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Alexandria ACM Student Chapter

YEARSAlexandria

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Big Data, TheHeading toHELLABYTE

More thanMooreWorld is coming,Nanodevices

BerkeleyOperatingSystem

ANDROID 4.4KitKat is OUT!

Science

Faith& Article



R.I.P

Ahmed Tolba

Alexandria ACM Student Chapter

is dedicating this special edition for his soul.



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Wrote

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PROGRAMMER COMPUTER

woman

A D A Y T O R E M E M B E R

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Women software developers earn 80percent of what men with the same jobsearn. Just 18 percent of computer sciencedegrees are awarded to women, down from37 percent in 1985. Fewer than 5 percent of venture-backed tech start-ups are founded by women.Those statistics, released by Symantec, thesecurity company, and the Anita BorgInstitute, which works to recruit andpromote women in tech, provide contextfor recent debates in Silicon Valley, like why Twitter has no women on its board.Given that girls begin to shy away fromcomputer science when they are young, because of a lack of role models and

encouragement from parents and teachers,perhaps a short history lesson on Ms.Lovelace would be helpful.She was the daughter of Lord Byron, thepoet, who split from her mother shortly after her birth. Her mother encouraged herto pursue math to counter her father’s“dangerous poetic tendencies,” accordingto the University of California, San Diego.

Meanwhile, in Silicon Valley, some peoplesense change in the air.“There’s a lot more focus than we’ve seen inthe past, and a lot more hardconversations,” said Telle Whitney, chief executive of the Anita Borg Institute.

In 1842, Ada Lovelace (Portrait in The Previous Page) known as the“enchantress of numbers,” wrote the first computer program. Fast-forward 171

years to today (which happens to be Ada Lovelace Day, for highlighting women

in science, technology, engineering and math), and computer programming isdominated by men.

The Symantec and Anita Borg report tried tofind a bright side — the wage gap is smaller intechnology and engineering than it is in otherfields, and the job opportunities are many. Astia, which offers programs for women techentrepreneurs, announced Tuesday apartnership with Google to expand its lunch

series for introducing women founders toinvestors. And two scientists, sponsored by BrownUniversity, are hosting a mass Wikipediaediting session on Tuesday, for people tocreate and expand upon entries for women inscience and technology.Happy Ada Lovelace Day.

CLAIRE CAIN MILLER By http://goo.gl/59UVOF



UScollectsMILLIONS

OF E-MAIL ADDRESS BOOKS

GLOBALLY



The National Security Agency is harvestinghundreds of millions of contact lists frompersonal e-mail and instant messaging accountsaround the world, many of them belonging to Americans, according to senior intelligenceofficials and top-secret documents provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.The collection program, which has not beendisclosed before, intercepts e-mail address books and “buddy lists” from instant messagingservices as they move across global data links.Online services often transmit those contacts

when a user logs on, composes a message, orsynchronizes a computer or mobile device withinformation stored on remote servers.Rather than targeting individual users, the NSA is gathering contact lists in large numbers thatamount to a sizable fraction of the world’s e-mailand instant messaging accounts. Analysis of thatdata enables the agency to search for hiddenconnections and to map relationships within amuch smaller universe of foreign intelligence

targets.During a single day last year, the NSA’s SpecialSource Operations branch collected 444,743 e-mail address books from Yahoo, 105,068 fromHotmail, 82,857 from Facebook, 33,697 fromGmail and 22,881 from unspecified otherproviders, according to an internal NSA PowerPoint presentation. Those figures,described as a typical daily intake in thedocument, correspond to a rate of more than

250 million a year.Each day, the presentation said, the NSA collectscontacts from an estimated 500,000 buddy listson live-chat services as well as from the inboxdisplays of Web- based e-mail accounts.

NSA analysts, he said, may not search within thecontacts database or distribute information fromit unless they can “make the case that somethingin there is a valid foreign intelligence target inand of itself .”In this program, the NSA is obliged to make thatcase only to itself or others in the executive branch. With few exceptions, intelligenceoperations overseas fall solely within thepresident’s legal purview . The ForeignIntelligence Surveillance Act, enacted in 1978,imposes restrictions only on electronic

surveillance that targets Americans or takes placeon U.S. territory .By contrast, the NSA draws on authority in thePatriot Act for its bulk collection of domesticphone records, and it gathers online records fromU.S. Internet companies, in a program known asPRISM, under powers granted by Congress in theFISA Amendments Act. Those operations areoverseen by the Foreign Intelligence SurveillanceCourt.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee,said in August that the committee has lessinformation about, and conducts less oversight of,intelligence gathering that relies solely onpresidential authority . She said she planned toask for more briefings on those programs.“In general, the committee is far less aware of operations conducted under 12333,” said a seniorcommittee staff member, referring to Executive

Order 12333, which defines the basic powers andresponsibilities of the intelligence agencies. “I believe the NSA would answer questions if weasked them, and if we knew to ask them, but it would not routinely report these things, and, ingeneral, they would not fall within the focus of thecommittee.”



Taken together, the data would enable the NSA, if permitted, to draw detailed maps of a person’slife, as told by personal, professional, political andreligious connections. The picture can also bemisleading, creating false “associations” with ex-spouses or people with whom an account holderhas had no contact in many years.

The NSA has not been authorized by Congress orthe special intelligence court that oversees foreignsurveillance to collect contact lists in bulk, andsenior intelligence officials said it would be illegalto do so from facilities in the United States. Theagency avoids the restrictions in the ForeignIntelligence Surveillance Act by interceptingcontact lists from access points “all over the world,” one official said, speaking on thecondition of anonymity to discuss the classified

program. “None of those are on U.S. territory.”Because of the method employed, the agency isnot legally required or technically able to restrictits intake to contact lists belonging to specifiedforeign intelligence targets, he said. When information passes through “the overseascollection apparatus,” the official added, “theassumption is you’re not a U.S. person.”In practice, data from Americans is collected inlarge volumes — in part because they live and

work overseas, but also because data crossesinternational boundaries even when its Americanowners stay at home. Large technology companies, including Google and Facebook,maintain data centers around the world to balance loads on their servers and work aroundoutages. A senior U.S. intelligence official said the privacy of Americans is protected, despite masscollection, because “we have checks and balances

