The Commonwealth Ombudsman, fresh from having completed a scathing report on the wrongful deportation of Vivian Alvarez, has revealed that he's now investigating the case of someone who was detained by the Immigration Department for more than three years. The Ombudsman, Professor John McMillan, says yesterday's was the most damning report he'd ever prepared.
For a lot of us here tonight, these have been the toughest days of our lives.
This kind of thing always happens to someone else. I've heard many people say that over the last few days and I've said it myself. But the reality is that bomb hit us that night, and it's hit our whole community, and so tonight we come here and as we said in the homily, we come with questions. Now one question on my mind is: why did this happen?
And apparently it's about religion. Apparently these wild, radical, whoever they are have decided that what we were doing was offensive to them. But we were eating dinner on the beach with our friends and families. Who does that offend? Who doesn't eat dinner with their family and friends? It's the most common thing in the world.
And now the cowards who planned and who advocate and champion this horrific act say that they are heroes and that the people who did it are heroes. But what's heroic about murdering the innocent and leaving families ruined?
But having been broken open, our hearts have been exposed, and the support and the strength that has been shown by the group who were together in Bali, while we were in Bali, was amazing.
We all leaned on each other and we all stayed positive. We even managed to make a few jokes. I managed to be the brunt of most of them because when the bomb went off it blew off my pants and I spent the night walking around in my undies.
(laughter from congregation)
Since coming home we tried to see each other every day, and as JK said, we're a family now.
But we've been bolstered by community support. I know for my family we got home on Monday and we found that our fridge was so stocked with groceries that there were some people who'd gone out and bought eskies so that there was more room to put the food in, and we had a bakery on the end of our table. And I was so grateful and proud to be a Novocastrian.
These are our darkest hours, the worst days of so many of our lives. This sad and sickening act has torn us open. But we'll stand together and we'll make it through.
The early versions of the book were displayed to the court by expert witness for the plaintiffs and creationist historian Barbara Forrest of the Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond. She suggested that they were strong proof that ID is indeed creationism by another name.
Forrest compared early drafts of Of Pandas and People to a later 1987 copy, and showed how in several instances the word 'creationism' had been replaced by 'intelligent design', and 'creationist' simply replaced by 'intelligent design proponent'.
"Forrest's testimony showed that ID is not a scientific theory, but a Trojan horse for creationism," said Eric Rothshild of Pepper Hamilton in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, an attorney for the plaintiffs.
The politicization of Internet control has intensified as the European Union made clear at the latest meeting on the one hand of its backing of the ITU and the United Nations, as it argued that other governments and international agencies must work together with ICANN when it comes to assigning domain names.
In part given the fact that the head of the ITU is a Japanese national, the Japanese government too has made clear its support for the U.N.-led initiative, thereby siding its support for the EU proposal. Given that Japan is the world's second-largest Internet user following the United States and the EU and Japan combined make up a significant part of global Web use, their joint opposition to continued U.S. dominance could well be the single-biggest source of friction at the upcoming Tunis conference. At the same time, while there are 13 principal routing servers that ICANN is connected to worldwide, only three are based in Japan and Europe, while the remaining 10 are located across the United States alone.
The Japanese media has pointed out that the existing domain-naming system has reached its limit, especially as many point out the need to come up with new names such as .asia to meet the ever-changing needs of Internet users worldwide without having to resort to the United States as the final arbiter of whether or not such names are appropriate.
In addition, the financial daily Nihon Keizai Shimbun pointed out that a U.S.-led Internet naming system inevitably becomes focused on the English language, whereas much of the growth seen in the World Wide Web these days comes from non-English-speaking developing countries. Certainly, objection to the dominance of the English language on the Web, particularly in assigning domain names, is a common complaint from both developing and industrialized countries alike where English is not the native tongue.
For its part, the United States has made clear its opposition to changing ICANN's role in naming domains as it continues to argue that now is not the time to change the system as it could lead to confusion while arguing that the United Nations would simply not be able to handle the responsibility.
Meanwhile, the ITU's Utsumi stressed the need to reach a consensus at the upcoming conference, stating that 'if we wish to build a just and equitable information society, this summit cannot be allowed to fail.'
At least one Australian is among 19 people killed in explosions in the popular Indonesian resort island of Bali, Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer said.
