region:southwest asia

The palaeogenetics of cat dispersal in the ancient world | Nature Ecology & Evolution
▻https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-017-0139

Abstract
The cat has long been important to human societies as a pest-control agent, object of symbolic value and companion animal, but little is known about its domestication process and early anthropogenic dispersal. Here we show, using ancient DNA analysis of geographically and temporally widespread archaeological cat remains, that both the Near Eastern and Egyptian populations of Felis silvestris lybica contributed to the gene pool of the domestic cat at different historical times. While the cat’s worldwide conquest began during the Neolithic period in the Near East, its dispersal gained momentum during the Classical period, when the Egyptian cat successfully spread throughout the Old World. The expansion patterns and ranges suggest dispersal along human maritime and terrestrial routes of trade and connectivity. A coat-colour variant was found at high frequency only after the Middle Ages, suggesting that directed breeding of cats occurred later than with most other domesticated animals.

The domestic cat is present on all continents except Antarctica, and in the most remote regions of the world, and its evolutionary success is unquestioned. While it is nowadays one of the most cherished companion animals in the Western world, for ancient societies barn cats, village cats and ships’ cats provided critical protection against vermin, especially rodent pests responsible for economic loss and disease . Owing to a paucity of cat remains in the archaeological record, current hypotheses about early cat domestication rely on only a few zooarchaeological case studies. These studies suggest that ancient societies in both the Near East and Egypt could have played key roles in cat domestication .

Wildcats (Felis silvestris) are distributed all over the Old World. Current taxonomy distinguishes five wild, geographically partitioned subspecies: Felis silvestris silvestris, Felis silvestris lybica, Felis silvestris ornata, Felis silvestris cafra and Felis silvestris bieti. Modern genetic data analyses of nuclear short tandem repeats (STR) and 16% of the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) genome in extant wild and domestic cats revealed that only one of them, the north African/southwest Asian F. s. lybica, was ultimately domesticated.

Wildcats are solitary, territorial hunters and lack a hierarchical social structure, features that make them poor candidates for domestication. Indeed, zooarchaeological evidence points to a commensal relationship between cats and humans lasting thousands of years before humans exerted substantial influence on their breeding. Throughout this period of commensal interaction, tamed and domestic cats became feral and/or intermixed with wild F. s. lybica or other wild subspecies as is common today. These regular genetic exchanges may have contributed to the low level of differentiation observed between modern wild and domestic cat genome sequences. Accordingly, the domestication process seemingly has not profoundly altered the morphological, physiological, behavioural and ecological features of cats, in contrast to what has been observed, for example, for dogs.

To address questions related to the contribution of the two purported centres of cat domestication, the Near East and Egypt, and the history of human-mediated cat dispersal, we analysed ancient and modern cats from Europe, north and east Africa, and southwest Asia (SWA), spanning around 9,000 years, from the Mesolithic period to the twentieth century AD. We analysed ancient DNA (aDNA) to explore whether a fine phylogeographic structure of maternal lineages existed prior to the domestication of F. s. lybica and whether, when and how it was reconfigured over time in response to human intervention, thereby documenting the domestication process of the cat. We also studied a genetically defined coat-colour marker, the blotched tabby marking, to monitor a phenotypic change reflecting human-driven selection along the domestication pathway.

https://images.nature.com/w926/nature-assets/natecolevol/2017/s41559-017-0139/images_hires/s41559-017-0139-f2.jpg

Mapping Immigrant America
▻http://personal.tcu.edu/kylewalker/immigrant-america/about.html

Mapping Immigrant America is a project I am working on for my upcoming talk September 19 at Dallas’s Old Red Museum, “Visualizing the Changing Landscape of US Immigration.” The map is a dot-density representation of the US immigrant population, with dots colored by immigrants’ general region of origin. The regions include:

Mexico (red);
Latin America and the Caribbean, other than Mexico (blue);
East and Southeast Asia (green);
South & Central Asia (aqua);
Sub-Saharan Africa (purple);
North Africa & Southwest Asia (pink);
Europe (orange);
Oceania (yellow);
Canada (brown)

Demographic data are from the 2009-2013 American Community Survey at the Census tract level; both geographic and demographic Census data come from the National Historical Geographic Information System1. I use ACS table B05006, “Place of Birth for the Foreign-Born Population in the United States.” Each dot represents approximately 20 immigrants in that Census tract from a given region, and the dots are placed randomly within Census tracts. The project was inspired by other interactive dot map implementations including The Racial Dot Map at the University of Virginia; Ken Schwenke’s Where the renters are; and Robert Manduca’s Where Are The Jobs?.