built into our tools.”NSA analysts, he said, may not search within thecontacts database or distribute information fromit unless they can “make the case that somethingin there is a valid foreign intelligence target inand of itself.”In this program, the NSA is obliged to make thatcase only to itself or others in the executive branch. With few exceptions, intelligenceoperations overseas fall solely within thepresident’s legal purview. The ForeignIntelligence Surveillance Act, enacted in 1978,imposes restrictions only on electronicsurveillance that targets Americans or takes placeon U.S. territory.By contrast, the NSA draws on authority in thePatriot Act for its bulk collection of domestic

phone records, and it gathers online records fromU.S. Internet companies, in a program known asPRISM, under powers granted by Congress in theFISA Amendments Act. Those operations areoverseen by the Foreign Intelligence SurveillanceCourt.Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who

chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in August that the committee has less informationabout, and conducts less oversight of, intelligencegathering that relies solely on presidential authority.She said she planned to ask for more briefings onthose programs.“In general, the committee is far less aware of operations conducted under 12333,” said a seniorcommittee staff member, referring to ExecutiveOrder 12333, which defines the basic powers and

responsibilities of the intelligence agencies. “I believe the NSA would answer questions if we askedthem, and if we knew to ask them, but it would notroutinely report these things, and, in general, they would not fall within the focus of the committee.”Because the agency captures contact lists “on the fly”as they cross major Internet switches, rather than“at rest” on computer servers, the NSA has no needto notify the U.S. companies that host theinformation or to ask for help from them.

“We have neither knowledge of nor participation inthis mass collection of web-mail addresses or chatlists by the government,” said Google spokeswomanNiki Fenwick. At Microsoft, spokeswoman Nicole Miller said thecompany “does not provide any government withdirect or unfettered access to our customers’ data,”adding that “we would have significant concerns if these allegations about government actions aretrue.”

Facebook spokeswoman Jodi Seth said that “we didnot know and did not assist” in the NSA’sinterception of contact lists.It is unclear why the NSA collects more than twice asmany address books from Yahoo than the other bigservices combined. One possibility is that Yahoo,unlike other service providers, has left connectionsto its users unencrypted by default.Suzanne Philion, a Yahoo spokeswoman, saidMonday in response to an inquiry from The Washington Post that, beginning inJanuary, Yahoo would begin encrypting all its e-mailconnections.Google was the first to secure all its e-mailconnections, turning on “SSL encryption” globally in2010. People with inside knowledge said the move was intended in part to thwart large-scale collection



of its users’ information by the NSA and other intelligence agencies.The volume of NSA contacts collection is so high that it has occasionally threatened tooverwhelm storage repositories, forcing the agency to halt its intake with “emergency detasking” orders. Three NSA documents describe short-term efforts to build an“across-the- board technology throttle for truly heinous data” and longer-term effortsto filter out information that the NSA does not need.Spam has proven to be a significant problem for the NSA — clogging databases with

information that holds no foreign intelligence value. The majority of all e-mails, oneNSA document says, “are SPAM from ‘fake’ addresses and never ‘delivered’ totargets.”In fall 2011, according to an NSA presentation, the Yahoo account of an Iranian target was “hacked by an unknown actor,” who used it to send spam. The Iranian had “anumber of Yahoo groups in his/her contact list, some with many hundreds orthousands of members.”The cascading effects of repeated spam messages, compounded by the automaticaddition of the Iranian’s contacts to other people’s address books, led to a massivespike in the volume of traffic collected by the Australian intelligence service on the

NSA’s behalf. After nine days of data- bombing, the Iranian’s contact book and contact books for several people within it were “emergency detasked.”In a briefing from the NSA’s Large Access Exploitation working group, that example was used to illustrate the need to narrow the criteria for data interception. It called fora “shifting collection philosophy”: “Memorialize what you need” vs. “Order one of everything off the menu and eat what you want.”

BARTON GELLMAN & ASHKAN SOLTANI

BY

http://goo.gl/iT4BOF



To the rest of the U.S., hella —Northern Californiacant for very — is a weird and uniquely annoyingpiece of slang. But to Austin Sendek , a physicsstudent at the University of California, the word isa mark of regional pride, one that he thinksdeserves immortalization in the annals of science.Sendek is the brains behind a burgeoning Interneteffort to make hella- an officially recognizedscientific-unit prefix, representing the magnitude

of 1.0x1027, expressed by the number1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. What started as a joke between a few of Sendek'sfriends has become hella popular, growing intothe loftily named Facebook group "The OfficialPetition to Establish 'Hella-' as the SI Prefix for10^27," comprising nearly 50,000 like-mindednerds and fans of NoCal parlance.The effort stems from the fact that many numbers— particularly large ones — don't have official

names. Small ones are familiar — mega- is theofficially recognized prefix for 1.0x106, o r 1million. Giga- is the prefix for 1.0x109, or 1 billion. But past 1.0x1024, or yotta-, there are noofficial names. (With one notable exception:1.0x10100 was set aside as googol- in 1938 — long

before being respelled by Larry Page and Sergey Brin 60 years later for Google, their upstartsearch engine.)Sendek says the idea for hella- came to him while working in a physics lab with a partner inFebruary . "We were looking at this electric field,and she said there were hella volts in this field,"Sendek says. "We started thinking that it'd bepretty funny if a hellavolt was a real thing, or ahellameter or hellagram." Sendek started theFacebook group for his inside joke but says he wassurprised to see it explode after a reporter fromthe Sacramento Bee discovered the effort. Sincethen, Sendek has advocated for his cause on radioshows from Canada to Australia, with articlesabout his effort appearing on the websites for ABC News, Fox News and the Telegraph.But if history has taught us anything (Ron Paulfor President! Snakes on a Plane!), it's that even

the most dedicated of Internet campaigns have atough time achieving much in the real world. Anddespite his efforts, Sendek says he doubts hella- will become an officially recognized prefixanytime soon. After the story in the Bee, Sendek says he received an e-mail from the chairman of



the Consultative Committee of Units at the International Bureau of Weights andMeasures, the group tasked with creating worldwide standards for scientific prefixes."He said he appreciated the humor but didn't think it would go much further," Sendek says.Part of the reason is that there's not much reason for numbers that big to have names,since they're seldom used. But the scientist in Sendek is hopeful that the prefix's day might come. "We're always learning more about the universe, stars, black holes,

planets and galaxies," Sendek says. "That's when those big numbers start to come up."Until there's a scientific breakthrough or a change of heart from the powers that be,Sendek says he hopes to keep the effort moving. He plans on launching a website athellapetition.com soon, and like any good Internet entrepreneur, he's trying to cash inon his viral success by selling T-shirts. "I've realized there's a pretty big nerd base outthere," Sendek says. If nothing else, Sendek's quirky effort will be a hella good résuméline when he graduates from college in 2013.

