1) UEW also reconstructs long vowels *ē *ī *ū for some words. However, modern consensus regarding Proto-Uralic is that it had no phonemic vowel length distinction.
2) According to vowel harmony; this vowel for back-vowel harmony. However, EVE's use of this is inconsistent. It is not listed in the EVE dictionary entries, but is listed in the Proto-Finnic database and is presumably their explanation for words with i-(a) vocalism in Finnic where the initial i is represented by a back vowel in some other branches (e.g. *kïśka-, *ńïla).
2) According to vowel harmony; this vowel for back-vowel harmony. However, EVE's use of this phoneme is inconsistent. Some of their reconstructions use it (including all reconstructions in the PF database) and others do not.