The main objective of this article is to analyze the relationship between increases in freight costs and inflation in the markets due to the increases reflected in the prices of the products in some economies in destination ports such as the United States, Europe, Japan, South Africa, the United Arab Emirates, New Zealand and South Korea. We use fractionally integrated methods and Granger causality test to calculate the correlation between these indicators. The results indicate that, after a significant drop in inflation in 2020, probably due to the confinement caused by the pandemic, the increases observed in inflation and freight costs are expected to be transitory given their stationary behavior. We also find a close correlation between both indicators in Europe, the United States and South Africa.

Disease epidemics may spread quickly and easily throughout nations and continents in our current global environment, having a devastating effect on public health and the world economy. There are over 513 million people worldwide who have been infected, and more than 6.2 million have died due to SARS-CoV-2. There are treatments but no cures for most viruses. Nevertheless, the spread of viruses can be limited by introducing antiviral coatings on public area surfaces and personal protective equipment (e.g., face masks). This work aims to fabricate a polymer-based coating with acrylic resin as a binder that possesses great antiviral activity against the Feline coronavirus (FCov). The chosen polymer, polyethylene glycol (PEG), is used as an antiviral agent because it contains “green” chemistry benefits such as non-toxicity, being inexpensive, readily recyclable, safe, natural, non-flammable, biocompatible, and biodegradable. The PEG/acrylic coating systems of different weight percentages were coated on the glass substrates by the spray-coating method and cured at room temperature for 24 hours. The developed PEG/acrylic coating system that contains 20 wt% of PEG exhibits the highest anti-viral activities (99.9% against FCov) compared to the other weight percentages. From this study, it has been observed that the hydrophilicity of the coating plays an important role in its antiviral activity. The developed coating has a hydrophilic property, in which the contact angle was measured at 83.28 ± 0.5°. The FTIR reveals that there are no existing toxic components or new components contained in the coating samples.

A problem in post-harvest of avocado (Persea americana Mill.) is the heterogeneity in fruit ripening, due to differences in the time of fruit set and the inability to ripen on the tree, a situation that causes inconsistencies in quality and differences in the response to preservation and processing technologies. In postharvest, the application of ethylene gas in hermetic chambers has been used to advance ripening; however, the use of ethylene releasers in liquid form (ethephon) has been proposed as an alternative, mainly for the treatment of low volumes of fruit. The present work was carried out in the production zone of Salvador Escalante (Michoacán, Mexico) with the objective of evaluating the effect of the application of two concentrations of ethephon on the time and homogenization of fruit ripening of avocado cultivars (cv.) Hass and Méndez. Fruits with 23.4% (cv. Hass) and 24% (cv. Méndez) of dry matter were harvested; one group was immersed in a solution of ethephon 500 mg/L and the other in 1,000 mg/L, both for 5 minutes; the treated fruits plus a control were stored at 20 °C for 11 days. Changes in respiration, ethylene production, weight loss, firmness, epicarp and pulp color, total phenol, chlorophyll and total carotenoid concentrations were evaluated. The results showed that ethephon doses of 1,000 mg/L in cv. Hass and 500 mg/L in cv. Méndez presented a ripening process 2 days earlier than the control.

Our previous research on social innovation examined the process, levels, and stakeholders of social innovation, as well as its relationship with technical and technological innovation. The present study analyzes the spatial image created by the social innovation potential and investigates its relationship with the economic power of the neighborhoods. The most important conclusion of the study is that the basic territorial inequality dimensions are the same in the case of both the social innovation potential and the district’s economic strength. The difference is primarily to be found in concentration, as economic power is much more concentrated in the capital and the most important economic and tourism centers than the social innovation potential. We can therefore state that developments based on social innovation can solve a lot of the highly concentrated spatial structure in Hungary.