Dan Fletcher

BY

http://goo.gl/B0Ze6d



The Apple's proposed new spaceship-shapedheadquarters got a super-charged blast-off Tuesday night when the Cupertino City Council

voted unanimously to approve the 2.8-million-square-foot behemoth beside Interstate 280,fulfilling a dream of co-founder Steve Jobs,hatching an iconic landmark for Silicon Valley,and promising more congestion in an already traffic-challenged region for decades to come."Steve transformed Apple into one of the mostinnovative companies in the world and weunderstand the responsibilities that come fromcarrying his legacy forward with this project,"

Apple's head of real estate and facilities Dan Whisenhunt told the council. "We've designedit with the same care and attention to detail as we do with all Apple products." A standing-room only crowd packed thechambers in the hour before the meeting, withseveral hundred Apple employees filling upmuch of the room, some of them holding brightgreen posters with one reading "Cupertino for Apple Campus 2.''

With councilmember Rod Sinks recusing himself because his wife works for Apple, Mayor OrrinMahoney and his three colleagues quickly took up

the matter of Apple's project: a four-story ring of curved glass housing up to 14,200 employees andsurrounded by acres of green space.Much of the session was a rehash of environmentaland other impacts posed by the project, with thefirst hour devoted to traffic consultants talkingabout the "significant but unavoidable'' impacts onneighboring roadways. Apple has already promisedto underwrite a number of roadway improvementsto alleviate the congestion throughout Cupertino,

and vowed to raise from under 30 to 34 thepercentage of its employees who will be using publictransit or Apple's shuttle buses to commute to work ."The project will certainly cause traffic issues," saidCouncilmember Mark Santoro shortly before the vote, "but I'm happy to hear Apple's going to work with us on solving these problems." Whisenhunt, Apple's point person on the project,said the building would be a manifestation of Jobs'lifelong love of the city . "Right here at this same



podium two years ago," he said, "Steve shared hisexcitement about this campus and about creating ahome where Apple grew up. Cupertino issynonymous with Apple; it's on every box" of Appleproducts "and we're immensely proud of that."During a public-comment session, most speakers wholeheartedly supported Apple, not surprising

since Cupertino is a veritable company town, with Apple offices spread far and wide."As my mom used to say, 'don't bite the hand thatfeeds you,'" longtime resident Carol Baker told thecouncil. "If we don't honor Apple with this building, they'll leave. There's no reason for themto stay here and be loyal to a community thatdoesn't support them. But if they left, it would be adisaster for the city ."Despite a few objections from speakers about the

project's location and traffic it will produce,supporters including Santa Clara County Sheriff Laurie Smith and Valley tech-industry leader CarlGuardino stepped up to lend their support.The council's decision represents a majormilestone in Apple's seven- year campaign to buildan iconic corporate home just across Interstate 280from its current headquarters. From the days in2006 when the company first began buying parcelsin the area laced by Tantau Avenue and Homesteadand North Wolfe roads where Hewlett-Packard(HPQ) once had a sprawling campus.In 2011, the world learned about the company'sambitious plans when an ailing CEO and co-founder Steve Jobs presented the spaceship-shaped building to city councilmembers. Withinhours of that cameo, Cupertino officials wereraving about the building's off - beat design, sayingits bold size and shape, along with a pedigreegilded by the involvement of world-renowned

architect Sir Norman Foster, would put Silicon Valley architecture center-stage for decades tocome."This is unprecedented in the United States," thecity's redevelopment and economic developmentmanager Kelly Kline said at the time. "This is truly a legacy building."

Now that the project has been approved, thecouncil by regulation must meet one more timeon Nov . 15 for a final and largely perfunctory vote.The spaceship, for all practical purposes, has now been approved for liftoff . Apple says it hopes to start demolishing existing buildings on the site by the end of this year.

Patrick May BY

http://goo.gl/V4j8sn

Covering PhotosNext Page



Berkeley futuristic



Does the world need anotheroperating system? Yes, according tothe creative minds in the computerscience department at the University of California at Berkeley, which havecome up with one called theTessellation Operating System that'sintended to light up the future of theInternet of things.

At the Design Automation Conference (DAC)

here this week, John Kubiatowicz, professor inthe UC Berkeley computer science division,offered a preview of Tessellation, describing it asan operating system for the future where surfaces with sensors, such as walls and tables in rooms,for example, could be utilized via touch or audiocommand to summon up multimedia and otherapplications. The UC Berkeley Tessellation website says Tessellation is targeted at existingand future so-called "manycore" based systemsthat have large numbers of processors, or coreson a single chip. Currently, the operating systemruns on Intel multicore hardware as well as theResearch Accelerator for Multiple Processors(RAMP) multicore emulation platform.

According to Kubiatowicz, Tessellation -- which is

a math term for how shapes can be arranged tofill a plane without any gaps -- is an innovative OSthat looks to define resources such as bandwidthfor cloud storage, latency to response, andrequests for database services in a continuousadaptive manner based on its concept of resourcecontainers. A key concept in Tessellation is the abstract ideaof the "cell" as "a user-level software component with guaranteed resources," said Kubiatowiczduring the session at DAC. Cells provideguaranteed fractions of system resources (such asprocessors, cache, network or memory bandwidth, fractions of system services). As partof this framework, the new OS makes use of a



quality-of-service method andscheduling. There's a novel way to message information in lieuof moving data around. Thereare services for keyboard andmouse, and network servicesare measured to maximizethroughput.The idea is that if Tessellation

catches on, one day there will be a "swarm of services," eitherlocal or in the cloud, that userscan invoke. At this juncture, UCBerkeley's new "Swarm Lab" isswarming all over app

development to see how farthey can take Tessellation.

a quality-of-service method and scheduling.There's a novel way to message information inlieu of moving data around. There are services forkeyboard and mouse, and network services aremeasured to maximize throughput.The idea is that if Tessellation catches on, one day there will be a "swarm of services," either local or

in the cloud, that users can invoke. At this juncture, UC Berkeley's new "Swarm Lab" isswarming all over app development to see how farthey can take Tessellation. A lot of hopes are riding on what Kubiatowicz --known as "Kubie" to his friends -- is spearheading with his team under the futuristic TerraSwarmproject, said Edward Lee, also a UC Berkeley professor, who spoke during another DAC sessionon the topic of the Internet of things. Lee said if

it's successful, it will provide an "open applicationdevelopment platform" that could form the basisfor home-based automation innovation and muchmore in the future. "We'll all be surprised by whatcomes out of it," he predicted. He added somecolleagues like to call it the "Unpad vision" because it can in theory work without a physicalmobile device of any kind.Is security an issue? Yes, Kubiatowiczacknowledges, suggesting cryptography, for onething needs to be part of it.In his closing keynote at DAC today, AlbertoSangiovanni-Vincentelli, a veteran of the designautomation industry, who helped found Cadenceand Synopsys, and now holds the Buttner Chair in

Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences atUC Berkeley, also predicted the world may seethe "Swarm" concept take root. He added theBerkeley OS project is supported by Semiconductor Research Corp.So just when will Tessellation and Swarmapplications be unleashed upon the world?

