposed to The History of Mathematics in Medieval Islam simply because “Such a book could not be written yet, for so much material remains unstudied that we do not know enough of the whole story” (Berggren, 1986).

The Content and the Method of the Tahafut

Even though Saliba’s arguments and evidence are quite convincing to doubt or reject the common narrative, I wanted to go straight to the source-the Tahafut-and have a closer look to see if it might be a book that can be held responsible for killing the science or scientific thought in Islamic civilization.

In Tahafut, Ghazali refutes twenty philosophical doctrines. Using a scientific, or in this context philosophical, method, he first explains those philosophical doctrines before criticizing them. His explanations were so comprehensive and so clear that he made them accessible to non-philosophers, and thus, his ideas became generally better known in the Islamic world. Next, he gave arguments to refute those doctrines. In doing so, he used the very same logical and philosophical principles and arguments that philosophers used in the first place to support their claims. Ghazali mainly argues that the philosophers who proposed the doctrines that conflict with religious principles failed to provide valid and rigorous proofs for their propositions. Hence, he attacked their methodologies using their own tools and principles.

An important point Ghazali makes in Tahafut is that he has no problems with the philosophers’ mathematics, astronomical sciences, or logic. He says (Marmura 2000, p. 11):

Regarding mathematical sciences, there is no sense in denying them or disagreeing with them. For these reduce in the final analysis to arithmetic and geometry. As regards to logical sciences, these are concerned with examining the instrument of thought in intelligible things. There is no significant disagreement encountered in these.

Therefore, it is clear that his views could not be used to justify a position against the study of mathematical sciences.

To give the reader a sense of what kinds of philosophical doctrines the Tahafut is concerned with and aims to refute, a selected few out of the twenty are listed below (Marmura 2000, p. 10, 11). The list shows that the questions discussed in Tahafut concern some of the most fundamental issues in theology, particularly in the Islamic theology.

The first problem: On refuting their doctrine of the world’s pre-eternity.

The sixth: On refuting their doctrine denying the divine attributes.

The tenth: On showing that upholding a materialist doctrine and the denial of the Maker is a necessary consequence [of what they hold].

The twentieth: On refuting their denial of bodily resurrection and the accompanying bodily pleasures and pains in paradise and hell.

Concluding Remarks

When I discuss the question given in the title of this article with my colleagues, and I argue that it would be unfair to hold Ghazali or Tahafut responsible for the decline of science in Islam, I sometimes hear the objection that “perhaps the content or the method of Tahafut may not justify this conclusion, but this is not how people understood it.” But then, one must consider the evidence given by Saliba that there is a large amount of sophisticated scientific production in the Islamic world well after Ghazali, and there is still much more to be discovered. Considering the content of Tahafut and the scientific advances in post-Ghazali period, I have a hard time convincing myself that the classical narrative is the ultimate truth on the matter. This position is supported by the fact that it is usually not realistic to try to explain most major social and historical transformations in terms of a single person, a book, an event, or the like. According to Saliba, the decline in Islamic science was the result of a combination of many internal and external reasons that took place several centuries after Ghazali.

Finally, one may wonder why this question is important or relevant. After all, these things happened a long time ago, and we have to deal with the current realities. One answer would be that there are many lessons to be learned from the history. And of course if the correct version of the history is not available, conclusions will be flawed. If anybody is interested in reviving science and scientific activities in a society, there is much that can be learned from the early Islamic period when there was a remarkable rapid and widespread rise in science, as well as lessons from the later periods of Islamic history when the Islamic world fell behind in scientific production. Some researchers are beginning to realize how much damage the classical narrative has caused in understanding the general history and the development of the modern science. It is always useful to have a critical mind to question and reevaluate assumptions when they do not conform to the evidence.

References

• Berggren, J. L. 1986. Episodes in the Mathematics of Medieval Islam, New York: Springer-Verlag.
• Marmura, Michael E. (translator). 2000. Al-Ghazali The Incoherence of the Philosophers (Tahafut al-Falasifah) Provo: Brigham Young University Press.
• Roberts, Victor . 1957. “The Solar and Lunar Theory of Ibn al-Shatir: A pre-Copernican Copernican Model,” Isis 48:428-432.
• Saliba, George. 2007. Islamic Science and Making of the European Renaissance, Cambridge: MIT Press.

Dedicate yourself to fight against the darkness that enshrouds the world, and enlighten the dark spots with torches of science and wisdom. And as long as you live, do not stop struggling against all kinds of ignorance and denial.

Keep walking on your path under the light shed by Providence; enlighten your surroundings, your soul and heart with the rays of that light. If your mind and conscience is deprived of the knowledge of truth and your heart of the lights of faith, you cannot rid yourself from evil thoughts and you cannot find the ways leading to high ideals such as faith, humanity, and love.

Even though it can be more difficult to do, do not give up being truthful, taking the right path, living honestly and virtuously. The caravans en route to the love of God and care of the society have always started from these stations and continued their way along the same destination.

Do not fail to love the young ones and respect the elderly. Be careful not to damage the bonds and values like unity around faith, home, and common goals. You should know how to stand against all kinds of adverse thoughts, paradoxes, and assimilations that harm the spirit of a society. Do not fail to keep up your essence.

Believe in the holiness of working and do not fall for the mistaken notion that others have to provide you with a living. Keep in mind that humanity is not supposed to serve you but you are supposed to serve humanity and believe that you can be of use only after your egoism is burnt in the purifying fire of altruism. Then, you will gain some true value.

Think that the most cherished great hopes and the long-awaited joys can come true only if you can orient yourself to the divine will and, instead of the power, opportunities, and strength of a mortal like yourself, you put your trust in the infinite power of the Almighty.

Always run to the mild climate of love and faithfulness and never fail to rely on their softening effects. Never forget that with these secret keys ingrained in your nature by your Creator, you can open even the rustiest locks.

All the errors, offences and sins committed by humans vary greatly in nature, form, and severity. A majority of these mistakes and sins have been portrayed and clearly defined within the disciplinary guidelines revealed in both the Divine revelation and in the Prophetic traditions, therefore referring to them is usually sufficient for a person to recognize prohibitions, mistakes, offences and sins. One may think, for instance, that not everyone has an equal capability of understanding matters entailing detailed knowledge in accordance with the original sources of religion, however a person of faith, a sincere believer should make every effort to strive, and learn the essential matters of faith to the best of their individual ability. Besides there is sufficient literature available for those who make an effort to read and learn. The main goal here is to purify oneself of these mistakes and sins at the first possible opportunity.

