Michel, a Catholic priest, has studied the Gülen movement for decades. As an outside observer and religious scholar, he’s able to both verify Hizmet’s extraordinary contributions to the world of education and service, while also explaining its ideology and history to readers who might not be familiar with the context of Islamic civil society groups.

The book is a collection of essays, speeches, and articles Michel has written over the years, and they encapsulate his knowledge of, and interactions with, Hizmet. Broken into two parts, the book begins by placing Gülen’s work as thinker and teacher in its proper context. Gülen has been called many things over the years; none of them, Michel argues in his first essay, quite accurate. Despite the claims of his critics, Gülen is not a politician, and he is the antithesis of an extremist. Though he shares elements with traditional Sufi sheiks, Gülen is not a traditional Sufi, either. Instead, Michel posits, he follows in the footsteps of many great thinkers. Chief among them are Bediüzzaman Said Nursi and Rumi, whose faith and devotion, as well as their commitment to love and acceptance, deeply affected Gülen and his philosophy.
Michel also draws on Gülen’s extensive connections to thinkers from the other Abrahamic faiths, including Pope John Paul II. He examines the strong commonalities between Islam, Christianity, and Judaism, and the way Gülen’s open, tolerant teachings have sought to build bridges between the faiths – an important task when too many people are seeking to exploit differences.

Of course, the differences in modern society are not just between faiths, but between ideologies. One of these major differences would seem to be between religion and science. Too often, people of faith and people of science are placed on opposite poles and held up as combatants. Gülen, however, believes differently. He believes that reconciliation is not just possible, but necessary. From page 65:
[Gülen] asserts that a new style of education is necessary,
one “that will fuse religious and scientific knowledge together with morality
and spirituality, to produce genuinely enlightened people…”

Education is key to understanding any of Gülen’s writings, and the first section of Michel’s book builds neatly to the final two chapters, which examine Gülen’s role as an educator. Michel first encountered Gülen’s writings, as well as the Hizmet Movement, through the network of schools, in around 160 countries, that have been opened by friends and admirers of Hizmet. These entrepreneurs have taken to heart Gülen’s belief that education is the best weapon against hatred, enmity, and ignorance.
Michel has visited many of these schools, and he recounts his experiences with them. Not surprisingly, the so-called “Gülen” schools tend to be very strong in the sciences. And though Michel finds their staffs to be guided by a deep personal faith, he also notes that the schools are not religious schools. In fact, every institution fulfills the legal requirements of its host country.

Once Michel has established the foundation of Gülen’s philosophy in the book’s first section, he examines the Movement known as Hizmet – or, alternatively, the Gülen Movement – in its second. As with the section on Gülen, Michel traces in this section the origins of Hizmet, from its humble beginnings in Turkey, where Gülen established “lighthouses,” which were safe havens for people of faith during the tumultuous 1970s, to the multinational civil society movement of today. This piece does a good job of charting Hizmet’s history.
Of course, history is nothing without context. In the rest of this section, Michel roots the humanitarian and educational efforts of Hizmet in Said Nursi’s teachings – in particular, his belief that humanity has three “common” enemies.” These three enemies – ignorance, poverty, and disunity – are shared across religious, racial, and national bonds. As such, diverse groups of people should be able to come together and make common cause to battle them.

This, as Michel shows, is exactly what Hizmet has done. Though much of Hizmet’s humanitarian work has been done in the name of fighting ignorance, the Movement has also fought poverty through its aid organization, Kimse Yok Mu? (Is Anybody There?), and disunity through the many dialogue centers it has opened. These centers have hosted countless multicultural and diversity forums, conferences, and events, and have worked hard to perform community outreach in their host communities, cities, and states. Many of Michel’s speeches come from such events, and his essays explore his own associations with a variety of Hizmet organizations.

Though Michel’s book hasn’t been updated with the most recent information, including last summer’s attempted coup in Turkey, he manages to address the questions some people, especially those unfamiliar with Hizmet, have asked about the movement. By examining both Gülen’s focus on peacebuilding and education, as well as the diverse makeup of Hizmet – the Movement includes doctors and lawyers, civil servants and business people, teachers and journalists – Michel easily lays to rest any doubts certain people have about the intentions of the Movement. Gülen’s entire career, and all of Hizmet’s activities, have been devoted to humanitarian, not political, ends. The Movement has no interest in power, but instead strives for peace – and does so with humility.

Because the book is a collection of pieces, and not a standalone book, it can, at times, be repetitive. One area of commonality that Michel doesn’t address but that is increasingly important is that of climate change. It makes sense that Michel wouldn’t talk about climate change, since the book is an introduction to Fethullah Gülen and Hizmet, but moving forward, one of the main areas of agreement between almost all of the world’s religions is the belief that our world is sacred, and humans are simply its stewards. As the effects of global climate change become more and more apparent, it is incumbent upon the faithful people of the world to set aside their minor differences to achieve the common goal of protecting God’s gift to us. This is one of the areas where Hizmet’s idea of dialogue could be most effective.  

Any criticisms of the book are minor quibbles, though. The themes Michel returns to, time and again, are worthwhile themes – and necessary, at this time of great division. Near the end of his book, Michel writes about the continuing need for finding common ground. In Fethullah Gülen and Hizmet, he finds a prime example of dialogue, consensus building, and unity. It is an example that we should all try to heed as we move forward into a divided, uncertain world. Both Michel and Gülen are reminders that despite superficial differences, we have the most important things in common.  

Dark matter, the mysterious unseen mass, and dark energy, the universe’s mysterious force, comprise the rest of the unknown universe. We still know very little about dark energy and dark matter. Dozens of institutes and thousands of scientists have organized international collaborations in search of both. In fact, scientists hope the biggest energy particle collider [1], the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Geneva, will help solve the puzzles of dark energy and dark matter.

            It is common for people to ask, how did the universe begin? After decades of observing and measuring, today the majority of scientists explain the beginning of the universe via the Big Bang theory. Two astronomers, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, established the Big Bang theory of cosmology by observing the cosmic background of radiation [2]. According to their theory, everything in the universe was contained in one single mass and there was no space or time. Everything started with the explosion of this extremely dense and hot mass. This explosion was not like an explosion into an empty space; rather space itself began with this explosion.

