Culturally modified trees or wasted timber: Different approaches to marked trees in Poland’s Białowieża Forest

Studies of past forest use traditions are crucial in both understanding the present state of the oldest European forests, and in guiding decisions on future forest conservation and management. Current management of Poland’s Białowieża Forest (BF), one of the best-preserved forests of the European lowlands, is heavily influenced by anecdotal knowledge on forest history. Therefore, it is important to gain knowledge of the forest’s past in order to answer questions about its historical administration, utilisation, and associated anthropogenic changes. Such understanding can then inform future management. This study, based on surveys in Belarussian and Russian archives and a preliminary field survey in ten forest compartments of Białowieża National Park, focuses on culturally-modified trees (CMTs), which in this case are by-products of different forms of traditional forest use. Information about the formation of the CMTs can then be used to provide insight into former forest usage. Two types of CMTs were discovered to be still present in the contemporary BF. One type found in two forms was of 1) pine trees scorched and chopped in the bottom part of the trunk and 2) pine trees with carved beehives. A second type based on written accounts, and therefore known to be present in the past (what we call a ‘ghost CMT’), was of 3) lime-trees with strips of bark peeled from the trunk. Written accounts cover the period of transition between the traditional forest management (BF as a Polish royal hunting ground, until the end of the eighteenth century) and modern, “scientific” forestry (in most European countries introduced in the second half of the nineteenth century). These accounts document that both types of CMTs and the traditional forest uses responsible for their creation were considered harmful to “rational forestry” by the nineteenth-century forest administration. Thus the practices which created CMTs were banned and the trees gradually removed from the forest. Indeed, these activities drew the attention of forest administrators for several decades, and in our view delayed the introduction of new, timber-oriented, forest management in the BF

VAL´KOVA Ol´ga A., Shturmuia tsitadel´ nauki. Zhenshchiny-uchenye Rossiiskoi imperii [Storming the citadel of science: Women scientists in the Russian Empire]

Ol´ga Val´kova monograph is devoted to women’s gradual entry into the academic community of the Russian empire in the late 18th – early 20th century. The book is essentially a reworked doctoral dissertation that Ol´ga Val´kova successfully defended at the Institute for the History of Science and Technology, Moscow, in 2014. We should certainly welcome this publication, as Ol´ga Val´kova’s research fills a manifest gap both in the social history of science in Russia and in Russian gender histo..

Evolution of European bison image and its implications for current species conservation

Funding Information: Research conducted in the frames of the project “Perception of European bison and primeval forest in the 18th-19th century: shared cultural and natural heritage of Poland and Lithuania” (UMO-2017/27/L/HS3/031870) financed by National Science Centre, Poland (https://www. ncn.gov.pl/en) and grant S-LL-18-6 financed by the Research Council of Lithuania (https://www.lmt.lt/ en). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Authors wish to thank the group of European bison specialists that agreed to evaluate the anatomical accuracy of historical depictions of European bison (prof. dr hab. Małgorzata Krasińska and dr hab. Rafał Kowalczyk from Mammal Research Institute, Polish Academy of Sciences in Białowieża, dr Katarzyna Daleszczyk and dr Zbigniew Krasiński from the Białowieża National Park, and doctor of veterinary medicine Jarosław Tomana from Pszczyna). Publisher Copyright: © 2023 Samojlik et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.Visual media are one of the fastest and most effective tools informing the public about conservation goals and convincing societies to support conservation actions. Similar mechanisms functioned in the past, only within a much longer time scale and different communication channels. We analyse the evolution of European bison’s depictions between 1500 and 1900 in the context of building public awareness of the species and its conservation needs. Experts evaluated the anatomical accuracy of thirty eight images of the species from the period analysed, and their conservation appeal was assessed by using an online survey of the general public. Existing knowledge and previous publications allowed authors to describe the development of the scientific knowledge about European bison in 1500–1900. By juxtaposing this with anatomical accuracy of depictions, a conclusion was reached that the accuracy of depictions was not directly linked to the state of knowledge about the species. In the survey, the public reception of the accuracy of historical pictures of European bison, as well as their potential to be used in conservation campaigns, was connected with subjective appeal of depicted animals. This lesson can be translated to modern conservation campaigns using mass media and global communication channels: popularization of knowledge on species of concern should be accompanied by appealing depictions of these species to strengthen public reception.Peer reviewe

Crystalloscopic analysis in detection of saliva metabolome specialties in elderly people