Repentance

If a person has been lured into, or trapped in one of the various dungeons of evil, he should strive in every way possible to repent, to ask his Lord for forgiveness and escape from sin at the first possible opportunity. He should reform himself and throughout life continuously bare the shame of this sin in his conscience, for a true believer is a person who never forgets sins of the past. Of course a person may have repented to God for his sins, and these sins may have been long forgiven, and may have repented with deep sincerity sufficient to eliminate his sins many times over. But even if years pass, a believer of perfection should constantly sense an emotion of regret and distress in his soul every time he remembers, as if he committed the sin yesterday, with the constant thought: “O Lord! How did I commit these sins when I know You exist, when I believe in You, when Your commands were clearer to me than the shinning sun” and continually interrogate his own self.

Such a belief and such an approach can lead to the elimination of sin, and it can even earn a person reward. This reward may be described as the virtue for suffering, the reward for finding the truth, a reward for repenting today for a sin of the past, or the reward for abandoning a recent sin and turning towards the Creator in repentance. Therefore it is appropriate to say that every time a believer regrets, or suffers for a sin he committed in the past, he is rewarded with a good deed which purifies the blemished pages in his book of actions and deeds.

The second point regarding the matter is that constantly remembering past sins with anguish and grief in fact prevents new mistakes and sins, for instance when an individual has the sincere understanding that: “Sinning was a huge mistake, an error which could spoil my relationship with God. For someone like me to act in such a way was sheer disrespect towards my Creator. I cannot ignore, or ever forget my disrespect and heedlessness, and I will continue to sense this grief and remorse until the day I die” He will continuously remember and sense the regret of committing sin, and when faced with the same situation again will seriously consider: “Only yesterday I hated myself for committing such a sin, so how can I possibly have the audacity of making the mistake and repeating this evil action again? Which spiritual understanding can possibly accept, or explain the tendency to repeat sin.” Therefore the probability of a person who sincerely repented for committing sin repeating the same mistake again is quite rare.

Such a person’s approach to the bestowal of rewards will be that even if he performs the greatest of deeds, or induces a deed more significant than we can possibly imagine, he will still think “I have not been successful in achieving a desirable result, under the same conditions somebody else could have achieved much more than I did.” He will continuously attempt to fulfill or substitute personal deficiencies with kindness and good deeds.

In terms of religious discipline, these observations are both a clear account and a guide of the limitations of mistakes, sins and deficiencies for humans.

Identifying intention and guiding the soul

In addition to the specified mistakes and sins, there are also prescribed judgments in accordance with certain conditions, or an individual’s actual intention of actions and behavior, for example if a person has the intention of committing evil. There are certain aspects that can prevent or deter from evil actions: this may be a person’s environment, friends or various other factors. The main problem here is that this person has the determination and tendency in his soul to commit evil as soon as the opportunity arises. Only the individual knows his true abilities and characteristics relating to this matter, therefore we are compelled to make an accurate decision between the “prohibited and lawful” as prescribed in the Divine commands, and the human conscience is the evaluator and judge between the two. If we go back to the previous example of questioning the self-conscience, we see that this is the only true means of an individual reaching a conclusion if he actually avoided an evil action due to an obstacle ordained by God, or by his own accord and willpower.

In one of the traditions, the Prophet referred to this subject: “God the Almighty ordered His angels: ‘Whenever My servant intends to do a bad deed, do not record it against him until he actually commits evil. If he commits a bad deed, write it down as one sin. But if he refrains from it for My sake, write down this as a good deed in his favor'” (Bukhari).

The subjects here are both the servant’s intention, and self-determination of avoiding evil for the sake of his Creator, thus the individual is rewarded by God for his willpower and self exertion. As we see in this tradition of the Prophet, even the human’s willpower of abstaining from evil can lead to virtue, but is this the case if the servant’s willpower or determination is not in question? Although this may not be recorded as a major sin, if a person is deterred from evil due to an obstacle beyond self-control, he may be called to account for it as a minor sin on the Day of Judgment. Therefore in every aspect of life, a human must constantly take both his good deeds and sins into consideration, and act accordingly.

There are of course many examples to be mentioned on this subject. For instance imagine a preacher who conveys to his audience some famous quotes from a scholar like Bediuzzaman Said Nursi: “Work for God’s sake, meet with others for God’s sake, labor for God’s sake; act within the sphere of ‘For God, in God’s name, on account of God’s pleasure.'” And if this preacher has the sincere intention to evoke emotions and excitement of acting for the sake of God deep in his soul, he most certainly will be rewarded accordingly. But if these words are conveyed solely to impress others with his knowledge or self-esteem, this is nothing but ostentation, and of course a sin. Again the only one able to judge this is the individual himself, his own conscience.

Considering this case as it appears from outside, this preacher is conveying the good message of God to others and speaking of Truth. But a true judgment of his speech depends on how much self-pretense and self-expression are involved. Keeping oneself out of the way is the basis of a true conversation of the Beloved. In fact it is a person’s duty to consider “If it was not me who said those words, they may have made more profound impact; it is because I said those words that some among the audience reacted negatively.” So if a person has the slightest emotion of self-expression or self-recognition in his soul while conveying the words of God, and the Prophet, or explaining belief to others, he is in fact committing a sin.

“If my good deeds are this impure…”

Similar considerations may be relevant even in the context of prayer, which is in fact a twin sister to faith. A person who is exalting God almighty should utter the words “God is the greatest” in a low voice, only audible to the individual himself. So if a person stands for communal prayer with the intention of portraying an image of submission and concentration, but lacks sincerity and consciousness, and repeats these words “God is the greatest” in a loud voice, instead of obtaining reward for performing worship, his vain behavior is recorded as a sin.

Another example is of a person who leads the prayer and recites the verse “True believers are only those who, when God is mentioned, their hearts tremble with awe, and when His Revelations are recited to them, it strengthens them in faith, and they put their trust in their Lord” (8:2) and during this recitation, this individual becomes so excited, as if his soul is overcome with submission and awe. He is displaying the conduct of a person desperate to obtain the pleasures of the Lord, just as the Companions stood in worship during the time of the Prophet. If this individual’s behavior is solely to imitate or resemble others, he is in fact corrupting his prayer, for even though these actions are not objected to if they occur as the result of indigenous motivation, deliberately portraying this type of conduct for show or self esteem does affect the merit of worship, and can also lead to sullied thoughts and opinions. It is the duty of every individual to behave according to his self-conscience and honor, thus when a person prostrates, and recites:

“Glory be to my Lord, the most high” he can become so overwhelmed with emotion that without even realizing, he recites this in a loud voice. The passion portrayed here is not a sin, but if there is the slightest emotion or desire of expressing self esteem in these actions, the individual blemishes the prayer with evil, thus adding to the list of bad deeds.

