Posted on 07/04/2007 9:49:14 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
I speak with physicist Hamed Tarawneh at his cramped, dingy temporary office at UNESCO's headquarters in Amman. Tarawneh, a tall, broad-shouldered chain-smoker with a disarming smile, left years ago to get his Ph.D. in Sweden and returned to Jordan just a few months prior to our meeting. He is in the process of assembling a staff of engineers and technicians for SESAME (Synchrotron-light for Experimental Science and Applications in the Middle East), an international laboratory organized around a machine that has wide applications in physics, biology, medicine, and archaeology. Only a handful of these versatile light generators exist, and this is the first in the Muslim world.
Jordan was selected as the site for SESAME after King Abdullah II donated land and ponied up $10 million for the facility that would house the synchrotron. The project is modeled on CERN, the Swiss high-energy physics lab formed after World War II to restore Europe's tradition of scientific learning. When SESAME becomes fully operational in 2009 -- the facility at Al-Balqa Applied University near Amman should be complete this June -- researchers will rotate through doing their work in weeks-long sessions. Like its European model, SESAME was conceived in part to motivate the region's best and brightest to stay, or even to return from abroad; the laboratory should also create excitement and opportunity that will attract young students to science.
Tarawneh hopes SESAME will become a knowledge hub for the member states that pay annual dues, a group that now includes Bahrain, Egypt, Pakistan, Turkey, the Palestinian Authority -- and Israel, the one country in the region that has a knowledge-based society but has been excluded from almost every other endeavor.
(Excerpt) Read more at discovermagazine.com ...
Is there anything that Islam is not in conflict with except for hatred, murder and mayhem?
“Would I earn more if I went to Berkeley?” Tarawneh asks. “Yes, of course. But I am from here. I am an Arab. I am a Muslim. This is where I want to be."Too bad he isn't forced to say this:
"I am an Arab. I am a Mulsim. And it is impossible for me to get a visa to visit or work in the USA."
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