Thursday, March 18, 2004

Pakistan's K2 2004 - Italians Return for Scientific & Mountaineering Expedition

MONTAGNA.ORG


ITALY: March 10, 2004 (Montagna.org) - At 6.00 pm on July 31, 1954, Lino Lacedelli and Achille Compagnoni became the first people to reach the summit of K2, the second highest mountain in the world (8,611m asl). Now, 50 years after the first successful ascent, Italians are returning to the Karakoram to celebrate that memorable moment with a new expedition titled “K2 2004 - 50 years later”. The expedition intends not only to repeat the historic endeavour, but also aims to reinterpret the values and challenges of the original adventure.





The ambitious and multifaceted project, coordinated by the Ev-K²-CNR Committee, is entrusted to a team of highly professional mountaineers including Alpine Guides and members of the Alpine Rescue Team, the Italian Alpine Academic Club (CAAI) and other elite climbing associations from all of Italy’s mountain regions. Technical and scientific teams will complete the group, reaching a grand total of nearly 100 people, to be led by Himalayan expert, experienced expedition leader and remote area scientific research coordinator, Agostino Da Polenza.





The mountaineering expedition



The mountaineering program includes an ascent of K2 by the Abruzzi Spur on the South face from Pakistan (the route used in 1954), and a simultaneous summit along the North Ridge from China. Prior to that but in the same season, the climbers will have first ascended Mt. Everest along the NE ridge from the Tibet Autonomous Region in China.


Unlike during the 1954 expedition, the 2004 team will include climbers from all over Italy, not just from the Alps, and two female climbers, nowadays a common reality in most important expeditions.



Agostino Da Polenza, on his fourth expedition to K2 as both mountaineer and expedition leader, will lead the team made up of:



-Alpine Guides from the Aosta Valley,



-“Ragni della Grignetta” elite climbing group,



-Alpine Guides and professional climbers from the Italian regions of Piedmont, Lombardy, Veneto, Abruzzo and Lazio.






The scientific expedition



The double ascent of K2 will be preceded by a scientific expedition to Everest, in a concluding salute to another Golden Jubilee: the 1953 summit of the world’s highest mountain by Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay Sherpa.





The team made up of climbers, technicians and scientists will leave Italy on April 7 and will attempt to summit Everest along the North-West Ridge as part of a series of physiological tests on physical and psychological reactions in extreme environments.





Expedition research on physiology, geodesy, glaciology, environmental sciences and eco-compatibility is coordinated and financed by the National Institute for Scientific and Technological Research on Mountains, INRM, and will also be carried out on K2. Italy aims in this way to “conquer” a new summit in the field of science, in the wake of the great Italian tradition begun by Ardito Desio continued today within the excellence of the Ev-K²-CNR Project.





This commitment also ideally corroborates the aims of the 1954 expedition, when for two months following the climbers’ return to Italy, Prof. Desio and his collaborators stayed on to complete their research on the Karakoram Valleys begun in 1953. The vast amount of scientific data accumulated then still today represents an important point of reference for researchers world-wide.





Central Karakoram National Park and the Siachen Peace Park



“K2 2004” should not be seen as just a mountaineering and scientific project, its aims including also important humanitarian and environmental programs, for example the implementation of protected area management and environmental research around K2, in collaboration with IUCN (the World Conservation Union) and UNEP (United Nations Environmental Programme). The Central Karakoram National Park around K2 was in fact instated by the Pakistani Government in 1993 but has yet to be implemented. “With your assistance, the 50th anniversary will be a good opportunity to make it into a reality,” Javid Zafar, Secretary of the Pakistan Ministry of Environment, recently said.





The aim of these initiatives is also to aid in stimulating the declaration of a Peace Park on the Siachen glacier. The Ev-K²-CNR Committee has now invested months in networking organisations and international institutions to promote peace in the mountain regions around K2, where a disastrous conflict between India and Pakistan has been waged for decades. The Minister of Agricultural and Forestry Policies and honorary expedition leader, Hon. Gianni Alemanno, will lead the initiative in collaboration with Italy’s Prime Minister and the Minister of Foreign Affairs. Together with the Italian Parliamentary Group “Friends of the Mountains”, an awareness raising campaign and actions to help promote dialogue in favour of the Peace Park has also been launched.



A medical dispensary



The “K2 2004” project in Pakistan began precisely one year before the anniversary of the summiting of the world’s second 8000 m peak with the inauguration of a medical dispensary in Askole, the last inhabited village along the route towards K2. The only health post in the Baltoro valley, the dispensary concept was elaborated following the 1996 expedition led by Agostino Da Polenza, when he and his team of climbers conceived this humble tribute to commemorate the death of the their companion Lorenzo Mazzoleni of the “Ragni di Lecco”. Mazzoleni fell from the western face of the mountain on his night-time descent from the summit on July 29, 7 years ago.