So following all these examples, if we return to the main topic we realize that although on many occasions there is no specific definition of the sins or mistakes recognized solely by a person’s instinct, it is the duty of every believer to question his actions, and his good and bad deeds in every aspect of life in order to determine and amend mistakes and sins. A sincere believer should constantly seek refuge and plead for forgiveness from the Creator in conduct which may seem favorable, but in fact could possibly entail evil or sordid intent. He should continuously bear the question and doubt in his soul: “What will become of a person like me whose good deeds can bear such impurity?” A true believer must acknowledge his faults, and repent to the Lord asking forgiveness for sins: “O Lord of Mercy and kindness! This servant of weakness, heedlessness, disobedience and ignorance who strayed from the path of truth acknowledges, and repents for the sins he committed, and seeks refuge in Your compassion, for only You are the forgiver of sins.”

Primarily a person must purify his egoistic desires, and recognize the ego as the essence of disobedience and sin in order to purify the soul of evil. A believer who lives with the constant fear in his heart will always recognize mistakes and deficiencies in every aspect of life, and with God’s will and mercy, as a result of his awareness, he will never be exposed to serious downfalls in life. As for repentance from minor sins, such a person turns to the tidings of forgiveness in the Divine declaration “If you avoid the major sins which you have been forbidden, We will blot out from you your minor evil deeds and make you enter by a noble entrance (to an abode of glory)”(4:31), seeking forgiveness from God the most Merciful, the most Gracious with the sincere aspiration that He will forgive our minor sins.

“Food safety” and “food terrorism” are two significant terms in the food health research. While the former stands for the unintentional contamination of a food product, the latter refers to its intentional contamination, thus a crime.

“From farm to fork” defines the entire process of food defense strategies in the protection of the food supply. It is even more critical in today’s environment, where productivity has a heightened sense of urgency. Many contamination problems that have occurred in growing numbers recent years are in fact preventable unintentional problems; nevertheless, an intentional problem, whose nature and scope are not well known, is not unlikely.

Harmful agents are easily dispersed via food, because factors like strong flavors, strong odors, various textures, or intense colors make the harmful agents invisible. There are hundreds of biological pathogens, toxins, heavy metals, parasites, radioisotopes that naturally occur, as well as many genetically-engineered organisms in addition to 80,000 chemicals that can cause illnesses in their proper concentration. Due to multiple points of accessibility during the manufacturing process and its distribution across great distances, foodborne illness have the potential for widespread impact, which necessitates preventive actions.

Food terrorism is defined by the World Health Organization (2008) as “an act or threat of deliberate contamination of food for human consumption with chemical, biological or radio nuclear agents for the purpose of causing injury or death to civilian populations and/or disruption of social, economic or political stability.” Food terrorism brings unique challenges. Increased food inspection, disease surveillance, laboratory capacity, and awareness among health professionals and the general public are required to assure food safety.

Warring armies targeted civilian food supplies in the past in order to intimidate the enemy. The first known bioterrorist attack happened in 1984 in the USA by members of a religious cult who contaminated salad bars in Oregon, USA with Salmonella typhimurium, causing 751 cases of Salmonellosis. This initial attack was a trial run for a more extensive attack intended to disrupt local elections.

Another case took place in 1996 in Texas, in which an unsatisfied laboratory worker contaminated bakery goods with Shigella dysenteria type 2, causing illness in 12 people.

Although few incidents of food terrorism have been documented, it is prudent to consider basic countermeasures. We can estimate the potential impact of the deliberate sabotage of food by extrapolating from the many documented examples of unintentional outbreaks of foodborne disease. As recorded in the WHO 2008 report, the most well-known incidents include the following:

– Shanghai, China. 1991. Probably the largest foodborne disease incident in history, this was an outbreak of hepatitis A that was associated with consumption of clams. Nearly 300,000 people were affected.

– United States. 1984. 224,000 people in 41 states were affected from an outbreak of S. enteritidis infection from contaminated pasteurized liquid ice cream that was transported as a pre-mix in tanker trucks.

– Japan. 1996. 8,000 children, some of whom died eventually, became ill with Escherichia coli O157:H7 infection from contaminated radish sprouts served in school lunches.

– Turkey. 2004. 96 people in Afyon, Turkey, became ill with Salmonella typhimurium and Shigella dysenteria.

Potential effects of food terrorism

It goes without saying that a deliberate attack with a dangerous agent can be devastating, if one kind of food can infect as many people as in the figures given above. The impact of such an attack will obviously be on the public health, economy, and may even cause political destabilization. Under such an attack, public health services are likely to halt, as they are not prepared to respond effectively in many countries, for their emergency plans do not usually cover food terrorism, and this may lead to errors in diagnosis and in the identification of the infected food.

Economy is also one of the major targets in food terrorism. Large-scale economic loss and disruption of trade with major impact on tourism are some of the most likely objectives of attacks. An example to a domestic-food related health issue becoming a global economic issue is the infamous mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), which caused public reaction and the refusal of importing USA beef in Europe and Japan in 2003. 10 thousand tons of frozen ground beef was in recalled in the USA in 2007 because of E. coli O157:H7 contamination. The USA and Canada banned the import of Chilean fruit in 1989 on the grounds that Chilean grapes were allegedly contaminated with cyanide. This ban resulted in a damage of several hundred million dollars, loss of jobs, and bankruptcy involved in this trade.

Another goal behind food terrorism is to generate panic and disrupt civil order. The anthrax attack through the mailing of an envelope showed that the dissemination of biological agents, however simple the means may be, can still cause public anxiety reducing confidence in the political system and government.

According to Dr. Richard Lee, there are only a few methods to weaponize food:

To contaminate, to adulterate, or to take it away. Chemicals or infectious pathogens can be added at various points along the food path, including using water as the vehicle. The longer the distance between the gourmet and the point of adulteration, the more specialized the adulterant must be in order to be viable or to be toxic when eaten by the consumer.

The figure below adapted from “Food as a Weapon” by Richard Lee et al. shows the possible ways of food contamination/adulteration, which can be a road map for us to take in preventive actions in each step of food production.

In order to reduce the burden of foodborne diseases, the food safety systems in many countries are intended to ensure the safety of the food supply, and thus reduce the burden of foodborne diseases. These often include safety management programs for food production, processing and distribution, which can be modified to incorporate basic consideration of food sabotage. The food industry has the primary responsibility for assuring the safety of the food they produce; government agencies, working with the private sector, have regulatory and advisory responsibilities in promoting safe food practices by industry, such as good agricultural and manufacturing practices.

