June issues of the scientific journals Estonian Journal of Archaeology, Estonian Journal of Earth Sciences, Linguistica Uralica, Oil Shale, Proceedings of the Estonian Academy of Sciences, TRAMES and a special issue of Proceedings of the Estonian Academy of Sciences have been published.
ESTONIAN JOURNAL OF ARCHAEOLOGY
The June issue of Estonian Journal of Archaeology for 2025 contains three papers.
Andres Tvauri focuses in his article on Estonian sheet pendants from the 11th to the 13th century, aiming to refine their dating. The main problem here is that no sheet pendants have been found in Estonia that can be exclusively dated to the 12th century. The article proposes several hypotheses to explain this chronological gap.
Kristiina Johanson, Agnes Unt and Sirje Hiie analyse the current state of archaeobotanical research in Estonia, outlining the usages of archaeobotany and the bene¬fits that the analysis of plant remains can offer in acquiring a deeper understanding of archae¬ological questions. They argue that while archaeobotanical sampling is a common practice in many countries, the discipline is struggling in Estonia due to a lack of researchers, laboratories, samples, and, ultimately, awareness of its value in understanding the past. They also propose steps and methods to improve the situation.
Irina Khrustaleva and Aivar Kriiska are concerned with Neolithic Comb Ware culture(s) (ca 3900–1750 BC) in the eastern Baltic and Finland. They outline the distribution area, analyse the most reliable dates from sites in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, describe the main hypotheses on the origins of this cultural complex, and reveal gaps in the research. Their aim is to initiate a discussion on the criteria for distinguishing Comb Ware cultures across the entire geographical and chronological range of this phenomenon, and to set a starting point for further broader study.
ESTONIAN JOURNAL OF EARTH SCIENCES
The first issue of the Estonian Journal of Earth Sciences in 2025 presents a wide cross-section of earth science research that spans climate science, geochronology, coastal dynamics, peatland ecology, and Paleoproterozoic tectonics.
Climate-driven hydrological change in Estonia is discussed by Oliver Koit and co-authors, who give an in-depth assessment of how Estonian river catchments respond to climate variability, revealing complex interactions between groundwater recharge, baseflow, and temperature-driven streamflow changes.
Coastal reshaping after nourishment in the Baltic Sea is studied by Ilona Šakurova and co-authors off Klaipėda, Lithuania, using detailed bathymetric data. They show a surprisingly intensive mobility of sediment under even mild wave conditions that underscores the nuanced challenges of coastal engineering in low-energy marine environments.
New geochronological data from the Orijärvi region in southern Finland using zircon and titanite dating by Elisa Toivanen and co-authors sheds light on the formation sequences of Svecofennian felsic volcanic rocks, helping to refine the regional stratigraphy and the broader correlations across southern Finland’s Paleoproterozoic terranes.
Peatland degradation study in the Ogre Municipality in central Latvia by Normunds Stivrins and co-authors highlights a serious decline in fen peat deposits over the last half-century. The study calls for urgent, updated field inventories and policy action to safeguard Latvia’s critical carbon sinks and biodiversity hotspots.
Tectonic evolution of the Alutaguse region in northeastern Estonia is discussed by Solano-Acosta and co-authors using robust geochemical fingerprinting. This research reconstructs the tectonic settings of Estonian Paleoproterozoic rocks, pointing to a back-arc setting formed during the Svecofennian orogeny, with implications for understanding Fennoscandia’s ancient crustal growth and mantle processes.
LINGUISTICA URALICA
This year’s June issue of Linguistica Uralica presents a comparative study on the Northern Khanty dialects of Obdorsk, Shuryshkary, Tegi, and Kazym by Nikita Muravyev from the University of Hamburg. Based on corpus data, Muravyev looks into the morphosyntactic encoding of core arguments, with special attention to the use of active and passive voice as well as subjective and objective conjugation. Such a cross-Khanty comparison is novel. The author follows alignment theory with the goal to describe the Khanty system in terms of hierarchical alignment, where access to inflectional slots is determined by the relative ranking of core arguments on prominence hierarchies, including person, animacy and definiteness. As the study reveals, the four Northern Khanty varieties exhibit different degrees of hierarchical alignment, forming a gradient from north to south, due to developments in the history of the language.
