Exotic Products Research Articles

The formation of tea culture in British

When foreign people think of British culture nowadays, they can easily picture gentlemen and ladies elegantly dressed, surrounded by fine furniture and utensils, enjoying afternoon tea. The unique tea culture has already become a strong impression of Britain. This article explores the positioning of tea within the map of cultural differentiation, highlighting its status as a significant symbol of British culture, despite Britain not being its country of origin. The success of tea arose from the collision of Eastern and Western civilizations, with Chinese tea being introduced to Britain by Dutch merchant ships in the 17th century, marking its economic rise. The paper raises key questions about how tea transformed from an exotic product into a British cultural icon and whether the promotion of tea culture in Britain is mere imitation or rooted in local traditions. Additionally, it reviews research by Chinese and foreign scholars on British tea culture, focusing on the origins of tea culture in China, including the history of tea cultivation and consumption, and the evolution of tea culture in various dynasties. The second half describes in detail the thriving process of tea trade in Britain since the 17th century, the background of tea culture breaking the gender status and other restrictions in British society, and the different connotations and influences of tea culture in the British upper society and working class.

MARKET RESEARCH OF THE UKRAINIAN SWEETS MARKET

The article conducts a market research of the Ukrainian sweets market. The research used the capabilities of MS Excel software tools and made a forecast of exports and imports of sweets in Ukraine. It has been determined that one of the most important factors affecting the price of confectionery is the dollar exchange rate. Since its fluctuations can lead to an increase or decrease in the price of products. Correlation studies have been carried out and it has been determined that the change in the dollar exchange rate has a small impact on the price of sugar. Swing charts have been built to assess the dynamics of changes in the dollar and sugar prices for the period 2021–2024. Also, current trends in the sweets market have been identified, namely: increased demand for natural products and vegan alternatives; changing tastes, preference for exotic products; digitalization, which makes sweets look Instagrammable; online sales.

PECULIARITIES OF FRUITING OF BLACK APRICOT IN THE CONDITIONS OF ZAKARPATTIA REGION

As a result of observations and biometric measurements and fixation of the phases of development of black apricot Black Prince found positive signs: the largest fruits of all varieties of black apricot can reach 80 g; skin dense dark red or cherry color, the flesh is soft, juicy, bright orange or burgundy; bone small, well separated; the taste is rich, sweet, sour, apricot; the tree is quite tall up to 4 m, but not thickened. The peculiarity is the growth of thorns on the branches, somewhere in the 5th year after planting with aging branches; self-fertile plant; Fast-fruiting bears fruit for the second year after planting; Resistant to diseases and pests (for two years of observations marked immunity). An important agricultural measure to increase the intensity of flowering of annual shoots is the June pruning, which allows to increase the efficiency of growing both ordinary and black apricot, which allows to increase the formation of crops on annual increments up to 50%. Satisfactory yield of 3.5 kg / tree at a young age (3 years) was observed in the variety Black Prince. The fruits were characterized by an attractive appearance and high taste. Due to the optimal combination of sugars, acids, intense color and pectin, compotes, jellylike products jams, as well as jams are in high demand. Black Apricot variety Black Prince is suitable for growing in industrial and homestead plantations in Transcarpathia and in terms of frost resistance exceeds the varieties that are common in farms of apricot. Economic analysis of production showed that the profitability of the apricot variety was June was 262%. There is no black apricot in the product market, but there is a great demand for such exotic products. Keywords: black apricot, common apricot, cherry, manifestation of signs, comparative characteristic, productivity, advantages and disadvantages

Swap Rate fallback: unreasonable effectiveness of approximations and alternatives

Observes that cash-settled swaptions with collateral discounting are impacted by the Swap Rate fallback mechanisms decided by working groups/ISDA. The legacy vanilla swaptions are becoming exotic products, as the mechanism is based on a non-linear transformation of the OIS swap rate, and generate convexity adjustments. It turns out that those two effects almost cancel each other and lead to almost vanilla products. Henrard analyses those cancelling effects and the risk management impacts. Based on those insights, Henrard proposes an adjusted fallback mechanism that reduces further the exotic features and simplifies further the risk management of the legacy book.

