Geneva

The Nobel Peace Prize 1901.

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Biography

Jean Henry Dunant‘s life (May 8, 1828-October 30, 1910) is a study in contrasts. He was born into a wealthy home but died in a hospice; in middle age he juxtaposed great fame with total obscurity, and success in business with bankruptcy; in old age he was virtually exiled from the Genevan society of which he had once been an ornament and died in a lonely room, leaving a bitter testament. His passionate humanitarianism was the one constant in his life, and theRed Cross his living monument.

The Geneva household into which Henry Dunant was born was religious, humanitarian, and civic-minded. In the first part of his life Dunant engaged quite seriously in religious activities and for a while in full-time work as a representative of the Young Men’s Christian Association, traveling in France, Belgium, and Holland.

When he was twenty-six, Dunant entered the business world as a representative of the Compagnie genevoise des Colonies de Sétif in North Africa and Sicily. In 1858 he published his first book, Notice sur la Régence de Tunis [An Account of the Regency in Tunis], made up for the most part of travel observations but containing a remarkable chapter, a long one, which he published separately in 1863, entitled L’Esclavage chez les musulmans et aux États-Unis d’Amérique [Slavery among the Mohammedans and in the United States of America].

Having served his commercial apprenticeship, Dunant devised a daring financial scheme, making himself president of the Financial and Industrial Company of Mons-Gémila Mills in Algeria (eventually capitalized at 100,000,000 francs) to exploit a large tract of land. Needing water rights, he resolved to take his plea directly to Emperor Napoleon III. Undeterred by the fact that Napoleon was in the field directing the French armies who, with the Italians, were striving to drive the Austrians out of Italy, Dunant made his way to Napoleon’s headquarters near the northern Italian town of Solferino. He arrived there in time to witness, and to participate in the aftermath of, one of the bloodiest battles of the nineteenth century. His awareness and conscience honed, he published in 1862 a small book Un Souvenir de Solférino [A Memory of Solferino], destined to make him famous.

A Memory has three themes. The first is that of the battle itself. The second depicts the battlefield after the fighting – its «chaotic disorder, despair unspeakable, and misery of every kind» – and tells the main story of the effort to care for the wounded in the small town of Castiglione. The third theme is a plan. The nations of the world should form relief societies to provide care for the wartime wounded; each society should be sponsored by a governing board composed of the nation’s leading figures, should appeal to everyone to volunteer, should train these volunteers to aid the wounded on the battlefield and to care for them later until they recovered. On February 7, 1863, the Société genevoise d’utilité publique [Geneva Society for Public Welfare] appointed a committee of five, including Dunant, to examine the possibility of putting this plan into action. With its call for an international conference, this committee, in effect, founded the Red Cross. Dunant, pouring his money and time into the cause, traveled over most of Europe obtaining promises from governments to send representatives. The conference, held from October 26 to 29, with thirty-nine delegates from sixteen nations attending, approved some sweeping resolutions and laid the groundwork for a gathering of plenipotentiaries. On August 22, 1864, twelve nations signed an international treaty, commonly known as the Geneva Convention, agreeing to guarantee neutrality to sanitary personnel, to expedite supplies for their use, and to adopt a special identifying emblem – in virtually all instances a red cross on a field of white1.

Dunant had transformed a personal idea into an international treaty. But his work was not finished. He approved the efforts to extend the scope of the Red Cross to cover naval personnel in wartime, and in peacetime to alleviate the hardships caused by natural catastrophes. In 1866 he wrote a brochure called the Universal and International Society for the Revival of the Orient, setting forth a plan to create a neutral colony in Palestine. In 1867 he produced a plan for a publishing venture called an «International and Universal Library» to be composed of the great masterpieces of all time. In 1872 he convened a conference to establish the «Alliance universelle de l’ordre et de la civilisation» which was to consider the need for an international convention on the handling of prisoners of war and for the settling of international disputes by courts of arbitration rather than by war.

The eight years from 1867 to 1875 proved to be a sharp contrast to those of 1859-1867. In 1867 Dunant was bankrupt. The water rights had not been granted, the company had been mismanaged in North Africa, and Dunant himself had been concentrating his attention on humanitarian pursuits, not on business ventures. After the disaster, which involved many of his Geneva friends, Dunant was no longer welcome in Genevan society. Within a few years he was literally living at the level of the beggar. There were times, he says2, when he dined on a crust of bread, blackened his coat with ink, whitened his collar with chalk, slept out of doors.

