Recherche pour le développement des systèmes d'élevage ovin au Maroc. Mission de contrôle d'avancement du projet GTZ-INRA Maroc-Programme viandes rouges

L'évaluation de l'état d'avancement du projet s'est déroulée au Maroc, à la fois au siège de l'INRA et dans les antennes du Programme Viandes Rouges (PVR) des différentes régions du pays. Le PVR, avec l'appui de la GTZ et par l'intermédiaire du Projet Conseil auprès de l'INRA, a obtenu de nombreux résultats significatifs aussi bien en terme de démarche de recherche pour le développement que de produits de recherche. Parmi ceux-ci, il faut citer les résultats de la programmation par objectifs, l'élaboration de projets de recherche par systèmes d'élevage régionalisés, la formation de chercheurs, les pratiques de gestion de la recherche en cours de "modernisation". Ces résultats conduisent à proposer la poursuite du Projet Conseil avec des objectifs d'amélioration des démarches de production scientifique, de consolidation des premiers résultats et d'ouverture vers les utilisateurs de ces dernier

Comparison of Lamiaceae medicinal uses in eastern Morocco and eastern Andalusia and in Ibn al-Baytar's Compendium of Simple Medicaments (13th century CE)

ETHNOPHARMACOLOGICAL RELEVANCE Transmission of traditional knowledge over time and across culturally and historically related territories is an important topic in ethnopharmacology. Here, we contribute to this knowledge by analysing data on medicinal uses in two neighbouring areas of the Western Mediterranean in relation to a historical text that has been scarcely mentioned in historical studies despite its interest. AIM OF THE STUDY This paper discusses the sharing of popular knowledge on the medicinal uses of plants between eastern Morocco and eastern Andalusia (Spain), focusing on one of the most useful plant families in the Mediterranean area: Lamiaceae. Moreover, we used the classical work of Ibn al-Baytar (13th century CE) The Compendium of Simple Medicaments and Foods as a basis to contrast the possible link of this information, analysing the influence of this historical text on current popular tradition of medicinal plant use in both territories. MATERIALS AND METHODS For data collection, we performed ethnobotanical field research in the eastern part of Morocco, recording current medicinal uses for the Lamiaceae. In addition, we systematically reviewed the ethnobotanical literature from eastern Andalusia, developing a database. We investigated the possible historical link of the shared uses and included in this database the information from Ibn al-Baytar's Compendium. To compare the similarity and diversity of the data, we used Jaccard's similarity index. RESULTS Our field work provided ethnobotanical information for 14 Lamiaceae species with 95 medicinal uses, serving to treat 13 different pathological groups. Of the total uses recorded in Morocco, 30.5% were shared by eastern Andalusia and found in Ibn al-Baytar's work. There was a higher similarity when comparing current uses of the geographically close territories of eastern Morocco and eastern Andalucía (64%) than for eastern Morocco and this historical text (43%). On the other hand, coincidences between current uses in eastern Andalusia and the ones related in the Compendium are lower, 28%. CONCLUSIONS The coincidence of the current ethnobotanical knowledge in the two territories is high for the Lamiaceae. Probably the shared historical background, recent exchanges, information flow, and the influence of the historical herbal texts have influenced this coincidence. In this sense, there is a high plant-use overlap between Ibn al-Baytar's text and both territories: nearly half of the uses currently shared by eastern Morocco and eastern Andalusia were included in the Compendium and are related to this period of Islamic medicine, indicating a high level of preservation in the knowledge of plant usage. The study of 14 species of Lamiaceae suggests that this classical codex, which includes a high number of medicinal plants and uses, constitutes a valuable bibliographical source for comparing ancient and modern applications of plants

Traveling in lifeworlds: new perspectives on (post) humanism, situated subjectivities and agency from a travel diary

International audienceThis paper argues for building bridges between humanistic geographical traditions and current post-humanistic approaches destabilising the centrality and the very epistemological status of the human subject. Extending and putting in relation recent literature highlighting the possible continuities over the ruptures between these traditions and feminist scholarship arguing for the political relevancy of intimate writings and emotional geographies, I analyse an exceptional archival document recently discovered in the Anne Buttimer archives at University College Dublin: Buttimer's travel diary relating her 1965-1966 trips to France and continental Europe, when she began to build her transnational and multilingual scholarly networks. Buttimer was one of the first geographers to explore "lifeworlds", and this document simultaneously reveals the emotional experiences of discovery and the role played in that by circumstances and external agencies decentring and problematising subjective intentionality. These journeys profoundly affected Buttimer's early scholarly career, leading to her first critical questionings of the institutions in which she was inserted. Complementing recent claims for a "new humanism" taking onboard the critiques coming from scholars informed by "anti/posthumanism", I argue that the mobility, situatedness and relational nature of in-becoming subjects, at the same time acting and being acted, allows for reconsidering huma

A genome-wide association study of pulmonary tuberculosis in Morocco

Although epidemiological evidence suggests a human genetic basis of pulmonary tuberculosis (PTB) susceptibility, the identification of specific genes and alleles influencing PTB risk has proven to be difficult. Previous genome-wide association (GWA) studies have identified only three novel loci with modest effect sizes in sub-Saharan African and Russian populations. We performed a GWA study of 550,352 autosomal SNPs in a family-based discovery Moroccan sample (on the full population and on the subset with PTB diagnosis at <25 years), which identified 143 SNPs with p < 1 × 10(−4). The replication study in an independent case/control sample identified four SNPs displaying a p < 0.01 implicating the same risk allele. In the combined sample including 556 PTB subjects and 650 controls these four SNPs showed suggestive association (2 × 10(−6) < p < 4 × 10(−5)): rs358793 and rs17590261 were intergenic, while rs6786408 and rs916943 were located in introns of FOXP1 and AGMO, respectively. Both genes are involved in the function of macrophages, which are the site of latency and reactivation of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. The most significant finding (p = 2 × 10(−6)) was obtained for the AGMO SNP in an early (<25 years) age-at-onset subset, confirming the importance of considering age-at-onset to decipher the genetic basis of PTB. Although only suggestive, these findings highlight several avenues for future research in the human genetics of PTB