CONTRIBUTIONS OF ROYAL MUGHAL WOMEN IN ECONOMIC FIELD

Women occupy a critical place in every stratum and society. Royal Mughal ladies played a considerable role in the economic field during the Mughal period. The Mughal age was marked by overall prosperity and growth in all the spheres of life. There was hectic economic activity in the country, which led to growth of trade and commerce. India commodities like textiles, spices, and exotic products like opium and dyes were in great demand in the countries of west Asia and North Africa. The items of import were gold, silver, ivory, pearls, precious gems, horses etc. Mughal women made a fairly large but little appreciated contribution to the development of trade and commerce in the country. Besides participating in economic activities, Mughal royal ladies saw to the construction of markets and caravan sarais. Therefore, encouraging and faciliating trade conditions in the country. The present article deals with contribution of the royal Mughal ladies in economic property of the Mughal empire which occupies a unique place in the annals of India.

Investigation of Meat from Ostriches Raised and Slaughtered in Bavaria, Germany: Microbiological Quality and Antimicrobial Resistance.

Simple SummaryThe rapid increase in the world population might lead to the need for new food resources. Ostrich meat remains an exotic food product, although it is characterized by high nutritional value. However, to secure food safety, good monitoring and control programs have to be implemented. Furthermore, standard data concerning the general microbiological status of meat, its evolution in time, and aspects influencing the different parameters have to be assessed in order to provide current information. Thus, production, slaughter, and processing procedures may be improved. For this purpose, the microbiological status, prevalence of zoonotic pathogens, and presence of antimicrobial-resistant microorganisms were assessed. The results will provide baseline data that can be used for future official specific hygiene control procedures and monitoring programs for producing ostrich meat.Ostrich meat is characterized by high nutritional value; however, it remains an exotic product in most countries worldwide. In Europe, only few data are available regarding its microbial contamination, prevalence of antimicrobial-resistant bacteria, and safety. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the microbiological quality and safety of ostrich meat samples (n = 55), each from one animal, produced in Bavaria, Germany. The provided microbiological status of ostrich meat included mesophilic aerobic bacteria, Enterobacteria, and mesophilic yeast and molds. In terms of food safety, all meat samples were negative for Salmonella spp. and Trichinella spp. Additionally, meat samples and a further 30 stool samples from 30 individuals were investigated for Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli genes, with two meat samples that were qPCR-positive. Antimicrobial-resistant Enterobacteriaceae, Enterococcus faecalis, and Enterococcus faecium strains were from meat and stool samples also analyzed; 13 potentially resistant Enterobacteriaceae (meat samples) and 4 Enterococcus faecium (stool samples) were isolated, and their susceptibility against 29 and 14 antimicrobials, respectively, was characterized. The results of this study provide an overview of microbial loads and food safety aspects that may be used as baseline data for the ostrich meat industry to improve their hygienic quality. However, the implementation of monitoring programs is recommended, and microbiological standards for ostrich meat production should be established.

At the beginnings of the funerary Megalithism in Iberia at Campo de Hockey necropolis.

The excavations undertaken at the Campo de Hockey site in 2008 led to the identification of a major Neolithic necropolis in the former Island of San Fernando (Bay of Cádiz). This work presents the results of the latest studies, which indicate that the site stands as one of the oldest megalithic necropolises in the Iberian Peninsula. The main aim of this work is to present with precision the chronology of this necropolis through a Bayesian statistical model that confirms that the necropolis was in use from c. 4300 to 3800 cal BC. The presence of prestige grave goods in the earliest and most monumental graves suggest that the Megalithism phenomenon emerged in relation to maritime routes linked to the distribution of exotic products. We also aim to examine funerary practices in these early megalithic communities, and especially their way of life and the social reproduction system. As such, in addition to the chronological information and the Bayesian statistics, we provide the results of a comprehensive interdisciplinary study, including anthropological, archaeometric and genetic data.

