The Origins of Boko Haram, and Why the War on Terror Matters

This article, prompted as a response to a recent contribution penned by Audu Bulama Bukarti, returns to the history of an incident occurred in 2003 between the Nigerian security and a group of militants popularly known as the “Nigerian Taliban” and considered as a precursor to Boko Haram. While the historiography around this incident has been almost saturated by debates around the size of the links between the “Nigerian Taliban” and al-Qaeda, that period of Nigerian history continues to be read in isolation from the broader counter-terrorism strategies conceived at the time by the Nigerian State in the context of what, for us, is a fundamental structural factor, i.e. the then mounting Global War on Terror. Drawing on a different set of data than Bukarti, our contribution will argue that, far from having been a “local” incident, the “Nigerian Taliban crisis” shows clear signs of how, at the time, the Nigerian space was being penetrated by the War on Terror’s strategic logic, discursive structures and political imperatives. The successive explosion, over the following years, of the “Boko Haram phenomenon”, is in our opinion the result of the latter as much as of the former

Uniparental markers of contemporary Italian population reveals details on its pre-Roman heritage.

BACKGROUND: According to archaeological records and historical documentation, Italy has been a melting point for populations of different geographical and ethnic matrices. Although Italy has been a favorite subject for numerous population genetic studies, genetic patterns have never been analyzed comprehensively, including uniparental and autosomal markers throughout the country. METHODS/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: A total of 583 individuals were sampled from across the Italian Peninsula, from ten distant (if homogeneous by language) ethnic communities--and from two linguistic isolates (Ladins, Grecani Salentini). All samples were first typed for the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) control region and selected coding region SNPs (mtSNPs). This data was pooled for analysis with 3,778 mtDNA control-region profiles collected from the literature. Secondly, a set of Y-chromosome SNPs and STRs were also analyzed in 479 individuals together with a panel of autosomal ancestry informative markers (AIMs) from 441 samples. The resulting genetic record reveals clines of genetic frequencies laid according to the latitude slant along continental Italy--probably generated by demographical events dating back to the Neolithic. The Ladins showed distinctive, if more recent structure. The Neolithic contribution was estimated for the Y-chromosome as 14.5% and for mtDNA as 10.5%. Y-chromosome data showed larger differentiation between North, Center and South than mtDNA. AIMs detected a minor sub-Saharan component; this is however higher than for other European non-Mediterranean populations. The same signal of sub-Saharan heritage was also evident in uniparental markers. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Italy shows patterns of molecular variation mirroring other European countries, although some heterogeneity exists based on different analysis and molecular markers. From North to South, Italy shows clinal patterns that were most likely modulated during Neolithic times

Picard et les g\ue9om\ue8tres italiens: histoire des deux prix Bordin

Dans mon intervention je chercherai \ue0 mettre au point la question des rapports entre Picard et les g\ue9om\ue8tres alg\ue9briques italiens, en particulier Enriques, Castelnuovo et Severi, en montrant comment si, d'un c\uf4t\ue9, les th\ue8mes de recherche se croisent, d'un autre ils ont \ue9t\ue9 d\ue9velopp\ue9s en utilisant des langages math\ue9matiques profond\ue9ment diff\ue9rents au point de rendre parfois impossible ou presque la compr\ue9hension r\ue9ciproque. Je chercherai aussi \ue0 donner un aper\ue7u des rapports en th\ue9orie des nombres entre Picard et Bianchi et de l'influence de Corrado Segre et Fano sur Cartan qui \ue0 son tour eut une profonde influence sur Benjamin Segre

Descates and the "impossible" constructions with ruler and compass

Si descrivono i tentativi di Descartes di determinare quando un problema geometrico e' risolubile con riga e compass