The idea that led scientists to the Big Bang came from observing the universe’s expansion. Edwin P. Hubble found that almost all galaxies are moving away from the center of the universe [3]. He did so by measuring the light from these galaxies to determine their velocities. This proved that the universe was not static, but was instead expanding. After scientists realized that the universe is expanding, they thought that there must be a beginning to this expansion. Then, using the speed of this expansion, they calculated the life of the universe. Through this, they were able to show that the universe has a beginning. Today, almost every scientist agrees with the Big Bang, and they can support it with scientific evidence.

The idea of the universe, let alone an expanding universe, can be pretty incomprehensible. Let me make it a bit more comprehensible. Think about a balloon. There are two spots marked on this balloon. When you inflate the balloon, you’ll see how these two spots are moving away from each other. The balloon is the universe and the two spots are matter in that universe. This example shows how matter “rides” the expanding universe.

Until about 20 years ago, most scientists thought that the expansion of the universe was getting slower. In 1998, observations of the Type la supernovae revealed the existence of dark energy. Dark energy, scientists found, was one way to measure the expansion rate of the universe over time. This discovery was proof for the universe expanding at an increasing rate. Saul Perlmutter, Brian P. Schmidt, and Adam G. Riess have been awarded the Shaw Prize in Astronomy in 2006 [4] and Nobel Prize in Physics in 2011 [5] for their breakthrough study on this topic. But though scientists know the universe is expanding faster and faster, no one yet knows why.

Let’s go back to the beginning of the universe and see how everything was induced into a perfect order. At the beginning, when the Big Bang (BB) occurred, one might think that this came with chaos and disorder. The perfect design of the universe came from that mess.

If we could get precise information all the way back to the Big Bang, it would help us to solve many outstanding mysteries. Unfortunately, we are unable to gather this information because the cosmos, in its infancy, was foggy and full of light rays. After about 300,000 years, the universe became transparent and many particles fell away; the furthest distance we can see across space is 13.7 billion light years, which is when the universe became transparent.

Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) was formed almost 380,000 years after the BB. That is the cosmic background radiation, or thermal radiation, and it is believed to be a leftover from the BB. The CMB is the source of the oldest light in the universe and it represents the kernel of stars and planets.

In the early stages of this CMB time, elementary particles were formed. These particles acquired mass while passing through the Higgs field and interacting with the Higgs boson [1]. These particles are mainly divided into two categories: fermions and bosons. Fermions are the most fundamental particles, known as quarks and leptons. The quarks and leptons are further divided into six flavors and corresponding antiparticles. Bosons are photon, gluon, W-Z bosons, and graviton. They carry forces, included the four main forces in the universe – electromagnetic, strong, weak, and gravitational.

The basic building blocks of matter are two composite particles, baryons and mesons, which are formed by the combination of quarks. Baryons are made of three quarks, such as protons (two up and one down quarks) and neutrons (two down and one up quarks), of the atomic nuclei. Mesons are usually found in cosmic rays and are composed of quark-antiquark pairs. Today, more than 200 subatomic particles have been discovered at sophisticated particle accelerator laboratories. Most of them are composite particles, composed of other fundamental particles.

After the creation of these elementary particles, stars, galaxies, and planets were formed, step-by-step.

First stars: 200,000,000 years after Big Bang
According to the results of NASA’s Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), the first stars were formed 200 million years after the BB. The clumps of matter were brought together with the gravitational force and they grew like a growing snowball until they have enough energy to start nuclear fusion process, which is the main process behind the shiny stars up in the sky.
First Galaxies: 1,000,000,000 years after Big Bang

1.6 million galaxies have been identified according to the location of the Milky Way Galaxy by The 2 Micron All-Sky Survey (2 MASS). Figure 1.1 is a computer-generated map of our surrounding universe by the 2 MASS, which shows nearly 50,000 galaxies near our galaxy, Milky Way (2 MASS/ J. Carpenter, R. Hurt & T. H. Jarrett).

The Milky Way, which includes our solar system, began to form 5 billion years after the BB. There are approximately three hundred billion stars in our galaxy, and there are estimated to be 100 billion galaxies in the universe. Scientists do not know the structure and features of these galaxies. But then, they don’t even know everything about our galaxy.

How big are objects in the Milky Way? Everyone knows about the moon and the Earth, as well as the other planets in our solar system. The largest star in the Milky Way is VY Canis Majoris, a Red hyper-giant. It has a diameter of 280 million km, which is so big that an airplane flying at 900 km per hour would need 1100 years to circle the star. There are approximately 200 billion stars in Milk Way alone and the sun is only one of them.

When thinking about all the space in our universe, it makes the order of our own solar system and galaxy seem quite extraordinary.

A solar system in general consists of a star at the center and rotating astronomical objects (planets, moons, etc.) around that star. In our solar system, the object in the center is the sun and everything orbits around it. There are eight planets including the earth and their natural satellites orbiting the sun. So far, 3946 comets, many asteroids, and thousands of near-earth objects and minor planets have been discovered [6] around the sun. The sun is attracting all these objects with the gravitational force and they counter this attraction by means of their centrifugal force. These forces are balanced and keep the objects in their orbits. All of these are formed and located perfectly with a magnificent balance. How does this kind of order form from a disorder spontaneously?

References:

[1]       Kara, Cihan, "Will CERN Reveal the Origin of the Universe or Cause the End," The Fountain Magazine, Issue 92, 2013.
[2]       The Large Horn Antenna and the Discovery of Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation,             https://www.aps.org/programs/outreach/history/historicsites/penziaswilson.cfm
[3]       Hubble Space Telescope,             https://www.spacetelescope.org/about/history/the_man_behind_the_name/
[4]       The Shaw Prize in Astronomy in 2006,         http://www.shawprize.org/en/shaw.php?tmp=3&twoid=51
[5]       The Nobel Prize in Physics 2011,      https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2011/
[6]       The Minor Planet Center: http://www.minorplanetcenter.net/

When we visited Laila Muhammad in her office at the foundation, we found her involved in a number of important programs: aid for underprivileged families in the Newark area; a charity drive raising school and office supplies for orphanages in Haiti; raising funds helping patients-in-need get cataract surgery. We spoke with her on the responsibilities she inherited from her family, her involvement in interfaith dialogue, the current problems haunting our world, and how we can move forward from here.

The Fountain: Your family made history in the US. You carry on your shoulders a heritage of wisdom and a struggle for civil rights that will be studied for many decades in the future. How would you describe that heritage?