Kubiatowicz wouldn't be pinned down but saidhe anticipated "soon."

Ellen MessmerBy

http://goo.gl/DDAGth



Google has revealed that its upcoming wearablecomputer, Glass, will in part be powered by quantum computing – although what thatactually means remains unclear.Earlier this year Google announced that it hadpurchased a quantum device from D-Wave of

Burnaby, Canada, and partnered with NASA toset up the Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab.In a video that debuted today at the ImagineScience Films Festival at Google New York, theteam discuss the types of applications they willexplore with the D-Wave computer.Quantum computers process information inquantum bits, or qubits, which can be both 0 and1 at the same time. In theory, this should one day allow quantum chips to vastly outperformregular PCs. D-Wave's computers remaincontroversial, because they use a non-mainstream technique called adiabaticcomputing that does not conclusively exploitquantum phenomena to increase performance.But a paper released earlier this yeardemonstrated that D-Wave could beatPCs running general-purpose optimisationsoftware, which is used in applications fromimage recognition to machine learning. The new Google video says that the team wants to use D-

Wave's abilities for tasks such as analysingclimate or genomics data and determining whether we are alone in the universe."The overwhelming obvious killer app forquantum computation is optimisation," says D- Wave founder Geordie Rose in the Google video.

The first real-world application to come out of thelab may be improved algorithms for Google Glass.The headset itself is not able to run quantumsoftware, but it is possible that a quantum computercould optimise an ordinary algorithm for use on thelow-powered wearable device.

Although the project is not specifically mentioned inthe video, tech site The Verge reports that Googleengineers have already used D-Wave to design a better blink-detection algorithm, which will allow Glass users to "click" on links by blinking. That fits with an earlier blog post by Rose, which also saidthat Google had used D-Wave to train their blink detectors.So far, though, D-Wave has not published any results showing that its machines can carry outoptimisation problems better than traditionaldevices that are specifically programmed to solve agiven problem. Without this evidence, Google's new video has left quantum computing expertsunconvinced."While I don't know the details of this Google Glassdemo, I'm sceptical that there's anything here thatcouldn't be done much faster and more easily usingclassical computers," says Scott Aaronson of theMassachusetts Institute of Technology.Matthias Troyer of the Swiss Federal Institute of

Technology (ETH) in Zurich has previously studiedthe performance of D-Wave's computers, and is alsounsure of the milestone. "This was probably atechnology demonstration, showing that such a kindof problem can, in principle, be solved on a D-Wavemachine. However, any problem that the machine



might have solved could easily have been done on a PC."Even if D-Wave's computers do not outperform regular machines, they are still worthy of study, says Troyer. "Just building a device that can do what the D-Wavemachine does is quite an engineering achievement."Google and D-Wave did not respond to requests for comment before this article waspublished. But the collaboration emphasises in its video that they are still in the early days of exploring the technology. "We don't know what the best questions are to ask that computer – that's exactly what we're trying to understand now," says EleanorRieffel of the NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California.

Jacob AronBY

http://goo.gl/uph6DJ



H I S T O R Y R E V E A L E D

Alexandria



We were once a leading nation. The only place known the light whendarkness covered the world. But that was then, that was a past and not

just a past, that was a thousands years past. Now our nation has beenlisted as a third world nation. One of the countries that are on the edge of apocalypse. We’ve been late in all fields of life. But to be late doesn’t meanthat you can’t race, that you can’t move forward, that you can’t show the world that you still in the game. That’s why we have started. Here wedeliver people not just science and knowledge of one of the most advancedsciences and the most leading one, Here we give them hopeful science with belief. We give people a value and a meaning to this value to learnscience, believe in their abilities to weld it, and to hope to changes thingsand life with it. That’s why back in 2006 this chapter was erected. Amid a broken system that should deliver knowledge and a very long desperatenation something have to move the shallows and get things to the rightcause.People who have spent their lives in here never get anything in return butthe value they leave in people. The science they spread, the knowledgethey share and the determination that emerges them to stay the courseand achieve this one aim …

A Nation of Computer Science.



The Sincerest Thanking for Every Name going to be mentioned inthe following pages. You let us live the dream we’re in now.

Thank You, All



The

GlimpseofaDream

The chapter was initiated back in late 2005. With the usual

administrative bureaucratic nightmares, Eng. Hassan Wasselmanaged to soothe the procedures that were needed to launch thechapter officially. A group of capable hands just started to take thechapter up to the light, the initiating group (2006 Board). Thechapter’s first advisor and dean was Dr. Ahmed Elmahdy. His rolein the chapter endured for more than 5 years in this position. Theprocedures had never ended by then but there was enoughfoundations for the wheel of the chapter to start spinning.In the first of its kind as an elective process. The students of theComputer and Systems Engineering Department elected the first

board officially. It was part of the duties of the chapter’s first boardto finalize every detail remained about the official coexistence of the chapter and its relation to the college and the grand ACM. Theduties of the chapter then extended to create some existence in- between the CS Students by creating a free membership for thestudents with some privileges back then like the mailing serviceand another advantage mainly given by ACM itself and provided by the chapter.Meanwhile the chapter started to pay attention for theinternational programming contests that was being held ever since.

The chapter started organizing on a small scale a training for thecontestants fromThe department to start taking part in these contests. If it weren’tfor the chapter creation we wouldn’t have even been on the map of these contests. It is until now the gate for our students to fly upthere. Sure as it is, the first year of the chapter the trainingexperience was not as it is right now after participating in even theICPC. The quality of the training is mounting since then because of the many participations that formalized the mentality of thecontestants now.