With the globalization of the world’s food supply, an attack on one country’s food supply cannot be viewed in isolation. Thus, governments must work together against food terrorism with the support of agencies like World Health Organization. Developed countries have various levels of food safety infrastructure and alert and response systems, and they will likely require strengthening to meet the new threat of food terrorism. In its review Terrorist Threats to Food WHO suggests that whether a food safety management program, such as HACCP (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points), “is rudimentary or well developed, further elaboration should focus on the nature and extent of the threat. When suspected or adulterated food reaches the consumer, the potential consequences to public health, the economy and social or political stability must be managed by an effective, rapid emergency response system. In most cases, existing systems for surveillance, preparedness and emergency response will need to be strengthened to increase their ability to address food terrorism. Without such improved systems, a food safety incident is more likely to escalate, or be perceived to escalate, into a food safety emergency” (p. 20, 11).

It should be kept in mind that food safety is not only the government’s job but each individual’s responsibility. Everyone should be careful to obey and enforce the regulations for food safety. Since it is not possible to monitor each individual all the time, it is important to educate individuals to use their conscience/spiritual/humanistic attributes to maintain food safety at every phase of production. In a saying of God’s messenger, “The believers are those, from whose tongues and hands others are safe and sound.” We should digest and promote this principle to create a society of trust committed to living in peace and comfort.

Hayriye Cetin Karaca is Graduate Research Assistant at Animal and Food Sciences, University of Kentucky.

References

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. http://www.bt.cdc.gov.

Demirdal T, Demirtürk N, Aktepe OC. “Bir universitede saptanan besin zehirlenmesinin incelenmesi”. Trakya Universitesi Tip Fakultesi Dergisi. 2007; 24(3):205-8.

Lee, Richard V., Harbison, Raymond D., Draughon, F. Ann. “Food as a Weapon.” Food Protection Trends. 2003; 23(8):664-674.

Tauxe RV. “Emerging foodborne diseases: an evolving public health challenge”. Emerging Infectious Diseases. 1997; 3:425-434.

U.S. Department of Agriculture Food Safety and Inspection Service. Food Safety and Security: What consumers need to know. http://www.fsis.usda.gov/OA/topics/foodsec_cons.pdf.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Terrorism and the Food Supply. 2005.

U.S. Food and Drug Administration. FDA introduces new technology to improve food security, 2003. http://www.fda.gov/bbs/topics/NEWS/2003/NEW00960.html.

World Health Organization (WHO), Department of Food Safety. Terrorist Threats to Food. 2008.

Original article: Olzsak T. et al, Science (2012, epub ahead of print)

It has been known by epidemiologists that people who grew up in farms are less likely to acquire immune diseases such as asthma, allergies, inflammatory bowel disease and multiple sclerosis when compared to people living in cities. Such observations have been the roots of “hygiene hypothesis,” which essentially points out the beneficial effects of being exposed to infectious agents. Supporting this theory, a recent study at Harvard Medical School showed that exposure to symbiotic bacteria has a long lasting beneficial effect on the immune system development. “We as a species are not exposed to the same germs that we were exposed to in the past,” said the co-author Dennis Kasper, a microbiologist at Harvard Medical School in Boston. In this study, published in Science, the researchers compared germ-free mice to mice with normal bacterial flora. Germ-free mice showed significantly higher levels of invariant natural killer T (iNKT) cells in their colons and lungs. “We made the serendipitous observation that these cells were dramatically enriched in the lung and colon in mice that lacked any microbes,” said the co-author Richard Blumberg, the chief of gastroenterology at Brigham and Woman’s Hospital in Boston. Body’s own production of elevated iNKT cells correlated with higher susceptibility to inflammatory bowel disease and allergic asthma in germ-free mice. Most strikingly, the study showed that exposure to these bacteria in late age did not lower the susceptibility to these immune diseases, indicating that the bacterial exposure needs to be early in life to boost the immune system. After all, broad-spectrum antibiotics for babies may not be such a good idea.

2- Giant chickens of Jurassic Park

Original article: Xu X. et al, Nature 484, 92 (2012)

Many of us undoubtedly learned a lot about dinosaurs from the famous Sci-fi movie Jurassic Park, but who would have imagined that some gigantic feathered dinosaurs would be running along with our favorite monster T-Rex? Paleontologists have recently made an incredible discovery in Liaoning Province of China. They found a set of perfectly preserved fossils that belong to a previously unknown species of dinosaurs. These 125-million-year-old feathered giant dinosaurs represent the largest feathered animal species ever lived on earth. The adult one is predicted to be at least 9 meters (30 feet) long with a weight of 1400 kg (~3000 pounds), which is approximately 40 times bigger than the Beipiaosaurus, largest known feathered dinosaur. New gigantic feathered dinosaurs are given a Chinese-Latin name Yutyrannus huali meaning a “beautiful feathered tyrant.” Simple filament like structures as well as the relatively small sizes of feathers seem more similar to feathers from a baby chick than the plumes of an adult bird, suggesting that Yutyrannus used feathers not for flying but for body temperature insulation, perhaps under the harsh climate conditions of that age. Paleontologists are really excited to see that how much more we have learned about dinosaurs over last 15 years and they predict that many different feathered meat-eating dinosaurs lived before and they are still yet to be discovered.

3- Stardust mystery revealed

Original article: Norris B.R.M. et al, Nature 484, 220 (2012)

Heavy elements are formed in the cores of stars and are crucial in formation of celestial structures like our earth. When an intermediate-mass star dies, it triggers a cosmic sandstorm that lasts thousands of years ejecting more than half of its mass into space. Our Sun is expected to go into a similar phase in around 5 billion years. Scientists observed these sandstorms for years but it was a mystery how these particles found could leave the vicinity of the stars and find their way into interstellar space. Computer simulations hinted that these sand-like particles could not be that small, otherwise they would be evaporated by the immense heat of the dying star. Scientists using the Very Large Telescope in Chile had a chance to explore these stars in a greater detail and discovered that the size of these particles is around a micrometer. This size might seem very small to us but for these particles, it is large enough to behave like mirrors for the light rays coming out of the star instead of absorbing them. Since light also behaves like a particle, the momentum transferred by this reflection helps particles to accelerate to the speeds like 10km/second. As the lead author of the study, Barnaby Norris from University of Sydney says: “The dust grains are like lots of little sails catching the wind, or in this case, starlight.” The material that comes out of the stars is recycled during the formation of new stellar objects like our old planet.