A Karakorum Museum in Skardu



On July 31 in Skardu, the capital of Baltistan in Pakistan’s Northern Areas, a museum named “Italy K2 – 50 years of Italian successes” will be inaugurated, as an outcome of the concept elaborated by the doyen of mountain journalism, Rolly Marchi.



The museum will host a photographic history of the successful first climb of K2 and equipment used during the 1954 expedition will be put on display. The exhibit will also include reference to other Italian successes over the past 50 years, including images, documentation, products and memorabilia of 50 companies or individuals that have contributed to Italian popularity worldwide since the ascent of K2.





Media and communications



Media involvement has not been left out of this rich program. Live televised broadcasts of the expeditions will be carried out by a specialised communications team and daily on-line reports will be sent directly from K2.





RAI, the Italian TV, and RCS, editorial group, join the climbing team


Both are partners of the “K2 2004 – 50 years later” project. RAI will be actively involved, dedicating a series of live broadcasts and TV specials to the event, culminating in a live special on the summit attempt. RCS will facilitate communication through its two national newspapers, Corriere della Sera and Gazzetta dello Sport.





Historical precedents



The summiting of K2 in 1954 was the culminating event of a project begun years prior by Ardito Desio, with the exceptional support of the Italian Alpine Club, the Italian National Research Council, the National Olympic Committee and the then Prime Minister Alcide De Gasperi. The summit of K2 can in fact be seen as the crowning glory of an Italian dream started years earlier, as far back as the beginning of the last century, when the first Italian effort to climb K2 was made 1909 by the Duke of the Abruzzi who repeatedly and unsuccessfully made attempts at the summit for an entire month.





20 years later, another Italian expedition set out for K2 with a new mountaineering and scientific agenda. Avoiding the possibility of a failed summit attempt, as potentially clamorous and tragic as that of Gen. Umberto Nobile and his trans-Arctic airship Italia earlier that same year, the scientific research became the real goal of the expedition. Ardito Desio took part in that expedition led by Aimone di Savoia, Duke of Spoleto.





Desio, involved in repeated rapid surveys on the glaciers, accompanied by an exploration team of scientists and mountaineers, later stated: “The sight of K2 was unforgettable, leaving a deep impression on my spirit and an indelible memory, full of desires and propositions.” These intentions would resurface 25 years later to be topped off by the success that put the Italian expedition in the limelight of the world.





Continuously updated information on “K2 2004 – 50 years later” can be found on http://www.montagna.org/K2-2004/





The End.


======================================================
Copyright C. 2002 - 2004
Pakistan Science and Engineering Forum (R)
"Kindling the Flame of Science in Pakistan (TM)"
PakSEF (TM) Daily Science News Update
=====================================================

Saturday, March 13, 2004

A.Q. Khan: nuclear outcast, but scientific benefactor

hsan Masood
6 February 2004
Source: SciDev.Net


Ehsan Masood describes the varied contributions of Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan to his country's research efforts.

Abdul Qadeer Khan, Pakistan's former chief nuclear weapons scientist who was last week pardoned for leaking nuclear secrets to Iran, Libya and North Korea, has been a major force in Pakistani science for more than a quarter of a century.

The government of President Pervez Musharraf said on Thursday (5 February) that the army’s audit department is to investigate the finances of all those connected with the current proliferation scandal.

In Khan's case, the army's enquiry is likely to place at least three institutions in the spotlight. For, in addition to his role in the nuclear weapons programme, Khan was well known as a donor to research causes.

A former president of the Pakistan Academy of Sciences, 69-year-old Khan has given time and money to several prestige research institutions over the past decades – whose future is now looking less certain following his admission that he masterminded the spread of uranium enrichment technology.

Institutions to benefit from his active involvement include the Pakistan Academy of Sciences (where he was president between 1997 and 2002); the Ghulam Ishaq Khan Institute for Engineering Sciences and Technology near the northwest frontier town of Peshawar, which Khan helped to establish; and the one-year-old Khan Institute for Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering (KIBGE), based at the University of Karachi.

Of these three, the future of the fledgling KIBGE hangs most clearly in the balance. The institute was Khan’s idea. He raised the funds and appointed senior staff. "Karachi is his home town," says one scientist who knows him well. "He felt he should do something about the fact that there is no major biotech research facility in a city of 10 million people."

