Imagine that you had digital access to all the books that have ever been written. Imagine further that you could search through them just by a few keystrokes. And that you could find out how frequently any word or expression of interest to you were used through the ages. Do you think this would be an extraordinary tool?

In fact, that tool already exists and it currently can search through more than six million books. That is possible first because Google has already digitized about a quarter of the 130 million books that have ever been written, and secondly, because two brilliant scientists have produced a software that allows anyone to perform such word searches and in a number of languages.

I recently read the book that those two young scientists — Erez Aiden and Jean-Baptiste Michel — published in 2013, where they describe their work, give all kinds of illuminating examples and explain why this may be regarded as a quantum leap in our exploration of various aspects of history. The book, Uncharted: Big Data as a Lens on Human Culture, gives a number of examples of word comparisons that can be performed through time (going back to the earliest book available) and where, in each case, one sees how humanity sometimes gradually and sometimes suddenly changed its mindset: Men and women (spoiler: the word “women” overtakes “men” in books in 1983), war and peace, gold and oil, coffee and tea, science and religion, Catholics and Muslims and many more. One quickly sees how this tool indeed becomes a “lens” on human culture.

As I have mentioned, the tool can be used by everyone; it is freely usable online, at: https://books.google.com/ngrams. In December 2010, Aiden and Michel published a paper presenting their work in the top journal Science and simultaneously released the tool, the “Ngram Viewer”, which allows anyone to do search comparisons between words or expressions from 1500 to today, or actually to 2008, to be accurate. The next day, it was on the front page of the New York Times, and within 24 hours, it got more than three million visits. Clearly, they had hit on something.

I remember hearing about the Ngram Viewer a few years ago and actually visiting the webpage and doing a few searches for fun, but I had not grasped its historical and cultural significance. The book explains this very well, and in witty style.

Indeed, applications range from the linguistic to the socio-political: One can investigate and come to understand the history and evolution of irregular verbs, social norms (through expressions, such as “slavery”, “heaven and hell”, “terrorism”, etc.), scientific topics (“evolution”, “space ship” or “space travel”, “cancer”, “autism”, etc.), how people become famous (and which types of personalities society prefers), how quickly various technologies spread through society (trains, telephones, radio, TV, internet, etc.), and many other trends.

The moment I understood all this, and well before I finished the book, I went online and decided to do some “interesting” searches. On the barebone webpage, I saw the languages menu, and I immediately thought: ‘Yes, I’ll search through the Arabic heritage; there are so many things one can learn from the frequency with which some words or expressions have been used in Arabic books through history!’ How disappointed — I was to find that Arabic was not one of the available languages: American English, British English, Chinese, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Russian and Spanish.

There have actually been some digitisation efforts made with Arabic or Islamic manuscripts. For example, the Yemeni Manuscript Digitisation Initiative, the largest of such efforts, covers 50,000 books from the 10th century to the present; the Welcome Arabic Manuscripts collection has about 1,000 digitised texts on the history of medicine; and other such initiatives, often found in western universities. Compared to the millions of books that Google and Ngram allow one to search, those manuscript collections are a tiny fraction of the Arabic/Islamic heritage. The Arab-Muslim world may currently have other fish to fry, but this is an important cultural development that some governments or cultural foundations should seriously consider.

In fact, it is not just books that are being digitised (Google says it will be done with all 130 million of them by 2020), newspapers are being digitised (one Australian foundation has already taken care of 100 million articles), and of course our current online activity (emails, tweets, facebook posts, Instagram pictures, YouTube videos, etc.) is already digital. Soon, the sum total of our digital records will provide both scholars and the general public extraordinary fields to plough, where human history, society and culture could be examined from various angles.

The Arab world must move its history and culture from the dusty shelves of old libraries and private collections to the digital, open and immediately accessible world of today and tomorrow.

By Nidhal Guessoum, published in Gulf News, April 2nd 2015.

Nidhal Guessoum is a professor at the American University of Sharjah. You can follow him on Twitter at: www.twitter.com/@NidhalGuessoum.