As an interior activity, the chapter took care of the students’ needs back then. One of these efforts exerted in this sought was the exams booklet.Then holding up a number of seminar by the startups and visitingprofessors about the department beyond the classrooms and college.By time and at the endings, the care of the chapter’s board at this beginning year turned to something more important. It was to developa certain structure for the chapter so that the next years elected boards

can follow. They created a brochure documenting the workflow they followed while creating their works. A flow that was in action until late2012. Besides the initiation of the chapter’s basic structure. Many have joined according to this structures. A recognition for Ramez Mohamed is essential for his vital role in thechapter in graphics issues. His presence was more efficacious and vitalthan some actual board members. As everything in beginnings, the hardships and the motivation were atthe extreme levels. The lack of resources was is problem that anchoredthe chapter since then and through all its years. It was the main reason

for the low productivity the chapter witnessed in the middle of these years and was unlikely to be if not for the resources-crisis. In addition,the lack of vision and the lack of a general objective and a clear policy clouded the role of the chapter for years to follow. But the most andactually the best achievement for this starting board is that they startedout the glimpse of a grand thing to come through.

Chairman: Waleed Ammar Vice: Amr Ebeid

Treasurer: Alaa El-Din Farouk Secretary: Hussein Maher



The rise of

Changes&Challenges A new board was elected in the spring of the second era of the chapter.

It started quite differently than any other year; by meeting the studentsand present the chapter for them. This step showed that the chapterhadn’t been deeply esteemed as it was expected. That was the mainissue the team tried to solve this year. An internal structure for thechapter’s committees had been planned to distribute the load of work and to be more enhanced in the way it serves the students, however itcontained many good hands, the general activities of the chapter has been strangely lessened than the previous year. Therefore, it has beenperceived that the capacity of people affected and involved in thechapter was less than the previous year. Nevertheless, continuity is a

challenge and it well know so this might be categorized as a naturaloutcome to follow.Looking at the activities of the chapter back then and despite theprevious facts, they were quite different along with preserving the last year activities. They were more involved in providing some technicalsupport to the students through some papers and surveys. Theremarkability of this board was in the contribution of the job fair andtheir unavoidable interest in career building sides. They took some leapthat is most appreciated also when they introduced the geeks and nerdsof CS to a fun day was the first of its kind to be handled. With a long list

of other planned and undone work The journey for broadening the chapter was continued here too as the

structure that was started back in 2006 completed but it didn’t achievedthe awaited outcomes. The most glooming point is that the next in thechain was provided with a pack of very innovative-planned items but with anchoring hardships that are yet to be faced as well.

Chairman: Mohamed Gaafar Vice: Amany Shehata

Treasurer: Ahmed AbdelkaderSecretary: Amr Magdy



The

PushForward Year A rise or a push or if you would like to call it the uprising of using every

inch from history and creating a building of variety and drilling down afruitful present. This year the chapter created a sum of 25 eventincluding some considerably big contributions to be counted as oneevent. They started something that has vanished until lately in 2013 that you actually read now, the chapter’s magazine. As much as it was copingits time and the limits in visual support but it earned a lot of attention.It was and still the initiative of our recent TECHnews magazine. It worked a bit differently than our central development nowadays as it was built on the most chosen articles by the readers. It kept it somehow focused on some certain topics that lackeyed its variety. However, for its

time, this was a considerably great work. Within the parade of this year, the reinforcing of the basic knowledgeand nature for the CS students came at handy. The chapter introducedsome programming background targeting work not as introductions butin drilling down way. In addition to the beyond theory effort that was in business too. May be it was not given that space but it was actually in its bright times already in the department.Then came the open source devotion by the chapter during this certain year. The start was the participation of the chapter in the ITI installfeast for open source software back then it was Linux. Then comes a

greater contribution, The Open Source Day in coordination with SafwaClub Engineering. The effort of the chapter had been extended that yearto care for the activities of the students. Many talks and efforts exertedto provide help for the students regarding the usability of their time,resources and for even helping them choosing their GP efficiently.Plus the carried effort from the past years, that year proved that thechapter can get way much deeper in everyone it serves. The Quality andthe Quantity of the work exerted back then are still considered one of the most appreciated work by the chapter.

Chairman: Ahmed Abdelkader Vice: Hazem Diab

Treasurer: Mahitab MohsenSecretary: Ahmed Badie



The

Expected ShrinkageIt’s not backing, It’s just the normal progress. Last year the chapter

outmatched its capabilities and create unprecedented efforts without aregular progress that should be followed. The outcome of this yeartended to create a change as nothing kept them bounded to keep whatpreceded them. Therefore, the change came but in the past tone. Thereported activities came greatly less than the past year but the gloomingpoint is that the quality stood still. The same capacity covered by thechapter in the preceded year was once more involved.The features of this year didn’t include the magazine that vanishedtotally after it appeared slightly in the past year. So what came aboard,the chapter in this year also cared about the technical progress of the

students through providing with some needed programming skills indifferent languages in use. Then knocked harshly the door of gamedevelopment as a new trended track back then. It was obvious also; theattempts of the chapter to create a link to the students between thecompanies outside that always and still backup the chapter as much astheir hands can reach.By various talks included introducing or driven by some companies andstartups. Some talks were actually introduced for the first time ever andit achieved a resounding effect on the students. However, one thing thatis still unachieved through all these years of the chapter until back then

… the continuity .

Chairman: Hazem Helmy Diab Vice:N/A

Treasurer: Yasmine GaberSecretary: Mohammd Kotb



Volcanic ActivityThere is a reason this year was considered to be one of the most perfect

years of the chapter above all the previous years. The chapter hasextended its activities to become broader than just college activity . Thepresence of the chapter in Bibliotheca Alexandrina was introduced forthe first time in this year. The care about the students knowledge has been upgraded from just talks to carry the students to some conferences where they can have knowledge and trying to feed them the culture of moving for knowledge.The return of so many lost features, the open source has been absentfrom the ground of the chapter in the past few two years but it returned with a greater look than anyone expected. The chapter funded and

organized Software Freedom Day that year. It was extraordinary different year for SFD under the flag of the chapter.New activities in the horizon, Science Super Course Day was one of thechapter unique activities. It was provided manly to encounter theclassification of data and a way to mine some courses in categoriesthrough a live example as it was based on a site supported by Bibliotheca Alexandrina.The chapter marked a new trending talk also in a new trending topicthat year. The talk of Prof . Moutafa Youssif . Research in Egypt is a talk depicting the research field in Egypt and across the world and giving the

students a closer look about the culture and basics of research along with getting them insider this fundamental field of CS. Fun activitieshas returned after about three years stopping. In a different way, asmuch as the year introduced its activities it was a football league.Still all that was not the main highlighted effort of the chapter. Thealgorithms training that year gained most of its strength back . Thecoaches whom in the next year qualified and achieved the highestranked for the chapter in the international and regional contestsorganized it. It was condensed and well organized. The resoundingeffect and the quality of the algorithms training of the year kept it as the

most highlighted contribution of the chapter in all its coming years.The graphical support was in a completely different level in this year.But once again, even after this volcano of activities erupted in this neat way . The loss of continuity trapped the chapter in this mode of onepulse up and several pulses down. In our case this time, it was just onepulse down which is the next year.

