When a country engages in scientific research, the fruits are harvested by the whole of humanity. Fundamental research, generating knowledge without direct applications but needed for developing applications, is published in international scientific journals open to everybody.

One or two years ago, a Lavazza’s take-away coffee shop opened on the side of Georgia’s east-west highway in the area of Zestaponi. You always could find plenty of coffee shops in Tbilisi, but it was a novelty to have them next to the highway. Soon afterward, another coffee bar opened along the road, and surprisingly, it was again set up close to Zestaponi.

In the 1930s, the American linguist Benjamin Lee Whorf put forward the hypothesis that people of different mother tongues perceive the world differently. According to linguistic relativity or Whorfianism, both the grammatical structure and the vocabulary of a language influence the way how people think.

Lifetime is one of the most precious assets. People are paying huge amounts of money to extend their lifespans, sometimes for gaining only weeks or months. And imprisonment and the death penalty is so widely applied punishments throughout all cultures and ages because people are scared off by the prospect of losing their life.

As I do every year since I arrived in Georgia back in 2009, this November I attended the Tbilisi International Fair for Agro, Food and Drink Products, Packaging, and Processing. This fair, although very small for international standards (some 60 stands) is actually one of the most important trade exhibitions in the country, and the only significant one with a focus on agriculture and food sectors.