Laila Muhammad: My parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, and community members, we call them pioneers. I have really embraced that idea, maybe in the last fifteen to twenty years. Prior to that, I didn’t really understand it. But I also know that it is a great responsibility. Before, I loved my family; I understood that my grandfather, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, and my grandmother Clara Muhammad, as well as my father Imam Warith Deen Mohammed, were historical people and leaders, but I didn’t understand the dynamic of it. Sometimes as a child or young adult I was a little irritated, because I had to share my father with people, or because I felt like everybody was watching me. But, God made me know that I am really blessed. Sometimes I am almost afraid and I ask God to make me worthy of this blessing.

Every blessing comes with responsibility. This must be perhaps why you are with Compassion Action. Tell us about it: what is Compassion Action?

Compassion Action is, firstly, a family. I moved to New Jersey in August 2016 because of my job in another organization, where I was doing domestic violence work and life coaching. I had applied to be a counselor at a rehab center, a transitional house for women. It was good, but God knew better!

I had been acquainted with a brother who is also a Compassion Action member. My background is early childhood education, and I really wanted to teach. So, I talked to him about the possibilities of my teaching. He offered me the opportunity to join with Compassion Action where I could teach… So our brother, our family, has opened the door to me. It is such a blessing that I am now in a building with them – where the call to prayer is called, and a friend is welcoming us at the door with greetings of peace. In how many buildings can you have this welcome? … It is so comforting to see that God is doing everything; and when you look back you understand, “That’s why it happened.”

I went for my minor pilgrimage (umrah) twice. When you go around the Ka‘ba, you are not going to make it if you do it on your own. But when you move with the flow of all the brothers and sisters, it becomes much easier. This is how I am trying to live my life: just go as if I am around the Ka‘ba and know that God is going to guide me. My father passed in 2008 – may God forgive him and reward him. He meant a lot to me; he was my daddy, he was my imam, he was my friend, he was my employer. I miss him a lot.  I relied on him a lot. Any question I had, I would call him. Then I prayed to God to let me see his guidance. God let me see that my life experience through my family parallels what I see as the understanding and experience of Compassion Action and the Hizmet movement it is inspired by. The ideas and goals are very similar. This is not surprising: if we are both living as God tells us in the Qur’an and as Muhammad ibn Abdullah, then we will be the same. So, I feel blessed to work with this family, and to help families in need.

How would you describe these goals?

The number one goal is to please God and serve Him. We serve God by giving to the world and leaving behind something when we leave… One of our similarities with Compassion Action is that we are both open to people. This was a great part of Imam Muhammad’s work. As you know my grandfather, Elijah Muhammad…was working with African American people. …I think one of my father’s main accomplishments was that he showed the community that came from my grandfather how we fit and how we are a part of the (larger) human family. I think that as Muslims, if we miss that, then we miss what God is asking from us. Because we all come from Adam, we all are one family. If we treat each other and love each other as brothers and sisters, there won’t be a problem.

Going back to your childhood, what are your earliest memories of spirituality?

I can remember two things that always stand out to me. One is that my father always taught me to be a thinker. He and my mother always taught it was OK to differ with them, as long as we did it respectfully. They had a son after my father’s three girls; I was the oldest, and kind of treated like a boy sometimes. I was very comfortable with speaking my mind… I was born a Muslim, but my mother converted; she was raised Catholic. I had lots of cousins who were Christians…I remember once when I was 12 or 13, I was reading the Qur’an, and it was a serious reading because it was Ramadan. I remember reading the verse, “Those who believe (i.e. professing to be Muslims), or those who declare Judaism, or the Christians or the Sabaeans (or those of some other faith) whoever truly believes in God and the Last Day and does good, righteous deeds, surely their reward is with their Lord, and they will have no fear, nor will they grieve” (2:62). I also remember that God says, “For each community We have appointed a clear way of life and a comprehensive system. And if God had so willed, He would surely have made you a single community; but (He willed it otherwise) in order to test you by what He granted to you” (5:48). It was a lightbulb moment for me, but it was also a sigh of relief. Because I really loved, and I still do, my mother’s sisters. I respect them. They were very nice ladies. When I read these verses, I said to myself, “This is a fair God, this is the truth.”

Then I also learned that God judges you on your intention. He knows your intention. That’s just fair. That was spiritual moment for me – to declare my testimony of belief because of my thought process, not because of my birth.

We know you are actively involved in interfaith dialogue. You have just mentioned your multi-faith family background. There are some groups within the domain of Islam, Christianity, and Judaism who oppose interfaith dialogue. What is your take on interfaith dialogue?

The rule is very simple. If we are here living together, why should we not talk? That’s what dialogue is: conversation… I have done dialogue for many years; so I personally prefer a particular type of dialogue. My first interfaith dialogue was with the Focolare movement. Their leader was Chiara Lubich, who passed away in 2008. She and my father met at an event, and their spirits connected… they wanted their communities to meet. And for fifteen years, we have had relationships with each other. Those relationships developed organically. We would go to meetings together, have lunch together, sometimes large summer outings together. Then we began to come to each other’s conferences. I went to Rome three times, the last of which I had the pleasure of meeting Pope Francis. This was an organic growth of getting to know each other. And that’s the type of interfaith dialogue I like. I have been to other types of dialogue, which are very structured, where they tell you, “This is what we are going to be doing; this is the project we will work on,” etc. I believe when it is too structured like that, it gets in the way of the heart… It has to come from the heart so that it can organically grow and connect you.

Considering the rise of governments and leaders in different parts of the world who have authoritarian tendencies, with nationalist and xenophobic discourses, do you think we should fear for our future? Do you think history is repeating itself? Are we circling back to the 1930s?

I don’t think we should fear for our future. No matter what the situation is, especially what is happening in America, Turkey, and in other places, we should be prepared. We should do as a person does when he or she knows it is winter as opposed to summer. You should prepare yourself. Maybe it is not snowing today, but you know where your wool hat is. We should not be reactionary. We should not move on emotion. We should be strategic, and most importantly – and this goes back to the previous question about interfaith dialogue – I think we should form alliances…

It’s been reported that there were more refugees around the world in 2016 than any year prior. People are fleeing their own countries because of war, oppression, or extreme poverty. … What are we expected to do at this point in history? Where is the world heading on this matter?