OIL SHALE
The latest issue of Oil Shale contains five articles in total – four by Chinese authors and one by Estonian authors.
We would like to highlight the article by the Estonian authors, “Quantification of oil shale industry ash flows – their chemical and mineralogical composition”. This article provides a comprehensive overview of the various fractions of oil shale ash generated in Estonia’s oil shale industry. The ash results from the direct combustion of oil shale using pulverized combustion and circulating fluidized bed combustion technologies, as well as from shale oil production processes. It offers detailed information on the proportions of ash derived from different technological processes, along with a thorough analysis of their mineralogical and chemical compositions, trace element content, and leaching characteristics. By examining these diverse characteristics, the study enhances the understanding of the ash’s potential implications and applications.
We also highly recommend reading the other articles by the Chinese authors, which focus on the hydrocarbon generation properties of Maoming oil shale when subjected to supercritical water, and research on deformation, temperature, and corrosion monitoring systems of in situ heaters in oil shale wells.
PROCEEDINGS OF THE ESTONIAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES
The second issue of the Proceedings of the Estonian Academy of Sciences of 2025 contains selected papers presented at the conference Modern Materials and Manufacturing 2025 (MMM2025), which hosted the 15th International DAAAM Baltic Conference and the 31st International Baltic Conference BALTMATTRIB 2025. The conference was organized by Tallinn University of Technology on 6–8 May 2025 in Tallinn, Estonia, and it welcomed over 120 participants from 11 countries: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Finland, Poland, Austria, Turkey, France, Spain, Norway and Armenia. The conference was divided into two scientific days and one day dedicated to laboratory visits and networking, attracting worldwide interest and active participation from researchers across national and global technical communities.
The technical programme included presentations on the results of scientific and engineering research in key areas of manufacturing and materials engineering as well as materials processing technologies, with a particular emphasis on current trends in the development and application of advanced materials and processes.
The conference Modern Materials and Manufacturing is an international forum focused on Industry 5.0, robotics and manufacturing engineering, the Internet of Things, digital twins and additive manufacturing, materials engineering, powder metallurgy and tribology – bringing together experts from universities and industry in the fields of materials and manufacturing. It encourages new collaboration between different partners, not only from academia but also from national competence centres, industry and funding bodies.
TRAMES. A JOURNAL OF THE HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES
In the opening article, Toomas Alatalu from Tallinn University examines Stalin’s geopolitics from the Tuva People’s Republic to the Baltic Sea, and his border policy. In October 1944, Churchill suggested to Stalin a plan for the division of spheres of influence in Eastern Europe, unaware that at the same time the Soviet Union annexed the Tuva People’s Republic. The state was reduced to a subordinate entity within the USSR. Secret documents published fifty years later show that the Soviet administration had coordinated their pre-World War II expansionist policies both in the Baltic Sea and Black Sea regions, as well as in the centre of Asia. Motivated by Churchill’s proposal, Stalin swiftly adjusted his geopolitical strategy in negotiations with Finland, adding territorial rearrangements within the Soviet Union. Some territories of the Karelo-Finnish SSR and Soviet Estonia were transferred to Leningrad Oblast. Ironically, Molotov, one of the architects of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, would later conclude his career in 1958 by signing the agreement about the transfer of Soviet territory (part of Tuva territory) to Mongolia – a gesture that was supposed to maintain Soviet-China relations.
The next article by Dogachan Dagi (Turkey) analyses Ukrainian resistance to Russia from the point of strategic culture. Ukrainian strategic culture is seen as a key in order to understand the Ukrainian reaction to Russian advances since 2014. Three interwoven characteristics of Ukrainian strategic culture, namely, its narrative of insecurity, commitment to sovereignty, and alignment with Western institutions, have shaped and sustained the Ukrainian resistance against Russia. Ukrainian political choices are limited not just by the country’s physical abilities, but also by the ideational milieu created by strategic culture.
Ukrainian researchers Oksana Myronets and her co-authors look at human rights and their connection with safety during the new world order, explain the issues related to safety and its prospects. The policy of the whole world that concerns the human right to safety needs to reshape the concept of global safety. Being multi-directional, it includes economic, legal, social, ecological, informational, military and ideological elements that need to be transformed in the new world order to ensure safety for every person and the whole planet.