4- Babies understand more than we think

Original article: Bergelsona, E. & Swingley, D., P.N.A.S. 109, 3252 (2012)

Most babies do not say a meaningful word until they are a year old. It was not clear whether they knew the meaning of the words prior to the speaking age. It is easy to ask the question on whether the babies understand words but it is hard to scientifically measure it. The researchers from the University of Pennsylvania devised an ingenious experiment to test the hypothesis whether the 6-9 months babies understood the common words. During the experiment babies sat on their parents’ lap in front of a computer while some images of body parts or foods were shown on the screen. The parents were given instructions through headphones about what to say to the baby about the image on the screen. Babies were monitored by an eye-tracking device to measure their attention being directed to screen. The researchers designed a control environment by pairing a body part and a food item. For instance, if a banana and some hair were shown on the screen, the researchers measured the time that the baby fixated on the banana when the parent instructed the child to look at the banana versus when the parent instructed the baby to look at the hair. 33 infants of ages 6 to 9 months and 50 toddlers of ages 10 to 20 months were recruited for this study. The study convincingly showed that the babies fixated longer on an object when they were instructed to do so. Moreover, as the age of the babies increased the period of fixation stayed pretty much constant until 14 months, but jumped dramatically afterwards. The reason behind the jump in 14 months begs further research. Now, the researchers want also to test the vocabulary of the babies and whether the babies also understand the abstract concepts.

Nowadays, forgetfulness has become a very common problem among both young and older people (Bambroo, 2010). There are various elements that lead to forgetfulness and poor memory; carelessness, not knowing the principles of memorization, and not using information are some of them (Tarhan, 2007). Therefore, the factors that cause weakness of memory are extremely critical. This article elucidates the causes of poor memory from emotional aspects such as depression, stress, and a confused mind as well as the behavioral aspects of alcohol and drug addiction, and alternative religious inspirations to help tackle the causes of bad memory.

Firstly, depression and a stressful lifestyle are deeply critical causes of bad memory and can lead to forgetfulness (Bambroo, 2010). Today depression has become a very common disease that can occur at any age. There are many reasons causing depression. Events like loss of a beloved person are usually accompanied by depression and result in problems with memory (MYLN, 2008). In addition, all negative emotions such as anxiety and anger can hamper the ability of our brains to remember. In particular, depression is the primary negative emotion to influence our memory because it interferes with our ability to concentrate (Edmonds, 2009). Some people might keep forgetting things, even though they need to concentrate to be able to work or study. Turning negative emotions that come from depression into a positive philosophy of life will aid the memorization ability.

Secondly, a confused mind is one of the most significant reasons for poor memory. Every day we get new information from everywhere, and we are exposed to more knowledge than we need. Even though some of them can be beneficial, most are useless to the effect that they dominate over the useful ones. Some scholars support the idea that mental pollution is one of the main reasons for poor memory nowadays (Gülen, 2007).

Next, some experts highlight that neglecting the emotional dimension is another reason for poor memory. A theater actor perfectly memorizes his role because he learns to pretend the emotions. Interest enhances emotional power, therefore it is said that interest is the teacher of learning. The left part of the brain does logical functions; however, the right part of the brain carries out emotional and artistic functions (Tarhan, 2007). In addition, Prof. Robert Ornstein, from the University of California, explains that people who use both parts of their brain in a balanced way, have five times more brain capacity than others (Tarhan, 2007). Therefore, using only the left hemisphere of the brain and neglecting emotions can result in having a weak memory, as well as forgetting information in a short time. For example, if we memorize five words without using emotional dimension, we can save them for a little time; however, if we create connections and acronyms among them or produce a story, these kinds of emotional aspects help us to save them for a long time.

Furthermore, alcohol and drug addiction can weaken the human memory. It has long been known that cannabis (an illegal drug, “marijuana,” made from the dried leaves and flowers of the hemp plant) causes memory loss by acting on the hippocampus, which is the area in the brain that rules most of our cognitive functions (Hood, 2009). Moreover, according to scientific research, heavy alcohol use clearly damages retrospective memory, namely, the learning, preservation, and recovery of previously presented materials (Buddy T., 2006). Furthermore, excessive alcohol consumption can result in blackouts-periods of temporary memory loss or amnesia. When a person consumes alcohol, the body immediately starts to break it down. The brain receives less oxygen when alcohol is present, and alcohol has a damaging effect on the central nervous system (Wellness Trader, 2010).

Religious inspirations, as well as religious life can help us cope with poor memory. According to Shatibi, an Andalusian Muslim scholar, there are five main purposes of the religions. They are protection of religion, protection of life, protection of progeny, protection of the mind, and protection of wealth. All religions and nations may observe these higher objectives (Shatibi, 1388). In this respect, all actions that might harm the mind are prohibited by Islam, and all activities that lead to the development of mind are recommended. Alcohol use and drug abuse are prohibited because they damage the mind. Moreover, the depression and stresses that often accompany modern day life can be overcome by remembering to place trust in God in every situation regardless if it is good or bad. As Bediuzzaman indicates “Those who attain true belief can challenge the universe, and in proportion to their belief’s strength, be relieved of the pressures of events. Relying on God, they travel safely through the mountainous waves of events in the ship of life. Having entrusted their burdens to the Absolutely Powerful One’s Hand of Power, they voyage through the world comfortably until their last day” (Nursi, 2010).

Hakan Coruh is a PhD student in Qur’anic exegesis at ACU National, Melbourne, Australia.

References

• Bambroo, C.J. (2010, May 10). Forgetfulness, a growing problem. Retrieved June 01, 2010, from http://www.hindustantimes.com.
• Buddy, T. (2006, July 09). Alcohol Damages Day-To-Day Memory Function. Retrieved June 01, 2010, from http://alcoholism.about.com.
• Edmonds, M. Top 10 Ways to Improve Your Memory. Retrieved June, 2009, from http://health.howstuffworks.com.
• Gülen, M. F. (2007, May 28). Mefluç Dimaglar ve Unutkanligin Reçetesi. Retrieved June 01, 2010, from http://www.herkul.org
• Hood, M. (2009, August 2). Pot shot: Scientists find cannabis trigger for forgetfulness. Retrieved June 01, 2010, from http://www.physorg.com.
• Mayda, A. (2010, January – February). Memory and Forgetfulness. The Fountain Magazine, Issue: 73, Retrieved June 01, 2010, from http://www.fountainmagazine.com.
• MYLN. (2008, December 2). 6 Ways To improve memory. Retrieved June 01, 2010, from http://www.manageyourlifenow.com.
• Nursi, Bediuzzaman Said. 2010. The Words, NJ: The Light, Inc., p. 330.
• Shatibi, E. Al Muvafakat. Al Maktaba Al Ticariyye Al Kubra, v: 2, p: 10.
• Tarhan, N. (2007, July 27). Beyin Sagligi ve Unutkanlik. Retrieved June 01, 2010, from http://www.aktuelpsikoloji.com.
• Wellness Trader Tm. (2010). Alcohol and Memory Loss. Retrieved June 01, 2010, from http://www.memory-loss.com.