Feel free to explore! Also, I welcome comments and feedback; I’m available on the web and on Twitter. A few additional points about the map are below.

How was the map made?

Making this map took a lot of experimentation, and in turn a number of tools. I processed the data with a combination of R, QGIS, ArcGIS, and Python; the map itself was designed in Mapbox Studio, and built with Mapbox.js and Bootstrap. I also use Chris Whong’s really cool Legend Buddy to make the legend.

▻http://personal.tcu.edu/kylewalker/immigrant-america/#

#cartographie #États-Unis #migrations

Pentagon Seeks to Knit Foreign Bases Into ISIS-Foiling Network - The New York Times
▻http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/11/us/politics/pentagon-seeks-string-of-overseas-bases-to-contain-isis.html?ref=world&_r=0

WASHINGTON — As American intelligence agencies grapple with the expansion of the Islamic State beyond its headquarters in Syria, the Pentagon has proposed a new plan to the White House to build up a string of military bases in Africa, Southwest Asia and the Middle East.

The Unbearable Lightness of America’s War Against the Islamic State | Foreign Policy
▻http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/12/11/the-unbearable-lightness-of-americas-war-against-the-islamic-state-ob

Excuse me, but isn’t that exactly what we’ve been doing since the 1990s and with greater energy and effort over time? Yet there are more al Qaeda affiliates now than there were back in 2001, and organizations like the Islamic State didn’t even exist back then.

#Etats-Unis #perseverare_diabolicum #bases #qaida #terrorisme

Future temperature in southwest Asia projected to exceed a threshold for human adaptability
▻http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate2833.html

A human body may be able to adapt to extremes of dry-bulb temperature (commonly referred to as simply temperature) through perspiration and associated evaporative cooling provided that the wet-bulb temperature (a combined measure of temperature and humidity or degree of ‘mugginess’) remains below a threshold of 35 °C. (ref. 1). This threshold defines a limit of survivability for a fit human under well-ventilated outdoor conditions and is lower for most people. We project using an ensemble of high-resolution regional climate model simulations that extremes of wet-bulb temperature in the region around the Arabian Gulf are likely to approach and exceed this critical threshold under the business-as-usual scenario of future greenhouse gas concentrations. Our results expose a specific regional hotspot where climate change, in the absence of significant mitigation, is likely to severely impact human habitability in the future.

Ties With Egypt Army Constrain Washington - NYTimes.com
▻http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/17/world/middleeast/us-officials-fear-losing-an-eager-ally-in-the-egyptian-military.html?ref=gl

La sempiternelle fumisterie de « #nos_valeurs » vs #nos_intérêts" ("notre #sécurité_nationale") avec des journalistes du New York Times comme porte-parole du régime étasunien.

Nul allié au monde n’est plus conciliant que le #CSFA,

Most nations, including many close allies of the United States, require up to a week’s notice before American warplanes are allowed to cross their territory. Not Egypt, which offers near-automatic approval for military overflights, to resupply the war effort in Afghanistan or to carry out counterterrorism operations in the Middle East, Southwest Asia or the Horn of Africa.
Multimedia

Losing that route could significantly increase flight times to the region.

American warships are also allowed to cut to the front of the line through the Suez Canal in times of crisis, even when oil tankers are stacked up like cars on an interstate highway at rush hour. Without Egypt’s cooperation, military missions could take days longer.

Those are some of the largely invisible ways the Egyptian military has assisted the United States as it pursues its national security interests across the region — and why the generals now in charge in Cairo are not without their own leverage in dealing with Washington in the aftermath of President Obama’s condemnation Thursday of the military’s bloody crackdown on supporters of the former president, Mohamed Morsi.

