NASA’s annual Spaceward Bound programme into the deserts of Earth in search of extreme life is soon to set-off for the far reaches of the United Arab Emirates.

The seven-day expedition to AL Gharbfield brings five NASA scientists, five UAE scientists, a select group of 20 local schoolteachers and 50 pupils together. Their mission — to inspire the next generation of space explorers and encourage children to choose science studies.

The teachers get to rub shoulders with top planetary scientists. This experience, it is hoped, will help the teachers to develop curriculum related to human exploration of remote and extreme environments. While the children get hands-on activities that enhance critical thinking and a chance to explore scientifically interesting but remote and extreme environments.

According to NASA, the trip entails

• Logistics and transportation

• Energy and life support

• Human factors

• Exploration and EVA activities

• Moon/Mars science and analog concepts and theory

The team will analyse salts in the desert groundwater, and set up year-round data loggers to monitor rain, fog and the growth of tough cyanobacteria found in the harsh climes of the desert.

“This microbiology shows the beginning of life, how life got started,” Asma al Ketbi, the head of the Emirates Geographic Society and a geography professor at UAE University, told the UAE daily The National. "That could be useful for understanding extreme environments on other planets.”

“The idea is that when comparing samples from the UAE to samples from other parts of the world and with samples eventually taken from Mars, similarities of the organisms might be found,” AbdulMajeed al Khajah, a UAE University medical microbiologist on the team told UAE Interact.

This article first appeared in Nature

Ewen Callaway

Zawi Hawass, Egypt’s high profile head of antiquities, is under fire over his ties to the country’s former president and his showy leadership style.

About 150 university archaeology graduates called for Hawass to quit, in a peaceful protest outside his offices yesterday, according to the Associated Press. In the days before Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak stepped down, Hawass accepted a post in Mubarak’s cabinet. Hawass also had said, before the president stepped down on Friday, that Egyptians should give Mubarak a chance at reform.

Protesters assembled outside of Hawass’ office in Cairo also complained of poor pay and Hawass’ self-aggrandizement. “He doesn’t care about us,” Gamal el-Hanafy, a 22-year-old graduate of Cairo University told AP. “He just cares about propaganda.”

To read more go to Nature news blog

Image courtesy of www.drhawass.com

Cross posted from Nature News

As petrol bombs fly near the Egyptian Museum, citizens and army mobilize against looters.

Declan Butler

“I’m a little shaken. They are throwing Molotov cocktails towards the museum.” Sarah Parcak, an archaeologist at the University of Alabama, Birmingham, who has spent the past 12 years working in Egypt, was speaking yesterday as the Al Jazeera TV news network showed live footage of running street battles around the Egyptian Museum at Tahrir Square in Cairo. “We are all nervous and scared, first and foremost for the people, but now the museum, a symbol of Egypt’s vast cultural heritage and treasures, is being threatened by Mubarak’s own people,” she said.

The military quickly extinguished the fires caused by the firebombs, but the battles around the museum continued throughout the night, with several more petrol bombs landing near the museum. Trouble had started yesterday when people loyal to President Hosni Mubarak mounted orchestrated attacks against the peaceful protesters, beating them, throwing rocks and petrol bombs, and shooting into the crowds.

So far, the protesters have held their ground against the onslaught, but the night’s battles have left at least 8 dead and 900 wounded.

Military priorities often take precedence during conflicts, while loss of life is the immediate concern in a humanitarian crisis. But efforts must nonetheless also be made to preserve artefacts, sites and monuments that are part of a nation’s cultural heritage, and also vital to understanding its history. Balancing these concerns is a problem that the international community has grappled with for decades.

“We are all very concerned about the Egyptian Museum, but please what we need first is to restore order and save the Egyptian people.”

The massive destruction of cultural heritage during the Second World War prompted the adoption of the Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict in 1954 at The Hague in the Netherlands. Signatories to the Convention pledge to take measures such as creating maps and inventories of cultural heritage, and to set up military units with expertise in archaeology and the protection of key sites and artefacts. In principle, governments and armies should draw up heritage-protection plans during peacetime, which can be activated once a conflict starts.

But implementation of the treaty varies widely. “There is much work to do,” says Julien Anfruns, director-general of the International Council of Museums, and president of the International Committee of the Blue Shield – the cultural equivalent of the Red Cross. “The Hague Convention is important, and the chaos over the past few days makes it even more important,” says Frank Rühli, who co-heads the Swiss Mummy Project at the University of Zurich’s Institute of Anatomy in Switzerland.

Egypt is a signatory to the Hague treaty, but few details are known about the heritage-protection plans of its military. It is clear, however, that the military was initially caught off guard by the recent surge in protests in Egypt, taking several days to secure the country’s main museums and sites.

“There was a period at the beginning that was dangerous. Now it seems that main sites are protected by military,” says Rühli, who had been scheduled to fly to Egypt this week to work in the Valley of Kings, but now doubts that his team will be able to resume its work there before the end of the year.

People power

Under normal conditions, Egypt’s archaeological sites are “amazingly well guarded”, says Parcak, for example by the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities’ (SCA) security guards. She attributes this effort to Zahi Hawass, head of the council, who was made minister of antiquities — a new position — in Mubarak’s new government sworn in on 31 January. “He will be doing everything in his power to make sure the sites are protected,” she says.

