Arab Idol: No Bieber fever in Gaza

Palestinian teenage girls instead have Mohammed Assaf, a Palestinian contestant on 'Arab Idol' who has them glued to their phones, texting in votes for him.

By Christa Case Bryant,?Staff writer / May 31, 2013

A banner depicting Mohammed Assaf, a Palestinian contestant on 'Arab Idol,' is seen on a building in the West Bank city of Ramallah May 13. Assaf has suddenly become one of the Arab world's hottest singing sensations.

Mohamad Torokman/Reuters

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Mohammed Assaf, who grew up in this crowded refugee camp performing with his pianist sister, has suddenly become one of the Arab world?s hottest singing sensations.

Skip to next paragraph Christa Case Bryant

Jerusalem bureau chief

Christa Case Bryant is The Christian Science Monitor's Jerusalem bureau chief, providing coverage on Israel and the Palestinian territories as well as regional issues.

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Among Gaza's teenage girls, the handsome Mr. Assaf inspires a Justin Bieber-like fandom. His sister says that young girls regularly call the family home asking to marry her brother. Ask any teenage girl on the streets of Khan Younis what they think of him and soon you'll have a gaggle of them giggling into their headscarves and vying for a chance to tell outsiders just how wonderful their hometown here is.?

His soulful renditions of Palestinian nationalist songs have prompted Palestinians of all stripes to rally behind him in the second season of ?Arab Idol,? a Lebanon-based singing contest.?But his stardom also represents a broader success for Palestinian solidarity. Even before hordes of teenage girls were texting their votes for Mr. Assaf, more than a few Palestinians went out of their way to help the aspiring star overcome the unique obstacles of life ? never mind music careers ? in Gaza.

If it weren?t for that support, Assaf may have never even had a chance to audition for Arab Idol, let alone become one of the final seven contestants out of 27.

Because of growing militant activity in the nearby Sinai peninsula and ongoing Israeli concerns about the flow of militants and weapons in and out of the Gaza, the borders of this tiny coastal territory are tightly controlled.

So when auditions were held in next-door Egypt this winter, Assaf had trouble getting through the Rafah border crossing.?By the time he arrived at the audition center, the organizers had closed the doors and refused to let him in.

He immediately called his mother in disappointment. She told him, ?Don?t come back with empty hands, even if you have to jump over the wall,? recalls his older sister Nisreen.

So Assaf walked the perimeter of the property with a cousin studying in Cairo and found a place to jump the fence. But when he got inside, he was denied the necessary ticket for a turn to audition. After his pleas were rebuffed by the woman in charge, he tried a different form of protest: He began singing.

A fellow Gazan in the crowded waiting area immediately recognized Assaf?s voice, which had become well-known through his radio appearances.

?He said, ?My voice is not as good as yours, please, take my ticket,?? says Nisreen, surrounded by her brother?s image on multitudinous posters in the family?s neat but modest home. Big trucks rumble by on the sandy streets outside.

Assaf first sang in public at age five with Shireen, his eldest sister, who was well-known for her piano playing. While the siblings never had formal music lessons ??no music school existed until very recently, says Nisreen ? their parents strongly encouraged them to pursue their talents. Shireen broke her electric keyboard more than once and they bought a new one each time ? a big financial sacrifice in a place where the goal is often to merely making ends meet.

They also encouraged her kid brother to call in to a popular television show with singer Jamal al-Najjar, who would take questions. When Assaf called in, his "question" was more of a request: Listen to me sing.

Mr. al-Najjar not only indulged him, but asked for his phone number to follow up. Soon after, Assaf?s father arranged a meeting between the two, which launched a mentoring relationship that his sister credits with making his music career.

And when the opportunity came to audition for Arab Idol, Assaf?s parents once again strongly encouraged him. The?contest?represents the first possibility for Assaf to earn money from his singing; according to his sister, he already has a 10-year contract with MBC, the Saudi TV station that airs Arab Idol.

?He?s never made a penny from his singing,? says Nisreen, noting that local merchants frequently use his image to boost sales without paying him due to a lack of copyright law. ?Now, this is going to change.?

For Assaf?s fellow Palestinians, his success also represents an opportunity to earn more dignity and respect in the Arab world. The Palestinian cause is often championed for political reasons, but little is done to help the 5 million or more refugees whose families lost their homes in the 1948-49 war of Israeli independence.