Up to four explosions rocked tourist areas of Kuta and Jimbaran Beach, wounding 51 people, including three Australians.
One hospital official said at least 35 wounded foreigners were taken to the main hospital on Bali.
Mr Downer says he is finding it hard to get detailed information.
'There are reports that there could be between 30 and 40 injured and some reports are suggesting that there are nine or so dead but these numbers are very early and they could change significantly,' he said.
'We know from experience the numbers unfortunately could turn out to be a good deal higher than that.'
Daniel Martin, a tourist in Bali, says there was chaos after the blast in Kuta Square.
'There was thick smoke for a few minutes afterwards but there didn't seem to be any fire,' he said.
'People were clambering onto the roof of the restaurant. It's about a three storey building so people were climbing out and screaming and jumping down to the street.
'It was pretty harrowing stuff.'
Phonelines between Bali and other parts of the country were overloaded, as people struggled to contact friends and relatives in the area.
Peter Holden of Gosford on the central coast of New South Wales says he received an SMS message from his daughter Donna, who lives in Bali, telling him about the explosions.
Mr Holden says his daughter has reported several fatalities.
'There have been at least two bombs gone off in Jimbaran in restaurants and those kind of restaurants are restaurants populated by tourists in the main,' Mr Holden said.
'And then a more recent report just a moment ago that there's also reports of another bomb in Kuta Square. That's a pretty busy tourist area,' he said.
The blasts come almost exactly three years since two nightclubs were bombed in Bali's famous Kuta Beach in October 2002, killing 202 people, including 88 Australians.
Explosions rocked�the Indonesian tourist island of Bali last night, leaving at least 23 people dead and dozens wounded.
Witnesses said they saw body parts, including a severed head and a leg, and hospitals filled with injured.
Many foreigners were�among those killed. The Foreign Affairs Minister, Alexander Downer, said at least one Australian
was confirmed dead.
The blasts at Jimbaran beach and a bustling outdoor shopping centre in downtown Kuta "were clearly the work of terrorists'',
Police Major General Ansyaad Mbai, a top Indonesian anti-terrorism official, told the Associated Press.
Komang, a receptionist at the Graha Asih Hospital, close to Jimbaran Bay, said there were at least eight people in the morgue and that doctors were treating at least 13 wounded. "It's a horrible scene,'' she said. "Some people have had their heads blown off.''
The bombs went off almost simultaneously at�about 7.30pm local time (9.30pm Sydney time).
The blasts hit two restaurants that were packed with foreign and Indonesian diners.
Wayan Kresna said he witnessed the first bomb at a seafood restaurant on Jimbaran beach. He counted at least two dead and said many others were taken to hospital.
This attack comes almost three years to the day after terrorists killed 202 people, including 88 Australians, in a similar attack on two Kuta bars.
Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has condemned the blasts as a criminal act.
Anyone who has relatives or friends in Bali is advised to try to contact them directly before calling the DFAT hotline on 1800 002 214.
A lesson learned by centuries of beachcombers has been distilled to a physicist's formula: to make the perfect sandcastle, use eight parts sand to one part water.
The physicists' study, released before publication in the journal Nature Physics, is entitled, rather grandly, 'Maximum angle of stability of a wet granular pile'.
While it deals with sandcastles, it could also help determine the stability of retaining walls and the material they hold back, one of its authors said.
This study and those that follow on this subject might have implications for those preparing for or recovering from a watery disaster like a hurricane, physicist Arshad Kudrolli said.
'Our study is the first step, in some sense, in trying to understand what's the most stable angle that one can build, say, a retaining wall,' he said. 'And if it fails, where would the material end up? How much part of the land will give way?'
Inspired by childhood memories of the seaside, the study's authors worked on a simple model of what makes for the most stable construction involving liquid and particles.
In the case of a sandcastle, builders need to use roughly one-eighth the water to the amount of sand, though Mr Kudrolli said there is a range of possibilities that would work.
Quicksand is not the bottomless pit portrayed in Hollywood films that sucks in unsuspecting victims and swallows them whole. It is true the more people struggle, the deeper they sink into the soupy mixture.But its buoyancy makes it impossible to be completely submerged, scientists report today in the journal Nature. 'Everybody thinks, thanks to Hollywood, that you can drown in quicksand. Basically if you do a simple buoyancy calculation, the Archimedes force, it is immediately evident that you can't drown completely,' says Professor Daniel Bonn, a physicist at the University of Amsterdam.Quicksand consists of salt, water, sand and clay. It is the water content that makes quicksand, which is found near estuaries, beaches and rivers, so dangerous.
