Keywords: O13; Q23
The paper presents data on the forest resource development in Bulgaria during the 20th century, as well as contemporary challenges. It is summarized that during the last 14 years, forestry in Bulgaria has passed through numeral structural and economic changes, directed to its adaptation to market economy. The forest industry in the transition to market economy after 1989 overcame the state monopolism but went to the opposite extreme. The weak sides of the forest industry in this period are summarized as: decreasing of the production; insufficiency of quantity and quality raw material for the existing processing capacities; lost markets for the production of the wood processing industry; problematic credit allowance. The strong sides of the Bulgarian forest industry are the high qualified specialists and the low labor price. The main challenge for sustainable development of economically viable forest sector is implementation of multifunctional forest management. Among the identified new priorities are: restoration of the economic activities in the state-owned forests; comasation of the small forest plots of land; interruption of experiments in the management of the forestry sector. The quantitative criteria for meeting the new challenges by the Bulgarian forest industry is achievement of annual growth of production and export by 10%.
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Keywords: Society; Communism; nostalgia; Czechoslovakia; history; memory;
A society that keeps looking in the rear-view mirror is bound to crash into something
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Keywords: Unit labour cost; export competitiveness; manufacturing industry;
The globalisation process along with removal of trade barriers is increasing competition among countries. As a result more attention is turned to the sources of export competitiveness and to their better use. For that reason the research in the area of com-petitiveness is intensified. The research of export competitiveness is more actual in those countries where import exceeds export. Since regaining its independence Estonia’s imports have annually ex-ceeded its exports, signalling that more attention must be paid to enhancing of exports relative to imports. One way of doing that is the maximal exploitation of the existing export advantage. To specify the sources of export advantages it is necessary to explore possi-ble sources more precisely. Up to now Estonia’s export competitiveness originates primarily from low labour costs that have shaped export structure and attracted foreign direct investments. Being a member state of the European Union, labours costs are expected to grow faster in Estonia. Estonia could lose its status of being a good location for labour intensive production. This could bring along the reallocation of enterprises to countries where labour costs are still very low. Given the up-ward pressure on labour costs, maintaining competi-tiveness require an increase in productivity or gaining an international advantage through innovation. Inno-vation could increase the volume of production with-out increasing production inputs. It could also lead to the elaboration of new or modified product, which has higher value-added. The aim of this article is to examine whether changes in unit labour costs brought along changes in export competitiveness of the Estonian manufactur-ing industry. The article is divided into two parts. The first part of the article is theoretical and explains the concept of export competitiveness. Also different indicators of export competitiveness are compared based on the role of labour costs. The second part of the article includes analysis of changes in the Esto-nian manufacturing industry’s export competitiveness on the basis of unit labour costs.
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Keywords: post-war architecture; international style; interior; rehabilitation of modern architecture; cultural heritage
This year will mark forty years since Ještěd Mountain Hotel and Television Tower first opened to great fanfare. A national cultural monument, built on the site of an old historical building that had burned down, the tower is a reflection of several currents in society at the time of its construction: the political thaw in Czechoslovakia, the social and cultural ferment of the ‘golden Sixties’, efforts to break away from the industrialised, quantification-centred approach that dominated in civil engineering, and the powerful determination to make a very distinctive individual mark in an era when ownership, means, and objectives were otherwise collective. The structure represents the timeless union of a unique landscape environment, a congenial impulse, and the cohesive outlook of the artists involved. Today it is a symbol of the town and the region as a whole and provides eloquent testimony of the dreams of a particular generation of architects. The fame and general popularity of the tower have made it the subject of numerous studies, but surprisingly they have overlooked its remarkable interior design, which forms an integral part of the tower’s overall physical and spiritual essence. The most familiar media image of this icon is as viewed from afar, an image that has taken precedence over the reality of experiencing a close human encounter with the architecture of the 1960s and 1970s. The experimental character of the tower, which Rostislav Švácha has described as a prime example of ‘the pragmatism of honest Czech engineering’ and Miroslav Masák as ‘high tech by a handyman’ is the product of the crucial cooperation between architect Karel Hubáček (1924 – 2011) and a group of structural and civil engineers. However, the need to create an interior ‘tailormade’ to this structure led to the involvement of two long-time colleagues, the outstanding interior designer Otakar Binar (1931 –) and furnishings designer Karel Wünsch (1932 –). Their foremost goal was to bring together two barely compatible worlds: the tower structure, a clear, coherent, and resolute gesture in tune with the magnificence of the surrounding landscape, and a hotel interior, with the smaller-scale spatial layout it required. From the outset efforts to this end were centred on two unifying ideas: One was to create an uninterrupted panorama of the surroundings and apply the popular post-war theme of the inner landscape. The fluidity of space and the strange sensation of infinity inside the tower are augmented with the use of circular corridors and apertures, and by the island-like placement of solitary furniture pieces which do not rise in height above the level of the window ledges. The second idea was to establish a tension between the two poetic worlds of ‘earth and sky.’ In the interior this was achieved by creating a contrast between the raw, robust character of the concrete core and floors and the apparent weightlessness of the ceiling and interior furnishings. The interior.