In the past few years, an awakening, through the ‘Arab Spring’, has focused on a political dimension of societal change. While the process of transformation begins with democracy, it does not end there. Though public uprisings have brought political changes, a new revolution is needed to transform the culture of learning. The failure of Arab education is a significant underlying cause of youth discontent in the region and has serious cultural, economic and political consequences.

The status of the Arab world in science and education is unacceptable. Its contribution to international scientific research is insignificant and Arab universities do not regularly rank among the world’s 500 best institutions. It is remarkable that between 25 and 40% of the Arab population of 350 million remains illiterate, while adult skills in the digital age are now defined in terms of literacy, numeracy, and problem solving.

In Egypt, which has the largest population of Arab countries, hundreds of thousands of students get a university education that is not compatible with the modern world. And, on the global market, there are no technological products “made in Arabia”.

It is too simplistic to ascribe a single cause, such as a false distinction between faith and reason. From a genetic point of view, Arabs are no different from those of any other ethnicity; there is no geographic monopoly on intelligence. Clearly, Arabs and Muslims in Spain, North Africa, and Arabia were at the apex of civilization when Christian Europe was in the dark ages.
The reasons for this lack of endeavor and achievement are myriad; including colonization, corruption, and constitutional deficiencies restricting human liberty and freedom of thought. And, for decades, the use of religion in politics and politics in religion have clouded national goals and diverted attention from the real issues facing Arab nations.
The question that needs to be answered is not what went wrong, but what can be done now? Revolutionary changes, not incremental ones, have to take place in education and scientific thought, with three essential components for progress.

First is the building of human resources by restoring literacy, ensuring active participation of women in society, and reforming education.

Second, there is a need to reform the national constitution to allow freedom of thought; to streamline and rationalize bureaucracy; to develop merit-based systems and create a credible and enforceable legal code.

Thirdly, and most tangibly, the constitution should ensure that the budget for research and development is above 1% of the nation’s GDP. In light of recent revolutions in Egypt, Tunisia and elsewhere, these changes are possible.

In this vision, human capital is paramount. The Arab world needs to nurture a new generation of professionals capable of thinking critically and creatively, one with contemporary knowledge of science and technology, and with the new emerging disciplines in physical, medical, and social sciences.

Such a pool of knowledge would help identify and provide solutions for fundamental problems facing society. Research into alternative energies, water resources, or drug design can bring numerous social benefits and rewards from the country’s economic growth and the participation in the global market.

Changes must be initiated at the root of the education system which is based on rote learning with a focus on the quantity rather than the quality of information delivered to students. This should be replaced with a merit-based system designed to encourage free and creative thinking, with practical experiences.

The landscape of funding and recognition in research also needs to be reformed. Today’s convention of using the number of publications to determine candidates for academic promotion has proven to be of little value and must be replaced with a framework to identify original and innovative contributions. Finally, there should be a strong link forged between the academic and industrial sectors to maximize potential mutual benefits from basic research and industrial interests, globally and domestically.

“Renaissance in the Arab world will not be possible without genuine government recognition of the critical role of science in development.”

In Egypt, the pioneering National Project for Scientific Renaissance, “Zewail City of Science and Technology”, was set up in 2011 to encompass these concepts in education, research, and the industrial impact. The project is funded by donations from the Egyptian people and the government.

At the heart of the City is the University of Science and Technology, whose primary role is to attract talented students from all over the country and offer unique academic curricula in cutting-edge fields of sciences and engineering.

The second major arm of the project comprises research institutes staffed with world-class scientists prioritizing research into essential national problems. The institutes, equipped with state-of-the-art equipment, represent a wide range of interdisciplinary fields, including nanotechnology, environmental engineering, renewable energy, space and communication technology, materials science, biomedical science, and physics of earth and the universe.
The third and last major component is the “Technology Pyramid”, which is responsible for commuting research output to industrial applications. It is designed to establish, with intellectual property protection, incubators and spin-off companies and to attract major international corporations to encourage a healthy climate for research-industry exchanges.
The benefits from the Zewail City of Science and Technology, domestically and on a world stage, are numerous. We believe this prototype initiative of three structures, if transferred to other parts of the Arab world, will change the landscape of education and scientific research, and, through significant international participation, will foster new opportunities for the youth of Arab nations.