The institute's director, Mujtaba Naqvi, has said that there is nothing secret or illegal in his labs. But observers believe that without Khan’s patronage, the institution is unlikely to continue in its present form, as construction remains unfinished, and Khan was one of its biggest donors.

Another institution that has benefited from Khan's support is the Ghulam Ishaq Khan Institute for Engineering Sciences and Technology, which is situated next to one of the country's largest dams, the Tarbela Dam near Peshawar.

Khan was one of the founders of the institute, which was set up partly to address the lack of high-quality engineering universities in Pakistan, as well as to encourage more women into engineering. He acted as its project director until the institute opened in 1993, and remains a member of its board of governors.

The institute's website describes Khan's efforts in glowing terms, and illustrates the reverence with which he is held in parts of the scientific community: "In spite of heavy preoccupations, he spared no pains to give his best to the creation of this institute. A touch of his vision and constructive genius can be discerned in all [the institute's] aspects, its curricula, its buildings and equipment and in the ethos of intellectual enterprise that permeates its atmosphere."

Khan is also understood to have helped out several other science organisations in need of money. A senior scientist who once struggled to fund a new research laboratory told SciDev.Net that his now-thriving lab owes its existence to Khan. "He came to me one day and asked how things were. I told him we didn't have enough money for construction of our new building. He said: 'don't worry. It will be done'. And that is exactly what happened."

Despite his transgressions, Khan is likely to remain popular with the public. This is partly because of his aggressively anti-Western views, which strike a chord with broad public opinion, and partly because of his popular image as the 'father' of the Islamic nuclear bomb.

Most of Pakistan's public, for example, does not agree with the way in which Musharraf has aligned Pakistan with the United States in the latter's 'war on terror'. Khan has never made any secret of his belief that Muslim countries should not rely on Europe and the United States for their national security.

In an essay entitled 'Restricted areas of science and technology and ways to develop them in the Muslim world', published in 2002, Khan calls on all Muslim countries to set up a joint atomic energy commission and to establish closer links between national defence research organisations.

"The survival of the Muslim world lies in joining hands for acquiring [nuclear] energy, which would also have its political and military advantages," he writes. "The only way to neutralise or withstand the pressure exerted by the West is to make ourselves self-sufficient in technologies which are either totally restricted or rationed to us."

The Khan affair is also prompting the army to review its procedures when appointing scientists to the nuclear programme. Previous Pakistani governments preferred to hire two kinds of scientists: those with a noticeable religious outlook on life, and those who had not lived or studied abroad; or had few overseas links.

The thinking behind this, according to one researcher with the Atomic Energy Commission, was that "a scientist with international connections might one day be tempted to leak information overseas; and a scientist who possessed the fear of God would never betray his country".


======================================================
Copyright C. 2002 - 2004
Pakistan Science and Engineering Forum (R)
"Kindling the Flame of Science in Pakistan (TM)"
PakSEF (TM) Daily Science News Update
=====================================================

India and Pakistan cement scientific ties

T V Padma
30 January 2004
Source: SciDev.Net


[NEW DELHI] The science ministers of India and Pakistan have agreed on a number of key areas of scientific collaboration through which they hope to strengthen ties between the two countries.

Meeting in New Delhi this week, Pakistan's minister for research and higher education Atta-ur-Rahman and Indian science minister Murli Manohar Joshi selected information technology; engineering sciences; pharmaceuticals; bioinformatics; and biotechnology for industrial, agricultural and health applications as areas in which researchers from the two countries will work together.

As a first step, the two countries will set up expert groups in these disciplines to initiate talks, according to an official spokesperson in New Delhi.

The meeting between the two ministers follows a landmark agreement reached earlier this month between the leaders of their respective nations to encourage greater cooperation in science and technology (see India and Pakistan pledge scientific cooperation).

Both countries face similar problems in areas such as health, agricultural and economic development. But a longstanding dispute over Kashmir has so far limited scientific cooperation between them.

However, with an overall improvement in relations in recent months between the two countries, many hope that scientific collaboration will develop.

"I have come to build bridges between the two countries," Rahman told an international conference on biodiversity and chemistry of natural products in New Delhi this week. "Scientists are joining hands to work for peace."

"Now that a composite dialogue [between the two countries] is in process, it should not be confined to trade and commerce and other issues," Rahman told SciDev.Net. "The two [nations] should collaborate in science and technology and education, in which they have a lot to share."

The two countries are also exploring ways to strengthen ties in higher education, such as by organising exchange visits of scientists and teachers. Of special interest are centres for excellence in various disciplines in both countries, which could be jointly tapped for mutual benefit.

But many fear that this is easier said than done, given the ongoing political tensions between the two nations.