For the next twenty years, from 1875 to 1895, Dunant disappeared into solitude. After brief stays in various places, he settled down in Heiden, a small Swiss village. Here a village teacher named Wilhelm Sonderegger found him in 1890 and informed the world that Dunant was alive, but the world took little note. Because he was ill, Dunant was moved in 1892 to the hospice at Heiden. And here, in Room 12, he spent the remaining eighteen years of his life. Not, however, as an unknown. After 1895 when he was once more rediscovered, the world heaped prizes and awards upon him.

Despite the prizes and the honors, Dunant did not move from Room 12. Upon his death, there was no funeral ceremony, no mourners, no cortege. In accordance with his wishes he was carried to his grave «like a dog»3.

Dunant had not spent any of the prize monies he had received. He bequeathed some legacies to those who had cared for him in the village hospital, endowed a «free bed» that was to be available to the sick among the poorest people in the village, and left the remainder to philanthropic enterprises in Norway and Switzerland.

Source: Nobel Prize.org

 

 

A possible biomedical facility at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN).

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 A well-attended meeting, called “Brainstorming discussion for a possible biomedical facility at CERN”, was held by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) at the European Laboratory for Particle Physics on 25 June 2012. This was concerned with adapting an existing, but little used, 78-m circumference CERN synchrotron to deliver a wide range of ion species, preferably from protons to at least neon ions, with beam specifications that match existing clinical facilities. The potential extensive research portfolio discussed included beam ballistics in humanoid phantoms, advanced dosimetry, remote imaging techniques and technical developments in beam delivery, including gantry design. In addition, a modern laboratory for biomedical characterisation of these beams would allow important radiobiological studies, such as relative biological effectiveness, in a dedicated facility with standardisation of experimental conditions and biological end points. A control photon and electron beam would be required nearby for relative biological effectiveness comparisons. Research beam time availability would far exceed that at other facilities throughout the world. This would allow more rapid progress in several biomedical areas, such as in charged hadron therapy of cancer, radioisotope production and radioprotection. The ethos of CERN, in terms of open access, peer-reviewed projects and governance has been so successful for High Energy Physics that application of the same to biomedicine would attract high-quality research, with possible contributions from Europe and beyond, along with potential new funding streams.

Courtesy: bjr journals

Scientists Find Evidence of Ancient Tsunami in Switzerland.

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Researchers say they’ve found good evidence that it has happened before. In the sixth century — the age of King Arthur, Mohammed and the bubonic plague — a bishop named Gregory of Tours noted an unusual event in Geneva. In 563, he wrote, a cascade of rocks plunged into the Rhone River, generating a  wave of water that “overwhelmed with a sudden and violent flood all that was on the banks as far as the city of Geneva,” over 40 miles away, according to the New York Times.

Historians reading Gregory’s story, which is backed up by other ancient texts, have suspected for quite some time that something akin to a tsunami had hit Lake Geneva.

Now, there may be science to prove it. On the bottom of the lake, nearly 1,000 feet down, researchers from the University of Geneva have discovered a massive, 16-foot deep deposit of sediment, six miles long and three miles wide. Taking samples from bits of wood and leaves stuck in the sludge, the scientists concluded that the sediment dates from between the late fourth and early seventh century. They suspect this may have been what was left of the rocky mass that Gregory reported nearly 1,500 years ago. Using computer simulations, they estimate that the effect of that much material plunging into the water would have caused a 26-foot high tsunami wave which would have reached Geneva in about 70 minutes.

What caused the rocks to fall into the river in the first place? It may have been an earthquake, say scientists. They also say lakeside dwellers should wipe that smug, not-tsunami-fearing look off their faces. “People think, ‘Oh, lucky us, we live near a lake — we don’t have any such threat,’ ” Dr. Guy Simpson of the University of Geneva told the New York Times. “This reminds people that hey, hang on, these things have happened in the past, and quite likely will happen again.”

Head on over to the New York Times website to check out a graphic illustrating how the Swiss tsunami may have unfolded. You can also listen to an interesting discussion with the article’s author, Henry Fountain, and find out what became of 6th century Geneva.

If you’re looking to bone up on ancient natural disasters, here’s a primer on a few lesser-known ones:

1. The Plague of Justinian

In 541-542 A.D., a tiny bacteria swept across the ancient world, killing as many as 100 million people. It’s named after Justinian, emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire at the time, who contracted the disease but did not die from it. We can all give thanks to Alexander Fleming for discovering that little mold penicillin in 1928 and ensuring this (probably) won’t happen again.

