Search Results (346)

Inclusive growth has increasingly emerged as a central framework for understanding how firms can align economic performance with social inclusion and environmental responsibility, particularly in emerging markets characterized by institutional volatility. In the context of geopolitical shocks and economic sanctions, such as those faced by Russia during 2022–2023, the normative meaning of inclusive growth is redefined toward prioritizing employment stability, industrial continuity, and strategic resilience at the firm level. This study aims to develop a systematic and transparent firm-level measure of inclusive growth that integrates strategic resilience with long-term business model potential. It further seeks to empirically assess cross-firm heterogeneity in inclusive growth performance within the Russian metallurgical and mining sector under geopolitical disruption conditions. This study constructs a composite Inclusive Growth Index using publicly available financial and non-financial disclosures, combining indicator normalization, variance-based weighting, and geometric aggregation. The index is applied to a panel of major Russian metallurgical and mining companies for the period 2021–2024 to evaluate their strategic resilience, business model potential, and industry-level dynamics under sanctions. The results reveal substantial heterogeneity in inclusive growth performance across firms, with higher index values being associated with stronger strategic resilience and more stable operational outcomes. The analysis further identifies a divergence between improving resilience and declining business model potential during 2022–2024, indicating a trade-off between short-term stabilization and long-term inclusive growth capabilities under the geopolitical stress. The findings suggest that inclusive growth at the firm level in a sanctioned emerging market context follows a distinct sovereignty-oriented logic in which employment stability and operational continuity take precedence over long-term innovation and governance enhancement. Overall, the proposed Inclusive Growth Index provides a robust analytical framework for assessing corporate adaptation to structural shocks and informing managerial and policy decisions in emerging market economies. Full article

The interaction between crude oil prices and exchange rates is central to understanding global financial stability and macro-economic balances. Contrary to traditional static analyses, the heterogeneous market hypothesis argues that market participants have different time horizons and that multi-scale analysis is necessary to capture dynamic changes in crisis periods. This study examines volatility spillovers between WTI crude oil and the Russian ruble using wavelet coherence, phase difference, and predictive information flow analysis in a time–frequency framework. The analysis separates short-term [2–32 days] transient shocks from long-term [32–256 days] structural changes. Findings show that a negative spillover, initially led by WTI, with evidence of dynamic, frequency-dependent leadership shifts during the 2020 shock, was interpreted as a result of the overnight price gap and a failure of microstructural synchronisation. With the outbreak of the 2022 Russia–Ukraine war, the relationship shifted to a strong, positive, and high-intensity risk transfer, consistent with contagion theory. Crucially, by 2024, a structural decoupling emerged due to geoeconomic fragmentation, signalling that the ruble no longer exhibits traditional petro-currency behaviour. These results offer critical signals for policymakers regarding reserve management and for market participants regarding new liquidity risks. Full article

This article examines the 1910 philosophical dispute between Vladimir Ern and Semyon Frank in post-1905 Russia as a dispute over the criterion of philosophy itself. The controversy arose in a field where the meaning of “Russian philosophy,” the authority of neo-Kantian nauchnost’ [scientificity], the religious-ontological program of Put’, and the problem of culture had become closely interconnected. The article argues that the central issue concerned what makes a claim philosophical: participation in an antecedent order of being, or conceptual articulation, proof, and universally valid justification. Ern’s intervention is presented as an attempt to reconstitute philosophy through Logos. For Ern, modern rationalism separates the discursive-logical from the “fullness of reason,” producing ratio as an autonomous and ultimately meonic form of thought; Logos, by contrast, names the ontological principle through which thought remains inwardly bound to being. Frank’s response locates the issue in the concept of philosophy itself. While acknowledging intuition, ontologism, and the insufficiency of one-sided rationalism, he insists that every appeal to being becomes philosophical only when it enters the medium of concepts, reasons, and proof. The article argues that the controversy turns on two irreducible conditions internal to philosophy itself: thought must remain faithful to being, yet it must do so in a form through which its claims become philosophically valid. Read in this way, the Ern–Frank exchange discloses a constitutive tension between ontology and conceptual justification, and between historical embodiment and universal validity. Full article