Renaissance in the Arab world will not be possible without genuine government recognition of the critical role of science in development and policies providing commensurate funding for basic research and reform of rigid bureaucracy which thwarts progress.
In doing so, Arab nations will regain confidence to compete in today’s international science and globalised economy. It is gratifying to see several new centres of advanced education and research and development being set up in the region.

However, the goal of the Egyptian initiative is different. Under one umbrella we are providing the milieu for education and research, from school and university stages to advanced manufacturing and market levels. This may be a route to developing society scientifically and culturally, to growing economically, and for restoring the prominent role of Arabs worldwide.

By Ahmed Zewail & Sherif Sedky, published in Nature Middle East, January 9^th 2014.

Ahmed Zewail won the 1999 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. He is the Linus Pauling Chair professor of chemistry and professor of physics at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), and is currently the director of the Moore Foundation’s Center for Physical Biology at Caltech. He is also the founding president of the Zewail City of Science and Technology.
Sherif Sedky is the founding provost of Zewail University of Science and Technology and the director of the Nanotechnology Center at Zewail City of Science and Technology.

I will never forget a rich Arab businessman I met in New York at the Clinton Global Initiative. He had an American lady in charge of his non-governmental organization. She was a great woman dedicated to her work, who would stay until midnight doing her job. He said that women in the Arab world will never succeed until they are ready to stay at work until midnight like the American woman. He complained that Arab women want to go home at five o’clock to look after their families. I was upset. I told him that it should be their choice how long they want to work; and if they have priorities such as family and want to leave at five, then this should be respected. It is men like him, and in some cases women, who undermine who we are.

The issues faced by women in science are beginning to receive more attention. On this page last week, Athene Donald highlighted one initiative to tackle gender bias (A. Donald Nature 490, 447; 2012). I would like to offer a perspective from the Islamic world.

Despite the impression given by extremists, Islam gives women the right to education. More than four in ten women who go to university in Jordan go into science, engineering or medicine. Women outnumber men on courses in natural science, pharmacology and agriculture; numbers are equal in maths and computer science; and one in three engineering students in Jordan is a woman.

Some of the problems faced by women scientists in the Middle East are the same as those faced by women around the world. Our productivity, for instance, is measured on a male scale. The years we spend taking care of children are not calculated as part of the gross domestic product of a country. What is more important — to build physical things or to nurture a human being?

As an example of this male scale, L’Oréal and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization are running a competition to award fellowships to Arab women scientists — but you have to be under 40 to enter. This is biased, and based on metrics from a male-dominated world, in which if a man doesn’t make it by 40 he is a failure.

The feminist movement was a good thing, but it was too focused on equality with men and failed to enable us to respect ourselves as women and to be proud of who we are.

“One must not fall into the trap of transferring solutions from one culture to another.”

Another common challenge to all women scientists is lack of mentoring and networking. Most women scientists everywhere have two jobs — work and home — and most will not give up home for work. They will always be worried about the children, want to be with them, and feel that the father’s presence won’t compensate for their own absence. So they don’t take time after work to have a coffee with their colleagues.

Yet this informal environment is where scientists learn what is going on; where they lobby, network, mentor and get mentored. Women don’t have the time. Networking is an extra effort. Men mentor each other and spend time together after work, fostering the men’s club. Women rush home to take care of children, not because they have to but because they want to.

This is a major obstacle for women scientists in terms of opportunities, learning and support. That is why mentoring projects — something we lack in the Arab world — are important. But social media allow mentoring online, and some women scientists now plan to start an online mentoring scheme for women scientists in Jordan, in collaboration with the country’s first woman university president, Rowaida Maaitah.