Même la « mesure punitive » de Obama n’était qu’une mesure de protection des troupes étasuniennes,

In his first overtly punitive step, Mr. Obama canceled the Bright Star military exercise, the largest and most visible sign of cooperation between the armed forces of the two nations. But given the growing violence in Egypt, it might have been impossible to guarantee the safety of the thousands of American troops scheduled to deploy for the war game, and the decision to call it off might have been the wise move regardless of the politics.

Et, affirme-t-on sans rire, de véritables mesures sont d’autant plus difficiles à prendre que « nos intérêts » coïncident avec le chemin de la démocratie en Egypte,

For the Pentagon, which had earlier delayed the delivery of four F-16 fighter jets to the Egyptian Air Force, other steps might be more difficult.

“We need them for the Suez Canal, we need them for the peace treaty with Israel, we need them for the overflights, and we need them for the continued fight against violent extremists who are as much of a threat to Egypt’s transition to democracy as they are to American interests,” said Gen. James N. Mattis, who retired this year as head of the military’s Central Command.

Le message étasunien au CSFA sera donc : Frappez aussi sauvagement que vous voulez, mais terminez vite,...

“The violence is intolerable, but clearly they feel the nation of Egypt is facing a sovereign, existential crisis,” said one Obama administration official. “So while the violence is intolerable, we may be able to eventually accept these decisions if the violence ends, and quickly.”

...un souhait qui a l’inconvénient d’être bancal,

The risk is that the United States may be left standing by as its allies in the Egyptian military lose control of the crisis.

En réalité nul allié au monde n’est plus conciliant que le CSFA pour aider le régime étasunien à commettre ses crimes dans la région...

For decades the Egyptians have helped the American military in ways that are largely unknown to the American public, said Robert Springborg, a professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif., and an expert on the Egyptian military. Mr. Springborg noted that in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003 — after the Turkish Parliament refused to allow the American military to use Turkish territory for crossing into Iraq from the north — Egypt gave the Pentagon immediate access for two aircraft battle groups and accompanying aircraft through the Suez Canal and across its territory.

Given the number of countries in the region that do not allow American military overflights, especially for combat missions, Egypt’s location makes it a vital, and relatively direct, access route to an unstable crescent of strategic importance.

...et aider Israël à commettre les siens,

Egypt’s role in the Camp David agreements has also been of critical value for America’s closest ally in the region, Israel.

En y réfléchissant bien il reste une aile de F-16 qui n’a pas encore été livrée cette année et dont la non fourniture pourrait servir de mesure punitive,...

All of the aid for this year already has been authorized, so even an order to halt the financial assistance would not have an impact until next year. In the meantime, Saudi Arabia and other oil-rich Persian Gulf nations have increased their financial support to Egypt, far surpassing the American contribution.

Beyond delaying shipment of the F-16 warplanes, officials said, there are few unfulfilled weapons contracts that could be held up as a punitive measure.

...au-delà, le « contre-productif » se profile,

American officials looking at ways to punish the Egyptian military for the order to clear Muslim Brotherhood protest sites have looked to the lesson of Pakistan, which came under economic sanctions for its nuclear program.

Among the actions taken was ending a program of inviting young Pakistani military officers to attend armed service academic programs in the United States. One result has been a generation of Pakistani officers with no affinity for — and, more often, hostility toward — the American military. A similar result could occur if the next generation of promising Egyptian officers were not invited to American military schools.

Il ne reste plus qu’à souhaiter que le CSFA se rende compte que la perpétuation de la violence n’est pas bonne pour son prolifique bizness ("l’économie de l’Egypte"),...

In the end, one powerful incentive for the generals to quickly end the civil unrest and establish order — and try to make good on promises to begin a transition to legitimate governance might be economic — to attract tourism and investment. And also to preserve Egypt’s relationship with the United States.

... et arrive à restaurer le moubarakisme,

“Both sides have a strong interest in preserving it and will work to that end,” Mr. Springborg said. “The Egyptian military will take steps to clothe the military’s behind-the-scene rule with suitable civilian trappings, making it possible for the U.S. and others to deal with it.”

#foutage_de_gueule