Background/Objectives: Sosnowsky’s hogweed Heracleum sosnowskyi, which originated in the Greater Caucasus region and spread rapidly across Central and Eastern Europe after being introduced as cattle fodder in the 1950s, is an example of an extremely dangerous invasive species listed by the European Union. This study aimed to estimate the genetic diversity of 6 native populations of Sosnowsky’s hogweed from the Caucasus region of Russia and Georgia, as well as 15 invasive populations from Lithuania and Poland, and to assess the adaptability of hogweed in new environments. Methods: Genetic analyses of plant material were conducted, including DNA extraction, ISSR genotyping, PCR product separation, and subsequent molecular data mining and analysis. Results: A pairwise Mantel test revealed a positive correlation between geographical distance and the genetic diversity of the hogweed populations. The presence of three distinct allele pools was confirmed in the populations under study, with genotypes from Poland dominated by the first allele pool, which had the largest number of polymorphic and private loci. Analysis of molecular variance by origin showed that 99% of the variation was within the analysed hogweed populations, with only 1% being between them. Native populations from Russia were genetically distinct from those in Poland and Lithuania. Some of the Georgian population shows genetic similarities to Russians, while the rest shows similarities to the secondary invasive Lithuanians. Conclusions: Introduced populations of H. sosnowskyi are characterised by considerable genetic variation, likely resulting from multiple introductions and subsequent evolutionary processes, which may facilitate local adaptation and invasiveness, although overall large-scale genetic differentiation remains low. Full article

In rural areas affected by Chernobyl, accelerated erosion has become a major source of particulate ¹³⁷Cs in sediment load. The long-term dynamics of the activity concentration in eroded soil material transported from individual slope catchments can be better understood by exploring the ¹³⁷Cs depth distribution in sediments deposited near cultivated fields. This study focuses on three cultivated slope catchments located in the Chernobyl-affected area of Central Russia. A depth incremental campaign was conducted within zones of sediment accumulation in 2022–2025. The behavior of radiocaesium associated with particles after the Chernobyl accident was controlled by the prompt implementation of remediation measures. Shortly after the accident, the values decreased by more than two times. The radionuclide flux then began to depend on soil erosion processes. Gradually, the thickness of the upper soil that had been eroded became large enough to allow soil material from deeper layers to be involved during ordinary plowing and led to a subsequent decrease in the ¹³⁷Cs activity concentration. Given the decreasing snowmelt runoff and lack of increase in high-intensity rainfall in the 21st century, the activity concentration of ¹³⁷Cs in slope runoff has remained quite stable. This phenomenon requires consideration of whether a physically based model for the transport of particulate radionuclides should be developed. Full article

In recent years, the frequency of forest fires has increased in many regions worldwide, with many fires developing rapidly and affecting large areas. Such fires lead to profound changes in ecosystem structure and functioning. Diptera play an important role in temperate European forests and, due to their high mobility, are among the first insect groups to colonize burned areas. However, many aspects of post-fire colonization by flying insects remain insufficiently studied. The study was conducted in the Republic of Mordovia (central European Russia) during the first year after the fires of 2021. Insects were collected using beer traps baited with beer and sugar. Sampling was carried out from April to October 2022 at 11 plots. The plots differed in fire intensity, distance from the 2021 fire edge, and the degree of vegetation recovery following the fires of 2010 and 2021. In total, 44 Diptera families were identified, comprising more than 36,000 specimens. Several families were represented by more than 1000 individuals in traps, including Anthomyiidae, Bibionidae, Chloropidae, Drosophilidae, Milichiidae, Muscidae, Polleniidae, Sciaridae, and Tachinidae. The lowest numbers of individuals and families were recorded at plots located farthest from the fire boundary, i.e., at the greatest distance from unburned areas. We found that Diptera abundance in traps correlated significantly with percentage of wood debris on a plot (r = 0.71, p < 0.05), and number of herb species per plot (r = 0.76, p < 0.01). The lowest values of biodiversity indices (Shannon, Simpson, Margalef, Pielou, and Berger–Parker indices) were recorded at a plot located 1 km inside the burned area. The highest values of these indices were observed at plots situated along the fire boundary. At completely burned plots located far from the fire edge, Diptera abundance dynamics were heterogeneous. Seasonal activity of Diptera at other plots was characterized by a slight increase in abundance in May, followed by a decrease by July, and a subsequent gradual increase from August to October. Full article