Women also have challenges specific to the Middle East. These may not be so obvious because they are subtle, and must be identified, studied and solved by Arab women themselves. For instance, the September study about a bias among US scientists against women, mentioned by Donald last week (C. A. Moss-Racusin et al. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA http://doi.org/jkm; 2012), would not necessarily translate to the Arab Muslim world, where the prevailing attitude among both men and women is that women work hard and are more dependable than men. One must not fall into the trap of transferring solutions from one culture to another.

I know of an American researcher who went to Bulgaria to help women fight for their rights. She went assuming that they would want to demand to work. But Bulgarian women who had lived under Communism wanted the exact opposite. They wanted the freedom to stay at home if they chose.

A much-misunderstood issue is the covering of the hair and sometimes the face by Muslim women. In the West, this is often considered a sign of oppression. Yet more than half the female students and academics in the Arab world choose to cover their hair for religious reasons, compared with fewer than 10% 20 years ago. These young women are educated, affluent and independent. I have a graduate student who covers her face who told me that she believed she would win a Nobel prize. This is not oppression.

I see the Arab spring as an opportunity for women to learn about their rights and to advocate for them — to distinguish between what is tradition and what is religion. This would weed out extremists who, through ignorance, distort the image of Islam. And it would weed out opportunists who want to misrepresent Muslim women. Throughout the Islamic civilization that flourished in the Middle Ages there were more than 8,000 women scholars. There are many more on the way today.

By Rana Dajani, published in Nature, October 31th 2012.

Download full article here

A high-level group set up by the European Commission to report on the quality of teaching in the region’s higher-education institutions concluded that it is “an embarrassing disappointment”. The report, published in June, added: “Serious commitment to best practice in the delivery of this core teaching mission is not universal, is sporadic at best and frequently reliant on the enlightened commitment of a few individuals.” Similar concerns have been expressed about higher education in the United States.

The problem becomes more acute when set against the backdrop of continued economic uncertainty. As Chinese scientist Qiang Wang pointed out on this page earlier this year (see Nature 499, 381; 2013), there is a worrying disconnect between what is taught in schools and universities, and the skills those students need in the real world. He was talking about China, but students everywhere face the same conundrum. We need to educate our youth to be entrepreneurs, so that they can create their own jobs despite the economic uncertainty.

“Our objective in education must be to light a fire in the heart of every individual.”

Students in the Arab world also face political uncertainty, as demonstrated by the events of the ‘Arab Spring’ and the continuing tensions. Despite some progress in education — in school enrolment, for example — the need for innovative teaching strategies is even more urgent here. Education reform in these countries tends to focus on the construction of new buildings, facilities and curricula. Knowledge, information and theories are presented as indisputable facts, and this creates students who struggle with the idea of uncertainty and who do not develop the analytical and problem-solving skills they need to prosper.

We need to shape and develop our own education systems. Simply reproducing Western models of education runs the risk of, among other issues, ignoring the configurations of politics, religion and gender unique to our region. Indeed, once the Arab world expands its innovative educational programmes, a healthy synergy between East and West can develop.

In my teaching of cell biology to university students in Jordan, I have introduced some innovations aimed at making the students think for themselves. As we all know, the media often inaccurately report science. I ask students to identify an item on the radio, television or in the newspapers, and to check whether it is true. Then they write to the media organization to outline their findings and add a note about the impact of misleading information on patients and the general public, and the importance of making the source of the story clear.

This is an example of what educators call ‘service-learning’. The students learn through their own research, while simultaneously serving the community, in this case the media — which in theory could alter the way science is reported in the future. Service-learning lets students learn more than the facts; they discover the relevance of that knowledge to real life and how it affects a community. They see their role in building that community and acquire a sense of responsibility. When they graduate, they have more confidence to try to drive change, even in a world of unemployment or instability.

Many university students are not interested in some courses they take, often because they are obligatory. I see it with some students on my molecular-biology course. To pique their interest, ideally I would like to give them a relevant novel to read, say Darwin’s Radio by Greg Bear. As well as covering the basic concepts of molecular biology, this book discusses the ethics of its application to real-world situations. Classroom discussion would be enlivened by discussion of the characters and themes, and the students would develop different points of reference for looking at a particular issue. Drama can also be used to teach biological mechanisms. Involving students personally in a three-dimensional world makes them think of the mechanism from the perspective of the molecule. They can then better understand the limitations, challenges, potential and beauty of cells.