Hurdles to scientific cooperation in the past — such as restrictions on visas and cancellation of flights — have not completely disappeared. And although air links have now been restored between the two countries, many argue that much needs to be done to ease delays and difficulties in granting visas.

"It will take a while," says P Balaram, professor at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore and member of the Indian Academy of Sciences. "There has not been much contact [in the past], so … the familiarity [between scientists between the two countries] will have to increase," he says.

"The key is the visas," says Virender Singh Chauhan, director of the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (ICGEB) in New Delhi. Even an international institute such as the ICGEB finds it difficult to obtain visas for visiting scientists from Pakistan, he says.

======================================================
Copyright C. 2002 - 2004
Pakistan Science and Engineering Forum (R)
"Kindling the Flame of Science in Pakistan (TM)"
PakSEF (TM) Daily Science News Update
=====================================================

Biotechnologists seek to bridge South Asian divide

K. S. JAYARAMAN


[HYDERABAD] Biotechnology collaborations have been agreed between India and Pakistan, ending more than five decades of scientific impasse between the two nations.

Last week, a Pakistani delegation to the BioAsia 2004 meeting in Hyderabad signed five agreements — three with Indian biotechnology companies and two with the All India Biotech Association (AIBA). The agreements are said to be the first involving a high-technology area to have been struck between the rivals.

"I will go back to my country extremely pleased," says Anwar Nasim, chairman of Pakistan's National Commission on Biotechnology, who led the delegation.

"We intend to collaborate with Indian companies in the areas of industrial products, vaccines, diagnostic kits and transgenic crops," Nasim told Nature. Under the agreements, the AIBA will help Pakistan to establish its own biotechnology association and will provide a list of Indian technologies that are available for licensing in Pakistan.

B. S. Bajaj, a senior AIBA official, says that in the long term the partnership should benefit both nations. "Indian technology could help Pakistan to bring down the price of its drugs, which are six to seven times more costly than in India," he says. "And Indian biotechnology companies will benefit from opening up a new market in their backyard."

The agreements are general in nature, however, and "we will have to see how they progress", cautions the AIBA's Ashok Sadim Khan. Nasim agrees that "complex issues will have to be dealt with" before the agreements are implemented. But he adds: "All I can say is that weare making a start, and are confident that many avenues will open up for collaboration."

Nasim says that prospects for improved relations between Indian and Pakistani scientists are looking brighter. "Our academy has already received an invitation from the Indian National Science Academy (INSA) and we are considering it," he adds. INSA secretary S. K. Sahni told Nature that, because things move slowly at government-to-government level, the INSA had decided to offer to launch discussions with the Pakistan Academy of Sciences on such common interests as agriculture and malaria.



======================================================
Copyright C. 2002 - 2004
Pakistan Science and Engineering Forum (R)
"Kindling the Flame of Science in Pakistan (TM)"
PakSEF (TM) Daily Science News Update
=====================================================

Friday, March 05, 2004

Fully Funded MS/PhD Research Opportunities at NIIT

Date: Thu, 4 Mar 2004 02:52:52 +0500 (PKT)
From: "Ashiq Anjum" Add To Address Book
Subject: [Research-Network] PhD/ MS funding available
To: pak-jobs-IT@yahoogroups.com
Cc: Research-Network@yahoogroups.com, Technology-Network@yahoogroups.com

Dear All,
With reference to my Email having Subject "Fully Funded Research Openings
at NIIT",i had publicized the information about the funded research
openings which NIIT is offering to talented and bright students.We were
asked about the funding issues, number of openings and other similar
queries.So i am writing again to clarify and answer all those questions
whih might be asked by young graduates and professionals.

PhD Scholarships:four PhD @ Rs 20,000/= PM each
MS Scholarships:four MS @ Rs 10,000/= PM each

The NUST admission criteria will be followed.

NUST addmission advertisement can be found at
http://www.nust.edu.pk/whatsnew.htm
Please look at the "Post Graduate Admission 2004" section of the above link.

For further information, please contact

Prof Dr Arshad Ali
arshad.ali@niit.edu.pk
Dean
NUST Institute of Information Technology
166A Street 9, Chaklala Scheme III
Rawalpindi, Pakistan
www.niit.edu.pk
Tel Off : 92 - 51 - 9280443, 92 - 51 - 9280658 Ext 101,
Mobile : 0320 - 4918064
======================================================
Copyright C. 2002 - 2004
Pakistan Science and Engineering Forum (R)
"Kindling the Flame of Science in Pakistan (TM)"
PakSEF (TM) Daily Science News Update
=====================================================