on monday the u.s. imposed its toughest ever sanctions on venezuela's state owned oil company at a vespa and earlier the u.n. warned that a government crackdown on anti madieu i protest as as lead to a record number of detentions. the united nations is ging warring parties in yemen to withdraw troops from her data immediately fighting has fled in the port city and some of the areas risking the collapse of a six week old cease fire there are fears the crisis will get worse off to the retired dutch general in charge of the un brokered truce that down and around thirty thousand people in northeast nigeria have fled into neighboring cameroon ferrying an attack by boko haram fighters they left round town in borno state at the weekend following the departure of cameroonian forces those are the top stories this hour that's it from myself and the teen here in london science in a golden age is next. the week began with the

use of ninety days in the to protect us china trade will the world's largest supplier of liquefied natural gas is leaving the biggest oil cartel we bring you the stories to the shaping the economic world we live in counting the cost on al-jazeera. modern high tech advances in medicine and health all of course the result of many centuries of development with experimentation much of which took place in the islam and quote between the ninth and fourteenth centuries a golden age of saw it during this time scholars in the islamic world made huge contributions to medicine and created a body of knowledge that was tremendously important and influential around the world for many hundreds of years. which is professor of theoretical physics but born in baghdad i'll be exploring states of the art biomedical science and the

covering the current to be you should made to the field by the scholars the golden age. it was during the islamic golden age that medicine started to be treated as a true science with emphasis on empirical evidence and repeatable procedures during that time medical books were written they became standard texts throughout the world for many hundreds of years i've come here to the hum of hospital in. to see how the ideas of the stillness in the medieval stomach world compare. our modern medicine. the hospital's neonatal unit deals with premature and newborn

babies who are suffering from a variety of conditions is the only one of its kind in qatar and babies are referred here from across the country all in all sit on our doors we probably have chose to seventeen to eighteen hundred babies and that amounts to about ten to eleven percent of the total birth that occurs in this hospital so it is by comparison one of the biggest units in the world we do look after babies who are as small as twenty three or twenty four weeks just asian so you're looking at a fight months pregnancy thought months and one week pregnancy and that in itself is incredible i mean not that long ago twenty three twenty four we call just days and there's no way that survivor was a little we've come a long way at this hospital they're carrying out pioneering research to improve the treatments of babies born with neonatal but the that's is babies born with serious

neurological damage because of a problem with oxygen or blood supply in the womb. the gold standard of treatment is putting these babies on a cooling map for us to try to reduce the temperature and limit the potential ongoing damage that could ensue in the brain however it does not really provide an appropriate success rate worldwide here we're trying a simple remedy that we believe has potential which is that addition of a drug called magnesium sulphate but it's never been tried in combination with the cooling. to improve the reliability of their research the hospitals using what we call a controlled burn some of the babies receive magnesium sulfate whereas a separate group the control group don't receive it this amounts to a hospital to compare fairly. effects of the treatment with and without the drug.

so this particular study is a double blind placebo control which means we are offering some of our babies a placebo or some or giving them magnesium sulphate we don't really know which are which and that's otherwise i mean why the virus a little bit why it's exactly one thing that's of tremendous interest to me is that this idea of a control group actually goes all the way back over a thousand years to a persian physician by the name of a razi who who built the first hospitals in baghdad who was looking into the causes and treatments of meningitis and i believe he had not only his sample of patients but he had a control group to which he wasn't it minister in the treatment in that case it was blood letting you know isn't the way to treat meningitis but the idea of a control group goes all the way back to to iraq this is actually one of the all

most important components of research that we do how to control to try to to ensure that you know our studies come out as non-biased as possible to compare you know absolutely out of the. other ozzy was born in the city of ray to herat in the mid nineteenth century and he was an early proponents of applying a rigorous scientific approach to medicine during his distinguished career he served as chief physicians of hospitals in both ray and baghdad. in the early tenth century the ruling tailless him back that look to feed off to rozzi where in the city he should build a new hospital so a rise he designed experiments he hung up around different locations to see how quickly they rotted and so determined the place with the cleanest air this was typical of a razi you have a problem you design an experiment to find the answer. during

