T his year’s World Water Day focused on the food-water nexus with the theme “Water and Food Security: The World is Thirsty Because We are Hungry.” While much of the emphasis under this theme focused on the quantities of water used for food produc­ tion, the quality of water is also important to that function. Water quality can also have sig­ nificant effects on health. In this context, the qual...

The paper focuses on the role of geographical indication in supporting strategies of food safety. Starting from the distinction between generic and specific quality, the article analyses the main factors influencing food safety in cases of geographical indication products, by stressing the importance of traceability systems and biodiversity in securing generic and specific quality. In the secon...

Pursuing the study started by Rigo, Salimov and Vandomme, we use elementary number-theoretic techniques to characterize rotation words having a finite set of abelian returns to all prefixes. We also make the connection between the three gap theorem and the number of semi-abelian returns for Sturmian words, simplifying some arguments developed by Puzynina and Zamboni.

We use a weak Gibbs property and a weak form of specification to derive level-2 large deviations principles for symbolic systems equipped with a large class of reference measures. This has applications to a broad class of coded systems, including β-shifts, S-gap shifts, and their factors. Our techniques are suitable for adaptation beyond the symbolic setting.