Even though the price is high and the company is a new one, the interest is rather high. An average of eight thousand people in a year die alone in Denmark. If old people without anyone to knock their door are not visited by some health staff, their bodies are discovered days, weeks, and sometimes months after their death; what announces their death is either a filled-up mailbox, or the sound of the hungry pets left behind, or some other way. If there are any relatives, they learn about it from the officials.

It needs to be underlined at this point that the issue is not specific to Denmark. A brief look at the reports from different countries within recent years reveals a similar picture. It is estimated, by Kenneth W. Wachter, Ph. D. at the University of California at Berkeley, that “the number of Americans between the ages of 70 and 85, without a living spouse, without any biological or stepchildren, and without living siblings or half-siblings, will total more than 2 million people by the year 2030.” A research result appeared in The Guardian suggests that “Up to 60 people die alone in their homes each week in England without friends or family to support them or arrange their funerals.”

The actual problem is not only having no relatives. There is a very dramatic indifference of family members towards the elderlies, which cannot be compensated by any public service however perfect it can be. Many developed countries provide luxurious hospices for their senior citizens, but the warmth of a real family aura cannot be substituted for. Answering the reporter asking why the relatives of the terminally ill abandon them, Anne-Mette Harder says, “After a long period of disease, the family cannot look after the patient anymore.” For a more satisfactory answer, she confesses: “Even if the patient is their relative, people are afraid of visiting a person lying at a hospital. They forget death will one day catch them as well, or they fear facing death. Since family ties are not very strong, even the spouse of a person suffering from a terminal disease abandons them most of the time,” alluding to example of the deceased TV speaker Kamilla Bach Hansen who died at 36 from cancer. At the beginning, Hansen had expressed that her greatest support was her husband, who later on left her when the course of the disease became irreversible.

Harder continues: “As a person who spent 20 years of her life in hospitals and with patients, I admire the care of some immigrant groups for the patients. When someone gets ill, all the acquaintances run to the hospital. At the beginning it seemed weird to me that people brought meal to the hospital. After I learned that it was a tradition, I appreciated it. The hospital visits are not formality; they never leave the patients on their own. They constantly come to visit the patients, raise their spirits, and pray for them.”

In countries where people do not bother with raising children and the family relations are weak, it will not be very surprising if the number of such companies grow.

Priest Tove Fergo, former minister of Danish Churches, thinks that his people have a lot to learn from the other in terms of familial love. Fergo completes his words as follows: “These people have great respect for parents and family elders. They do not leave the elderly on their own, and do not break contact with relatives. We have just the opposite. Family concept is disappearing. They must present an example for us with respect to family life.”

Putting aside complicated debates about tradition versus modernity, the first and foremost question here is to strike a balance in between and not lose the values that make us truly human. Something deep inside every one of us urges more than turning our head and dismissing the issue until we face the same situation one day. An urge for deeper meaning… something we can refer, as food for conscience.

Hasan Cucuk is the representative of Cihan News Agency in Denmark.

People spoke of him mockingly. They said he behaved strangely, obeyed his wife to the letter. He didn’t hang out with other men after work in the coffee shop. He liked to read, a good-for-nothing sport. He didn’t speak the local accent although he had breathed the air of this town all his life. Presor Dyli didn’t curse or spit on the ground. He was unusually polite and mild, almost like-God forbid-a woman. He was weird, they said. People made fun of his wandering eyes, but that’s too cruel, and I am going to skip it.

I didn’t think of him as weird. He was different yes, but far from weird, if you know what I mean.

When Presor Dyli decided to start the first afterschool club ever in the history of our school, he ensured that he would become the laughingstock of the town for a hundred more years. Nobody knew what the club was about or even what an afterschool club was supposed to be.

Somehow he managed to secure a small room in the municipality building, five old typing machines, and a considerable supply of index cards and pencils.

Presor Dyli asked all his students to enroll in the club. Anything that could be an excuse to get out of the house, away from the never-ending chores, was welcome, so I was happy to oblige.

I remember the first meeting of the club quite clearly. My best friend, Lindita was sitting by my side, and she would giggle every time Presor Dyli looked at us, his wandering eye extremely lapsed in the wrong direction. I became annoyed with her since what Presor Dyli was saying kindled my curiosity. I turned to her sternly and scolded, “Oh, hush for a moment, won’t you?”

She looked at me like I had gone crazy. Little did I care if I had.

His soft voice spoke in unfamiliar words such as noble cause, great service, our language sweeter than honey. I felt like I was transported to a strange new planet.

“My dear children,” Presor Dyli said, “our mother tongue, Albanian, is an old and rich language. Unfortunately, many words used by older generations are about to vanish because they never saw the light of print on the pages of dictionaries. These old words are called archaisms; most of them originate from Ottoman language as a legacy of 500 years of Ottoman rule in Albania.”

“It is our mission to save these words from dying. While listening carefully to adults talking, if you catch a word you have never heard before, write it down on the index cards I will provide for you. At our club meetings we will compare notes, consult the dictionary, and type the words we don’t find in it. Okay? Later, we will mail those words with their meaning and usage to the National Committee for Albanian Language, so that they may be added to the dictionary. I know it sounds complicated but it is easy, you will see. Any questions?”

All twelve of us stood there dumbfounded. My brain felt fuzzy, like a TV which has lost its signal.

Nevertheless, Presor Dyli went on with a new subject–the methodology of our work. After explaining step-by-step the instructions on word hunting, he relaxed our overstretched minds with a story of a smart linguist on an archaism hunt.

“This linguist on an ancient-word hunt went to the farmer’s market. Immediately he spotted his prey-a toothless white-haired lady selling eggs, and he approached her. He asked her how much one egg cost.

She looked at this well-dressed, prospective buyer and smiled. “10 leke,” she said.

Then the linguist did the most unimaginable thing. In a frenzy, he snatched the egg basket and started throwing eggs to the ground, one by one. The old woman, cursing with contempt in her heavy mountainous dialect, fought back with this crazy man. To the surprise of everyone watching, the linguist, delighting in every curse as if receiving blessings from heaven, took out his notebook and excitedly recorded the lingual pearls.

The old woman, making no sense of what had happened, squatted over the broken eggs and cried over the ill fate that had befallen her. Right then, the linguist told her that he would pay for all the eggs he broke, 10 leke each. She did not believe him at first, but when he took out his purse and pulled out the money, she opened up like the sky after a storm. She thanked him effusively and upon hearing that he was willing to pay 15 leke for each, she let flow from her old mouth a string of benedictions. Again, the crazy linguist wrote down whatever she said, as if his own life depended on it.