Our societies do not need students who are merely textbook educated; we need students who can engage positively with society. Too often, higher education focuses on the former without paying attention to the latter. We are all potential entrepreneurs in the sense that we can easily identify problems. The bigger challenge, and where conventional education fails, is to enable us to overcome doubts and inhibitions and take action. The goal of higher education should be for students to learn to apply the knowledge and skills they acquire to the realm of everyday life.

As the poet William Butler Yeats said: “Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.” Our objective in education must be to light a fire in the heart of every individual.

By Rana Dajani, published in Nature, October 23rd 2013.

Download full article here

Nidhal Guessoum

Most people have a very traditional conception of teaching. Ask a parent how she imagines her child in school, and she will describe a classroom with a teacher standing at the front, near a board (white, black, or green), and pupils (hopefully a small number) sitting at tables, one by one or two by two, row behind row, listening and writing. Ask a (typical) educator how teaching is best performed, and he may murmur something about “active” or “collaborative” learning, “technology and web tools”, and other such “innovative” approaches, but in reality, he will most likely be just lecturing to his students, trying to impart as much “knowledge” as possible.

Many Muslims believe that the Quran is not merely the word of God but a religious scripture that also predicts or describes scientific phenomena and theories, among other things.  An example supporting this view is a verse in the Quran that says that God “has constructed the heavens with might” and is “steadily expanding it.” Proponents of the theory that the Quran foretells scientific discoveries say that this is line with the modern observation that the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate.

Now, these meditations on the text, as per the new ministerial resolution, may be taught as scientific “facts” in Egyptian schools – an issue that some might regard as perturbing at best.

“This is not how science is done; looking in the Quran diverts students from the tried-and-true scientific method, i.e. the need to observe nature, study phenomena, formulate hypotheses, draw conclusions and predictions, test the hypotheses through experiments and more observations,” comments Nidhal Guessoum, renowned Algerian astrophysicist, and author of Islam’s Quantum Question: Reconciling Muslim Tradition and Modern Science.”

So far, the harshest backlash in Egypt came from a few media personalities, and two political groups that advocate secularism and separating religion from politics. The new move by the minister is, in his words, part of “promised progress” in the research and education sphere, according to circulating press reports.

Guessoum, however, says that none of the many examples that have been advanced to proof that scientific prophecies are hidden within the religious text stand up to scrutiny; “on the contrary, they simply betray basic and serious misunderstandings of the relevant science on the part of the claimers.”

A Muslim himself, he opines that the Quran never tells Muslims to dissect (and bend) its verses in search of scientific knowledge; “on the contrary it tells us: ‘Travel in the earth and see how creation (was) started…’ and, ‘We shall show them our signs in the horizons and in themselves…’, and hundreds of verses that exhort Muslims to observe, think, contemplate, etc. – never to look for natural facts in the Book.”

The scientist believes that the Quran considers natural phenomena as signs that point to a higher intelligence and a purpose, “but that’s at the interpretation stage, not at the exploration/research stage. The science part is done through the usual research methodology, then the interpretation, or theology is done after that to draw meaning from what’s been discovered.”

“Why would the Quran carry 20th to 21st century science in particular?”

During a press conference at Zewail City for Science and Technology, this editor ran the question by Nobel Prize winner and the “father of femtochemistry” Ahmed Zewail, who was appointed by President Abdel-Fatah El-Sisi to a presidential advisory council, typically consulted on education among other things.

Zewail avoided outright criticism of the move by the ministry, clarifying that he doesn’t personally “see a collision between science and religion,” specifically a version of religion that is “forgiving” and “which understands what scientific development and what science application mean.” Still, he affirmed that in places like Zewail City, a hub for scientific research and knowledge, this “mixing” between religious concepts and science will not be present.