Commodity and carbon markets are central to natural resource allocation, energy security, and the effectiveness of carbon-pricing policies, yet their risk linkages can intensify sharply during crises. This study examines nonlinear, tail-dependent volatility spillovers across strategically important resource markets using a Quantile-on-Quantile connectedness framework. We employ weekly observed data from 3 January 2010 to 27 April 2025 for eleven futures markets spanning metals (copper, silver, gold), energy (WTI crude oil, heating oil, natural gas, gasoline), agricultural commodities (sugar, coffee, corn), and carbon emissions. Volatility is measured using GARCH-based estimates and embedded in quantile VAR dynamics to map state-contingent shock transmission across the distribution. The results indicate strong asymmetries: connectedness rises markedly in tail regimes and attains its highest levels during the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russia–Ukraine war, relative to the 2015–2016 energy market adjustment. Heating oil, gold, and natural gas frequently act as key volatility transmitters, while the carbon market shifts from a peripheral receiver to a more integrated and sometimes systemic node within the broader commodity risk network. The findings indicate that carbon-price risk propagates through resource markets in a regime-dependent manner, with implications for stress testing, tail-sensitive hedging, and the coordination of resource and climate policy under turbulent market states. Full article

Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) spans most of Eurasia, yet southern and mountainous populations may retain distinctive genetic components shaped by long-term isolation and complex postglacial dynamics. We genotyped 186 trees from four Scots pine stands in Armenia (AM1-AM4) and reference stands from Germany, Russia and Montenegro with the PiSy50k SNP array and integrated these data with published European array datasets from Finland, Poland and the Baltic region. After quality checks and conservative SNP filtering, 627 individuals from 47 populations and 3659 SNP loci were retained. Within-population diversity was generally high; Armenian stands AM2–AM4 were among the most diverse, whereas AM1 showed reduced diversity and the highest differentiation relative to the remainder of the dataset (FST vs. rest = 0.0047). Direct pairwise F_ST and hierarchical AMOVA confirmed pronounced heterogeneity among Armenian stands, with AM1 the most differentiated stand, AM2 and AM4 closest to the broader Eurasian background, and AM3 intermediate. Principal component analysis (PC1 = 1.42%, PC2 = 0.76%) again separated AM1 strongly from all non-Armenian samples, while AM2 overlapped with the central/eastern European cluster and AM3 and AM4 combined continental-like and AM1-like individuals. Structure-like inference with LEA/sNMF showed a broad cross-entropy plateau from approximately K = 4 to K = 6; we therefore use K = 5 as a practical summary, which highlighted a dominant AM1-associated ancestry component and variable continental admixture in AM2–AM4. KING kinship estimates provided little evidence for within-stand family clustering in Armenian stands; no second-degree-or-closer pairs were observed in AM1–AM4. Together, the results reveal pronounced heterogeneity among Armenian Scots pine stands and identify AM1 as a highly differentiated but unresolved genomic component, providing a genomic baseline to support conservation planning, provenance evaluation and the management of forest reproductive material in the Lesser Caucasus. Full article

Located in northeastern Anatolia, Çıldır and Ardahan serve as a gateway to the Caucasus for political entities such as the state and mobile groups such as the tribe. Due to this geopolitical characteristic, the region has fallen under the dominion of numerous states and civilizations throughout history. With its fertile highlands, Lake Çıldır, and natural water resources like the Kura River, the area constitutes an attractive living space for hem settled agriculturalists and nomadic tribe groups subsisting on animal husbandry. These features have profoundly influenced the ethnic, demographic, socio-economic, and cultural fabric of the region. Following the establishment of Ottoman sovereignty in the 16th century, Çıldır and Ardahan assumed a vital role in the state’s Caucasian and Eastern policies. This research addresses the Turkmen tribe and other ethnic communities residing around the eyalet of Çıldır and the sanjak of Ardahan. It further examines the banditry activities carried out by these groups, the attitudes of central and local administrators toward such activities, migration and settlement patterns, and the economic and political pressures exerted by the Russian State upon these tribes. The political and economic pressures exerted by the Russian State on these tribes reflect a broader imperial strategy of frontier making, as discussed by Khodarkovsky in the context of Russia’s expansion into its southern borderlands. By positioning the region as a negotiated frontier, this study moves beyond a descriptive narrative to analyze how tribal mobility and settlement functioned as tools of sovereignty and resistance within the broader context of Ottoman state formation and trans-imperial rivalry. The methodology employed in this study is the Qualitative Research Method; accordingly, documents from the Presidential Ottoman Archives (BOA) were transcribed, and the relevant sections were interpreted and incorporated into the study. The archival findings are contextualized within recent historiographical debates concerning the shifting definition of the state versus nomadic agency during the transition from the 18th to the 19th century. While existing literature contains academic studies aiming to elucidate the archaeological, geographical, economic, and administrative structures of Çıldır and Ardahan, it has been determined that no academic research has been conducted to analyze the ethno-socio-demographic structure of the region specifically focusing on the 18th and 19th centuries in a historical sense. With this focus on the interplay between imperial frontiers and tribal identity, this study provides a critical analysis of how local dynamics shaped the grand strategies of the Ottoman and Russian Empires. Full article

Hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome (HFRS) is the most common zoonotic disease in Russia, with about a 98% abundance of Puumala virus in all HFRS cases. We report clinical manifestations and genomic characteristics of the Puumala virus strain that caused an unconventional course of HFRS with sudden death. The patient was admitted to the hospital on the third day from fever onset with hyperthermia, cough, shortness of breath, and severe weakness, and died 28 h after hospitalization despite intensive care. Further analyses of autopsy samples led to Puumala virus detection. The viral genome was sequenced, followed by phylogenetic and similarity plot analyses. The genomic sequences of three viral segments were identified as endemic for the Moscow region strain. Phylogenetic and similarity plot analysis revealed the reassortant origin of the strain via M segment exchange. This finding increases the explored molecular diversity of Puumala virus in the Central Federal District and underscores the need for heightened awareness of HFRS manifestations that deviate from regular clinical presentation. Full article

Honeybee (Apis mellifera L.) populations are a vital resource for pollination and honey production, yet their genetic diversity in Central Asia remains poorly understood. This study provides a comprehensive genetic assessment of 16 honeybee populations from Kazakhstan, with comparative samples from Russia, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan, utilizing mitochondrial COI–COII intergenic region and 12 highly polymorphic nuclear STR markers. Mitochondrial DNA analysis revealed the predominance of the Eastern European C lineage (A. m. carnica), while a few populations from East Kazakhstan and Russia attributed the M lineage (A. m. mellifera), indicating local introgression and the persistence of relict lineages. STR analyses showed high levels of polymorphism and genetic diversity, with variation in heterozygosity and inbreeding across populations. Analyses of population genetic structure delineated four principal genetic clusters shaped by regional differentiation, historical gene flow, and sporadic admixture. Concordance between mitochondrial and nuclear markers confirms the robustness of these findings. Overall, this study highlights the rich genetic diversity of honeybees from Kazakhstan and emphasizes the importance of conserving local populations and implementing selective breeding programs to sustain adaptive potential and long-term apiculture. Full article

The U.S. dollar’s share in global central banks’ foreign reserves has declined slightly between 2015 and 2025. When gold is included as foreign reserves, the decline is significantly larger. We find that the average USD share in total reserves declines by 12 percent, while the gold share increases by 8 percent and other reserve assets by 4 percent. The rise in the share of gold is primarily explained by gold price appreciation. In the case of sanctioned Russia, appreciation is 78%, while physical gold accumulation accounts for 22% of the increase in the value of gold reserves. In China, 91% of the increase in the share of gold is due to gold appreciation, while only 9% is due to gold accumulation. In India, the respective proportions of active versus passive accumulation were 80% and 20%, while in Japan they were 96% and 4% respectively. Physical gold accumulation took place in China (538 metric tons), Russia (915 mt), India (322 mt) and Japan (81 mt). For Germany, France, Italy, Spain, England, and Switzerland, 100% of the share of gold reserves took place passively due to gold appreciation, with no change in physical gold held. Reserve de-dollarization takes place in all ten countries, except for Switzerland, whose USD assets rose by 2% of total reserves. In most cases, de-dollarization reflects valuation effects rather than substantial reductions in dollar asset holdings. Full article