National Tally Room Preparations
The NTR for the 2004 federal election was located at Exhibition Park in Canberra. It took about two weeks to build, three days to dismantle and many months of detailed planning to organise.
Transforming the empty hall into the central point on election night was a massive logistical exercise. The AEC had access to the building from 27 September when the work began on:
- laying the temporary floor
- building the 35 metre x 7 metre tally board
- allocating space to the media, parties and television networks
- organising the electricity supply, air conditioning, telecommunication lines and computer cabling.
Elaborate security arrangements were in place during the building of the tally room and on election night. To ensure the smooth running of the NTR the AEC also conducted a rehearsal on the Thursday before election day to test the computer system and to provide training for the casual staff employed on the National Tally Board and in divisional offices throughout Australia.
The NTR cost approximately $650 000 to organise. This included the hire of venue, communication and computing facilities, equipment hire, casual staff wages and security. The television networks met the costs of constructing their own sets.
National Tally Room Logistics
The NTR included:
- 700 members of the media
- four major and two minor purpose-built television studios
- 100 political party workers and Members of Parliament
- 160 international and other official guests
- 150 AEC and other NTR workers
- 2 400 members of the public (a maximum of about 300 at any one time).
On the technical side there were:
- 84 terminals, four printers and 7 separate data feeds
- six kilometres of telephone cables
- 8.5 kilometres of computer cabling
- two mobile telephone repeater stations
- in excess of 300 mobile and 150 static telephones
- up to 650 amps of electrical load (enough to power a small town).
Today's communications satellites demonstrate how an object can remain poised over a fixed spot on the Equator by matching its speed to the turning Earth, 22,300 miles (35,780 km) below. Now imagine a cable linking the satellite to the ground. Payloads could be hoisted up it by purely mechanical means, reaching orbit without any use of rocket power. The cost of launching payloads into orbit could be reduced to a tiny fraction of today's costs.
The space elevator was the central theme in my 1978 science-fiction novel The Fountains of Paradise (soon to be a Hollywood movie). When I wrote it, I considered it little more than a fascinating thought experiment. At that time, the only material from which it could be built – diamond – was not readily available in sufficient megaton quantities. This situation has now changed, with the discovery of the third form of carbon, C60, and its relatives, the Buckminsterfullerenes. If these can be mass-produced, building a space elevator would be a completely viable engineering proposition.
What makes the space elevator such an attractive idea is its cost-effectiveness. A ticket to orbit now costs tens of millions of dollars (as the millionaire space tourists have paid). But the actual energy required, if you purchased it from your friendly local utility, would add only about a hundred dollars to your electricity bill. And a round trip would cost only about one tenth of that, as most of the energy could be recovered on the way back.
Once built, the space elevator could be used to lift payloads, passengers, prefabricated components of spacecraft, as well as rocket fuel up to Earth orbit. In this way, more than 90 per cent of the energy needed for exploration of the solar system could be provided by Earth-based energy sources.
Looking even farther ahead, one could see the virtual elimination of the rocket except for minor orbit adjustments. By extending the elevator, it would act as a giant sling, and payloads could be shot off to anywhere in the solar system by releasing them at the correct moment. Of course, rockets would still be responsible for the journey back to Earth – at least until elevator/slings were constructed on the other planets. If this ever happens, the most expensive component of travel around the solar system would be for life support – and inflight movies.
As its most enthusiastic promoter, I am often asked when I think the first space elevator might be built. My answer has always been: about 50 years after everyone has stopped laughing. Maybe I should now revise it to 25 years.
Yes, the spectacle of the two major parties slugging it out brought to mind the old system. And yet, curiously enough, the result looks like precisely the kind of outcome MMP encourages a shifting balance of power around the notional centre, where all must take into account the position of the other, not dismiss them as irrelevant. To paraphrase another commentator, this is the opposite of Geoffrey Palmer's famous 'unbridled power'.
If First Past the Post lingers anywhere it is in the mindsets of certain journalists and politicians. Elections are still reported as though they are rugby tests, and there is an almost tangible desire for a close result to mean instability or potential chaos.