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Keywords: Hungarian morphology numerus absolutus (numerus indefinitus) singulare tantum plurale tantum count nouns; uncount nouns
The analysis and interpretation of grammatical number seems to be a very complex task, due to the diversity of tools to express it in various languages. The category of grammatical number exists in most languages. As far as the marking of number is concerned, nouns — traditionally — could be classified as count and uncount nouns. Differences in the quantity and function of uncount nouns in different languages could be explained by the speakers’ distinct approaches and conceptualizations reflected in word-formation processes and in everyday language use. Because of the differences in (uniform or less uniform) conceptualization we cannot predict whether the noun denoting a particular entity is countable or not. In the Hungarian language (as well as in other Uralic languages) nouns are used in the singular quite often where a plural form can be observed in most Indo-European languages. The meaning of this (unmarked) singular in Hungarian can be plural, too, e.g. the form könyv ’book’, paradicsom ’tomato’, alma ’apple’ can refer to any number of books, tomatoes, apples, so the number is neutral. Unlike the unmarked singular, the marked form always denotes the plural: the forms könyvek ’books’, paradicsomok ’tomatoes’ always refer to the plural. In Uralistics, this function is often called numerus absolutus (or numerus indefinitus), which does not denote number or explicit quantity. As it does not even refer to a concrete individual (token) or a type it is more appropriate to interpret it as a function. In Hungarian the use of the singular form in the sense of numerus absolutus can be considered in numerous cases. The aim of this paper is to collect singular forms in the function of numerus absolutus on the one hand, and to interpret and define singulare tantum in Hungarian on the other.
More...Keywords: goodwill; empathy; personalization; supportive/ defensive oriented communicator; ethical attitude; positive attitude
Skilled business persons know that creating goodwill is the main objective of any business, whatever the specific objective may be: buying, selling or solving problems. How could we define good will? The Oxford Dictionary considers it as a "kindly feeling to persons". Trying to define it, we may say that goodwill is the degree to which the receiver of the message perceives the communicator of the respective message as a likable, trustworthy and consistent person. Of course, this image shall be determined by the attitude of the communicator. Can goodwill be taught and learned? Our hope is that it can become a constant value of human behaviour by gradual, trained accumulation of knowledge and successful practice.
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Keywords: public – private; adaptation; resistance; compromise; approachment – reapproachment
This article analyzes the dynamic relationship between the public and the private in the Romanian rural world during the communist period. The analysis is based on oral interviews with persons comprising various age groups and diverse socio-professional categories. The data was gathered during an anthropological research project on communism undertaken between 2011-2012 by the Romanian National Peasant Museum.