the golden age the dissection of human bodies was considered disrespectful but there was one group of people who knew quite a bit about anatomy butches albeit the anatomy of animals rather than humans. well even though this is just the lambs probably human all we can still see quite clearly the different compartments the different chain biz within the heart this isn't something very familiar to his physicians of the medieval age. in the seventeenth century william harvey famously carried out his groundbreaking research into the circulation of blood in the function of the heart but in nineteen twenty four an ancient document was discovered this was a text written by him in the seals the thirteenth century arab physicians in it he

described the basics of pulmonary circulation how large doesn't move across from one side of the heart to the other has to take the long way round around the body this four hundred years before harvey. building on the writings of physicians like him enough he said william harvey our understanding of the heart has continued to develop her field hospital in the u.k. is part of the country's largest center for heart and lung disease there cutting edge treatments build on the work of professor mag one of the world's leading heart specialists who set up the hospital's busy transplant unit and has received a knighthood in britain for his services to medicine the heart is such like a magical the more i learn about the more i respect. because it goes on

incessantly beating quietly maintaining life professor yet who is also interested in the history of medicine as part of a paper he commission for medical journal he's researched the life and work of it. here we have a scholar. born in syria in the early part of the thirteenth century he was a policeman because he was studying. i feel your churn and here was a scientists if you lie it was a discoverer but arguably his most important contribution was his commentary on medicine in which he looked at how blood moves through the heart so this is the heart and you can see quite clearly the right ventricle and the left ventricle and these are two completely separate chambers the question has been.

how does blood go from the right ventricle to the left and through. the centuries the accepted view had been that of the renowned greek physician galen galen said that blood passes directly between the rights and left ventricles of the heart through tiny holes in the septum the dividing wall that separates them from the feast was the first to challenge galen's view he established that there weren't any holes so they had to be another way for blood to pass from rights and left the contention of some persons to say that this place is poor yes it's beneath on the preconceived idea that the blood from the right men to him had to pass through the process. and they are oh. yes he's quoted as saying that for somebody as young as this

person at the time when he was twenty nine to have the courage to state. such a thing it's absolutely remarkable. galen said that there are holes in the septum. but. if you open the right ventricle like and doing now it is solid there on no channels whatsoever even if use was absolutely right. in the feast dated that the blood must first pass through the lungs where he said it mingled with them before it came back to the heart and was pumped around the body and now we know. the blog from the right's ventricle goes into the pony are three is here goes around the lawn. comes back. in these on the navy seals into the offensive so this

is the problem of the research relation which comes here that is the discovery it's now obvious what it was and then. evelyn if he says description wasn't widely accepted at the time and it wasn't until his manuscript was rediscovered in the twentieth century this work was universally recognized it's now part of the long history of medicine that continues to evolve today we have learnt a lot. more grant how to stop it. how to replace how to mend the. person or. the journey continues. early hospitals did exist in the ninth century baghdad but these were little more than hospitals for the sick offering care but not much in the way of cure however hospitals as we recognize them today giving treatments and offering medicine for

free they begin to appear around the empire in cities such as cordova and damascus . in order for these hospitals to provide care they needed a knowledge of medicines and surgery the most important work of the golden age was written by the great tenth century philosopher and physician been seen or better known by his latin name at the center this is my personal copy of his great text the canon of medicine. the full work was a multi-volume group of techs that took on where the greeks left off physicians like galen and hypocrisy in this first book he describes human anatomy in great detail and what i love is that he talks about things like. the muscles of the face and then goes on to talk about the muscles of the forward the muscles of the eyeball even the muscles of the. he that works his way through the entire human anatomy in other he describes surgery he describes illnesses and treatments it's

