The coronavirus pandemic has reinforced the need for sustainable, smart tourism and local travel, with rural destinations gaining in their popularity and leading to increased potential of smart rural tourism. However, these processes need adjustments to the current trends, incorporating new transformative business concepts and marketing approaches. In this paper we provide real life examples of new marketing approaches, together with new business models within the context of the use of new digital technologies. Via hermeneutic research approach, consisting of the secondary analysis of the addressed subject of smart rural tourism in adversity of the COVID-19 and 6 semi-structured interviews, the importance of technology is underscored in transforming rural tourism to smart rural tourist destinations. The respondents in the interview section were chosen based on their direct involvement in the presented examples and geographical location, i.e. France, Slovenia and Spain, where presented research examples were developed, concretely within European programmes, i.e. Interreg, Horizon and Rural Development Programme (RDP). Interviews were taking place between 2022 and 2023 in person, email or via Zoom. This two-phased study demonstrates that technology is important in transforming rural tourism to smart tourist destinations and that it ushers new approaches that seem particularly useful in applying to rural areas, creating a rural digital innovation ecosystem, which acts as s heuristic rural tourist model that fosters new types of tourism, i.e. smart rural tourism.

Increasing number of smart cities, the rise of technology and urban population engagement in urban management, and the scarcity of open data for evaluating sustainable urban development determines the necessity of developing new sustainability assessment approaches. This study uses passive crowdsourcing together with the adapted SULPiTER (Sustainable Urban Logistics Planning to Enhance Regional freight transport) methodology to assess the sustainable development of smart cities. The proposed methodology considers economic, environmental, social, transport, communication factors and residents’ satisfaction with the urban environment. The SULPiTER relies on experts in selection of relevant factors and determining their contribution to the value of a sustainability indicator. We propose an alternative approach based on automated data gathering and processing. To implement it, we build an information service around a formal knowledge base that accumulates alternative workflows for estimation of indicators and allows for automatic comparison of alternatives and aggregation of their results. A system architecture was proposed and implemented with the Astana Opinion Mining service as its part that can be adjusted to collect opinions in various impact areas. The findings hold value for early identification of problems, and increasing planning and policies efficiency in sustainable urban development.

As urbanisation increases, questions arise about the desirability of further urban growth, as it was not accompanied by corresponding economic growth, and social and environmental problems began to grow in the largest cities in the world. The objective of the article is to substantiate the limits of urbanization growth in Kazakhstan based on the study of theoretical views on this process, analysis of the dependence of social and economic parameters of 134 countries on the urbanisation level and calculation of the urbanisation level that contributes most to economic growth and social well-being. To achieve the goal, the following tasks have been set and solved: theoretical views on the process of urbanization have been generalized; a hypothesis has been put forward about the emergence of an “urbanization trap” in which the growth of large cities is not accompanied by economic growth and improvement of social well-being; an analysis of the dependence of socio-economic indicators on the level of urbanization has been carried out on the example of 134 countries of the world; the level of urbanization that maximizes economic growth and social well-being is calculated; the necessity of the development of small towns in Kazakhstan is substantiated. To solve the problems, the methods of logical analysis, analogies and generalizations, economic statistics, index, graphical, Pearson correlation analysis, Spearman and Kendall rank regression based on models in SPSS were used. As a result, the following conclusions are made: the hypothesis of a possible deterioration of socio-economic indicators in large cities is confirmed; the best positive result is demonstrated by the level of urbanization of 50%–59%. The recommendations are justified: in Kazakhstan, it is necessary to adhere to the level of urbanization no higher than 59%; the growth of urbanization should be ensured through the development of small towns; it is necessary to improve the methods of managing the process of urbanization and develop individual city plans.

Due to the lack of clear regulation of management accounting at the state level in Russia, the authors conducted a study based on an analysis of information sources, an expert survey on their reliability, and a case method, which resulted in a reporting form compiled for the production process of an agro-industrial enterprise (grain products) as part of inter-organizational company cooperation. The developed management reporting system (composed of eight consecutive stages: standard reports, specialized reports, itemized query reports, notification reports, statistical reports, prognostic reports, modeling results reports, and process optimization reports), on one hand, allows solving a set of tasks to increase the competitiveness of Russian agro-industrial enterprises within the framework of inter-organizational management accounting. On the other hand, the introduction of ESG principles into the management reporting system (calculation of the environmental (E) index, which assesses the company’s impact on the natural ecosystem and covers emissions and efficient use of natural resources in the agricultural production process) increases the level of control and minimizes the risks of an unfair approach of individual partners to environmental issues.

An α, α^′-dipyridyl adduct of a complex compound hexaaquatribenzene-1,2,4,5-tetracarbonatotetra iron (III) with porous structure was synthesized for the first time. According to the results of elemental, X-ray, IR-spectroscopic and differential-thermal analyses the individuality, chemical formula, thermal destruction, and form of coordination of acidic anion and dipyridyl were established. During interaction of a complex compound with dipyridyl, it completely loses all crystallization molecule of water resulting in a compound with a chemical formula of Fe₄(C₆H₂(COO)₄)₃(dpy)₂(dipyridyl). Using the identification of diffraction pattern the parameters of lattice cell of the complex compound were determined.

The study evaluated the aseptic establishment of Monstera acuminata Koch and Monstera deliciosa Liebm (Araceae) from leaves and the induction of in vitro organogenesis of M. acuminata K. from stem discs of young shoots. For this purpose, different disinfection protocols were applied to mature leaves and young shoots, from which leaf explants of approximately 1 cm² and stem discs of approximately 1 mm thickness were extracted. The explants were established in semi-solid media with different hormone treatments during the aseptic establishment stage and induction of organogenesis. Disinfection with 3% sodium hypochlorite (NaClO) for 20 min and 50% Murashige and Skoog^[1] medium with plant tissue culture preservative (PPM) favored less oxidation in leaf explants of both species. All explants of M. deliciosa in both treatments grown in PPM-added medium and at different disinfection protocols survived, showed no contamination and more than 80% retained cellular activity up to 49 days of culture age. At 35 days of culture, with disinfection in Tween-20 + 20% ethanol + 2.5% NaClO, and seeding of explants in MS medium added with 1 mg/L of BAP, 0.5 mg/L of AIA and 0.1 mg/L of ANA, seven new shoots of stem discs were induced. Monstera deliciosa was more adaptable to in vitro conditions. Advances in aseptic establishment and induction of organogenesis in native Araceae for wicker production are the basis for ex situ conservation of local populations.