You know, I am not a political person… But I believe that when things have become really bad, they are about to turn around. We should not fear. We should be open to helping and accepting change… I think we should go through life as we would if this was not occurring. We should work, but first submit to God… I remember my father said many times that work is worship…

Are we going back to the ‘30s? I hope not. But we have to know what took place in the ’30s and study the strategies of how the people survived then, so that we can survive now. We just have to move forward, collectively. This is what is good about this interview and about this new relationship for me with our brothers and sisters in the Hizmet Movement, which is that we collectively do this work. I don’t believe that we can work isolated…

Recently, Islam has been abused by various terrorist groups to legitimize their attacks. However, no group has gone as far as ISIS. Beheadings, child assassins, all sorts of brutality. All committed – or so they claim– in the name of God. How have they made Islam a tool of their violence? What should Muslims do in response?

Being a mother myself, when I think of ISIS, I think of young people. Those horrible behaviors and tragic things ISIS has done… those people have mothers. How do Muslim children become that? As parents, we have to educate our children. We cannot teach them that they are just Muslims. We have to let them read the Qur’an themselves and not just obey imams. Because the imam may be corrupt. That’s what I think happens to a lot of people. They get brainwashed by corrupt people and they really believe they are right. I am not saying this has to do with only imams or Muslims… We just cannot think somebody is a Muslim because they say it. You have to judge people by their behavior. You have to cover yourself with God and move forward. It is very frightening when young people and children are doing this. As I said earlier, we have to be strategic and we should not be reactionary…

As a woman active in social matters, where do you see female empowerment headed? Some perceive Islam as oppressive to women. What would you say to that?

Islam is what frees me. Islam is what gives me my voice. I have never felt disempowered by Islam. Have I felt disempowered by misinformed people, misinformed Muslim men? Yeah. Islam is like anything else; it is made up of human beings. My grandmother would say, “There is nothing bad of Islam; there might be a bad Muslim, but it’s nothing bad about Islam.” Part of the human experience is that people take femininity for weakness. But it is not. All life comes from women. We bear the burden. We carry the child, give birth to the child. The Arabic words “community” (umma) and “mother” (um) are coming from the same root. That’s powerful to me…

What is happening in this world today, I think some folks are trying to take us backward. I am not worried, because we have people like Sojourner Truth, Clara Muhammad, Harriet Tubman, Khadija, and Aisha… We are going to be fine as women. (I think about) our sister Betty Shabbaz and the work that I do with domestic violence. I tell people all the time, “Your situation is really bad. But did you ever hear about what Dr. Betty Shabazz went through?” Of course they say no. “Did you ever think about the fact that her husband was assassinated in front of her, in front of her children, and she was pregnant?” I say, “That’s horrible, right? But then she moved on. She was 27 years old. She was a nurse, and became a PhD. And she raised her girls. We can do it. We can do it.”

Muslims have many problems in their own countries, but also in diaspora. What do you think Muslims should do to better represent their religion?

The number one thing is we don’t think of it as (just) Muslims. The Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him, said, “You will not have faith until you love your brother and sister.” That’s the first thing we should do. We should love God. I went to a women’s conference once, where my friend, Attorney Maaria Mozaffar, was speaking. I am saying her name for a reason; I think she is going to be great, greater than she is now; a very intelligent woman. She has this Skinless Project. I went to her conference… Muslims from all different nationalities and ages. She said, “Fall in love with God.” That’s powerful. That’s what we have to do as men and women. Fall in love with God, and then yourself, your family, your community, and just do what you do when you love somebody: take care of them, listen to them, support them, educate them. It is such an evil thought when some people say, “We Muslims do not do the love thing; it is what Christians do.” But our Prophet is saying otherwise. We do the love thing.

For instance, It is very heartbreaking to see what the Hizmet community is going through. Last time I went (to Turkey), I met with people; they hosted us back then, but now they are not even in their country. Because they had to run out, unjustly. I don’t even think you have to say who is right or who is wrong. But we know in Islam, and in a world of civilized people, that people have the right to a trial. How can you accuse people and try them all in the same moment? That’s wrong in anybody’s book. That’s what I stand on… You are taking their livelihood, kicking them out of their homes… that’s wrong. So, I am praying for them. My heart and my arms are open. I am encouraged, because I know that God is in charge, and He has promised the righteous servants victory.

(Editor’s note: This interview has been lightly edited due to word count restrictions.)

One kind of light that is mostly invisible to the human eye is polarized light, which comes from sunlight reflecting off brilliant surfaces. Polarized light spoils our clarity of vision on sunny days. It appears as flashes on the sea or an asphalt road. In order shield our eyes from this light, we use sunglasses. We need to do this even though the naked human eye only perceives a very small amount of the polarized light on earth. However, this is not a shortcoming. On the contrary, it’s a blessing to us. If we were better able to perceive polarized light, we would not see any object clearly, owing to the dazzling lights around us.

As evidenced by polarized light, the human eye is actually quite limited. Just as it cannot see radio or television waves, it cannot see ultra-violet light either. Since ultraviolet light is harmful to the retina of a human eye, it is prevented from reaching the retina by the eye’s external structures.

Every animal has a different ability and threshold when it comes to seeing colors. For example, honeybees have three-color vision, just like humans do. In the human eye, there are three types of conical cells that perceive wavelengths in red, green, and blue. All other colors are perceived as mixtures of these three colors, albeit in different proportions.

Just as there are colors like green or red, ultraviolet light has a color of its own. We do not name the color, for we cannot see it, but ultraviolet color exists for many other creatures. Since it is a very dense and brilliant form of purple, other colors would be more distinct and difficult to perceive if humans could see ultraviolet.

Bees have very complex eye structures including comb-shaped units made of cells that perceive ultraviolet color. These cells are necessary for bees to be able to see ultraviolet light, because they locate their own position and the direction they will fly according to the existing position of the sun. They use ultraviolet light to find their hives or flowers with nectar. In experiments, researchers observed that when another source of light was used instead of sunlight, bees were unable to find the direction of their hive. Even on a cloudy day, it is easy to perceive ultraviolet light. Thus, bees can locate the position of the sun and then find the direction and place of flowers containing honey. Surely, the colors and patterns of flowers appear differently to bees than they do to humans.

Honeybees also see polarized light. They use it to determine the exact location of the sun at any given moment. However, as polarized light might dazzle the eyes and reduce clarity of vision, the eye cells of honey bees are placed at the back and upper part of the eye’s structures. Since a honey bee does not see polarized light with the lower part of its eye, it is not dazzled by such flashes and reflections. It uses the upper and back portions of the eye to see polarized light, and can thus to determine which direction to fly. This trait is not unique to bees; for instance, hummingbirds, which feed on flower nectar, also perceive ultraviolet light.