This article examines the avant-garde reformulation of the nature–culture dichotomy. Within avant-garde discourse, the traditional opposition between the organic and the mechanical—and, by extension, between the body and the machine—evolves into a specific dialectical form based on the principle of juxtaposition-in-identity. In this framework, a metaphysics of corporeality comes into conflict with an instrumentalist understanding of the organic. The analysis identifies a key conceptual shift in the 1920s: the notion of the body is superseded by that of the organism, which is subsequently transfigured into the machine. Focusing on Russian painting from the 1910s to the early 1930s, this study employs a comparative and typological methodology. It analyzes works by Mikhail Larionov, Mikhail Matyushin, and Pavel Filonov in relation to those of Konstantin Redko, situating this analysis within a broader art-historical and intellectual context. The research traces and exemplifies a pivotal transition in visual art: the shift from the early avant-garde mythopoetics of the machine–human to the late-1920s construct of the human–machine, as theorized in biomechanics and gesture studies. The article foregrounds electricity as a central pictorial motif, arguing that it served as a powerful visual and conceptual medium for synthesizing the organic with the mechanical and the mythological with the ideological. Ultimately, it posits that the internal social logic of this aesthetic shift contributed to the formation of the totalitarian body politic in Stalinist Russia. Full article

To improve diagnostics and prediction of changes caused by increased impact of anthropogenic activity, it is necessary to increase the comparative analysis of measurements and modeling of ozone—one of the climatically important atmospheric gases due to the decisive influence of stratospheric ozone on the radiation balance of the Earth-atmosphere system and the role of tropospheric ozone, the third most significant anthropogenic factor contributing to the greenhouse effect. This task is particularly relevant for Russia, as its geographical location makes it more vulnerable to climate change than other countries, whereas its regional tendencies in ozone variability have not yet been studied in sufficient detail. An analysis of IKFS-2 tropospheric ozone content (TrOC) measurements for 2015–2022 revealed that in Siberian, Far Eastern, North Caucasian, and Southern federal districts of Russia TrOC maximum, caused by photochemical formation of ground-level ozone, is observed in July (up to 30–35 DU for monthly means in surface-400 hPa layer). In Northwestern federal district, TrOC maximum (up to 25–30 DU), determined by meridional transport, is observed in late spring. No statistically significant linear trends in TrOC are detected. The WRF-Chem model qualitatively describes the seasonal variations of TrOC as well as the anomalous increase in TrOC caused by forest fires. The variability of total ozone content (TOC) is analyzed by OMI (2005–2023) and IKFS-2 (2015–2022) measurements as well as by SOCOLv3 simulations. Ozone negative anomalies in spring (up to 15% for monthly means) are generally observed with positive Arctic oscillation index values and a westerly phase of Quasi-biennial oscillations. For the 2008–2022 period, a statistically significant increase in TOC (+1.6–1.7% per year) is obtained for European Russia and Western and Central Siberia in November. Full article

Background/Objectives: African swine fever virus (ASFV), the causative agent of African swine fever (ASF), is a highly contagious virus affecting both domestic and feral pig populations with mortality rates approaching 100% within one week of infection. Currently, there are limited treatments or vaccines available to control the disease. Although ASF is endemic in sub-Saharan Africa, the virus has also spread widely, reaching regions of the European Union, Russia, China, Southeast Asia, and, more recently, to the Dominican Republic and Haiti, bringing the threat closer to the United States (U.S.). ASF introduction to the U.S. would have severe consequences for swine producers and the national pork industry. Consequently, there is an urgent need to develop effective vaccine strategies to manage ongoing outbreaks abroad and mitigate the risk of future ASF incursions. Recent efforts have identified several ASFV epitopes and evaluated them in experimental vaccine trials. However, these vaccine candidates have elicited limited protective immune responses and have not demonstrated full protective efficacy. Methods: In this study, we employed in silico modeling and epitope prediction tools to design a synthetic multiepitope ASF protein incorporating key immunogenic regions of ASFV. The goal was to generate a single-antigen construct capable of inducing broad and robust immune responses when formulated with an established nanoparticle-based vaccine platform. The multiepitope ASF protein was subsequently expressed and entrapped into mannose-conjugated chitosan (M-CS) nanoparticles for vaccine formulation. The candidate vaccine, formulated with M-CS nanoparticle-entrapped adjuvant (ADU S100), was administered intramuscularly to pigs, and both T- and B-cell responses were assessed following the primary (DPV 22) and booster (DPV 42) doses. Results: Our M-CS ASF protein vaccine elicited antigen-specific T- and B-cell responses, both of which are recognized as central correlates of protection against ASFV. Conclusions: These promising preliminary immunological findings suggest that this nanoparticle vaccine has the potential to confer protection against ASFV challenge, a hypothesis that will be examined in future studies. Full article