“Egypt’s ancient heritage is so rich that the whole country is basically one large open-air museum.”

But in the early days of the uprising, the unrest provided a window of opportunity for looters. Young citizens responded by helping the SCA’s security guards, forming vigilante groups to protect sites. They formed a human chain around the Egyptian Museum on the first night of rioting in the vicinity, for example, and so prevented any serious damage or thefts.

Ismail Seregeldin, director of the Library of Alexandria, issued a statement on 30 January to thank the youth for protecting the library from “lawless bands of thugs, and maybe agents provocateurs”. The Library would remain closed, he added, until greater security returned.

In a statement yesterday, Hawass said that the army was now protecting all 24 national museums, including the Egyptian Museum, the Coptic Museum and the Museum of Islamic Art in Cairo, as well as all the major archaeological sites, including Luxor, Aswan, Saqqara and the pyramids of Giza. The local population are guarding the San el-Hagar site in the Nile Delta.

Impossible task?

But many researchers fear that it may be impossible to protect all the country’s important heritage sites, leaving some vulnerable should the security situation worsen. “Egypt’s ancient heritage is so rich that the whole country is basically one large open-air museum. It would be impossible to station a soldier at the door of each and every tomb,” says Margaret Maitland, a graduate student in Egyptology at the University of Oxford, UK, who has been collating information about lootings and damage on her blog, The Eloquent Peasant.

Meanwhile, researchers are struggling to assess any losses or damage to artefacts, hampered by continuing difficulties in getting reliable information from inside the country. Parcak has created a Facebook page, Restore + Save the Egyptian Museum!, where archaeologists are sharing information on damage and looting, and trying to separate fact from rumour.

So far it seems that the damage to the Egyptian Museum on 28 January, when 10 men descended into the museum on ropes from glass panes on the roof, was limited, with around 70 objects broken. A warehouse storing antiquities was also looted in Qantara in the Sinai, but most of the roughly 300 stolen objects have been recovered. Padlocks on tombs in Saqqara were broken, but no damage to the tombs was reported.

Rühli hopes that Egypt will call on external experts to form an international mission to assess the damage, and decide what restoration is needed. Such a mission could also assess the security at sites, and how this might be improved. Jan Hladík, a specialist in cultural heritage at the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), notes there was a similar UNESCO mission during the Iraq War, in 2003. Researchers have also called on law-enforcement agencies and art dealers around the world to look out for stolen Egyptian antiquities.

For those in the thick of the fighting, however, Egypt’s vast heritage is understandably not the most pressing priority. “We are all very concerned about the Egyptian Museum, but please what we need first is to restore order and save the Egyptian people,” one member of the Restore + Save the Egyptian Museum! Facebook page posted last night, after returning from the bloody clashes in Tahrir Square.

Cross posted from <a href= “https://www.nature.com/news/2011/110203/full/news.2011.70.html”>Nature News

SESAME experiment pushes on despite revolutions and assassinations.

Geoff Brumfiel

When members of international scientific projects meet, it’s typically a mild affair. But at the Synchrotron-light for Experimental Science and Applications in the Middle East (SESAME) there is a sense that the stakes are considerably higher. At a gathering last year, project members held a minute of silence in remembrance of Masoud Alimohammadi, the Iranian physicist and fellow participant who was killed by a car bomb in Tehran. In November, a second member of the Iranian delegation was assassinated.

As pro- and anti-government protesters continue to clash in Cairo, the SESAME project is reaching a crucial phase of its own. To reach completion, it needs an extra US$35 million. Israel has committed $5 million, provided that other countries in the region step in with similarly sized contributions. Egypt was expected to match the Israeli pledge at a meeting this March. Hany Helal, the nation’s minister of scientific research under President Hosni Mubarak, has been a staunch supporter of SESAME. Yet no one can guess how long Helal will remain in his post, or what a new government’s attitude towards the project might be.

“It’s obviously a bit worrying,” says Chris Llewellyn Smith, a British physicist and president of SESAME’s council. “But I think we’ll come through it.” Indeed, scientists across the Middle East remain adamant that SESAME will go forward, despite the cash shortages, protests in Egypt and continued unrest in Jordan, where the project is based. “It’s very important that we keep it going, especially at times like this,” says Zehra Sayers, a biophysicist at Sabanci University in Istanbul, Turkey, and chair of SESAME’s scientific advisory committee.

Peace through science

SESAME began in the late 1990s as a way to build scientific ties in the troubled region. Originally, the plan was to move a decommissioned German synchrotron to Jordan, where it could be used for materials and biological imaging along with studies in agriculture, archaeology and engineering.

In recent years, researchers decided it would be better to upgrade the older machine to a more sophisticated “third-generation” light source capable of delivering energies of 2.5 gigaelectronvolts. Llewellyn Smith, who took a leading role in the project in 2008, has supported the upgrade. “If it’s good for doing science, the political aim of getting people together will follow,” he says.