Bees’ eyes are surrounded by a dense layer of tiny hairs, which help them to navigate in windy weather. These tiny hairs have nerve extensions within them. They sense the slightest hint of wind, sending the relevant information to their brain and pointing them in the right direction.

As mentioned above, a honeybee’s eye is a very complex structure. It is a unified form of more than 8,000 hexagonal and simple eye units. Each of these simpler units has its own lens, crystal, and sight cells. This united (or combed) eye system enables a honeybee to perfectly perceive the slightest movement that occurs around it. While the human eye can only see movement across 180 degrees, a bee’s eye will recognize the slightest movement across 360 degrees. Thus, it can notice every kind of possible danger and take protective action.

A honeybee sees moving objects better than unmoving ones. Therefore, honeybees are more likely to visit flowers shaking in the wind. For this same reason they are more likely to attack people running away or moving their arms or legs. Honeybees see moving objects better than stationary ones because their vision is very blurry, at least relative to human eyesight. They see objects with 1/60th the clarity of human vision. In other words, an object we comfortably recognize from a twenty-meter distance, a bee must be as close as 30 cm to recognize. Thus, honeybees see the whole world virtually like a honeycomb. For example, they see a human face in a fragmented and blurred way, as if looking at it from behind a milk-glass.

Bees are supposed to harvest honey from flowers, and the sight system they possess is exactly as needed for this purpose. Conversely, the human eye consists of a single cornea and lens system. For this reason, humans see an unmoving spot much more clearly and smoothly. While we cannot detect flower nectar from afar, humans are endowed with the ability to behold and appreciate the beauty of a flower. And this is what we are meant to do.

It’s likely most people are familiar with the most common forms of medical imaging: Computed tomography scans (CT scans), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and ultrasounds. These are not the only forms of medical imaging, but they’re certainly the most well-known.

Each form of imaging has been produced for specific purposes. For instance, MRIs are usually used to view soft tissue, such as internal organs. CT scans are usually used to view more solid parts of the body, such as in the case of bone injuries, chest and teeth imaging, and cancerous tissues [1].

Each form of imaging has its own pros and cons. For example, in CT scans, exposure levels (X-ray tube amperage and peak kilovoltage), slice thickness, and volume of interest (VOI) affect the resolution of the images. Higher exposure levels, bigger VOI, and smaller slice thickness produce better resolution images. However, optimum parameters may not be used in order to limit the radiation dosage, which can be harmful to humans. Another difference is that CT scans take a shorter time than MRI scans.

On the other side of the process, innovators working on the image analysis have been proposing new ideas and methods to assist doctors and radiologists in diagnosing diseases in their early stages. The earlier a disease is detected, the better the patient’s long term prognosis. For instance, early detection of cancer tissues in organs, calcium plaque in arteries, or osteoporosis in bones, improves the odds of successfully treating a patient.
How can diseases or disorders be diagnosed using medical images? Important features (such as color, shape, movement, volume, etc.) of the organ or object of interest should be clear enough to analyze. The doctors or specialists analyzing the images obviously need knowledge about the normal and abnormal behaviors of the object of interest. Let’s examine what some abnormal situations are and how medical imaging can diagnose them.

1. Early detection of the body rejecting a kidney transplant

According to the National Health Institute (NIH), 17,600 kidney transplants were performed in the United States in 2013 [3]. Many of these diseases lead to kidney transplants, which can lead to the body rejecting the transplanted organ. Early detection of the rejection can be a matter of life and death.

Currently, rejection is diagnosed via biopsy, but a biopsy subjects a patient to risks like internal bleeding and infection. Moreover, the relatively small needle used in a biopsy may lead to over- or underestimation of the extent of inflammation in the entire graft [11]. These problems can be compounded by the fact that transplanted kidneys face a number of surgical and medical complications anyway. Therefore, a noninvasive and repeatable technique is not only helpful, but also necessary for early diagnosis of acute renal rejection.

Researchers have been introducing automatic methods to determine both normal kidney function and symptoms of kidney rejection by using dynamic contrast enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (DCE-MRI). In DCE-MRI, a contrast agent called Gd-DTPA is injected into the bloodstream, and as it permeates into the organ, the kidneys are imaged, rapidly and repeatedly. During the permeation, Gd-DTPA causes a change in the relaxation times of the tissue and creates a contrast in the images. As a result, the patterns of the contrast give functional information. MRIs can also provide good anatomical information, which help in distinguishing between diseases that affect different regions of the kidneys.

1. Diagnosing osteoporosis

Osteoporosis is a bone disease characterized by a reduction in bone mass, resulting in an increased risk of fractures [4]. With osteoporosis, a patient’s bone tissue has less than the normal amount of calcium. Low bone mass and osteoporosis occur more frequently in women. Without diagnosis and prevention, a woman can lose 20%-30% of her bone mass during the first 10 years of menopause [5]. Based on a Surgeon General’s report [6], there were approximately 10 million people over 50 with osteoporosis, and an additional 34 million with low bone mass or osteopenia, in the United States in 2002. Unfortunately, the total number is expected to increase to 61.4 million by 2020.

To diagnose and properly treat osteoporosis, doctors need the bone mineral density (BMD) measurements of the vertebral bones. The BMD measurements are strong predictors of fracture risk. In the Surgeon General’s report, it is stated that the relationship between the BMD score and future fracture is stronger than the relationship between cholesterol levels and future heart attack [6]. The BMD measurements are also used to track bone changes in treated and untreated individuals, allowing doctors to assess the effectiveness of certain drug therapies.

Dual x-ray absorptiometry (DXA) and quantitative computed tomography (QCT) are the most widely used method for taking the BMD measurements. QCT measures the true volumetric density in units of grams per cubic centimeter rather than the areal density measured by DXA.

QCT has an advantage in that it can be performed on any commercial CT scanner with the use of specially designed calibration phantoms and analysis software. Improvements have reduced the initially high radiation dose [4].

Once the test is done, a patient’s BMD is compared to the mean value in a reference population of young, healthy adults. The difference between the scores is referred to as a “T-score.” In the BMD measurements, each T-score decrease corresponds with a 1.5-2.5 times greater risk of fracture [6].