Perhaps this is due partly to the journalistic instinct for avoiding boredom. Where Helen Clark plainly revels in the Scandinavian torpor of policy negotiation and strategic alliance building, we hacks would prefer it all to descend into bitching and scratching because it makes better headlines and obviates the need for anything more than superficial analysis.
Attempts now to blame MMP for delivering a supposedly unjust outcome, as Richard Prebble has argued, can perhaps be attributed partly to the Right's lingering distaste for a system that by design precludes absolute minority rule and 'reform' by decree. As Prebble also observed, Brash fought a good First Past the Post campaign. It's just that history has moved on.
Hurricane Rita-driven winds pushed floodwaters from the Industrial Canal into the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans and Chalmette as water topped a section of the levee that was under repair, Secretary of Transportation and Development Johnny Bradberry said Friday.
Bradberry said the flooding was waist-deep near the levee.
He said there have not been any reports of flooding in other parts of the area, such near the 17th Street Canal or the London Avenue Canal, two troublespots during Hurricane Katrina.
Louisiana's top hurricane experts have rejected the official explanations for the floodwall collapses that inundated much of New Orleans, concluding that Hurricane Katrina's storm surges were much smaller than authorities have suggested and that the city's flood- protection system should have kept most of the city dry.The Army Corps of Engineers has said that Katrina was just too massive for a system that was not intended to protect the city from a storm greater than a Category 3 hurricane, and that the floodwall failures near Lake Pontchartrain were caused by extraordinary surges that overtopped the walls.
Workers repair a section of the levee at the 17th Street Canal, which breached and caused flooding.
But with the help of complex computer models and stark visual evidence, scientists and engineers at Louisiana State University's Hurricane Center have concluded that Katrina's surges did not come close to overtopping those barriers. That would make faulty design, inadequate construction or some combination of the two the likely cause of the breaching of the floodwalls along the 17th Street and London Avenue canals -- and the flooding of most of New Orleans.
Q So the lessons learned from Katrina will be applied in the case of Rita?
MR. McCLELLAN: Well, in terms of Katrina, that was a storm that was unprecedented in size and scope and devastation. It is something that we want to make sure all the lessons possible are learned, and we want to make sure that we know exactly what worked and what didn't work. And that's why we are working closely with Congress as they move forward on their investigation. That's why the President has tasked his Homeland Security Council to make sure that there is a comprehensive review of the preparedness and response relating to Katrina, so we're doing that.
Now, in terms of Rita, I just talked about the steps that we're taking. And we're going to make sure that we are doing everything we can to have the strongest possible coordination with state and local governments as we prepared and respond to Hurricane Rita.
Q Well, Scott, continuing with what Steve said, how is what you're doing for Rita different from what you did from Katrina?
MR. McCLELLAN: Sure. A couple of things -- one, the President is focused on making sure we have the strongest possible coordination with state and local governments in the path of Hurricane Rita. We hope Rita is not devastating, but we must be prepared for the worst. Coordination at all levels needs to be seamless, or as seamless as possible, and that's what we're working to do.
Homeland Security and FEMA officials are working closely with state and local governments so that resources can be targeted where they are most needed. They are redoubling efforts to make sure we have a full understanding of what the needs are so that we can make sure that those needs are met. And I went through several steps that were already taken to address these issues.
Q So that's -- you think that that's going to be an improvement over what was done in Katrina?
MR. McCLELLAN: Well, again, in terms of Katrina, we're still focused on the immediate needs of the people in the region and working to make sure that they are getting back up on their feet, that we're moving forward on the recovery, that we're moving forward on the rebuilding to help people rebuild their lives and rebuild their communities. We are determined to learn the lessons of Katrina, and that's why we have been assessing what's been working and what hasn't been working and taking steps to address those issues. That's why we're also working closely with Congress, and the President is committed to making sure that there's a thorough investigation so that we can learn those lessons.
Q Well, can you distinguish what you're doing differently?
MR. McCLELLAN: Yes, I just talked to you about where the President's focus is and what we are doing. We want to make sure that we're --
Q And these are things you didn't do in Katrina?
MR. McCLELLAN: We want to make sure that we are better prepared and better positioned to respond to Hurricane Rita and that's what we're doing. That's why I outlined the several steps that we are taking. And that's why I just told you that the President is focused on making sure that we have the strongest possible coordination with state and local officials, and that we have --
Q Which you didn't have before, right?