But building a world-class machine, even with recycled parts, costs money. A new estimate led by Llewellyn Smith, who has overseen projects such as the Large Hadron Collider, shows a $35 million gap in the construction budget. Foreign donors such as the European Union and the United States have been reluctant to get involved without a clear commitment from regional governments.

Jordan, Iran and Turkey had all indicated they might match the Israeli offer, and at a meeting on 11 March, Llewellyn Smith says he hopes to get firm commitments from many of the countries involved. Even if the contributions are short of the $35-million goal, he says, the money will make it possible to obtain additional contributions from Western governments and major foundations.

Uncertain future

Whether Egypt will be in a position to contribute next month remains unclear. The crisis is still unfolding in Egypt. Tarek Hussein, a physicist at Cairo University who spent most of last week encouraging his students to protest peacefully, says he is optimistic that any new government will remain committed to SESAME. There is reason for hope: Mohammed ElBaradei, the current head of the Egyptian opposition, was supportive of SESAME when he was director of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna.

If Egypt is not able to pay, it will put more pressure on other partners during difficult times. Already, the financial crisis resulting from last year’s flooding has forced Pakistan to suspend its payments to the project. But Sayers says that she is optimistic Turkey can contribute. Llewellyn Smith says he has received positive signals from the Palestinian Authority, Jordan and Iran.

“What’s astounding about the project is how robust it is,” says Eliezer Rabinovici, a string theorist at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and one of the scientists who helped to found the collaboration. Rabinovici says that no matter what happens politically, SESAME meetings are always filled with scientists eager to discuss their latest research. “It’s definitely a parallel universe,” he says.

Cross posted from Nature News

Michael Harms, director of the Cairo office of the German Academic Exchange Service, offers a view from the Egyptian capital.

Quirin Schiermeier

As the protests against President Hosni Mubarak gather pace across Egypt, the growing possibility of regime change is inspiring hope among many sectors of the population. The swelling number of protestors has seen academics add their voices to the call for change (see ‘Scientists join protests on streets of Cairo to call for political reform’).

But the volatile situation in the country inevitably means uncertainty for the scientific enterprise, and a stronger future for research will depend in part on support from international collaborators such as Germany, which has had strong scientific links with Egypt for decades.

The German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), which supports international academic cooperation, has had an outpost in Cairo for more than 50 years. In 2009, it funded 189 German academics in Egypt, and 679 Egyptian academics in Germany.

Michael Harms, director of the DAAD’s Cairo office, spoke to Nature about the current situation and the prospects for the future.

Where are you now?

My team, as well as 55 German DAAD fellows, have been camping here in the office since Friday. We’re located in the diplomatic quarter on the Zamalek Nile Island, just a few kilometres from Cairo’s main square downtown and the centre of the protests. The situation here is still very critical: there are armed guys patrolling the streets, and there are militia everywhere.

What is the mood among Egyptian academics?

They basically share the same views with the majority of the protesters: a deep fury about the Mubarak regime. Most intellectuals say the regime is unfair and corrupt. But nobody really has a programme or a vision for the future, nor are there any common goals for the time to come.

The many academics I have spoken to do not think there is currently a political force which would be capable of unifying the country. Certainly they don’t trust the Muslim Brotherhood [a leading political opposition group] to do it. There is also a widespread feeling that Western-style democracy is not a panacea for Egypt. But few have a good idea of what a political system that would suit Egypt should look like.

How would you describe Egyptian science?

There are many problems. Universities are critically under-funded and academic salaries are so low that most scientists need second jobs to be able to make a living. Tourist guides earn more money than most scientists. You just can’t expect world-class research under these circumstances. Also, Egypt has no large research facilities, such as particle accelerators. Some 750,000 students graduate each year and flood the labour market, yet few find suitable jobs – one reason for the current wave of protests.

But there are some good scientists here, particularly those who have been able to study and work abroad for a while. The Egyptian Ministry of Higher Education has started some promising initiatives. For example, in 2007 it created the Science and Technology Development Fund (STDF), a Western-style funding agency. And Egypt is quite strong in renewable energies and, at least in some universities, in cancer research and pharmaceutical research.

The Egyptian science minister, Hany Helal, is still in office. This is good news for us inasmuch as we need continuity, not least when it comes to funding ongoing projects and fellowships. Helal is in a better position than other ministers in the Mubarak government because many academics here perceive him as colleague rather than as part of the regime. Helal has previously overseen Egypt’s involvement in a European Union-funded programme – Tempus – aimed at modernizing higher education in countries near the European Union.

How can Germany and other Western countries help Egyptian science to grow?

The worst they could do would be to discontinue existing programmes. There was a very successful German–Egyptian ‘Year of Science’ in 2007 [which promoted scientific collaborations]. We now have several co-financed master’s and PhD programmes running, and there are a number of bilateral research projects in areas such as sustainable city development and renewable energy. There is also a €3.8-million (US$5.2-million) German–Egyptian Research Fund, jointly managed by the German science ministry, the DAAD and the STDF. Currently, there are 25 bilaterally funded research projects [in Egypt and Germany]. The next funding round is to be discussed at a steering committee meeting in March in Germany. We hope that the STDF will still exist then.