Automatic Monitoring of Fruit Ripening Rooms by UHF RFID Sensor Network and Machine Learning

Accelerated ripening through the exposure of fruits to controlled environmental conditions and gases is nowadays one of the most assessed food technologies, especially for climacteric and exotic products. However, a fine granularity control of the process and consequently of the quality of the goods is still missing, so the management of the ripening rooms is mainly based on qualitative estimations only. Following the modern paradigms of Industry 4.0, this contribution proposes a non-destructive RFID-based system for the automatic evaluation of the live ripening of avocados. The system, coupled with a properly trained automatic classification algorithm based on Support Vector Machines (SVMs), can discriminate the stage of ripening with an accuracy greater than 85%.

Robust product Markovian quantization

Recursive marginal quantization (RMQ) allows the construction of optimal discrete grids for approximating solutions to stochastic differential equations in d dimensions. Product Markovian quantization (PMQ) reduces this problem to d one-dimensional quantization problems by recursively constructing product quantizers, as opposed to a truly optimal quantizer. However, the standard Newton–Raphson method used in the PMQ algorithm suffers from numerical instabilities, inhibiting widespread adoption, especially for use in calibration. By directly specifying the random variable to be quantized at each time step, we show that PMQ, and RMQ in one dimension, can be expressed as standard vector quantization. This reformulation allows the application of the accelerated Lloyd algorithm in an adaptive and robust procedure. Further, in the case of stochastic volatility models, we extend the PMQ algorithm by using higher-order updates for the volatility or variance process. We illustrate the technique for European options using the Heston model, and more exotic products using the stochastic alpha–beta–rho (SABR) model.

The Efficacy of Sedation Depends on the Diet of Population

Physicians are often faced with the fact that the duration of anesthesia varies in different patients, which significantly complicates the process of surgical intervention and may confront the surgeon with an unforeseen situation. Recently, publications have appeared in the literature on the effects of various, including exotic products on anesthesia. There are also many conflicting statements about the effect of camel milk (CM) on the duration of anesthesia. Some data show that CM prolongs anesthesia, while other scientists argue the exact opposite: CM shortens the effect of the anesthetic. We decided to shed light on these studies by analyzing the effect of CM consumption on the effectiveness of local anesthesia in different patients. This article highlights the significant changes that occur in anesthesia due to the patients’ diet. To achieve the set goal, we sort the twenty patients underwent local anesthesia into groups depending on the habit of using CM. The first, control, group consisted of practically healthy patients who did not use CM throughout their lives, and the second group had the habit of regularly taking CM. In both groups, local anesthesia was first performed without pre-drink CM. For the second time, participants in the control and experimental groups were asked to drink CM before the anesthesia procedure. Both in the control and experimental groups, patients drank CM one hour before local anesthesia. A significant correlation was found between the use of CM and the duration of anesthesia in both groups. Consumption of CM had a different effect on the duration of local anesthesia in the experimental and control groups. When milk was consumed before the use of analgesics in these two different groups, it changed exactly the opposite: for those who usually drink milk, it was shortened, and for those who did not drink it daily, lengthened. Thus, we found that the differences in the statements of scientists about the CM impact on anesthesia are based on the fact of different effects of CM in its single and long-term use. We attribute this to the suppression under long-term use of CM the cytochrome system neutralizing both foreign compounds and nutrients entering the organ. However, further long-term studies with larger sample sizes are needed to elucidate the molecular mechanisms behind this phenomenon.

Interest rate structured products: can they improve the risk–return profile?

In this paper, we investigate the contribution of interest rate structured bonds to portfolios of risk-averse retail investors. We conduct our analysis by simulating the term structure according to a multifactor no-arbitrage interest rate model and comparing the performance of a portfolio consisting of basic products (zero-coupon bonds, coupon bonds and floating rate notes) with a portfolio containing more sophisticated exotic products (like constant maturity swaps, collars, spread and volatility notes). Our analysis, performed under different market environments, as well as volatility and correlation levels, takes into account the combined effects of risk premiums required by investors and fees that they have to pay. Our results show that capital protected interest rate structured products allow investors to improve risk–return trade-off if no fees are considered. With fees, our simulations show that structured products add value to the basic portfolio in a very limited number of cases. We believe our paper contributes to understanding the role of structured products in investors portfolios also in light of the current regulatory debate on the use of complex financial products by retail investors.