Chairman: Mohamed Adel El-Belbesy Vice: Ahmad MamdouhSecretary: Abdelrahman AsalTreasurer: Mayada Muhammad



The FallingThe chapter back in this year was handled by election to a group that

was extremely passionate about algorithms, roughly nothing else. Thereis a reason why the chapter was forgotten and the gap of effect returned back once more as it was back in 2006. That’s because the chapter this year managed nothing but continuing the algorithms training in thesame way and in the same quality. It was indeed their greatestachievement. But the cost of such risky plan was fatal.

First it started by downgrading the chapter and omitting it from theactive chapter on ACM charted chapters. The gravity of such issue isthat the chapter was this close from being officially down and

annihilated. Nevertheless, the international qualified team to the ICPCthat included the chair of the chapter back in this year, kept the chapterin minds. However, its activities had been unfortunately reminded notfor anything by just for the algorithms training.

Therefore, the outcomes of such a short year to mention were that wereceived a chapter barely exist anywhere. No international presence, Noground it could be reminded with, No structure to be kept, No Faculty Sponsor and no activities or official documentations on both ends eitherat ACM or the college department … These was the inputs of 2013-2014

chapter along with one other input, a new board.

Chairman: Mahmoud Fayyaz Vice: Islam HamdiSecretary: Ahmed Moustafa GadTreasurer: Mohamed Gamal



We OweThanks ForThe Utmost appreciation for the faculty Sponsors for the chapter who helped it allits past years and provided every supportthey can give …

Dr. Ahmed Elmahdy

Alexandria ACM StudentChapter Faculty sponsorfor the years; 2006, 2007,2008, 2009 and 2010

Dr. Moustafa Elnianay

Alexandria ACM StudentChapter Faculty sponsor forthe years; 2011 and 2012



Rewriting

Think As Far as You dare, The Chapter isFlying Further.

Never Yet reached the destination, but …

History



Google revealed that Android 4.4 (KitKat) willintroduce the concept of a default SMS app, which

the user can select in system settings.Furthermore, the new version will make existing APIs public so that developers don’t have to worry about losing them.Google notes that many Android app developershave built SMS apps using hidden APIs. Googletries to discourage this practice since hidden APIscan change or be removed, and new devices arenot tested against them for compatibility. As such, with Android 4.4, Google will try to bring all SMS

apps onto the same page.Here are some of the points you have tokeep in mind if you’re a developer:• When your app is not currently selected as the

default SMS app, it’s important that youdisable the ability to send new messages from your app because, without the ability to writeto the SMS Provider, any messages you send won’t be visible in the user’s default SMS app.

• To enable your app to send and receive

messages, you can display a dialog hosted by the system that allows the user to make yourapp the default SMS app.

• To provide a graceful user experience, check whether your app is the default SMS app when your activity resumes and modify your UI toinclude a message that allows the user tochange the default SMS app.

• Because the ability to write to the SMSProvider is restricted to the app the user selects

as the default SMS app, any existing appdesigned purely to backup and restore SMSmessages will currently be unable to restoreSMS messages on Android 4.4. An app that backs up and restores SMS messages must also be set as the default SMS app so that it can write messages in the SMS Provider. However,if the app does not also send and receive SMSmessages, then it should not remain set as thedefault SMS app.

Rumour has it that KitKat will have a new Hangouts app with texting functionality. If true, weexpect that this will be the app set as default, atleast on the stock version of Android.The move should also help alleviate the Androidmalware problem, given that on the platform steal your money via premium SMS. Other variants can be particularly nasty.Google is asking Android developers to update

their apps “as soon as possible.” The company alsonotes it will “soon” be providing the necessary SDK components for Android 4.4 so they can compileand test their changes on Android 4.4. We’ll let youknow when that happens; we’re betting it willeither be this month or next.

Emil ProtalinskiBy

http://goo.gl/iFTwAI



Jaguar Land Rover is a member of GENIVI, a

nonprofit auto industry alliance committed todriving the broad adoption of an open-sourceIVI development platform. This week,representatives of the high-end automaker wereamong 180 GENIVI members who met in SanDiego to discuss ways to foster broader adoptionof an open-source platform. GENIVI is lookingto align platform requirements, deliver referenceimplementations and offer certificationprograms to automakers.

Later this month, the Linux Foundation will holdits third annual Automotive Linux Summit inEdinburgh to discuss industry developmentefforts.Carmakers today have to maintain theirproprietary operating systems, which they buy from outside software providers. And that leavesthem at the mercy of their vendors. For example,Microsoft supplies Ford's MySync system, soFord would be forced to find another supplier if

Microsoft decided to abandon the automotivemarket. With Linux, the auto industry has a fullcommunity of open-source developerssupporting and updating the software.

In 2012, the Linux Foundation launched

the Tizen Project, a reference architecture andsoftware development kit (SDK) for a Linux- based IVI. Tizen's SDK allows developers to useHTML5 to write applications for an IVI.For example, Reaktor, a software services andconsulting company headquartered in Helsinki,Finland, interfaces for existing popular mobileapplications for the Tizen open source IVI; Todate, Reaktor has created a user interface for themusic streaming service Spotify and for the

location-based social networking service FourSquare."One shouldn't have to re-implement [a mobileapp] for the infotainment system every time anew one is created. We'd like to be able to use anexisting application on the phone and access itthrough the user interface," said KonstaHansson, general manager at Reaktor."Spotify is a prime example," Hansson said. "You want to be able to control it through your IVI like

any other audio source, but to also be able toperform searches and use your existing playlistseasily."Once an industry standard open-source IVI iscreated, work can begin in earnest on developing



the user interfaces for any number of mobile apps already available.For example, a navigationsystem could be integrated witha driver's email account. Withthat type of setup, a salespersontraveling to a meeting could, forexample, be notified to expectdelays because of heavy traffic. And at the same time, someone

the salesperson wanted to talk to at the meeting would get thesame notification."My car knows about my location and it has my calendarfrom my email," Streif said. "So,

you're combining theinformation. It could evensuggest parking lots wherespaces are open."

the user interfaces for any number of mobile appsalready available.For example, a navigation system could be integrated with a driver's email account. With that type of setup, asalesperson traveling to a meeting could, for example, be notified to expect delays because of heavy traffic. Andat the same time, someone the salesperson wanted totalk to at the meeting would get the same notification."My car knows about my location and it has my calendarfrom my email," Streif said. "So, you're combining theinformation. It could even suggest parking lots wherespaces are open."