“Well, children, this is the story of the linguist who dearly loved our language and did everything in hand to preserve it, even wasted eggs and paid for them” Presor Dyli smiled. “Don’t try this yourself though, all right?”

Later he dismissed us with the air of a commander sending his troops on an expedition.

I hugged the pack of index cards he had given me, and on my way home I made a mental list of suspects. I put my grandmother at the top. She was over eighty. She was bound to spill some ancient word from her mouth. Second, came our next-door neighbor, an old lady. “She loves to chat for hours. She gossips a lot too, but if breaking eggs is okay, then I will put up with that.” I decided.

I went to sleep that night, my chest filled with great aspirations for the remarkable service I would render to our mother tongue, which was sweeter than honey.

The next day I lay in ambush for my neighbor on her way to the farmer’s market. She started into her favorite sport-gossip-immediately.

“Did you see how the so and so’s wife was dressed in the so and so’s wedding?” she asked.

I shook my head, but that only invigorated her.

“Her outfit was for hakaret. How could she come in a dress that was so revealing? She should have…”

“Wait, wait a second,” I interrupted. A bulb started blinking in my brain.

“What is hakaret?” I asked, feeling for my pencil and the index card pack in my pocket.

She looked pretty annoyed to deal with words when greater scandals regarding the wife of so and so were involved. She answered anyway, maybe for fear of losing my interest.

“Hakaret means something discreditable, something that people will point their fingers at.

I started scribbling industriously on my index card as she spoke. My neighbor eyed me suspiciously.

“What are you doing?”

“Taking notes.”

“You aren’t going to tell the wife of so and so about what I said, are you?” She looked worried.

“Oh no, no. This is something related to my language club assignment.” I assured her.

Unconvinced, she decided to take no further risks and bade me good-bye, murmuring something about not wanting to miss the fresh eggs in the market.

As I watched her hurry away looking flabbergasted, I wondered if she would tell someone in the market about her neighbor’s so and so daughter doing strange things with a pencil and some what-you-call-them cards.

That evening I listened all ears, pencil in hand to my grandma complain to Mom about one of her grandchildren, my uncle’s only son among three daughters.

“The child is spoiled rotten and if something isn’t done to bring him to his senses, he will bring shame to all of us. It is as clear as that. As they say, you don’t need a kilavuz to the village for what you can see.”

“What is a kilavuz, Grandma?” I asked curiously.

Grandma froze, unprepared for this all-out assault. Soon enough she came to her senses and replied, “Kilavuz is someone who leads the way.”

“A guide?” I said, coming to her assistance.

“Yeah, something of the sort. Now why don’t you go and pick some grapes from the vine, wash them thoroughly, and bring us some to eat.”

I went out, sat on the front steps and wrote down with indescribable delight, kilavuz, my second victory. My heart beat with glory.

At the third club meeting I brought three hard-to-find words. You know the first two already. Why, the third came from a street argument among two drunks shouting at each other at the top of their lungs. I just wrote down the word because, as you can figure out, I couldn’t ask them, drunk as they were, about its meaning. I asked my mom instead. She blushed and threatened to make me bite on red hot pepper if I ever spoke that word again. Just as Professor Dyli asked us to hand him our index cards, I erased the third word. I reasoned that our language might do better with one less bad word.

Week by week, month by month, the about-to-be-lost words accumulated, like little streams in a pond. When we finally correctly typed thirty of them, Presor Dyli put the list in an envelope and mailed it with an accompanying letter, explaining our humble service to the National Committee for Albanian Language.

We continued on our word pursuit the rest of the school year, although we didn’t hear back from the NCFAL. Presor Dyli’s matchless enthusiasm fueled our little engines.

During that year, our country was undergoing great changes, although we, young club-goers, took little notice. On the radio, television, the coffee shop, the street, everyone talked about the big transition from over forty years of communism, to democracy. The land and the factories were being privatized and words such as private property and business were articulated boldly for the first time in many years. We brought them over to club–that’s how I remember. Presor Dyli told us that they were new words, therefore of no use to our mission.

My parents talked over dinner each night of how some of our neighbors or their friends had come up with amazing ideas to start a trade, and how courageous it was to take such a risk in the collapsing economy. Some of them had turned their patios into little shops, selling anything they could lay a hand on and stock in such a little space. My parents wished we were living in the walk-in level apartment, so we could try our luck in business. Why, it was such a convenient thing to work so close to your living quarters. I understood nothing of their talk. Nonetheless I listened carefully, my pencil and cards nearby.

At one of our meetings, which I learned later would sadly be the last, Presor Dyli told us apologetically that he had to quit the language club. He had to dedicate his time to something really important.

“I am sorry, children. I tried to find a substitute to keep the club going but to no avail. You kids did a great job. I am proud of you. I am sorry to quit but I have to,” he said in a sad tone. He did not look at us.

We left in silence, wondering what could be so important and so sorrowful at the same time.

Had he come down with a bad disease and he needed to go for treatments? Was he moving to another city? Had he received a disheartening letter from NCFAL? What could it be?

Weeks went by. Presor Dyli still taught us language arts during regular school hours but as soon as the last bell rang, he would hurry in the direction of his apartment. I had been taught to never pry. That’s why, tempted as I was, I never followed him.

One day, I took another way home after school because I had to take a make-up assignment to a sick classmate. I was entertaining myself with my shadow sliding ahead of me on the pavement, when his voice startled me.

“One kilogram tomatoes, two dozen eggs, one box of matches. Anything else I can get for you, sir?”

Yes, it was him. In his apartment’s patio which had been converted into a shop. I couldn’t believe it! He still had on his morning attire-white shirt and black pants. A black apron hung loosely about him and his shirt sleeves were rolled up. He had tomato stains on his shirt.

“No thanks,” replied the customer as he handed him the money.

As Presor Dyli rummaged in the big front pocket of his apron for change, a passerby who was the age of my father, stopped at the door of the shop and shouted.

“Hey Abdyl, how is it going? You’ve got a pretty good-sized shop here. Hang in there, buddy and before you know it, you will own a big market, just like Naim. He started small like you but look at him now. Has money to cover himself standing. I am happy for you, man.”

He made his point and patted Presor Dyli on the shoulder.

“Finally the cat caught a mouse, eh, Abdyl? “

I was about to cry. This little business was his really important something. What’s worse, he didn’t even mind being compared to the ill-famed Naim, a mafioso who was known to sell anything illegal.

Presor Dyli looked up. He saw me standing on the pavement across the street, like a statue of salt. He tried a genuine smile and waved at me, a bit hesitantly.

I was waking up from the dream.

He had lost his charm. I had lost my aspirations. He wasn’t weird anymore by the town’s standards. He was Abdyl now.

I didn’t wave back. I moved on and let my tears flow.

