The beginnings of the Chicago Sinai congregation : a contribution to the inner history of American judaism

by B. Felsenthal

Ancient DNA, a Neolithic legging from the Swiss Alps and the early history of goat

Ancient DNA from a Neolithic legging (1st half of the 3rd millennium BC) found at Lenk, Schnidejoch (2750 m a.sl.) in the Swiss Alps has demonstrated, that modern distribution of genetic variation does not reflect past spatio-temporal signatures. The legging was made from the skin of a domestic goat (Capra hircus), belonging to the caprine haplogroup B1, which is marginal in Europe today, but represents a third highly diverse goat haplogroup entering Europe already in the Neolithic. Population expansion of lineage B therefore happened more than 4500 years ago, but their members were at some point almost completely replaced by goats of today's common A and C haplogroups.

The political and the social Leaders of the Jewish community of Sepphoris in the second and third centuries

by Adolph Büchler

Notes on the diplomatic history of the Jewish question : with texts of protocols, treaty stipulations and other public acts and official documents

by Lucien Wolf

The deglaciation history of the Simplon region (southern Swiss Alps) constrained by 10Be exposure dating of ice-molded bedrock surfaces

The deglaciation history of the Swiss Alps after the Last Glacial Maximum involved the decay of several ice domes and the subsequent disintegration of valley glaciers at high altitude. Here we use bedrock exposure dating to reconstruct the temporal and spatial pattern of ice retreat at the Simplon Pass (altitude: ∼2000 m) located 40 km southwest of the ‘Rhône ice dome’. Eleven 10Be exposure ages from glacially polished quartz veins and ice-molded bedrock surfaces cluster tightly between 13.5 ± 0.6 ka and 15.4 ± 0.6 ka (internal errors) indicating that the Simplon Pass depression became ice-free at 14.1 ± 0.4 ka (external error of mean age). This age constraint is interpreted to record the melting of the high valley glaciers in the Simplon Pass region during the warm Bølling–Allerød interstadial shortly after the Oldest Dryas stadial. Two bedrock samples collected a few hundred meters above the pass depression yield older 10Be ages of 17.8 ± 0.6 ka and 18.0 ± 0.6 ka. These ages likely reflect the initial downwasting of the Rhône ice dome and the termination of the ice transfluence from the ice dome across the Simplon Pass toward the southern foreland. There, the retreat of the piedmont glacier in Val d’Ossola was roughly synchronous with the decay of the Rhône ice dome in the interior of the mountain belt, as shown by 10Be ages of 17.7 ± 0.9 ka and 16.1 ± 0.6 ka for a whaleback at ∼500 m elevation near Montecrestese in northern Italy. In combination with well-dated paleoclimate records derived from lake sediments, our new age data suggest that during the deglaciation of the European Alps the decay of ice domes was approximately synchronous with the retreat of piedmont glaciers in the foreland and was followed by the melting of high-altitude valley glaciers after the transition from the Oldest Dryas to the Bølling–Allerød, when mean annual temperatures rose rapidly by ∼3 °C.

Ignoring heterozygous sites biases phylogenomic estimates of divergence times: implications for the evolutionary history of Microtus voles

Phylogenetic reconstruction of the evolutionary history of closely related organisms may be difficult because of the presence of unsorted lineages and of a relatively high proportion of heterozygous sites that are usually not handled well by phylogenetic programs. Genomic data may provide enough fixed polymorphisms to resolve phylogenetic trees, but the diploid nature of sequence data remains analytically challenging. Here, we performed a phylogenomic reconstruction of the evolutionary history of the common vole (Microtus arvalis) with a focus on the influence of heterozygosity on the estimation of intraspecific divergence times. We used genome-wide sequence information from 15 voles distributed across the European range. We provide a novel approach to integrate heterozygous information in existing phylogenetic programs by repeated random haplotype sampling from sequences with multiple unphased heterozygous sites. We evaluated the impact of the use of full, partial, or no heterozygous information for tree reconstructions on divergence time estimates. All results consistently showed four deep and strongly supported evolutionary lineages in the vole data. These lineages undergoing divergence processes split only at the end or after the last glacial maximum based on calibration with radiocarbon-dated paleontological material. However, the incorporation of information from heterozygous sites had a significant impact on absolute and relative branch length estimations. Ignoring heterozygous information led to an overestimation of divergence times between the evolutionary lineages of M. arvalis. We conclude that the exclusion of heterozygous sites from evolutionary analyses may cause biased and misleading divergence time estimates in closely related taxa.