By Pakinam Amer, published in Nature Middle East | House of Wisdom, September 15th 2014.

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Nawar Fakhry Ezzi

Efforts have recently been made to increase awareness regarding depression and suicide in Saudi Arabia. Nawal Al-Hawsawi, a counseling psychologist, arranged a Twitter conference last month in order to discuss the causes and symptoms of depression in addition to dedicating a hashtag in Arabic, which translates as “You are not alone!, to support people with suicidal tendencies.
In this conference, Sheikh Suleiman Al-Tarify, a cleric in the Saudi Ministry of Islamic Affairs, stated that it is wrong to assume that suicide attempts result from lack of faith. He said that those who are suicidal should get the appropriate psychological and medical treatment in addition to being guided spiritually. Although this statement is not widely accepted, it can still be considered a huge leap forward in understanding depression and people with suicidal tendencies.
Until recently, it was a taboo to talk about suicide in Saudi Arabia as well as in many Islamic countries because many people assumed that we as “righteous” Muslims do not commit suicide and if someone did, he was deemed to be an apostate regardless of his mental condition. Depression, which is one of the leading causes of suicide, was and still is judged by some people as the first sign of weakness in character and faith in God. The paradox is that some of those who condemn suicide victims condone suicide attacks as if killing others is justifiable while being depressed to the point of suicide is a sign of “cowardice” that deserves condemnation!
Ironically, the population of the Middle East and North Africa has one of the highest rates of clinical depression around the world along with some countries in Sub-Saharan Africa and Eastern Europe. These were the results of a study conducted last year at Australia’s University of Queensland and published in PLOS Medicine journal. By using preexisting data, researchers found that most developed countries actually have lower rates of depression than most developing countries. Unsurprisingly, Afghanistan and Palestine have recorded the highest depression rates worldwide.
In this case, depression is not meant to be the “blues” that almost everyone experiences at some point in their life as a result of going through difficult times or after the death of a loved one. The depression rate studied in the research mentioned earlier is “clinical depression”, which according to the World Health Organization is “a mental disorder, characterized by sadness, loss of interest or pleasure, feelings of guilt or low self-worth, disturbed sleep or appetite, feelings of tiredness, and poor concentration”. It occurs as a result of decreased levels of two chemicals in the brain and is caused by genetic predisposition, social factors, physical illness or age. Accordingly, high depression rates in the study have little to do with faith and more with social injustice, political conflicts and the horrors of war.
Fortunately, most patients who receive proper psychological and medical treatment recover from depression. In addition, just as chemicals in the brain can affect a person’s attitude toward life, positive reinforcement and faith can be a significant factor in improving the chances of recovery for people who suffer from depression and get the proper treatment. According to research conducted at Wayne State University, there is a positive correlation between patients’ faith and improved emotional and physical rehabilitation outcomes. Believing in a benevolent, loving higher power is a source of power to those who feel completely hopeless and helpless.
Also, religious scriptures can provide consolation to many people who read them. For Muslims, the Holy Qur’an contains many versus and stories, such as the story of Yusuf (peace be upon him), which could be a source of hope and an inspiration to triumph after suffering from great oppression. This cannot happen though if people feel condemned and rejected by their faith because in that case religion could contribute to a further worsening of their condition.
The least we can do is to recognize depression as an illness and to sympathize with those who suffer from it in order to help them get better and hopefully not to be suicidal. September 10 was World Suicide Prevention Day and for once everyone’s goal is to prevent suicide. However, it cannot be achieved through intimidation and narrow-mindedness, but rather it should be achieved by providing unconditional support and love, so we are better able to help those who are silently suffering. In this way, we can help in creating a more sympathetic environment where patients can seek psychological and medical treatment without feeling ashamed or stigmatized.

By Nawar Fakhry Ezzi, published in Saudi Gazette, September 11th 2014.

Courtesy of Saudi Gazette.

To read more, download full article here

By Safinaz Salem.

Safinaz Salem is demonstrator at Al-Azhar University, Faculty of Science, Special Physics Department, Cairo, Egypt.