?I believe he changed Arab perceptions for the better,? says Nismaa Arafa, a 10th?grader. ?Palestine became more popular in front of the Arab countries.?

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/N9fp-jMBnR8/Arab-Idol-No-Bieber-fever-in-Gaza

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One of the moon's mysteries solved: Origin of mascon basins

May 30, 2013 ? A mystery of the moon that imperiled astronauts and spacecraft on lunar missions has been solved by a Purdue University-led team of scientists as part of NASA's GRAIL mission.

Large concentrations of mass lurk on the lunar surface hidden like coral reefs beneath the ocean waves -- an unseen and devastating hazard. These concentrations change the gravity field and can either pull a spacecraft in or push it off course, sealing its fate to a crash on the face of the moon.

"In 1968 these mass concentrations were an unwelcome discovery as scientists prepared for the Apollo landings, and they have remained a mystery ever since," said Jay Melosh, a member of the Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory, or GRAIL, science team who led the research. "GRAIL has now mapped where they lay, and we have a much better understanding of how they developed. If we return to the moon, we can now navigate with great precision."

A better understanding of these features also adds clues to the moon's origin and evolution and will be useful in studying other planets where mass concentrations also are known to exist including Mars and Mercury, said Melosh, who is a distinguished professor of earth, atmospheric and planetary sciences and physics.

"We now know the ancient moon must have been much hotter than it is now and the crust thinner than we thought," he said. "For the first time we can figure out what size asteroids hit the moon by looking at the basins left behind and the gravity signature of the areas. We now have tools to figure out more about the heavy asteroid bombardment and what the ancient Earth may have faced."

The team confirmed the standing theory that the concentrations of mass were caused by massive asteroid impacts billions of years ago and determined how these impacts changed the density of material on the moon's surface and, in turn, its gravity field. A paper detailing the results will be published online by the journal Science on May 30.

In addition to Melosh, Purdue team members include Andrew Freed, associate professor of earth, atmospheric and planetary sciences, and graduate students Brandon Johnson and David Blair. Additional team members include Maria Zuber, GRAIL principal investigator and professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; J. Andrews-Hanna of the Colorado School of Mines; S. Solomon of Columbia University; and the GRAIL Science Team.

"The explanation of mascons has eluded scientists for decades," Zuber said. "Since their initial discovery they have also been observed on Mars and Mercury, and by understanding their formation on the moon we have greatly advanced knowledge of how major impacts modified planetary crusts."

The mass concentrations form a target pattern with a gravity surplus at the bulls-eye surrounded by a ring of gravity deficit and an outer ring of gravity surplus. The team found that this pattern arises as a natural consequence of crater excavation, collapse and cooling following an impact.

The team determined that the increase in density and gravitational pull at the bulls-eye was caused by lunar material melted from the heat of the asteroid impact. The melting causes the material to become more concentrated, stronger and denser, and pulls in additional material from the surrounding areas, Melosh said.

The large asteroid impacts also caused big holes into which the surrounding lunar material collapsed. As the cool, strong lunar crust slid into the holes it bent downward, forming a rigid, curved edge that held down the material beneath it and prevented it from fully rebounding to its original surface height. This causes a ring with less gravitational pull because the mass is held farther below the surface, the top of which is what most influences the gravitational signature, he said.

The outer ring of increased gravitational pull comes from the added mass of the material ejected by the initial impact that then piles on top of the lunar surface.

The team combined expertise in specialized computer analysis methods called hydrocodes and finite element codes to create computer simulations that could show the physical changes occurring from microseconds to millions of years. The team analyzed the Freundlich-Sharanov and Humorum mascon basins.

Melosh is a pioneer in adapting computer hydrocodes -- computer programs originally created to analyze the flow of liquids -- to simulate how complex materials move when high-speed collisions occur, like that of a planetary collision. Hydrocodes can be used to study such phenomena on a time scale of microseconds to hours, but are not practical from time scales much longer than that, he said.

Freed is a leader in adapting finite element codes, like those used to study car crashes, to simulate the changes in density of complex materials upon cooling and the evolution of Earth and other planets on the time scale of hours to millions of years.

Using the GRAIL data set, which offers an unprecedented, detailed map of the distribution of masses in the moon, the team was able to put together a picture of how the moon's crust and mantle behaved and the development of the concentrations of mass in the aftermath of large asteroid impacts.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/~3/jwYCiKAeaNY/130530142009.htm

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