Spanish Spelt Wheat: From an Endangered Genetic Resource to a Trendy Crop

Spelt wheat (Triticum aestivum L. ssp. spelta Thell.) is an ancient wheat that was widely cultivated in the past. This species derived from a cross between emmer wheat (T. turgidum spp. dicoccum Schrank em. Thell.) and Aegilops tauschii Coss. Its main origin was in the Fertile Crescent (Near East), with a secondary center of origin in Europe due to a second hybridization event between emmer and hexaploid wheat. This species has been neglected in most of Europe; however, the desire for more natural foods has driven a revival in interest. Iberian spelt is classified as a geographical group differing to the rest of European spelt. In this review, the particularities, genetic diversity and current situation of Spanish spelt, mainly for quality traits, are discussed.

“ORANG KAMPUNG”, PEMASARAN DIGITAL, DAN KEBIJAKAN PUBLIK: SEBUAH TINJAUAN DAN AGENDA PENELITIAN. STUDI KASUS : PEMASARAN TRADISIONAL SONGKO RECCA

ABSTRAKMengatasi tantangan yang ditimbulkan oleh penduduk pedesaan adalah topik yang sangat menarik bagi pemasar, pembuat kebijakan, dan peneliti. Namun, hanya ada sedikit penelitian tentang bagaimana penduduk pedesaan menerima atau menolak teknologi digital baru. Dengan perubahan kekuatan ekonomi dan tingkat adopsi ketika komunitas digital tumbuh antara daerah perkotaan dan pedesaan, menjadi semakin penting bagi pemasar untuk memahami bagaimana mereka menggunakan teknologi dan bagaimana mereka menggunakan saluran digital. Agar pemasar dan pembuat kebijakan memahami sepenuhnya bentuk masa depan masyarakat digital berbasis data, penelitian perlu lebih mempertimbangkan dampaknya terhadap kelompok generasi yang berbeda dalam hal adopsi dan penggunaan teknologi digital oleh konsumen di daerah pedesaan.Melalui tinjauan multidisiplin literatur tentang orang-orang tradisional menggunakan lensa teoritis kelompok geografis, penulis mengidentifikasi tantangan penelitian utama, peluang, dan dampak bagi pemasar dan pembuat kebijakan. Kata Kunci : pemasaran digital; kebijakan publik; kesenjangan demografis; generasi; kesenjangan digital ABSTRACTAddressing the challenges posed by rural populations is a topic of great interest to marketers, policymakers, and researchers. However, there is little research on how rural residents accept or reject new digital technologies. With changing economic power and adoption rates as digital communities grow between urban and rural areas, it is becoming increasingly important for marketers to understand how they use technology and digital channels. For marketers and policymakers to fully understand the future shape of a data-driven digital society, research needs to consider its impact on different generational groups in terms of consumer adoption and use of digital technology in rural areas. Through a multidisciplinary review of the literature on traditional people using a theoretical lens geographical group, the authors identify key research challenges, opportunities, and impacts for marketers and policymakers. Keywords : digital marketing; public policy; demographic gap; generation; digital gap

Research on phenol complex infrared dried grape pomace

Studies have shown that grape pomace is a promising raw material for the functional drinks production with an increased phenols mass concentration. At the same time, the highest mass concentration of phenols was determined in red frape varities pomace. The highest mass concentrations of flovanols were found in white pomace, flavonols in muscat, phenolic acids in red pomace. The mass concentration of oligomeric forms in phenols does not differ significantly in all samples. The highest mass concentration of polymers in phenols is determined in the red pomace. The anthocyanin profile corresponded to the Western European ecological-geographical group grape varieties. Highest mass concentration was determined monoglycoside malvidin.

