The paper deals with the first digital corpus of texts in the Koraput Munda languages (Sora, Gutob, Bonda), which became available online in Spring 2020. Koraput Munda are spoken in India on the border between states of Odisha and Andhra Pradesh and they all are more or less endangered. Texts in these languages were collected during four expeditions to the state of Odisha in 2016–2018. Koraput Munda speakers live in communities, which differ in religions, traditional occupations, dialects and are influenced by various official languages depending on the state. For example, Sora speakers belong to more than six religious communities and use four types of writing. Therefore, one of the main tasks of the corpus is to present texts of various genres and different social conditions of language usage. At the moment, the corpus includes oral and written texts, poetry and prose, religious, folklore and traditional everyday content. Oral texts are presented both in phonological transcription and in audio and video recordings. The sub-corpus of written texts presented in various scripts contains both texts related to a particular handwritten genre, as well as samples of printed materials. The texts are provided with morphological markup and translation into Russian and English. Each text is accompanied by detailed sociolinguistic and genre-specific information. One of the most special features of the corpus is the system of tags including text format, speaker’s gender, script, genre, topic, religion etc. This project is intended not only to make linguistic materials of the Koraput Munda languages accessible for the global linguistic and anthropological studies, but also to be useful for teaching and preserving cultural heritage, in particular within the framework of the Multi-Language Education government program.

Kombucha tea was made by the fermentation of SCOBY culture of green tea broth with the addition of Fucus vesiculosus algae extract, Cetraria islandica lichen extract and their mixture. Kombucha was also made without the herbal supplements as a control. After 11 days of fermentation, in addition to the yeast Brettanomyces bruxellensis and the bacteria Komagataeibacter rhaeticus and Komagataeibacter hansenii contained in all of the samples, the yeast Zygosaccharomyces bailii and bacteria Komagataeibacter cocois were detected in the samples with the herbal extracts. In all of the kombucha with herbal additives, the total fraction of yeast was decreased as compared to the control. The total content of polyphenols and the antioxidant activity of the beverages with and without the addition of herbal extracts were comparable. The kombucha made with the algae extract showed an increased content of sucrose and organic acids, while the fructose and glucose content in the samples with algae and the mixture of extracts were lower than in the other samples. The samples with the algae extract had the highest organoleptic indicators “aroma”, “clarity” and “acidity”, while the control samples had slightly higher indicators of “taste” and “aftertaste”. The results of this study indicate the potential of algae and lichens as functional supplements for obtaining non-alcoholic fermented beverages with additional nutraceutical value.

The review covers the proceedings of the 1st Congress of Russian Association of Researchers of the Himalaya and Tibet held in November 2021 in Saint-Petersburg. The Association was founded on 5 March 2019 and aims to bring together the research work of experts engaged in the study of nature and culture of the Himalayan region and the Tibetan Plateau. The Congress hosted the interdisciplinary academic conference “Russian Studies on the Himalaya and Tibet — 2021: Nature and Culture”. The total number of its participants and guests exceeded 60 academics representing research centers and educational institutions of different cities of Russia (i.e. Saint-Petersburg, Moscow, Krasnodar, Saratov, Elista, Orenburg, Arkhangelsk, Magadan), as well as of Belorussia, Uzbekistan and India. Sessions of the conference took place at the headquarters of the Russian Geographical Society, in the Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and in the Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (the Kunstkamera). More than 30 live and online talks presented at the Conference addressed a wide range of issues relating to both the humanities (art history, religious studies, history of philosophy, ethnography, linguistics) and natural sciences (botany, zoology, genetics, physical geography, geomorphology, glaciology). Several presentations dealt with certain little-known facts from the history of Russian Indology, Buddhology and Tibetology. Most natural science papers were dedicated to Himalayan and Tibetan flora and fauna. Some talks were of a pronounced interdisciplinary nature. After the conference a special meeting was held to discuss directions of the Association’s future activity.

No abstract