MR. McCLELLAN: -- as seamless as possible coordination with state and local officials.
Q In other words, better than the last time?
MR. McCLELLAN: I think I just answered that question, Bill.
Q No, not really.
Only half of the Bundestag owes its seats to state party lists and proportional representation. The other half of the chamber are actually British-style constituency MPs. A quick glance at the official results released by the Federal Returning Officer shows that an entirely first-past-the-post election would have led to more or less the same outcome.
If we simply ignore the half of the Bundestag that is elected by PR, and concentrate on the 299 MdBs elected by direktmandat (ie, the first-past-the-post constituency MPs), the composition of the new Bundestag would look like this:
SPD: 145 seats
CDU: 105 seats
CSU: 44 seats
Greens: 1 seat
Left: 3 seats
FDP: 0 seats
Uncertainty reinforces the Churchillian view of democracy as being the worst form of government apart from all the others. In the meantime, the obvious answer to the problem would be for Germany's SPD party to form a grand coalition with New Zealand's Labour and rule both countries - New Zealand did once rejoice in a 19th-century nickname as 'the Prussia of the Pacific'.
He [Joschka Fischer, the Green leader] told the Guardian: 'Can you really see Angela Merkel and Edmund Stoiber [the leader of the CDU's Bavarian sister party, the CSU] sitting round the table in dreadlocks? This is more our style. It's impossible. I don't see that.'
On issues such as atomic energy, taxation, social policy and Turkey's membership of the European Union, the conservatives and the Greens had nothing in common, he added.
Both Mrs Merkel and Mr Schr�der failed to win an outright majority for their parties in Sunday's election, which Mrs Merkel had been widely expected to win. Her CDU party got just 35.2% of the vote - one of its worst results ever, and far less than opinion polls had predicted. Mr Schr�oeder's Social Democrats won 34.3% of the vote.
Mrs Merkel's coalition partner, the FDP, won 9.9%, with the Greens on 8.1% and the recently formed Left party on 8.7%. Under Germany's constitution, the country's new parliament has to elect a new chancellor when it meets next month. But with Mrs Merkel unable to command a majority in the Bundestag, she is unlikely to win in a secret ballot of MPs.
After three rounds of voting, the country's president, Horst Koehler, could then invite her to form a minority centre-right government. But he is unlikely to invoke this option, which would almost certainly lead to the new government's swift demise and further humiliation for an already weakened Mrs Merkel. Instead, constitutional experts believe, Mr Koehler will dissolve parliament.
Until this happens, Mr Schroeder will carry on as chancellor until Germans go to the polls again, probably in January.Asked who was likely to win the face-off between Mr Schroeder and Mrs Merkel, Nils Diederich, a professor of political science at Berlin's Free University, said he had his money on the chancellor: 'There is now a poker game going on, with Schroeder playing for very high stakes. The reason he was so relaxed on election night is that he knows he is now in a favourable position.'
Article 63 (Election and appointment of the Federal Chancellor)
(1) The Federal Chancellor is elected, without debate, by the Bundestag on the proposal of the Federal President.
(2) The person obtaining the votes of the majority of the members of the Bundestag is elected. The persons elected must be appointed by the Federal President.
(3) If the person proposed is not elected, the Bundestag may elect within fourteen days of the ballot a Federal Chancellor by more than one-half of its members.
(4) If there is no election within this period, a new ballot shall take place without delay in which the person obtaining the largest number of votes is elected. If the person elected obtained the votes of the majority of the members of the Bundestag the Federal President must appoint him within Seven days of the election. If the person elected did not receive this majority, the Federal President must within even days either appoint him or dissolve the Bundestag
Now, a new study is offering insight into the long-term impacts of these changes, particularly the effects of large-scale deforestation in tropical regions on the global climate. Researchers from Duke University, Durham, N.C., analyzed multiple years of data using the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies General Circulation Computer Model (GCM) and Global Precipitation Climatology Project (GPCP) to produce several climate simulations. Their research found that deforestation in different areas of the globe affects rainfall patterns over a considerable region.