THE FIRST STEPS TOWARDS THE FIRST-ORDER POLITENESS RESEARCH IN UDMURT

The research is the continuation of my dissertation written at the Department of the Finno-Ugrian Philology of the University of Szeged. However, in this research I do not analyse politeness on my own like I did in my dissertation, as I include answers of native speakers of the language. They express their own ideas about the different answers I got during my PhD research. This study is based on interviews conducted with 10 native speakers of the Udmurt language. These speakers not only represent different age groups but they have different backgrounds as well: I included speakers of the southern and the northern dialects of the language, there are students and teachers of the Udmurt State University and there are two speakers who had been living abroad for at least two years at the time of recording. There were three main exercises to complete during the interview: in the first one they had to express their opinions about answers that I had acquired earlier in different politeness situations, in the second one they had to group answers based on which ones can belong to the same speaker and in the last one I showed them the correct groups of answers and they had to identify the age, the gender, the dialect and the place of origin of the speaker. Their answers can be really helpful to support my previous results or to open a new perspective in the research because, as native speakers, they are able to understand small differences that could be easily skimmed over by non-native speakers. This research has two main parts. In the first part the native speakers express their ideas about answers in given situations and in the second part they try to identify the age, the gender, the dialect and the place of origin of the speakers based on their answers. In the first part the answers usually matched with each other but the interpretation of the Udmurt second past in this situation led to the biggest contradiction in this research. Some of the speakers (as I expected) said that it makes the sentence more polite, but there were some speakers who felt exactly the opposite way about it because in their interpretation it means that the speaker used this tense to avoid responsibility. From the second part it draws out clearly, that there is no age, gender, dialectal or geographical group of speakers who could be easily identified by the given answers and the speakers mainly, but not exclusively, used stereotypes for identification. The result of this is that the answers were about as accurate as taking a blind guess.

13C NMR-Based Chemical Fingerprint for the Varietal and Geographical Discrimination of Wines

A fast, economic, and eco-friendly methodology for the wine variety and geographical origin differentiation using 13C nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) data in combination with machine learning was developed. Wine samples of different grape varieties cultivated in different regions in Greece were subjected to 13C NMR analysis. The relative integrals of the 13C spectral window were processed and extracted to build a chemical fingerprint for the characterization of each specific wine variety, and then subjected to factor analysis, multivariate analysis of variance, and k-nearest neighbors analysis. The statistical analysis results showed that the 13C NMR fingerprint could be used as a rapid and accurate indicator of the wine variety differentiation. An almost perfect classification rate based on training (99.8%) and holdout methods (99.9%) was obtained. Results were further tested on the basis of Cronbach’s alpha reliability analysis, where a very low random error (0.30) was estimated, indicating the accuracy and strength of the aforementioned methodology for the discrimination of the wine variety. The obtained data were grouped according to the geographical origin of wine samples and further subjected to principal component analysis (PCA) and partial least squares-discriminant analysis (PLS-DA). The PLS-DA and variable importance in projection (VIP) allowed the determination of a chemical fingerprint characteristic of each geographical group. The statistical analysis revealed the possibility of acquiring useful information on wines, by simply processing the 13C NMR raw data, without the need to determine any specific metabolomic profile. In total, the obtained fingerprint can be used for the development of rapid quality-control methodologies concerning wine.

On Spatial and Platial Dependence: Examining Shrinkage in Spatially-Dependent Multilevel Models

Multilevel models have been applied to study many geographical processes in epidemiology, economics, political science, sociology, urban analytics, and transportation. They are most often used to express how the effect of a treatment or intervention may vary by geographical group, a form of spatial process heterogeneity. In addition, these models provide a notion of "platial" dependence: observations that are within the same geographical place are modeled as similar to one another. Recent work has shown that spatial dependence can be introduced into multilevel models, and has examined the empirical properties of these models' estimates. However, systematic attention to the mathematical structure of these models has been lacking. This paper examines a kind of multilevel model that includes both "platial" and "spatial" dependence. Using mathematical analysis, we obtain the relationship between classic multilevel, spatial multilevel, and single-level models. This mathematical structure exposes a tension between a main benefit of multilevel models, estimate shrinkage, and the effects of spatial dependence. We show, both mathematically and empirically, that classic multilevel models may overstate estimate precision and understate estimate shrinkage when spatial dependence is present. This result extends long-standing results in single-level modeling to mutilevel models.