1. Identifying symptoms of autism

Autism is a neuro developmental disorder characterized by impaired social interactions and communications, and also by restricted, repetitive, and stereotyped patterns of behavior. It occurs in all ethnic and social groups, and affects every age group. Experts estimate that 1 out of 88 children aged eight might have autism, and males are four times more likely to have autism than females [7].
To detect autism in the brain, the intensity, shape and volume of the corpus callosum region are analyzed via medical imaging. Data sets are classified into two categories: 1) training and; 2) testing classes. Training classes consist of information about patients that is already known. The objective is to detect the differences between a normal and an autistic corpus callosum in the testing data sets by means of information extracted from the training data sets. During the past two decades, studies of autism’s neuropathology have increased dramatically. One can find an example study in [8].

1. Virtual colonoscopy

A virtual colonoscopy can be used to check for symptoms of pre-cancerous growths (called polyps), cancer, and other diseases of the large intestine and colon [9]. Since colorectal cancer is preventable, it is crucial to detect and treat the cancer in its earliest stage.
Most colorectal cancers begin as polyps. As polyps get bigger, they are more likely to develop into cancer, which then has the ability to spread throughout the body.
Polyp size can help to distinguish benign polyps from cancerous ones [10]. In a virtual colonoscopy, a computer puts the images together to create an animated, three-dimensional view of the inside of the large intestine [9]. Certain processes help to make the image clearer, enabling a doctor or specialist to make determinations about the different polyp types [10].

1. Low radiation dose

Unfortunately, the CT scans that reliably identify tumors also expose the patient to an X-ray dose. “It’s known that a radiation dose can increase the risk of cancer, but nobody knows exactly how much,” said Jeffrey Fessler, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at University of Michigan. “In repeat scan situations, it’s crucial that the dose be very low,” he said [13]. Based on the report in [13], Fessler’s team has been investigating methods to reduce the dose from around 2 mSv to between 0.24 and 0.4 mSv. The drawback is that the images taken at these low X-ray doses do not have good resolution as higher-dose. The advance would also benefit children and adolescents, who are thought to be more sensitive to radiation. Now, the National Institute of Health (NIH) has provided Fessler and his team $1.9 million to achieve low dose CT scans with high resolution [13].

Recourses to do discoveries
As we can see, medical imaging plays an important role in diagnosing and treating many diseases – and the above list is just a snapshot of the many ways medical imagining is used. To maintain these many projects, there are important national offices supporting these projects. In the US for instance, there is the National Institute of Health (NIH), National Science Foundation (NSF), and other national and private institutes. In 2010, the total budget of the NIH was approximately $31 billion, which covers all its expenses [12]. The NIH devotes around 10% of its funding to research within its own facilities, whereas 80% of its funding in research grants is given to outside researchers. The NIH spent $10.7 billion on clinical research, $7.4 billion on genetics-related research, $6.0 billion on prevention research, $5.8 billion on cancer, and $5.7 billion on biotechnology.

REFERENCES

1.      http://www.diffen.com/difference/CT_Scan_vs_MRI.

2.      J. L. Prince and J. M. Links, Medical imaging signals and systems, Prentice Hall, 2005.

3.      https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/health-statistics/

4.      G. M. Blake, H. W. Wahner, and I. Fogelman. Dual energy x-ray absorptiometry and ultrasoung in clinical practice. Martin Dunitz, 1999.

5.      S. Tapp. A markov model of secondary prevention of osteoporotic hip fractures. Ph.D Dissertation, 2003.

6.     Department of Health and Human Services. A report of the surgeon general: Bone Health and Osteoporosis. U. S. Public Health Service, 2004.

7.      http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/autism/detail_autism.htm.

8.      HossamAbd EL Munim, Aly A. Farag, and Manuel F. Casanova, “Frequency-Domain Analysis of the Human Brain for Studies of Autism,” Proceedings, 7th IEEE International Symposium on Signal Processing and Information Technology, ISSPIT 2007, Cairo, Egypt, December 15-18, 2007, pp. 1198-1203.

9.      http://digestive.niddk.nih.gov/ddiseases/pubs/virtualcolonoscopy.

10.    Dongqing Chen, Aly A. Farag, Robert L. Falk, and Gerald W. Dryden, "Variational Approach Based Image Pre-processing Techniques for Virtual Colonoscopy," Book Chapter of Biomedical Image Analysis and Machine Learning Technologies: Application and Techniques, Editors: Fabio Gonzalez and Eduardo Romero, 2009.

11.    Farag, A. A., El-Baz, A., Yuksel, S. E., El-Ghar, M., &Eldiasty, T. (2006). A framework for the detection of acute renal rejection with dynamic contrast enhanced magnetic resonance imaging. In Proceedings of the 3rd IEEE International Symposium on Biomedical Imaging, (pp. 418-421), Washington, DC: IEEE Press.

12.    http://www.wikipedia.org.

13. http://bme.umich.edu/faster-image-processing-to-fight-lung-cancer/

As the moon receives its light entirely from the sun, so a saint is enlightened only by following the Prophet and becomes a polished mirror in which the Divine light is reflected. It can even be said that not only the saints that came after Prophet Muhammad, but also all the previous Prophets received their light from him, who is the sun of Prophethood, upon him be peace and blessings:
He is the sun of virtues and the others are the stars that diffuse light for people at night.
All the miracles the blessed Messengers worked were because his light reached them.
(Busayri )

The word waliyy (saint) is used as an agent or as a past participle. It denotes, in the first case, one who resists sins and regularly fulfills the duties of worship and obedience with patience, while in the second case, it denotes one who has been favored with God’s help and protection. Both of these meanings are in accord with the covenant made between God and His servants, which is mentioned in the following hadith qudsi :
God Almighty declares: “Whoever shows hostility to My saint- ly servant, I will surely wage war on him. My servant cannot get near to Me with something more lovable to Me than fulfilling the things I have made incumbent on him. Then, My servant gets nearer and nearer to Me until I love him by fulfilling the supererogatory acts of worship. When I love him, I become his ears with which he hears, his eyes with which he sees, his hands with which he grasps, and his feet on which he walks. (His hearing, seeing, grasping, and walking take place in accordance with My will and commandments.) If he asks Me for something, I surely grant it to him, and if he seeks refuge from (something), I surely take him under My protection.