Deforestation in the Amazon region of South America (Amazonia) influences rainfall from Mexico to Texas and in the Gulf of Mexico. Similarly, deforesting lands in Central Africa affects precipitation in the upper and lower U.S Midwest, while deforestation in Southeast Asia was found to alter rainfall in China and the Balkan Peninsula. It is important to note that such changes primarily occur in certain seasons and that the combination of deforestation in these areas enhances rain in one region while reducing it in another.
This finding contradicts earlier research suggesting deforestation would result in a reduction in precipitation and increase in temperature in the Amazon basin, but carry no detectable impact on the global water cycle.
In truth, it is the complicated permutations of the German electoral system that have turned Dresden into such a hot button area. Although only one representative will actually be elected in the district, Germany's 'second vote' system -- in which individuals vote for a party they want to see in parliament -- could produce three extra parliamentary seats for Dresden. These are known as 'overhang' seats and are created to reflect more accurately and more democratically a party's true support. And it is these seats that are being eyed by the politicians. The current breakdown of seats in parliament is SPD 222, CDU 225. So those three seats could make a big difference and transform Dresden into the German kingmaker.
Indeed, there are already murmurings of a new Dresden "poker game" in which the Left Party might be convinced to encourage its voters to vote for the SPD. Its own candidate, Katja Kipping, is already assured a parliamentary seat due to the second vote system. So that leaves the party and its voters free to maneuver.
Public broadcaster ZDF and Forschungsgruppe Wahlen have released their first exit poll:
CDU - 37%
SPD - 33%
FDP - 10.5%
Greens - 8 %
Left Party/PDS - 8%
(6:32 p.m.) Cheers for SPD-chairman Franz M�unterfering, but otherwise restrained reactions in the Willy-Brandt House at the SPD's election party. With the weak results for their own party, the members are calculating that the crisis won't run too deep. Cheers break out whenever a new low number gets reported for CDU/CSU. 'The Union has lost,' is the tenor among the party faithful. And: more and more people are talking eagerly about a 'stoplight' (Red-Green-Yellow between the Social Democrats, Greens and FDP) coalition.'
WIESBADEN/BERLIN - As reported by the Federal Returning Officer, 41.9 percent of the persons entitled to vote have exercised their voting right until 2 p.m. (CEST) at today's Bundestag election. The votes cast by postal voters have not been included yet.The Federal Returning Officer has ascertained voter participation in co-operation with the Land returning officers on a representative basis for the entire Federal Republic of Germany.In the 2002 Bundestag elections, voter participation until 2 p.m. was 42.8 percent; total voter participation was 79.1 percent.The Federal Returning Officer asks all persons entitled to vote who have not voted yet to exercise their right to vote. The polling stations will be open until 6 p.m.
(6:48 p.m.) The head of the Free Democratic Party, Guido Westerwelle, sees his party as the 'victor of the day.'
Germany isn't exactly known as a den of gambling addicts, but after betting and winning that native son Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger be elected to the seat of Peter, more Germans than ever have been drawn to gambling on this Sunday's federal elections.
(7:26 p.m.) Despite his party's poor showing, Chancellor Gerhard Schr�der of the Social Democrats told party supporters Sunday night that he should remain chancellor. 'I feel this validates ... that in the next four years, the country will have a stabile government under my leadership.'
Sunday's results are not yet final. The results from 220,000 voters in Dresden will not be known for another two weeks -- votes that could be vital for the final outcome. Last week, far-right candidate Kerstin Lorenz of National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD) died of a stroke while giving a campaign speech, meaning that ballots there had to be reprinted and the vote delayed until Oct. 2.
It might not knock Coldplay or Kanye West off the top of charts, but physicists who say they have cracked the riddle of 'singing' sand dunes are compiling a CD of sand music. The team say their new theory allows them to predict the notes that different dunes will make.
Sand dunes in certain parts of the world are notorious for the noises they make as sand avalanches down their sides. Some emit low powerful booms, others sound like drum rolls or galloping horses, and some are even tuneful. These dune songs have been reported to last for up to 15 minutes and can sound as loud as a low-flying aeroplane. Physicists know it is the avalanches that set the grains humming, but the precise mechanism has remained controversial.
St�phane Douady of the French national research agency CNRS and his colleagues shipped sand from Moroccan singing dunes back to his lab to investigate. They found that they could play notes by pushing the sand by hand, or with a metal handle. That put to rest one theory that the noise was the result of the entire dune resonating.