Egyptian Scarabs Discovered on Kuwait’s Failaka Island and Similar Finds from the Gulf Region

AbstractOver the course of the last three decades, Ancient Egyptian scarabs have been discovered on Failaka Island off Kuwait, as well as at other sites in the Arabian Gulf. A scarab is the most expressive amulet of the cultural identity of ancient Egypt, revealing its influence and its cultural diffusion in the ancient world. Therefore, this paper discusses the reasons for the presence of such exotic products on the island and also answers the question about their origin. Were Failaka scarabs locally manufactured? What is their connection to the Levant? Are they a testimony to the interconnection between ancient Egypt and Arabia?

Landscapes of Elision: Nostalgia and Imperial Networks

A striking aspect of Aukland-Peck’s piece is the way it traces a connection between naturalism and environmental exploitation via imperial networks. By grounding the discussion of Shell’s advertising campaign in a discussion of its historical emergence as a company trading in exotic seashells from across the British empire linked to existing domestic interest in seashells and fossils by naturalists, Aukland-Peck establishes naturalism itself as part of the lineage of Shell’s exploitation of imperial networks for later intensified forms of environmental extraction. There is no overstated claim here however: the move from seashells to oil and kerosene is clearly an economic one, with a kind of nostalgia for the oceanic constituting a thread of continuity with Shell’s seashell-trading origins, most obviously in the company name and logo. However, the connection between British domestic interest in the natural landscape through collecting and landscape painting and the growth of a commercial network which ravaged both imperial and domestic environments is striking, not least because of the poetic connection Auckland-Peck makes between the seashell as an exotic product for trade in the first instance, and as part of the substrate from which oil is extracted in the second. While imperial collecting was always extractive, this linkage between a set of practices at least seemingly oriented around an interest in “nature” and the groundwork it laid for later intensive environmental exploitation is an intriguing avenue of inquiry.

Current state and development prospects of Ukrainian sauce market

Sauces play an important role in the food industry, as they occupy a significant part in the diet of many Ukrainians. The purpose of the paper is to research current state and development prospective of state of the sauce market in Ukraine. The study has brought the following results. The study analyzes the current state of the sauce market in Ukraine and identifies prospects of its development. In particular, it was found that the market is saturated and characterized by fierce competition. Peculiarities of demand for sauce products in Ukraine are analyzed, in particular: frequency of purchases, seasonality, dependence on demand for other products. The commodity structure of the market of sauce products of Ukraine is analyzed. It is determined that in Ukraine, in contrast to Western countries, consumption amounts of complex sauces are inferior to mono sauces – mayonnaise and ketchup. The main development trends of the sauce products market in Ukraine are indicated: growth in demand for organic products, decrease in the share of fat and high-calorie products, growth in demand for new exotic sauces. The competitive environment of the market of sauce products of Ukraine is analyzed. It is determined that the main market share belongs to large producers who have a developed distribution network and offer consumers a wide range of products and low prices. The dynamics of production and sale of products, export and import of sauces is studied. It is determined that the share of imports in the domestic market is small, as domestic consumers prefer cheap domestic products. It is substantiated that Ukraine occupies an important place among exporters of sauce products and its export volumes are growing. Perspective ways of development of the sauce products market in Ukraine are defined. The sauce products market in Ukraine is characterized by saturation, high competition, seasonality and growing demand for organic, low-calorie and exotic products, that forces producers to diversify the product structure and expand sales in foreign markets.

Literacy and the quality of index insurance decisions.

There is widespread concern in developing countries with the expansion of formal insurance products to help manage significant risks. These concerns arise primarily from a lack of understanding of insurance products, general failures of financial literacy and the need to use relatively exotic products in order to keep costs down for poor households. We investigate the importance of incentivized measures for general understanding, as well as domain-specific knowledge of the decision context on the purchase and the quality of index insurance decisions. We evaluate the quality of financial decisions by comparing the individual expected welfare outcomes of a number of decisions each individual makes to purchase index insurance or not. We find that excess purchase is an important driver of welfare losses, and that our incentivized measure of domain-specific literacy plays a critical role in bringing about better quality index insurance decisions.Supplementary InformationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1057/s10713-020-00060-1.