Let us imagine the earth as a small sphere before us. If we throw an object from the North Pole toward point A on the equator line, the object follows a curved line towards the right side and reaches point B, not point A. Likewise, an object thrown from the South Pole towards the same point A will follow a similar line curved in the opposite direction. These cases have a common point. An object rolling on a rotating ground moves on a curved line. This curved line, instead of a straight one, is explained with reference to the force of acceleration. This force is named after the French engineer, Coriolis who explained it in 1835. If this force-which is generated by the earth rotating around its own axis-did not exist, then air movements and ocean currents, and consequently the climate conditions of our world, would be different than they are. The objects in our example, thrown from the two poles, go in different directions, because the world rotates counter-clockwise when looked from the North Pole, and clockwise from the South Pole.

The air over the equator receives the sun’s rays at a broad angle. It rises up after gaining heat and is replaced by colder air coming from distant latitudes. Air convection begins in connection with these heat changes. So if the world did not rotate, the air on the Poles would get heavier with cold air and come down. Then, it would be replaced by hot air from lower latitudes. The air at the equator would rise up with gaining heat and would move until reaching the Poles where it would come down after losing heat. Then, it would return to the equator, this time very close to the ground. In this case, the world would probably be an uninhabitable place with cold and fierce winds blowing all around. And of course, the side facing the sun would be very hot and the other side would be very cold.

Instead, the Coriolis effect makes these great atmospheric air masses move over our rotating earth. The hot air rising up from the equator moves towards the poles with a curved course thanks to the Coriolis effect (Figure 4). As this air current approaches the latitudes around 30 degrees, it loses heat and descends. A part of the descending air begins to move back toward the equator, but it follows a curved line again owing to the Coriolis effect. So this last curving forms the “trade winds.” In the past, sailing ships traveled from Europe to America for the purpose of trade; thus, these winds were named as trade winds. This air circulation between the equator and the 30-degree meridians is known as Hadley circulation. These air currents cause heavy rainfall in the equatorial region and the consequent formation of rain forests, which are considered as the lungs of our planet, and also they cause the formation of deserts around the region where the dry and hot weather are pure blessings for us. They are a blessing because the airborne dust rising from the desert fertilizes the rainclouds and plays a critical role for rainfall.

The air over the poles becomes cold, and it causes another air current as it becomes heavier and starts to descend. As the lowered air moves toward the equator, it changes course with the Coriolis effect. At the same time it begins to gain heat and ascend. At the latitudes where water ascends by gaining heat, a rain climate prevails. This polar air cycle is seen between latitudes of 60-90 degrees.

Some part of the air current, which descends down around 30 degrees of latitude, moves toward the poles at a low level. Also, some part of the air which comes from the poles and ascends begins to move towards the equator. So a third air cycling begins between the altitudes between 30-60 degrees. The “western winds” are brought forth from this third cycle. During the time of sailing ships, these winds were used to traveling from America to Europe (Figure 4).

In order for these air cycles to happen, the earth’s rotation around its own axis is not sufficient; its speed and atmospheric mass also play an important role. If the earth rotated slower, the Coriolis Effect would be too weak to give way to a triple air cycle. For example, since Venus rotates too slowly, there is only a single air cycle in its atmosphere. Another factor, as we mentioned, is the mass of the atmosphere. Since the atmosphere of Mars is thin and its mass is relatively less, the Coriolis Effect is too weak and there is only a single air cycle.

Coriolis Effect prevents the air current from following a straight course and the isobars form twisters as they proceed. Therefore, hurricanes in the Northern hemisphere move counter-clockwise, and those in the south move clockwise (Figure 5). Naturally, these main atmospheric movements are not the only ones. A region’s climate is dependent on several factors such as landscape, night-day heat differences, and the like. Therefore, the climatic conditions on the earth have a very complex structure. Even when we consider just these few factors discussed here, it is evident that there are countless parameters that make human life possible in our planet, and each one is finely adjusted. Even slight changes in rotation and the mass of the atmosphere would result in a dramatically different planet Earth.

The ocean currents

Movement of air masses affects the water on the ocean surface as well. Thus, wind-generated surface currents are born. These currents are parallel with the relevant winds. It is a well-known fact that these huge bodies of water change the climate of the regions they pass. Therefore, two places at 54 degrees of latitude show a surprising difference: there can be a polar bears’ park in Ontario, whereas palm trees and tropical fruits can grow in Belfast thanks to the Gulf Stream. There are other warm ocean currents that pass from Brazil, and the north and south of the equator. Some of major cold surface currents pass from Labrador, Canada, the Falkland Islands, and Peru. Warm currents soften the climate of the regions they pass, while cold currents provide sea creatures with rich food, and they are important areas of fishing.

The impact of the wind on ocean water normally reaches as deep as 100-200 meters, and even 1,000 meters in some cases. The Coriolis effect has a determining role on the direction of the currents. These currents on the move make a turn when their way is blocked by land. Thus, the succession of ocean currents becomes a cycle, and they form the great current cycles named as “gyre.” They turn clockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and counter-clockwise in the south.

There are five main ocean circulations on earth and each of them consists of four streams. These currents are at the north and south of the Atlantic Ocean, the north and south of the Pacific Ocean, and one in the Indian Ocean. The North Atlantic circulation is made up of the Northern Equator Current, the Gulf Stream, North Atlantic Current, and the Canary Current.

With the Coriolis effect, a blessing of wondrous scale, food chains are brought to life in the ocean and around coastal regions. The ocean waters are set in motion by the winds generated by the Coriolis effect, but they do not strictly follow the winds that activated them. With a deflection of nearly 45 degrees they move right in the Northern Hemisphere and to left in the Southern Hemisphere.

The effect of the winds weakens in the deeper ocean waters, and then the Coriolis effect becomes dominant. Thus the direction of ocean water carried in the Northern Hemisphere is vertical to the wind direction and towards the right. This condition causes ocean waters to be pushed towards the circulatory center, and the water level there rises about 2 meters.

As rising waters move down with the effect of gravity, the Coriolis effect comes to the stage again to give way to another current in the same direction within that current. The waters that were rising toward the center begin to sink, and they form a new vertical current. For the same reason, the separation of the water current to the right and left directions around the equatorial regions gives way to the waters at the bottom which then come to the surface. At these places, the water level decreases a little. This “upwelling” phenomenon has very important results. Dead organisms sinking down are broken down by bacteria in the deep waters. When this nutrient-rich water returns to the surface, it is a great blessing for so many sea creatures. It is a striking fact that the rotating of the earth is a means for providing many living beings with sustenance. All of these finely adjusted balances on our planet, which we mostly take for granted, provide reflecting minds with food for thought.