Book
Gastronomy and Urban Space: Changes and Challenges in Geographical Perspective
This book focuses on the relationship between gastronomy and urban space. It highlights the intrinsic role of eating establishments and the gastronomy industry for cities by assessing their huge impacts on urban changes and discussing some of the challenges posed by new developments.
Written by authors with a background in geography, it starts by discussing theoretical aspects of studies on gastronomy in urban space to place the subject in the broader context of urban geography. Covering both changes and challenges in gastronomy in urban space, it presents a wide range of problems, which are described and analysed using various case studies from Europe and other parts of the world.
This chapter underlines the key role of a city centre in urban space gastronomy. It offers a four-step perspective, ranging from urban to local. First, the example of Saint-Petersburg (Russia) shows that gastronomy reflects the major phases of urban growth. Here, eating establishments are used as a proxy for the city centre. Second, the example of Warsow's Śródmieście district in Poland indicates the constant growth in catering services in this central borough since 1994. Using density analysis, it shows gastronomy hotspots in the centre of the city. Next, the case of Kraków (Poland) focuses on the centre of a historical tourist city, where there has been both quantitative growth in the number of eating establishments and a change in their distribution. The last examples offer a local perspective, specifically they concern the district Żoliborz in Warsaw, Poland, and the neighbourhood of Podskalí in Prague, the Czech Republic, which are near the city centre.

The article considers the processes of the production and property deconcentration in the Russian agri- culture and forestry during the period of systemic economic crisis of 1990s and the processes of the produc- tion concentration and of the vertically-integrated companies formation during the period of compensato- ry industrialisation of 2000-s. Special attention is paid to impact these processes made on spatial organisa- tion of the rural areas of the Non-Black Soil region of the European part of Russia and on the socio-eco- nomic conditions of rural communities. The conclusion is made that agriculture and forestry — the loner (raw material supply j stages of the technological chains of the agri- and timber-industrial complexes — had suffered the most during the economic recession and has been usually becoming the objects, not the subjects, of the vertical integration during the subsequent economic growth.
The Higher Education and universities have high impact for regional development and youth migration. We suggest what the migration of people with a high level of knowledge (called “brain drain”) is detrimental for the region of emigration. High level universities attract the best students and growth the brain drain. There are close relationships between neighboring regions. Distance can be understood as a barrier of human capital growth. Geographical distance between parental home and college poses a potential barrier to higher education entry, and could be a deciding factor when choosing between institutions. Similar issues potentially arise when considering who goes to which universities, because students with different backgrounds and abilities choose different types and qualities of universities, and the spatial distribution of both university types and student characteristics is not uniform. But at the same time there are the researches which don’t find the impact of distance to accessibility of higher education. The distance a pupil lives from their nearest university has little effect on the likelihood that they go to university. There are many articles describe the social Neighborhood Effects of universities. But the question about geography and place is too often overlooked. The paper of Cullinan and Duggan presents a gravity model of student migration flows to HEIs in Ireland. Their analysis suggests that while geography plays a very important role in explaining student flows. Available studies about student migration cover the territory of England, Ireland, Romania, Poland, US, Canada etc. But we don’t have the works which explain the spatial effect of Russian universities to youth migration. In this article we observe the example of Kazan federal university and her spatial effect to educational migration. The case of Kazan federal university is very important. It’s a one of ten federal university of Russia. More of 30.000 students study in university, 80% of them is from Volga Federal district. The study allowed to find the neighbors of the first and second order, who are influenced by a strong neighbor.
The article introduces a Japanese manuscript containing maps of China and the world along with depictions of the inhabitants of 25 countries and brief descriptions of those countries. On the basis of the information about Russia and the Ainu lands, the author puts forward a hypothesis about the date of the manuscript.
Papers in geography, biology, history
The article deals with the toponyms occurring in the Aramaic and Arabic texts of the Late Sassanian and Early Moslem period concerning the biography of the prominent Eastern Syrian mystical writer Isaac of Nineveh. Two particular cases are analysed. Firstly, it is reported by Ishodnah and other writers that Isaac left Qatar in the mid-7th century and became bishop «of Nineveh», whence his cognomen Ninwāyā. The history of Nineveh and its mythological reception are traced to the 7th c. BC. Due to the never forgotten glory of Assyrian past, any new centre which ever re-emerged at Kuyunjik or Nabi-Yunus hills (which had been parts of Assyrian Nineveh) and even the pre-Mosul settlement on the opposite bank of the Tigris (once called Nav-Ardashir) received the name of «Nineveh» and were thought to be the same Assyrian Nineveh. It was this western pre-Mosul settlement that is really implied by «Nineveh» of Isaac. The population lived on the western bank of the Tigris in Nav-Ardashir, while the historical city of Nineveh had been abandoned. Bishops of Nineveh resided in the monastery of Beth Abe (in the Forests). It can be concluded that the term Ninwaya in the episcopal title of the Church of the East was a mere convention. Secondly, the toponym Matut is brought under analysis. After leaving Beth Nuhadra Isaac moved northwards to Susiana (Beth Huzaye), where he spent some time in the monastery of Rabban Shapuhr before moving to the mountain cave where he spent the rest of his hermitic life. The name of the mountain in Aramaic sounds Matut and it is said that Matut encircled Susiane which makes «Matut Mt.» to be a rather vast segment of Zagros. It is impossible to explain the horonym quite reliably, but it can be hypothetically interpreted as a late form of Ancient Mesopotamian GN Mat-Utem (a part of Zagros region at upper Lesser Zab was called that as early as the 2nd mill. BC), used in extended sense.