Lucas MearianBy

http://goo.gl/Hupm7J



Are integrated circuits "too good" for

current technological applications?Christian Enz, the new Director of theInstitute of Microengineering, backsthe idea that perfection is overrated.

Christian Enz, the head of the Integrated CircuitsLaboratory (ICLAB), explains why we should buildour future devices with unreliable circuits, andadopt the "good enough engineering" trend. Non-fully reliable circuits can lead to a substantialreduction of energy consumption. Even better,

they will allow scientists to stay in theminiaturization race, which has beencompromised of late. The size of transistors thatconstitute circuits cannot be reduced boundlessly. As they get smaller and smaller, they producemore and more mistakes. Some hardware musttherefore be added and additional margins taken, which annuls the benefits of miniaturization, andincreases energy consumption. Imperfect circuitsrequire less silicon area, and are therefore lessenergy consuming and less expensive. ButIndustry remains to be convinced, where giving upperfection is concerned.How is it that sloppy chips don't adversely affectthe performance of the device they're in?

Circuits are generally resilient to a certainstatistically small proportion of errors, with only a

negligible impact on the final output. Of course,this isn't true for all applications, but you can takea "good enough" approach for "perceptual" useslike audio and video playback. For instance, thescreen on a smartphone: here, any impact onimage quality will be too small to be perceived.

Human sight is an extremely robust system, onethat automatically corrects any small errors.

How do you build "inexact" circuits?The crucial step is determining where you haveroom for error. We start by looking for spots onthe circuits that are underutilized. For example, if you have a circuit dedicated to adding numbersand there aren't too many decimals in thenumbers being added, we can try to get rid of thepart of the circuit that handles decimal places andsee what happens. This sort of "inexact" approach will of course lead to lower numbers on quality metrics like signal-to-noise or image quality, butthe result will still be "good enough." Thisdecimal-place technique is known as "inexactarithmetics", while more generally, the approachis known as "good-enough engineering".



What are the main advantages of these

kinds of circuits?Initially, we focused on the possibility to reduceenergy consumption. Imperfect circuits do make acertain number of errors, but they neverthelessultimately deliver almost the same performancesas "perfect" circuits. We therefore simply tried toreplace simple no-fault circuits with "good-enough" circuits that were sufficient for theminimum requirements of a given application.This reduced energy consumption and size; the

latter, by decreasing the need for silicon, alsodrove costs down. We then realized that the robustness of imperfectcircuits could actually help us deal with some of the problems inherent in modern technology, andget past the limits we're currently seeing inminiaturization.

Why has the miniaturization of perfectcircuits become so difficult?For the last four decades, every two years the

semiconductor industry has doubled the numberof transistors that fit onto a given silicon chip. Thisis in line with Moore's 1965 prediction.Miniaturization has driven the development of computers, tablets and smartphones that are atonce powerful, energy efficient and increasingly compact. Today's transistors measure around 20nanometers (i.e. 20 millionth of a millimeter). Thecircuits have become so dense that 100% error-free functionality is simply no longer possible,

given the increase in manufacturing tolerances.This means you have to add extra circuits tocorrect the errors and extend the design margins, but that of course cancels out the space gains youget from miniaturization - and the energy savings.In fact, you can actually end up using more energy this way. In a word, we are beginning to hit a wallon miniaturization.

Is it difficult to promote the "good enough"

engineering in the Swiss society?

Yes, because the average product designer hatesthe idea of getting rid of parts of his circuits andintentionally generating errors. So the standardapproach today is to make sure the manufacturedcircuits correspond exactly to design specs. Ourapproach is thus completely new. It's a paradigmchange, one that is difficult to push through in asociety that values perfect technology. That said,

the "good enough" approach has been gettingsome traction in the corporate sector, becausechip-makers can't see any real alternative. Intel,for example, is interested in "good enough"engineering. In addition, there are teams of research scientists working on it all over the world.

Laure-Anne Pessina by

http://goo.gl/bThnUH



Moore's Law - which holds that thenumber of transistors on an integratedcircuit, and hence its processing power,doubles every 18 months - has been theguiding principal of chip design for almosthalf a century. But with physicallimitations to further transistor scaling

being reached, Moore's Law may have metits match. We are entering a 'More than

Moore' world in which EU-fundedresearchers are playing an important role.

Since Intel co-founder Gordon E. Moore describedhis theory in 1965, circuit designers have countedon the steady increase in transistor density toprovide greater chip performance in ever smallerpackages. Now, however, some of the physicalconstraints to transistor scaling - such asoverheating, energy dissipation and resistance -

mean that conventional semiconductor designapproaches are unlikely to produce the same rateof progress. And that is not the only challenge for morepowerful and smaller electronic devices to beachieved. Moore's Law only deals with integratedcircuits, such as the 'Complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor' (CMOS) chips that live inside yourPC, mobile phone or digital camera. A bulky array of additional discrete passive components - such as

resistors, capacitors, inductors, antennas, filtersand switches - interconnected over a printed-circuit board or two are still needed for your phoneto make a call or your camera to take a photo.For real miniaturisation, a different approach isrequired: one based on advanced nanotechnology that promises seemingly infinite possibilities andunlimited potential applications. By integratingnew functionality using tiny nanostructures such asnanowires and nanomaterials (each tens of thousands of times thinner than a human hair) intoCMOS chips, the 'More than Moore' approachmeans electronics can keep getting smaller, morepowerful and more efficient. So small in fact that acomputer in pill form could monitor health anddeliver drugs inside the human body, or a completesmart home control system could be combined into

a package about the size of a credit card.'Nanostructures and nanowires have receivedmuch attention for future CMOS in recent years.Nowadays activities devoted to usingnanostructures, especially nanowires, to createinnovative "More than Moore" products are very promising,' says Dr Francis Balestra, the Director

of the Sinano Institute of France's CentreNational de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) anda researcher at INP-Minatec in Grenoble.Devices on the nano-scale:In the 'Beyond CMOS nano-devices for addingfunctionalities to CMOS' (NANOFUNCTION)Network of Excellence, Dr Balestra and a team of researchers from 15 academic and industrialpartners in 10 European countries worked on how nanostructures can be integrated with CMOS