The saintly scholars have always dwelt upon two important dimensions of sainthood and consider them as two parts of a single unit:

• An initiate’s scrupulous observance of God’s commandments and in return,
• God’s taking him or her under His special care and protection.

Such care and protection manifest themselves as sinlessness in a Prophet, and protection against sins in a saint. Sinlessness and protection from sins are different from one another, but that not our subject matter here.
A saint is surely a noble, blessed one, and can be favored with working of wonders. However, the working of wonders is not a condition of sainthood. It is a disputed matter whether a saint knows or should know of being a saint. After all, a saint is surely an object or recipient of some special favors of God.
Ibrahim Adham defines sainthood with its dimensions and the favors it receives as renunciation of the world (not in respect to earning a living, but rather with respect to loving it from the heart), turning to God with all one’s being, and continuously expecting His turning to oneself.
According to Yahya ibn Mu‘adh, sainthood is enduring every hardship and difficulty on the way to attaining friendship with God.
Sainthood, in the words of Bayazid al-Bistami, is not to allow any desire to be known by others, despite one’s deep and continuous worship and obedience to God and one’s extraordinary care in fulfilling other duties of servanthood. According to Abu Sa‘id al-Kharraz, God opens the door slightly to one qualified for sainthood by enabling regular mention of Him and recitation of His Names. When the initiate begins to take pleasure in mentioning Him or in the recitation of His Names, the One Mentioned leads him or her by the hand to the summit of nearness to Him. Then, He clothes him or her in the bejeweled robe of His close friendship according to the degree of the person’s loyalty and faithfulness. In this position, the initiate feels Him only, thinks of Him only, keeps His company only, and holds back from everybody else other than Him, because of his or her duties to Him. Whomever God especially favors, they tremble with fear lest it lead to their perdition. While it is a requirement of a Prophet’s mission that he publicizes his Prophethood and the miracles associated with it as a manifestation of this special, sacred favor, it required among the courtesies of sainthood that a saint keeps both himself and God’s special favors towards him concealed. Concerning this, Muhyi’d-Din ibn-u’l-‘Arabi writes:

It is compulsory for God’s friends to conceal the wonders they work; so do not ridicule yourself, nor become disgraced, by publicizing them. However, the Messengers are obliged to publicize their miracles, for their miracles are connected with the coming of the Revelation.

The wonders we mention are those that can be witnessed by others or worked through the agency of the external senses and organs, such as mind-reading, giving information about things that are hidden or invisible, and crossing great distances or achieving many things in a relatively short time. Far from desiring them, saints of great stature have felt seriously uncomfortable even with the wonders that have proceeded from them unintentionally.
There is another kind of wonder related to the religious life which is not visible. Comprehension of the spirit of religion, attainment of good morals, strict observance of both the rights of God and the rights of the creatures, practicing what one has learned of religion and being blessed with its consequences, certainty in knowledge of God, sincerity and purity of intention in religious deeds and services, reaching the degree of acting as if seeing God when worshipping God in daily life, and similar attainments are wonders of this kind. Such Divine favors, which the common people cannot see and therefore attach no value to are the greatest values of the things that the distinguished servants of God should always pursue. Even if we should avoid publicizing such actions, seeking them out is tantamount to seeking out the Ultimate Truth. The heirs to the greater sainthood—the sainthood of the Prophet’s Companions, which is marked by meticulous observance of religion and self-dedication to serving it—have long been counted among the heroes of this attainment.

O God! Include us of among Your servants sincere (in faith and practicing the religion), and endowed with sincerity, and God-revering, pious, and abstinent from all forbidden things big or small, and near-stationed to You, and who love and are loved by You. Amen.

History of discussion about singularity

Vernor Vinge, a science fiction writer, first wrote about the vision of technological singularity and coined the term in 1993. He wrote, "Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended."
Ray Kurzweil, inventor and futurist, is a fervid proponent of technological singularity. Kurzweil predicts the timeline of singularity as follows:

• By 2019, a $1000 PC will have the computing power of the human brain. It will be capable of performing 20 million billion calculations.
• By 2029, a $1K PC will be a thousand times more powerful than the human brain; the human brain itself will be successfully reverse engineered.
• 2045 is singularity: machines will have surpassed humans in intelligence and in fact will have created next-generation robots even smarter than themselves. We should either merge with our creations or step out of their way. Immortality!
• By 2055, $1K of computing power will equal the processing power of all the humans on the planet.

In 2011, Ray Kurzweil sponsored a movie/documentary about singularity, titled "Transcendent Man," which has been screened in five major cities in the U.S., as well as London. In December 2012, Kurzweil was hired by Google as a director of engineering to "work on new projects involving machine learning and language processing."
In 2000, Bill Joy, a well known computer scientist and the primary figure behind the BSD operating system (on which MacOS was built on) and the widely used Java programming language, joined this discussion. In a Wired magazine article, "Why the future doesn’t need us," Joy declared, in what some have described as a "neo-Luddite" position, that he was convinced that growing advances in genetic engineering and nanotechnology would pose severe risks to humanity.