Diversity Among a Wide Asian Collection of Bitter Gourd Landraces and their Genetic Relationships with Commercial Hybrid Cultivars

We report here the genetic characterization of bitter gourd (Momordica charantia) based on polymorphisms of 50 simple sequence repeat (SSR) loci in 114 accessions that included landraces, breeding lines, and commercial open-pollinated and F1 hybrid cultivars widely grown in Asia. Neighbor-joining tree analysis revealed a high level of genetic variability in the collection. The 114 accessions formed three subpopulations represented by five clusters. Distribution of accessions across the five clusters reflected their geographic origin to a large extent. South Asian accessions originating from India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan were more closely related to each other than to any other geographical group. Likewise, southeast Asian accessions that originated from Cambodia, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Philippines were grouped together. Accessions that originated from Taiwan were genetically distinct and grouped separately. A landrace from Laos was genetically close to the accessions from Thailand and genetically distinct from the rest of the accessions. White-fruited genotypes were genetically distinct from green- and dark green–fruited genotypes. Low- and medium-bitter accessions were more similar to each other than to the high-bitter genotypes. Accessions with cylindrical fruit were genetically distinct from those with spindle or elongated fruit. Commercial cultivars in each cluster were closely related, which indicated a narrowing of the bitter gourd genetic base in Asia in response to market demands for uniformity and yield. Use of diverse germplasm resources in bitter gourd breeding will help in sustainable breeding and production.

The alien flora of the Rzeszów Foothills

The aim of the study was to analyze the synanthropic flora of the Rzeszów Foothills (south-eastern Poland). Floristic studies were carried out in years 2007-2013 using the cartogram method in the ATPOL system (2×2 km square grid). Here we present the numerical data (number of species in each historical-geographical group, families most frequently represented by anthropophytes), show the proportion of specific growth forms and describe habitat preferences. The Rzeszów Foothills region had already been shown as strongly impacted by anthropogenic pressures. The total number of vascular plant species detected was equal to 1115; among them, the synanthropes represent about 30%. Also the index of synanthropy was calculated to confirm strong anthropogenic transformation of the studied area. In the presented study, 47 invasive plant species were discovered in the region. Moreover, the role and distribution of the most interesting and invasive of the synanthropic species was analyzed based on their negative impact on the native flora. We also identified plant species with high invasive potential and indicated causes of their appearance and spread.

The Necessity / Need of Strengthening the Applicative Character in the Scientific Research in Geography

The revolution of research, precisely, the revolution of knowledge has been transforming the role of modern universities in Europe and farther. Nowadays, it is emphasized the need to revise the whole process of research – technology – production. The enhancement of human knowledge is a consequence of the changes and transformations being done in all aspects of the practical life of the society. A quick development has accompanied the direct or indirect geographical group sciences. Among the widespread fields of study introduced nowadays, it is hard to find another field of study, which is more interdisciplinary than the one being discussed. Albania is trespassing another stage of social and economical transformations, and this is due to political changes undergone in the years 1990-1991. This stage is followed by other new changes which require further scientific studies based on specific topics. An important step has been done in the regional tackling of problems, where it was estimated the interdependence between the geographic environment and the demographic and economic development of specific regions. Such studies have been done in the field of tourism, a field much explored in the aspects of natural and cultural inheritance. The scientific research in Geography needs to be developed through detailed analysis, which is based on primary and secondary data. These data should be well interpreted from a contemporary point of view, characterized also from physical and geographical transformations, as well as social and economical ones. Although the curricula of Geography in Albanian universities has undergone several changes, (a lot of subjects have been added to the curricula), their effect on the scientific research has not been so much reflected. The field of the applicative scientific research in Geography is broad, because the object of Geography is broad. The applicative scientific research of Geography in Albania will give importance to the role of the geographer, especially in different levels of decisions. The paper will show concrete arguments for the necessity of strengthening the applicative character in the scientific research of Geography in our country.