The Social Life of African Trypanosomes

The unicellular parasite Trypanosoma brucei shuttles between its definitive host, the tsetse fly, and various mammals including humans. In the fly digestive tract, T. brucei must first migrate to the ectoperitrophic space, establish a persistent infection of the midgut and then migrate to the salivary glands before being transmitted to a new mammalian host. In 2010, it was shown that insect stages of the parasite (procyclic forms) exhibit social motility (SoMo) when cultured on a semi-solid surface, and it was postulated that this behaviour might reflect a migration step in the tsetse fly. Now, almost 5 years after the initial report, several new publications shed some light on the biological function of SoMo and provide insights into the underlying signalling pathways.

The palaeoecological history of the Praz-Rodet bog (Swiss Jura) based on pollen, plant macrofossils and testate amoebae (Protozoa)

Stratigraphy, radiocarbon dating and analyses of pollen, plant macrofossils and testate amoebae were used to reconstruct the development and ecology of a small raised bog in a karst-dominated landscape in the Swiss Jura Mountains. Special focus was on past vegetation and on the history of Pinus rotundata in relation to anthropogenic and climatic influences. Testate amoebae were used to reconstruc-t past local soil pH and water-table depth. The inferred development of the Praz-Rodet bog typifies a classic hydroseral tefrestrialization of a small basin. Two features are specific for this site. First, the bog was much wetter than today for a long period; according to our hypothesis, this only changed as a consequence of human activities. Second, two hiatuses are present at the coring location (Younger Dryas--early Preboreal, and 4700-2800 cal. yr BP), the former probably caused by low lake productivity due to cold temperatures and the latter by the erosional activity of the adjacent small river. The date of 2800 cal. yr BP for renewed peat accumulation may be related to climatic change (Subboreal-Subatlantic transition). Pollen indicators failed to show one hiatus: an apparently complete pollen sequence is therefore no guarantee of an uninterrupted sediment accumulation. Evidence of early minor human impact on the vegetation in the Joux Valley dates back to c. 6850 calendar years, congruous with the early Neolithic in the Jura Mountains. The history of Pinuis rotindata appears to be more complex than previously believed. Human activity is clearly responsible for the present abundance of this species, but the tree was naturally present on the bog long before the first evidence of important human disturbance of the site (1500 cal. yr BP). It is suggested that, in karst-dominated landscapes, dense forests growing on mineral soils around raised bogs may significantly reduce summer evapotranspiration by acting as windbreaks. Forest clearance results in increased evapotranspiration, causing a lowering of the water table on the bog and a modification of the vegetation cover. This hypothesis has implications for the management of similar small raised bogs in karst-dominated landscape.

Influence of human impact and bedrock differences on the vegetational history of the Insubrian Southern Alps

Vegetation history for the study region is reconstructed on the basis of pollen, charcoal and AMS14C investigations of lake sediments from Lago del Segrino (calcareous bedrock) and Lago di Muzzano (siliceous bedrock). Late-glacial forests were characterised byBetula andPinus sylvestris. At the beginning of the Holocene they were replaced by temperate continental forest and shrub communities. A special type of temperate lowland forest, withAbies alba as the most important tree, was present in the period 8300 to 4500 B.P. Subsequently,Fagus, Quercus andAlnus glutinosa were the main forest components andA. alba ceased to be of importance.Castanea sativa andJuglans regia were probably introduced after forest clearance by fire during the first century A.D. On soils derived from siliceous bedrock,C. sativa was already dominant at ca. A.D. 200 (A.D. dates are in calendar years). In limestone areas, however,C. sativa failed to achieve a dominant role. After the introduction ofC. sativa, the main trees were initially oak (Quercus spp.) and later the walnut (Juglans regia). Ostrya carpinifolia became the dominant tree around Lago del Segrino only in the last 100–200 years though it had spread into the area at ca. 5000 cal. B.C. This recent expansion ofOstrya is confirmed at other sites and appears to be controlled by human disturbances involving especially clearance. It is argued that these forests should not be regarded as climax communities. It is suggested that under undisturbed succession they would develop into mixed deciduous forests consisting ofFraxinus excelsior, Tilia, Ulmus, Quercus and Acer.