The new issues of the scientific journals Linguistica Uralica, Oil Shale, Proceedings of the Estonian Academy of Sciences and Trames have been published.
Brief reviews of the journals:
LINGUISTICA URALICA
The first 2023 issue of Linguistica Uralica features a study on the Livonian jussive by Milda Dailidėnaitė from the University of Tartu and the Livonian Institute at the University of Latvia. The jussive is a verbal mood which exists also in Estonian. In Livonian, however, jussive forms are generally used in conjunction with the hortative particle laz (‘let’). Livonian has not been systematically standardised and exhibits a lot of variation in usage. Based on 444 occurrences in a corpus, the author discusses her results of a morphosyntactic analysis. The article presents previous research on the Livonian jussive, formal aspects of jussive occurrences in the corpus, and an analysis of the case marking of arguments of jussive predicates.
OIL SHALE
In the recent issue of Oil Shale, the reader finds an article “A bibliometric comparative study on global oil shale research: hotspots, trends and regional focus”. Chinese researchers have prepared a bibliometric analysis of articles on oil shale published between 2012 and 2022, collected from the Web of Science (WoS) database. The authors concluded that the main research topics during the last 10 years include ‘pyrolysis’, ‘oil shale’, ‘oil shale ash’, ‘GC-MS’, ‘pore structure’, ‘flame propagation’, ‘Maastrichtian’, ‘trace elements’, ‘atomic force microscopy’, and ‘HCL-HF isolation method’. This covers aspects from oil shale’s geological and chemical characteristics to the exploitation and utilization methods and technologies.
In the article “The composition of kukersite shale oil”, Estonian scientists present new experimental data on the elemental composition and infrared spectrum of kukersite shale oil. In order to get detailed information on how the composition of the oil changes depending on the average molecular weight of the oil fraction, shale oil was separated into narrow boiling fractions using distillation. This gives more detailed data on different portions of the oil than earlier datasets.
Other articles in the issue include “The effect of various parameters on the supercritical extraction of Moroccan oil shales: Application in the elaboration of carbon foams and graphitizable carbons” by Moroccan scientists and “Pore types of oil shale in Jilin Province, Northeastern China” by Chinese scientists.
PROCEEDINGS OF THE ESTONIAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES
The March 2023 issue of the Proceedings of the Estonian Academy of Sciences contains nine articles by scientists from Estonia and abroad. The articles cover topics ranging from fluid mechanics to mathematics, optics, physical mathematics and many more.
The issue also features an article “Restoration of eelgrass (Zostera marina) in Estonian coastal waters, Baltic Sea” by Liina Pajusalu et al. Scientists from the Estonian Marine Institute in co-operation with colleagues from Finland and Norway have tested whether co-restoring two ecosystem engineers, namely eelgrass Zostera marina and blue mussels Mytilus edulis/trossulus, would increase eelgrass restoration success in different sites. Seagrass meadows are facing structural degradation worldwide, losing both area and biodiversity. Habitat restoration could reverse this degradation, but so far, the success rate of seagrass restoration has been low. In this study, the authors found that co-restoration of eelgrass and mussels did not work at small scales because mussels were washed away within the first growing season. However, the shoot density of eelgrass increased over time, especially over the second growing season, in the sheltered site, indicating that restoration is possible in these areas. The research results suggest that in such dynamic ecosystems abiotic factors, particularly exposure, play a larger role compared to biotic interactions, and thus the success of habitat restoration largely depends on local environmental conditions.
TRAMES. A JOURNAL OF THE HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES
The latest issue of Trames includes four contributions.
The opening article by Jüri Saar (University of Tartu and the Estonian Academy of Security Sciences), “The Russian holy war and military statehood”, tests a hypothesis that the Russian military strategy and the ideas of the main state ideologies can be associated with war waged because of religion. The author tries to assess to what extent this association finds practical confirmation in the current Russian-Ukrainian war. He also examines how Russia behaves in words and deeds.
The Chinese researcher Xiaohong Zhong’s article about Chinese folk music looks at the musical instrument called zházhēng (yazheng). He attempts to find out why this instrument has a different shape and production process in various places and what contributed to the fact that it is still going strong today. Research materials included the surviving authentic yazhengs, as well as written sources. The theoretical framework of the study is ethno-musicological.
Researchers John Lee Kean Yew and Jacob Donald Tan from Malaysia and Indonesia, respectively, take a comparative look at the impact of Buddhist and Christian ethics on Chinese business culture. The article is based on the religious customs of Chinese business leaders, which influence both leadership and business ethics. Buddhism focuses on experience-based ethical consciousness, to develop a business responsibly, whereas Christian faith and reason intertwine to create principles, criteria, guidelines, and a set of virtues significant for business activities. The aim of the article is to contribute to the strengthening of good business practices.
The last article “Class capitalism in a post-liberation state: democratic South Africa’s Black Diamonds” is by the South African researcher Juliet Joseph. South Africa has made great progress in inclusion and equality of the marginalised. The gap between the rich and the poor has nevertheless grown. Elitism and privileges are as old as human existence and will continue in future. The article examines on the basis of South Africa’s Broad Based Black Economic Empowerment (BBBEE) the influence of neoliberal policy reform aimed at securing transformation and development. As a result of capitalism and nationalistic discourses, there are clear winners and losers in South Africa. This is confirmed by the differences in race, class, and gender in South African emerging class capitalism. The article proves that black African women remain stereotypes within hegemony, hierarchy, class, and social representation.
Additional information:
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