Arguments and counterarguments about the feasibility of singularity

Proponents of singularity often cite Moore’s law to support their claim. Moore’s law states, crudely, that the capacity of computer chips doubles every two years. That is, the speed and capability of computers grows at an exponential speed. Such an exponential growth is a powerful enabler. Consider the series 1,2,4,8,16,32… The small increments in the beginning may be misleading about the overall speed of the series’ growth. The 20th element in this series would be 1 million. The 266th element in this series is 1080, which is more than the number of atoms in the universe.
Proponents of singularity argue that thanks to this exponential growth, the processing powers of computers will reach such high levels in the next few decades that it will be possible to simulate the human brain in high fidelity. The workings of each neuron in the brain will be simulated in real time, achieving a full simulation of the brain. At that point, the computer will essentially have the equivalent of human intelligence. In the succeeding years, with the increase in capacity, the computer intelligence will be several folds ahead of human intelligence.
Opponents of the feasibility of singularity cite that exponential growth is hard to sustain. Exponential growth is seen in the beginning of a series, but then due to limitations/adversities, most series will level off and stay constant. An example of this is the population of rabbits. Initially, the increase is exponential; however, due to scarcity of food sources and an abundance of predators, the population stabilizes around a constant. Therefore, opponents of singularity argue that the exponential progress of computer processing speeds will similarly hit a brick wall. At the chip level, physical issues such as heating will make exponential speedup unsustainable. At the cluster level, latency, consistency, and scalability issues will also prevent exponential growth.
Underlying all of Kurzweil’s ideas regarding the progress of technology and the singularity is the Law of Accelerating Returns. This Law states that technological progress occurs exponentially instead of linearly, meaning that each new advancement enables several higher advancements instead of just one higher advancement, and, concordantly, every year brings more useful inventions and discoveries than were made in the last. The first generation artificial intelligence (AI) approaches failed, but simulating a human brain may work if we know the workings of the brain in excruciating detail. As a promising development, recently, “deep learning” and “deep neural networks” technologies achieved great success in image and speech recognition tasks.
However, the opponents of singularity like to point out that the workings of the brain as a whole are still a big mystery. We have information about the rough mechanism of how a neuron works. An excited neuron can transmit a signal to a neighboring neuron through its synapses. But, there is no clear explanation about how thought occurs from this process. Brain-scanning techniques are improving, as they are based on computers, but the brain may throw us more complex surprises as we learn more about it.
In fact, much of the brain power comes about through organic materials, and the very low-level analog physical interactions between these materials. These physical phenomena could be close to impossible to model/simulate in a digital environment. Henry Markram, lead researcher of the "Blue Brain Project" for simulating mammal brains at the molecular level, has stated that "it is not [their] goal to build an intelligent neural network." He claimed, “[That would] be very difficult because, in the brain, every molecule is a powerful computer and we would need to simulate the structure and function of trillions upon trillions of molecules as well as all the rules that govern how they interact. You would literally need computers that are trillions of times bigger and faster than anything existing today."
Another relevant question is whether we can develop the parallel processing architectures needed to support the parallel processing that goes on in the brain. The brain uses far more parallel processing than exists in most classical computing designs.
Even if a computer successfully simulates the human brain, whether such a computer design will be “scalable” to two times, ten times, or even one hundred times the brain’s normal power is an unknown; for the human brain’s computation power may be inherently unscalable. Also, if a computer models the human brain, human emotions would also be modeled. Would the resulting computer be stable? As it scales up, would it become existential and suicidal, or perhaps become an arrogant killer?

The aftermath of singularity

Several questions are raised about the aftermath of singularity. Can a downloaded personality replace the spirit? How does this equate to living forever? Singularity promises are similar to claiming that you can live forever by cloning yourself. One copy dies, but another digital copy survives. But it is clear that the copies are different entities.
And it is also clear that this is not true immortality. If we stretch singularity’s approach to immortality a little further, we can argue that humans can achieve immortality through their work or art. And to this idea Woody Allen provided the best response: "I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it by not dying."

References

• Vernor Vinge, “The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era”, 1993, available from https://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/faculty/vinge/misc/singularity.html
• Ray Kurzweil, ”The singularity is near: When humans transcend biology”, Penguin books, 2005.
• Bill Joy, “Why the future doesn’t need us”, Wired 8 (04), 2000.  
• Henry Markram, “The blue brain project”, Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 7 (2), 153–160, 2006.

Narcissus, or the Narcissist, is in love with what he sees in the pool. He loves it at the expense of the worldly reality around him. In a way, he is dependent on the pool, reality in a reversed form. The image provided by the pool makes him happy. Narcissus is nothing without the pool; it is that which enables him to replace the truth with an image.

Narcissus is so deeply immersed in his reflection that he is unable to recognize the image is just an image. He plays with his own image like a baby. In his sight, what he sees in the pool is truer than the truth. Narcissus is in a pathological state.

However, even Narcissus cannot escape reality, in spite of his ability to deceive himself. One day, he touches the water with his finger. The water moves in waves, and the image grows ugly. This depresses him. The finger breaks the illusion and points to the truth. Instead of thanking the truth for freeing him from the cage of an image, he prefers to get angry with the truth, since he prefers seeming to being.

This situation isn’t just true in the parable, but in reality. This inconsistency between reality and the image upsets the Narcissist’s balance. According to him, reality is ugly, and the image is beautiful. He does not know that real beauty is fostered in the bosom of truth.

Unfortunately, the Narcissist cannot break free of the image. He is ready to commit every kind of madness to maintain his altered reality. The poor Narcissist! In the parable, unable to resist reality’s taunts, he throws himself into the pool and drowns. He prefers being caged in that little pool to the sublimity of reality.

Every Narcissist has a pool. The same pool brings the end of every Narcissist. He needs the pool, for there is no image without it. The pool is a virtual shelter to escape when he is disturbed by reality. The pool is a trap. It offers an image, taking away character.

Unfortunately, in our modern world the Narcissists still exist. Some build their own images in the media which serve as their pools. Others are chained to themselves, so obsessed and caught up in their unfortunate altered reality. They either drown in their pool or remain caged in a lie.

Every Narcissist has a pool.

Since quinoa contains twice as much fiber in comparison to other grains, it is recommended for problems like constipation, hemorrhoids, and for controlling blood sugar. Quinoa is rich in iron, a mineral that helps carry oxygen to cells and is critical for brain functioning, retaining body heat, and producing energy.
The list of benefits goes on and on. Rich in vitamin B2, quinoa supports energy metabolism in the brain and muscle cells. Since it is rich in magnesium, it might help migraine patients. As an antioxidant, quinoa protects cells against the negative effects of free radicals and slows down aging. It also contains quercetin, a good support against spring allergies. The lignin in quinoa is a good protector against hormonal cancers, such as breast cancer.
As the world population grows and the global climate changes, there is projected to be a decrease in the harvest yields of essential grains, like wheat and rice. Many experts believe that highly efficient plants like quinoa are the way of the future. They can be used to fight famine and help humanity adapt to a changing planet.

References
FAO Web Site. Corporate Document Repository "Quinoa (Chenopodium quince) http://www.fao.org

DaMatta F M, Grandis A, Arenque B C ve Buckeridge M S (2009). Impacts of climate changes on crop physiology and food quality. Food Research International 43: 1814-1823

Jacobsen,S.E. 2003. The worldwide potential for quinoa ( Chenopodium quinoa Willd.), Food Rev. Int. 19(1–2):167–177.

Comai,S., A.Bertazzo, L.Bailoni, M.Zancato, C.V.L.Costa and G.Allegri. 2007. The content of proteic and nonproteic (free and protein bound) tryptophan in quinoa and cereal flours, Food Chem. 100:1350-1355.