The purpose of this study was to assess the features of saliva crystallization in middle-aged and elderly people. The study included middle-aged (45-60 years old; n=63) and elderly (over 60 years old; n=78) men who signed an informed consent to participate. Crystalloscopic analysis of saliva in order to characterize the metabolic characteristics of the body and the composition of biological fluids. The intrinsic crystallization of mixed saliva was studied using the method of classical crystalloscopy. The structure index, crystallizability, facia destruction degree and the clearity of the marginal protein zone were determined. Each of the parameters was expressed on a 5-point scale. In general, the study made it possible to establish the presence of shifts in the crystallogenic properties of mixed saliva in the older age group (over 60 years old) relative to middle-aged people. Thus, the features of the crystalloscopic picture of biological fluid in elderly subjects included a decrease in the total crystallogenic potential of biological fluid, which was manifested in a decrease in crystallizability and the structural index of dehydrated saliva facies. In addition, the involutive shifts of the crystallograms were represented by an increase in the degree of destruction of facies and the expansion of the marginal zone of micropreparations. The revealed transformations of the crystallogenic properties of the biological medium allow us to speak about age-dependent characteristics of the component composition and physico-chemical parameters of saliva and, therefore, indirectly describe the involutive changes in the metabolome of this biological fluid

Business Risk in Changing Dynamics of Global Village 2

The monograph is prepared based on the presentations and discussions made at the II International Conference “BUSINESS RISK IN CHANGING DYNAMICS OF GLOBAL VILLAGE (BRCDGV 2019)”, November, 7th-08th, 2019, in Ternopil, Ukraine. The aim of this scientific international conference is to provide a platform for professional debate with the participation of experts from around the globe in order to identify & analyze risks and opportunities in today’s global business, and specifically in Ukraine. The conference will provide a framework for researchers, business elites and decision makers to uplift the business ties and minimise the risk for creating a better world and better Ukraine.The Conference is designed to call experts around the globe from different sectors of practices which are effected by globalization and watching changes in Europe as well as in Ukraine. It is an excellent platform for interactions and communication between academicians, corporate representatives, policy makers, representatives of organizations and community, as well as individuals being the part of this globalized world. The 1st edition of this conference was held at the University of Applied Sciences in Nysa, Poland (2017); the 2nd edition took place at Ternopil Ivan Puluj National Technical University, Ukraine (2019); the 3rd edition will be organized at Patna University, India (2020) in cooperation with Indo-European Education Foundation (IEEF, Poland) and its partner universities from Poland, India, Europe and other part of the world.Under modern conditions of globalization nowadays, economic activity is undergoing changes. Innovative technologies, new forms of business, dynamic changes taking place in the world today result in the emergence of the necessity to minimize risks in order to maximize benefits. The cooperation between experts from different fields with the aim to ensure sustainable growth – policymakers, scientists, universities representatives and business elites is essential nowadays. With the purpose to bring them together and discuss the main issues of todays’ global world this conference took place in Ternopil, Ukraine. As Ukraine is now passing through a dynamic period of changes, recommendations coming up from such discussions can be very beneficial for building stronger society and meet the risks globalization brings up. This monograph provides a useful review of economic, financial and policy issues in the context of globalization processes and has proven extremely popular with practitioners and industry advisors. This edition is given the continued high demand and interest for experts form different areas working on diminishing of business risks wishing to keep abreast of current thinking on this subject. According to many experts process of managing risks is currently one of the most relevant business technologies and at the same time it is a complex process which requires ground knowledge in the research field and practical experience. The popularity of business risks management is due to objective reasons such as dynamics of society, interconnections and interdependence between different players in the society, increasing role of human capital in the country’s sustainable developmen

Phenological shifts of abiotic events, producers and consumers across a continent

Ongoing climate change can shift organism phenology in ways that vary depending on species, habitats and climate factors studied. To probe for large-scale patterns in associated phenological change, we use 70,709 observations from six decades of systematic monitoring across the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Among 110 phenological events related to plants, birds, insects, amphibians and fungi, we find a mosaic of change, defying simple predictions of earlier springs, later autumns and stronger changes at higher latitudes and elevations. Site mean temperature emerged as a strong predictor of local phenology, but the magnitude and direction of change varied with trophic level and the relative timing of an event. Beyond temperature-associated variation, we uncover high variation among both sites and years, with some sites being characterized by disproportionately long seasons and others by short ones. Our findings emphasize concerns regarding ecosystem integrity and highlight the difficulty of predicting climate change outcomes. The authors use systematic monitoring across the former USSR to investigate phenological changes across taxa. The long-term mean temperature of a site emerged as a strong predictor of phenological change, with further imprints of trophic level, event timing, site, year and biotic interactions.Peer reviewe

Chronicles of nature calendar, a long-term and large-scale multitaxon database on phenology

We present an extensive, large-scale, long-term and multitaxon database on phenological and climatic variation, involving 506,186 observation dates acquired in 471 localities in Russian Federation, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Belarus and Kyrgyzstan. The data cover the period 1890-2018, with 96% of the data being from 1960 onwards. The database is rich in plants, birds and climatic events, but also includes insects, amphibians, reptiles and fungi. The database includes multiple events per species, such as the onset days of leaf unfolding and leaf fall for plants, and the days for first spring and last autumn occurrences for birds. The data were acquired using standardized methods by permanent staff of national parks and nature reserves (87% of the data) and members of a phenological observation network (13% of the data). The database is valuable for exploring how species respond in their phenology to climate change. Large-scale analyses of spatial variation in phenological response can help to better predict the consequences of species and community responses to climate change.Peer reviewe