So Who Cares? Taking Livingston out of Africa

So Who Cares? Taking Livingston out of Africa

(Invited) The Electrochemical CO2 Reduction Reaction: Understanding the Selectivity of the Cu Catalyst

Electrochemical CO2 and CO reduction holds the promise to be a cornerstone for sustainable production of fuels and chemicals. However, it is a complex reaction which give multiple different products depending on metal catalyst [1]. The product distributions on the metals catalyst can be understood by ignoring the reaction pathways and grouping the multiple metal catalyst by their product selectivity [2]. It shows that, the unique copper catalyst, as the only metal catalyst has the ability to bind CO* while not having hydrogen under potential deposited (UPD), which results in a high value multiple-carbon product distribution. Furthermore, the exotic product distribution has been shown to be dependent on the exact crystal orientation of the Cu facets for the Cu catalyst [3,4]. Consequently, understanding and improving the product selectivity of the Cu catalyst is a complex property to understand.In this talk I will discuss the properties of the Cu catalyst: (1) How is the products from the Cu catalyst facets related to each other and how they can be grouped. (2) How can descriptors and models be built to understand and guide the product distribution of the Cu catalyst toward selective high value products [5].[1] Y. Hori et. al., Journal of the Chemical Society, Faraday Transactions, 1989, 85, 2309-2326.[2] A. Bagger et. al., ChemPhysChem, 2017, 18, 3266–3273.[3] Y. Hori et. al., Journal of Molecular Catalysis A: Chemical, 2003, 199, 39-47.[4] K. J. P. Schouten et. al., Journal of the American Chemical Society, 2012, 134, 9864-9867.[5] A. Bagger et. al., ACS Catal. 2019, 9, 9, 7894–7899.

Orientação de Mercado para Pequenas e Médias Empresas de Imigrantes Brasileiros no Exterior

Objetivo: contribuir para o campo de estudo do empreendedorismo, no contexto das empresas étnicas ou de imigrantes, ao analisar variáveis que definem sua orientação de mercado e as decisões estratégicas tomadas, aprofundando o conhecimento sobre o assunto.Método: foi utilizada a coleta de dados com estratégias multimétodos (quantitativa e qualitativa), sendo sua principal estratégia a entrevista em profundidade, que compõe a análise de múltiplos casos de empreendedores no exterior, oriundos de diferentes comunidades brasileiras. Essas informações foram trianguladas, a partir de dados de surveys realizadas com brasileiros na Austrália, no Canadá, em Portugal e na Estônia, da netnografia e da análise documental. Sendo assim, análises intra e intercasos foram feitas, visando encontrar similaridades e diferenças nos resultados alcançados.Originalidade/Relevância: o artigo enfoca uma importante questão, que envolve as grandes economias mundiais – os imigrantes. Dadas as dificuldades em sua inserção nas sociedades acolhedoras, eles tendem a ser identificados como “problemas sociais”. Por outro lado, a aplicação de modelos de negócios e de propostas de orientação mercadológica para empreendedores imigrantes, viabiliza um caminho para a sua ascensão econômica e social. Ao se tornarem empreendedores bem-sucedidos, eles podem reverter essa percepção discriminatória a seu respeito.Resultados: com base nos dados coletados, bem como na análise de artigos da literatura existente, foram identificadas quatro orientações diferentes de mercado: (1) foco no nicho de mercado étnico, (2) foco em interesses específicos, (3) foco em produtos exóticos para o cliente local, e (4) foco em mercados altamente competitivos. Uma matriz 2 x 2 é apresentada, incluindo as variáveis: (a) grau de afiliação de empreendedores com suas comunidades étnicas e seu público-alvo, e (b) segmentos de mercado enfocados.Contribuições teóricas/metodológicas: uma das principais contribuições teóricas deste artigo é apoiar a discussão sobre a orientação para o mercado de imigrantes, os empreendimentos étnicos e as decisões do público-alvo a ser atendido. Além disso, o artigo inova, ao discutir decisões estratégicas, no contexto de pequenos e médios negócios de brasileiros no exterior.