medical knowledge as they understood it then it contained a lot of. superstition but a lot of common sense as well the point is this text was so important it was still being used around the world over five hundred years later. even though today we know that not everything had been seen a road was corrected his work was the pinnacle of medical knowledge at that time in his canon he includes a large number of medicines and remedies that use common had. during the golden age herbal remedies weren't an alternative to mainstream medicine they were all very new and as the empire grew travelers will bring back new plots from far and wide so new drugs were discovered and administered rema hazmat is based in our june in jordan she cultivates medicinal herds some of which have been in use since the golden age. live and is good for relaxed. and is very

good for. so even though they would have used this in the golden age i wouldn't understand about bacteria they knew it was still good yeah ok and this is. wormwood yes. what is this use for is good for the call over to treat cancer these are yes and this was known from a long time you know. this is a is. this. sage oh yeah this is good for good for their good base and. what i find so fascinating is that during the golden age every hospital would have had a herb garden just like this with a drug store and it's interesting that we're hearing those same devotees the still describe and in use in modern times. even seen as great canon of

medicine describes a variety of her. one thousand years after the canon was written dr detlef concern is growing some of these herds in a park in istanbul so that he can study the medical remedies the even seen it described we planted it following the canon of medicine twenty six made this no plans out of hundreds which had been described by. thousand and twenty he worked for six years of the company so these things they had medicinal properties what sorts of things with a. very untrue toxic untrue flow and that they were some of them are poorly today that have this active ingredients we say they can show you one sample it is called letter only. if you

can find it also on the bread on the turkish bridge or. small black sea it's yeah but human blood human absolutely it had been useful properties there and it was also anti toxic for example it was seen a mention it's against bites probably slate bytes it was used for until two thousand still it is used. by carter important works during the golden age it can see. his canon of medicine spread across the islamic world and the young and as the process of knowledge transfer was revolutionized one reason only spread so effectively throughout the islamic empire was because it suddenly became much easier to produce to copy texts the islamic scholars had adopted the chinese technology of paper making paper is much cheaper to produce and use the parchments

of the pirates an important aspect of this is killigrew feeding off of handwriting so i've come to me to calligraphy to tell me all about it. among what lee county start with methadone and i'm often asked when they had me this know me him because he started to have to come not come and you know who. you are talking about in this as well. as. this one about. a lot of. books then. a lot of. pressure. you've been highlighting with your feeble little replica falls you've got the mask. the chinese paper was juror. and more easily balance the books which created

a thriving publishing and copying industry manuscripts had to be duplicated by hand and this produced a great demand for slimy calligraphy it's one of the sort of thing to me that if they were in leave you for him you claim to be supervising this and. other thing. he said again and again on the hook. because you would look for something that you couldn't afford to do the kind of movie thing and i think that if i ever had. the worst of it if in the bathroom in the closet with a look i mean he would call home. well calligraphy clearly remains today just as important an art form as it was back in the golden age the scholars then not only perfected the art of paper making they also developed simpler forms of calligraphy means of preserving their paper and winding blues to hold their books together in

that way these technologies came together enabling them to produce books in large quantities this is how their knowledge propagated so effectively throughout the world. the manuscripts of the golden age influenced scientists long after the decline of the islamic empire for instance had been seen as canon of medicine was translated into latin and copies were still being printed and circulated well into the sixteenth century these texts influenced the great thinkers of the rene songs who in turn laid the foundations for our modern world. this impressive building is the weill cornell medical college an offshoot of cornell university in new york based here in qatar of come to find out more about their genetic research how their mapping the human genome to find out more about genetic and hereditary diseases pertaining to people in this part of the world. the

genome is the complex genetic code contained in every cell in our bodies it determines all our inherited features such as what we look like or what inherited diseases we might be vulnerable to it's unique for every person so this is a microscope that allows you to look in different depth and side the cell. professor khalid met chakka has great expectations of what sequencing genomes will reveal the program is about six years old now the focus is on problems that are of the importance in the region particularly into other where there are a lot of families that have inherited diseases. and diabetes is a critical importance there in your genetic disorders or critically important so we've chosen to take those families and sequence both afflicted on afflicted members and that will help us been pointed a gene that causes a disease. the key to understanding these diseases is to analyze people's genomes