chips to add a vast array of new functionality on atiny scale. Supported by EUR 2.8 million inresearch funding from the European Commission,the consortium focused particularly on ultra-sensitive nanosensors capable of detecting signalsin molecules; nanostructures for harvestingenergy for the development of autonomousnanosystems; nanodevices for spot cooling of integrated circuits; and nanodevices for radio-frequency (RF) communication.'These nanodevices will be needed in the futurefor very low power or autonomous nanosystemsfor many applications, including health andenvironmental monitoring and the "Internet of Things",' Dr Balestra explains.Nanoscale systems-in-package (SiP) or system-on-chip (SoC) devices, integrating processing



power with sensors, RF communication and arange of other functionalities, for example, could be used to detect all manner of substances, toxicand benign, including chemicals in theenvironment, in food, and in the human body.In the NANOFUNCTION project, the researchersadvanced the current state of the art, developing a

low-cost and highly efficient nanowire sensorarray, which contains more than 1000 siliconnanowires and integrates different sensingelements to simultaneously detect variousmolecules. To test the array, the team designedeffective functionalisation techniques for DNA grafting - a cutting-edge and highly experimentalprocess in which a segment of DNA is removed andreplaced by another form of the DNA structure.The team further showed how nanostructures, as

well as acting as sensors, can also provide criticalimprovements to existing sensor technology andother electronic applications. Working in an areaknown as 'cooltronics,' the team proved that hugeperformance enhancements or new regimes of operation are enabled when critical components inan electronic circuit are cooled to ultra-low temperatures. Their approach relies on a new typeof 'electron cooler' that uses strained silicon (sSi) incombination with a superconductor, and which hasso far been tested on terahertz (THz) radiationsensors - an emerging technology operating in thefrequency range between microwaves and infraredlight waves, which has many potential uses,including medical imaging, security and spaceapplications.Similarly, the consortium took a cutting-edgeapproacommunicationsch to using nanostructuresfor RF, exploring the potential for nanowires to beused as highly efficient RF interconnects andantennas - technology that could lead to much

smaller communication devices.

Nano-power:But where would such a tiny device draw powerfrom? Conventional batteries are still a long way from reaching the nanoscale. TheNANOFUNCTION researchers thereforeinvestigated innovative ways to power nanoscaledevices from their immediate environment,drawing energy from vibrations, movement, heat

or solar power and storing it in active materialsthat can act as nano-batteries. The developmentpaves the way for fully autonomous nano-devicesable to power themselves.'These nanotechnologies will be combined andintegrated in future autonomous nanosystems, which will be needed for many applications. The

main challenges are the development of CMOS-compatible technologies and the reduction of theenergy consumption of sensors, computing andRF communication, as well as increase in theenergy harvested from the environment,' DrBalestra says.He notes that in the NANOFUNCTION project

many challenges have been overcome, and thatthe team's work is helping open the door tofurther miniaturisation of devices.'Miniaturisation remains a major enabler for pricereduction, functionality multiplication, andintegration with other electronics. In addition,nanoscale structures can improve devices'intrinsic performance or enable new functionality,such as ultra-high-sensitivity detection,' heexplains.

In advancing the current state of the art andcarrying out extensive dissemination activitiesamong the European and internationalnanotechnology community, NANOFUNCTION's work constitutes an important benchmark in thefield.'It will benefit European industry and society by preparing long-term integration, which Europecan rely on to underpin research on advancedtechnology development in this strategic "Morethan Moore" field - in which Europe already has astrong position,' Dr Balestra says.He notes, nonetheless that it is likely to be 10 to20 years before such advanced nanodevices maketheir way into commercial applications.'For commercial exploitation, additional research will be needed in order to optimise thesenanocomponents for very important applicationsfor European economy and society,' he says.NANOFUNCTION received research fundingunder the European Union's Seventh Framework

Programme (FP7).

Link to project on CORDIS:- FP7 on CORDIS- NANOFUNCTION project factsheet on CORDISLink to project's website:- 'Beyond CMOS nano-devices for adding functionalities to CMOS' project websiteLinks to related video:- NANOFUNCTION project video

Other links:- European Commission's Digital Agenda website

http://cordis.europa.eu/fp7/home_en.html

http://cordis.europa.eu/projects/rcn/95145_en.html

http://www.nanofunction.eu/nanofunction/




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXwniDbiQZM

http://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/

http://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXwniDbiQZM


http://cordis.europa.eu/projects/rcn/95145_en.html

http://cordis.europa.eu/fp7/home_en.html



ScienceFaith& Article



How long do these two words

were making troubles to most

of us when hearing any of them

against the other.

These troubles didn’t arise in one hour or less, it

could have been much easier, it first appeared

when Galileo told the priests about his theory of

the rotation of the earth around the sun.

At that time, this was considered to be a kind of

shifting away from God’s mechanism in the world,

and Galileo’s destiny was to die like witches.

Galileo was not the last one to fall in such

dramatic situation.

Many people since that disaster were afraid of

showing any discovery, that was contradicting

with the church, to people.But this didn’t last too long, it was around the

1600’s when Rene’ Descartes came with his theory

of philosophy, he is considered the father of

modern philosophy, which arises a lot of

suspicions around him, some of the priests

accused him of harboring some of the religious

beliefs in that time.

However, Descartes is considered the first thinker

to emphasize the use of natural science in our life.

After Descartes died in Sweden, Queen Christina

abdicated her throne to convert to Roman

Catholicism. The only Roman Catholic with whom

she had prolonged contact was Descartes, who

was her perfect model. Many scientists have

passed with this experience many times, they

never got hopeless. Instead, they have enough

faith to convince people with their work .

And this is the main conceptual difference between

Faith and Science; in science you made a lot of

practical experiments to prove you are right and

then apply your theory on any application to prove

the concept of your theory .

On the other hand, faith doesn’t pass on all these

steps. Instead, what you have to get in your deep

belief in your idea, contradicting all the facts.

You may say “People, whom have Faith, shall suffer

a lot in his/her life!!”

What I’m going to tell you is that, a long history,

these great scientists such as Galileo, Boyle,Einstein, Descartes, Newton, and others, were

having their faith in their idea, discarding all the

opposing conditions. Without your faith in yourself

and that you can make what is different, you will be

a person without goal, dream, and hope.

This was the message from all the holy books by

Allah, to have faith and to construct the world,

proving that Science and Faith should be told

together, not versus each other.

A.B.A



C O

P Y R I G H T E D

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