Distributionsrevolution des 15. Jahrhunderts

The Distribution Revolution of the Fifteenth CenturyThe consumption revolution of the long eighteenth Century (c. 1650-1850) was inconceivable without a prior distribution revolution in Northwest Europe, in the course of which markets were linked in a stable hierarchy reaching from the international fairs of Antwerp and Frankfurt down to humble packmen tramping from village to village. The exotic products of the consumption revolution did not have to surmount any significant distribution problems, because the networks had been functioning since the fifteenth Century. The proof of this hypothesis is divided into two parts, one empirical and the other theoretical. The foundation of some 2000 weekly markets in England between 1200 and 1350 resulted from the interaction of peasants’ cash requirements and improved transportation by horse: There was much money to be made by establishing markets, but peasants could choose between them. This set in train a brutal winnowing of markets which was intensified in the late middle ages by the effects of the plague, the enclosure movement and price-wage developments. In the end, the surviving markets had organized themselves into a hierarchy based on London, which was, by 1500, indisputably the center of foreign trade and the distribution of imports in England. This section concludes by showing that the hierarchization of markets was also characteristic of the Hanseatic area during the same period. The theoretical part of the paper demonstrates that the hierarchization of markets changed the framework for economic actors in a way no person or group could alter. Late medieval industrial mass production, succeeded by early modern proto-industrialization, required efficient labor markets and distribution networks. Placing the price signals generated by urban markets at the center of the argument solves a number of troubling problems of proto-industrialization: the geographical concentration of proto-industries, the outsourcing of simple tasks (and the retention of more sophisticated processes) and thesubsequent urbanization of rural industrial clusters. It also allows us to go beyond Diamond and Krugman and construct a real-world model of the rise of market hierarchization, as traders exploited scale economies derived from the difference between urban Wholesale and rural retail prices, and - by concentrating their trade on the most liquid provincial markets (thus maximizing thick market externalties) - locked these satellite markets into the hierarchy. An examination o f the policies o f the London Grocers and Mercers proves that this did, indeed, take place in the course of the fifteenth Century. Therefore, the distribution revolution was a true revolution, one which changed forever the framework for economic actors in a way 110 person or group could alter (,economic Constitution‘).

Avaliação das características físicas e físico-químicas de araçá Psidium brownianum Mart. ex DC. (Araçá-de-veado)

O araçazeiro é uma fruteira nativa do Brasil, pertencente à família Myrtaceae, podendo ser encontrada desde o Estado do Rio Grande do Sul, passando por Minas Gerais, até a região Nordeste. São muitas espécies de araçá, mas dependendo da região existem diferentes interesses em realizar estudos quanto a sua caracterização, ressaltando que essa fruta possui excelentes características físico-químicas, grande potencial econômico e podem ser consideradas imprescindíveis na regeneração de áreas degradadas. Essas características dos frutos tornam o araçazeiro uma nova e promissora opção de cultivo, trazendo benefícios aos consumidores e tornando-se uma alternativa para a exploração sustentada para os pequenos produtores rurais. O beneficiamento dos frutos nativos como araçá atende a crescente interesse industrial por produtos exóticos, além de ser extremamente aceito pelos consumidores. Quanto aos frutos de araçá existentes na Floresta do Araripe; não foram encontradas informações na literatura, relativas aos parâmetros físicos e químicos, sendo assim objetivou-se determinar as características físico-químicas (SS, pH, AT, SS/AT, açúcares redutores e não-redutores) e as características físicas como: massa do fruto inteiro, massa da polpa, rendimento de polpa. Dos resultados obtidos para araçá foi possível verificar que devido seu baixo grau de doçura não possui grande aceitação para consumo do fruto in natura. Apresenta potencial para industrialização e um dos fatores que contribuem é a uniformidade de formato, levemente arredondado, bom rendimento em polpa, baixo pH e elevadas concentrações de acidez.