Laien Yang and co-authors from China examine ancient Chinese nursery rhymes and their cultural connotations. Beyond their role in early childhood education, these rhymes have historically functioned as a vehicle for expressing public opinion on dynastic shifts and political events in ancient Chinese society, as well as a primary medium for imparting knowledge and moral values to children. Nursery rhymes describe the traditional way of life, festival customs and spiritual beliefs. They are also systematic reflections of regional and ethnic cultures on the linguistic level.
The final contribution comes from China – Liao Zhengding’s lavishly illustrated article on ecoaesthetics. The article analyses artworks created in different countries that reflect the ideas of destruction brought on by the advancements of industrial civilization and technological revolution, as well as an ecological catastrophe that is the impending doom of humanity. The research concludes that artists of different countries, regardless of their cultural background, are trying to express their ideas via a universal language, understandable in every corner of the world. The strength of visual metaphors helps to convey the deep tragedy of global ecological art: images of suffering, death, hopelessness and despair visualise the catastrophic extent and consequences of the unfolding ecological crisis.
PROCEEDINGS OF THE ESTONIAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES
This special issue of the Proceedings of the Estonian Academy of Sciences features six extended papers from the 19th Biennial Conference on Electronics and Embedded Systems 2024 (BEC2024) held on 2–4 October 2024 in Tallinn, Estonia.
In the article “Enhancement of residential PV energy storage system by supercapacitor battery – high spatial resolution data analysis”, an international team of researchers from Poland and Estonia (Szymon Rogowski, Sayeed Hasan, Andrii Chub and Maciej Sibiński) presents a hybrid energy storage system combining supercapacitors with traditional batteries to address instability in residential photovoltaic installations. Their results show that this approach effectively compensates for both short-term and long-term power fluctuations, while potentially extending battery lifespan.
In “Design and development of solid state circuit breaker with residual current protection for residential prosumer DC microgrids”, Estonia-based researchers (Tanel Jalakas, Andrii Chub, Indrek Roasto, Dmitri Vinnikov and Jarek Kurnitski) develop a hybrid protection device that integrates circuit breaker and residual current detection technologies for enhanced safety in residential microgrids. Laboratory tests confirm the prototype’s ability to protect against short circuits, electric shock hazards, and equipment overloads, while meeting safety requirements.
In “Environmental performance analysis of innovative mechanical separation for recycling of waste printed circuit boards”, an international team of researchers based in Belgium and Estonia (Pooya Hosseini, Artur Klauson, Dmitri Goljandin, Brent Hendrickx and Joost R. Duflou) analyzes the environmental impact of mechanical separation processes for PCB recycling, identifying key energy-intensive steps in the process. The paper highlights both the potential for mitigation impact and the challenges of high energy consumption during the size reduction phase.
In the article “Lightweight CNN-based microfluidic droplet classification for portable imaging flow cytometry”, researchers based in Estonia (Fariha Afrin, Yannick Le Moullec, Tamas Pardy and Toomas Rang) introduce a customized YoloV4-tiny model for classifying microfluidic droplets on resource-constrained devices for field applications. The results show that carefully designed systems can achieve robust performance even on resource-limited hardware, making the approach deployable in the field.
In “Detection of surface defects of metals: a case study”, Estonia-based researchers (Olev Märtens, Raul Land, Margus Metshein, Anar Abdullayev, Henri Vennikas, Yannick Le Moullec and Marek Rist) examine eddy current testing methods for metal surface defect detection, showing that higher frequencies enhance crack detection capabilities in saw blade specimens. The paper also provides recommendations for future work in high-speed detection technologies and machine vision-based solutions.
In the final article of the issue, ‘Impact of multipath on anchor selection strategies for UAV localization in mobile networks’, Italian researchers (Luca Reggiani and Alberto Facheris) investigate base station selection strategies for UAV positioning, achieving sub-meter 3D positioning accuracy in realistic propagation scenarios. The results showed that the number of anchors can be significantly reduced without compromising performance, and that the corresponding reduction in complexity and latency can also be obtained through simple signalto-noise-ratio-based techniques, especially at low altitudes.
Content and full texts of the articles
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