2. The Antioch Earthquake

The 6th century was not a great time for humanity in general. In 526 A.D., a devastating earthquake struck the city of Antioch, in present-day Turkey, killing some 250,000 people. The quake lifted the city’s port up by more than three feet and caused fires to break out, destroying what remained of the metropolis. Antioch, once a great outpost of the Byzantine Empire, was reduced to rubble in the disaster.

3. The Alexandria Tsunami

On July 21, 365 A.D., a magnitude 8.0 quake hit the island of Crete, generating a tsunami that swept across the Mediterranean towards the port city of Alexandria. The water pushed the port’s giant ships inland into the city and deposited them on top of buildings. Tens of thousands of people lost their lives.

4. Damghan Earthquake

This earthquake hit modern-day Iran on Dec. 22, 856 A.D., causing some 200,000 deaths, including 45,000 in the Persian city of Damghan.

5. Plague of Athens

During the Peloponnesian War (431-404 B.C.), Athens was struck down by a plague which may have wiped out as much as a third of the city-state’s population. Historians debate whether the epidemic contributed to Athens’ loss of the war to Sparta and the Peloponnesian league. In the city-state itself, however, the plague had a number of well-documented social effects. The Greek historian Thucydides recorded that it changed peoples’ attitudes toward the social order and money — with citizens spending and breaking the law with impunity.

Source: Time.com

 

 

 

Quantum cryptography conquers noise problem.

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Encoded photons sent a record distance along busy optical fibres.

Quantum cryptography could keep messages ultra-secure — if the right detector can be developed.

It’s hard to stand out from the crowd — particularly if you are a single photon in a sea of millions in an optical fibre. Because of that, ultra-secure quantum-encryption systems that encode signals into a series of single photons have so far been unable to piggyback on existing telecommunications lines. But now, physicists using a technique for detecting dim light signals have transmitted a quantum key along 90 kilometres of noisy optical fibre1. The feat could see quantum cryptography finally enter the mainstream.

You cannot measure a quantum system without noticeably disrupting it. That means that two people can encode an encryption key — for bank transfers, for instance — into a series of photons and share it, safe in the knowledge that any eavesdropper will trip the system’s alarms. But such systems have not been able to transmit keys along telecommunications lines, because other data traffic swamps the encoded signal. As a result, quantum cryptography has had only niche applications, such as connecting offices to nearby back-up sites using expensive ‘dark’ fibres that carry no other signals. “This is really the bottleneck for quantum cryptography,” says physicist Nicolas Gisin, a scientific adviser at quantum-cryptography company ID Quantique in Geneva, Switzerland.

Physicists have attempted to solve the problem by sending photons through a shared fibre along a ‘quantum channel‘ at one characteristic wavelength. The trouble is that the fibre scatters light from the normal data traffic into that wavelength, polluting the quantum channel with stray photons. Andrew Shields, a physicist at the Toshiba Cambridge Research Laboratory, UK, and his colleagues have now developed a detector that picks out photons from this channel only if they strike it at a precise instant, calculated on the basis of when the encoded photons were sent. The team publishes its results in Physics Review X.

Designing a detector with such a sharp time focus was tough, explains Shields. Standard detectors use semiconducting devices that create an avalanche of electrical charge when struck by a single photon. But it usually takes more than one nanosecond (10−9 seconds) for the avalanche to grow large enough to stand out against the detector’s internal electrical hiss — much longer than the narrow window of 100 picoseconds (10−10 seconds) needed to filter a single photon from a crowd.

The team’s ‘self-differentiating’ detector activates for 100 picoseconds, every nanosecond. The weak charge triggered by a photon strike in this short interval would not normally stand out, but the detector measures the difference between the signal recorded during one operational cycle and the signal from the preceding cycle — when no matching photon was likely to be detected. This cancels out the background hum. Using this device, the team has transmitted a quantum key along a 90-kilometre fibre, which also carried noisy data at 1 billion bits per second in both directions — a rate typical of a telecommunications fibre. The team now intends to test the technique on a real telecommunications line.

Gisin’s team has independently developed a photon detector with a similar time window, which they presented at the QCrypt 2012 meeting at the Centre for Quantum Technologies in Singapore in September. However, Gisin has calculated that such a technique cannot be used to transmit quantum signals beyond the range of a large city of 100 kilometres2. Scattering accumulates over distance, so there would eventually be so many stray photons that it would be impossible to filter them out, even with a precisely timed detector.

Still, 90 kilometres is a “world record that is a big step forward in demonstrating the applicability of quantum cryptography in real-world telecommunications infrastructures”, says Vicente Martín, a physicist at the Technical University of Madrid.

Source: Nature