to look for differences and to do this they use a d.n.a. sequence connected to a supercomputer all living organisms i made up of cells each cell has a new p.s. and within the new this is the genetic material that defines the features that make us use. these genetic material is a code made up of over three billion components called bases. is too long to be analyzed in one piece so first they need to split it into smaller sections these machines is does a process called shotgun sequence so essentially here what we do is take that genetic material chop it up into small pieces and load it into the instrument it was untrue print that information and put these pieces back together so rather than trying to follow the full string awful but the billions of bases on one d.n.a. molecule is chopping it up looking at different bits and then putting it back

placing it back together genetic technology is evolving rapidly the lab has recently installed their most advanced piece of equipment for d.n.a. sequencing is the first of its calling to be used in the middle east this is the third generation sequencer and what it does is it sequences longer fragments of the genetic code this one can give us as you see here the tail goes all the way to put a thousand or two thousand as a model to one hand about that one so that will give you more structure information on the chromosome this equipment makes it possible for the lab to sequence the gene . knowns of large numbers of people it's a huge advance since nine hundred ninety when the first projects to sequence the human genome officially began their original human genome reference was sequenced in ten years it was a huge international problem feeling yeah it was a big accomplishment and now we can sequence the human genome within six to ten

days with this technology so that advances are huge within ten years. going on here puts the university at the forefront of modern research building on the scholarly spirits of the golden were over a thousand years ago the flow was from the west to the arab world where people were coming to. the xandra in damascus centers of learning and learning about delayed stick knowledge and what's going on and then taking it back home and improving their own health care or mathematics or understanding over astronomy or whatever of this do you feel personally a sense of pride that now in the arab world in the muslim world there is this cutting edge research going on again off the set of many centuries of decline where it was once the center of knowledge and research you know very much so very much so i think that's a huge incentive for

a lot of scientists who are originally from the region to come back and contribute back but i also see it as a bridge to you know science tend to be a good subject to bring different. people from all over the world together because everybody is seeking new knowledge so it's a great platform to kind of build connectivity and build a multicultural environment where everybody can discuss and talk about these things . while my head is spinning not only of the borgias head the most advanced don't want to quit that i've probably seen anywhere in the world. but they've brought together researches from around the world different cultures different backgrounds to work together collaboratively in a way that's so reminiscent of what happened in the house of wisdom in baghdad during the height of the golden age.

from astronomy and optics to chemistry. and medicine. we've traced the journey of scientific discovery that links the scholars of the golden age to the cutting edge science of our modern world. what you have here is a handheld model of the sky their achievements were groundbreaking this is a particular favorite of mine it's beautiful and their discoveries still resonate today almost a thousand years after the golden age of song it's. the bolivian salt flats. a place like no other. for generations stand by the sun later.

but the discovery of precious lithium below the salt threatens to change their way of life forever. witness. the latest news as it breaks to the front is about to blast bottles awesome flightless that are to stick in the ribs with the this time both with truth is through. with details coverage has already said that he's ready to take over as interim president and calls for you elections. from around the world volunteers are doing what they can that's not the point behind the government's decision to criminalize homelessness in hundred. the world's largest oil company fails to become public water tap and. other kingdom of the company inseparable here the world's largest oil producer and you don't list in the world's largest stock exchange that definitely says something

al-jazeera investigates the politics of oil the middle east's most potent economic weapon. saudi arab code the company and the state on al-jazeera. this is al-jazeera. a lot of have some say get this is the news hour live from dog coming up in the next sixty minutes rejected the british parliament votes down a no deal bragg's it but theresa may gets a thumbs up to go back to brussels for more negotiations. blocked in venezuela a self-proclaimed president is bob from.