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Keywords: Maramureş; (revival of) tradition; peasant room; object; ritual; dowry; representation; status; village life; community; social dynamics;
“The clean room” or “the peasant room”, as it has been called lately, is the space where people from Maramureş place the most beautiful objects, most of them crafted by themselves: the most wonderful rugs, flowered carpets, woven table cloths, exquisite (woven) wall carpets and towels, the most valuable icons and 'talgere' (plates). In this article, the interest focuses on the context of the creation of the “peasant room”. For each “good room” that I visited in Dragomireşti, Ieud and Săliştea de Sus has a special motivation for which people have decided to have such a room in their houses; this motivation has a close connection to the lives of the women who created them. Thus the “front room” becomes a feminine topos: it is the space where the woman represents herself mainly through the dowry, the inheritance from her parents which she displays here.
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Let the light slip on the row of spikes mounted on the windowsill. Let the sun shine straight ahead, from the tennis courts by the church, so that when she looks out of the window it is hard to read the temperature. Let’s suppose there are smears of cooking oil on the windowpanes that obstruct the view. Let her open the window. In her carelessness, let her catch the palm of her hand on the spikes that were mounted to deter pigeons. Let her mutter under her breath, the way people do when they have been on their own for a long time, that it’s eleven degrees. If springtime herbal fragrances flood the kitchen on the afternoon of New Year’s Eve, let songbirds muster up the courage to chime in with sounds resembling pocket calculators. Let flowers reminiscent of snowdrops poke their heads out on the islands of grass on the tobogganing slope in front of the ninefloor tower block. She shouldn’t notice them. Let these plants, already wilted when they bloom, be as if trampled on by children’s feet. And in closing the window let her have the feeling that it is not just the sodden earth outside that stinks but also the garbage can inside. She may lift the lid and peek in, then take out the bin liner bag, even though it is less than half full. The lemon peel, ash, and canned mackerel will reek; let the whole thing be gross.
More...Athenaios retails a story, little heeded, but variously understood when not misunderstood, according to which Polykrates of Samos was a purveyor of stromnai while still a private citizen. This paper offers two new explanations of the word stromnai, gives some reasons for attaching credence to the report, and surmises that the original version of the story preserved by Athenaios made Polykrates responsible locally for innovations also seen elsewhere.
More...Keywords: L60; P20
This paper addresses the pattern of structural change in selected transition and developed economies in Europe both from the point of view of a national economy and from cross-country perspective as well. It uses cross-industry country data at 2 and 3-digit level of the NACE classification to examine structural changes in the manufacturing industry in the second half of the 90’s. To asses the structural change the paper proposes a decomposition of productive efficiency into macroeconomic, or pro-cyclical component and “structural effect” component, based on two-error component model of unobservable effects. Estimation results from panel data models provided empirical evidence for a heterogeneous development pattern with dominating macroeconomic factors in many transition economies and prevailing structural factors in a few countries.
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Keywords: retable; painting and sculpture;Roman-Catholic Church;
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Keywords: regional specialisation; smart specialisation; clusters; Lower Silesia;
Strategy Europe 2020 is intended to support smart specialisation, i.e. the innovative development of individual regions which benefit from what constitutes their specific and unique features. Regions have to indicate their strong points, and focus their activities on those areas of science and innovativeness which are complimentary to a given region’s resources and ultimately will create or strengthen its comparative advantages. The aim of this article is to present the concept itself, as well as the theoretical principles of smart specialisation in a regional dimension. In turn, they will become the basis for examining the role and the importance of clusters in the development of the regional specialisation of Lower Silesia. At the same time, the authors studied the possibilities of creating new clusters and their relevance for mapping out future areas of specialisation of the region, corresponding with the objectives of Strategy Europe 2020.
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Keywords: Poetry; Monika Herceg; Croatian literature; Poems;
*; deaf cats; silence; birds’ deaths; amnesia; escape; grandma’s eye; Hunt; A Short Break before Entering the Yard; A Short Break for Resurrection.
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Keywords: Poetry; Marija Dejanović; Croatian literature;
To Heal a Horse; The Ethics of Bread and Horses; The Invisible Bow; To Double the Profit; In the Exercise Room; The Zoo; The Table; The Flood; The One You Fell in Love With; White Rabbits.
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