Varna University of Management

Cerebral palsy (CP) and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are neurodevelopmental conditions that affect physical growth and developmental outcomes. While distinct, both can influence neuropsychological development, yet limited research has examined how growth indicators relate to developmental profiles in these groups. This pilot cross-sectional study examines the relationship between physical growth and neuropsychological development in children with CP and ASD, and compares their developmental characteristics. This cross-sectional study included 27 children (CP: n=14; ASD: n=13). Anthropometric assessments included height-for-age (HAZ), weight-for-age (WAZ), BMI-for-age (BMIAZ), mid-upper arm circumference-for-age (MUACAZ), and skinfold thickness Z-scores (TSFAZ, SSFAZ). Neuropsychological development was measured using the Developmental Profile 3 (DP-3), covering physical, adaptive, cognitive, social-emotional, and communication domains. Children with ASD had significantly higher scores in physical development (median: 83.5 vs. 54.0, p=0.006), adaptive behavior (81.0 vs. 53.0, p=0.003), and overall development (78.0 vs. 58.0, p=0.035) than those with CP. No differences were found in cognitive, social-emotional, or communication domains. In the full sample, WAZ significantly correlated with adaptive behavior (r=0.491, p=0.015) and overall development (r=0.439, p=0.032). MUACAZ and TSFAZ were also associated with specific developmental domains (e.g., MUACAZ and adaptive behavior: r=0.445, p=0.033). Linear regression analysis confirmed that WAZ significantly predicted neurodevelopmental scores (β=6.20, p=0.022), explaining 46.5% of the variance when adjusted for age, gender, and parental age (Adjusted R²=0.465; p=0.040). Children with CP show greater growth and developmental delays than those with ASD. Weight-for-age is a key predictor of neurodevelopment, especially adaptive behavior. These findings support integrating nutritional and developmental care in neurodevelopmental interventions.

The processes of fruit separation and fruit damage during mechanised harvesting of Stella variety tomatoes were investigated. Controllable factor optimisation parameters are defined. The experiment's matrix was constructed, and a three-factor experiment was conducted. The results of the optimisation were that the regression model of fruiting in the studied regimes showed a 98% increase in fruiting of the variety Stella, confirming its suitability for mechanised harvesting. The optimisation results of the regression model for fruit damage under the examined conditions indicate that damage to the Stella variety can be minimised to 0.05%. The equal response line diagram facilitates the selection of optimal operating parameters for the tomato harvester.

Agent-based simulation platforms play a key role in enabling fast-to-run evolution experiments that can be precisely controlled and observed in detail. Availability of high-resolution snapshots of lineage ancestries from digital experiments, in particular, is key to investigations of evolvability and open-ended evolution, as well as in providing a validation testbed for bioinformatics method development. Ongoing advances in AI/ML hardware accelerator devices, such as the 850,000-processor Cerebras Wafer-Scale Engine (WSE), are poised to broaden the scope of evolutionary questions that can be investigated in silico. However, constraints in memory capacity and locality characteristic of these systems introduce difficulties in exhaustively tracking phylogenies at runtime. To overcome these challenges, recent work on hereditary stratigraphy algorithms has developed space-efficient genetic markers to facilitate fully decentralized estimation of relatedness among digital organisms. However, in existing work, compute time to reconstruct phylogenies from these genetic markers has proven a limiting factor in achieving large-scale phyloanalyses. Here, we detail an improved trie-building algorithm designed to produce reconstructions equivalent to existing approaches. For modestly-sized 10,000-tip trees, the proposed approach achieves a 300-fold speedup versus existing state-of-the-art. Finally, using 1 billion genome datasets drawn from WSE simulations encompassing 954 trillion replication events, we report a pair of large-scale phylogeny reconstruction trials, achieving end-to-end reconstruction times of 2.6 and 2.9 hours. In substantially improving reconstruction scaling and throughput, presented work establishes a key foundation to enable powerful high-throughput phyloanalysis techniques in large-scale digital evolution experiments.

The first occurrence of an invasive pest species, the fall armyworm (Spodoptera frugiperda, Lepidoptera: Noctuidae), in Bulgaria is reported. Different trapping methods (black light trap, traps baited with semiochemical lures, and food attractants) were used to study Noctuidae assemblages in Bulgaria in 2023. Two males of S. frugiperda were caught with sex pheromone traps in maize fields in Knezha, northern Bulgaria, in early November 2023. Additionally, three moths were attracted by black light traps (early November 2023) and one moth by a food lure applied on a tree trunk at the end of October 2023 in the municipalities of Parvomay and Chirpan, southern Bulgaria, respectively. The identification of S. frugiperda was confirmed using morphological and molecular methods.

The article examines the main aspects of using CRM systems in the management of relationships in companies under the condition of ensuring intellectual property rights. It was determined that the protection of intellectual property rights is considered through the prism of the development and implementation of a system of legal norms that require regulation of relations aimed at the need to create and implement intellectual property objects. The need to protect intellectual property rights, which is mediated by the design, development and use of special software, has been proven. Based on the analysis of the essence of the concept of intellectual property and the definition of its main components, the introduction of specially developed software is proposed. The choice of the software environment and tools for the implementation of the visual design of the proposed database is substantiated, which unites all stages of its development and implementation in a single seamless environment for the purpose of ergonomics and optimization of writing code in the appropriate scripting environment, which aims to ensure the generation and reproduction of tables, comparison of databases, synchronization of schemes and data, preparation of reports and optimization of the methodology and technology of their distribution, as well as fast and effective security management in databases. The main areas of implementation of the CRM management strategy and the implementation of software developments in the organization of the company's work, as well as the components of the information support of CRM systems, are presented. The method of implementing the CRM strategy in the company's activities is proposed. An information system for accounting of the company's activities was designed and developed on the basis of the CRM system. The main features, advantages and disadvantages of using CRM systems in the company's activities are determined. The scientific and practical utility of the proposed information management system allows for a step-by-step and component analysis of all business processes, to make management decisions for the purpose of better cooperation and legal protection of intellectual property in the modern information space.

Der Beitrag handelt davon, wie Steffens sein Interesse an chemischen Prozessen in der Natur mit zeitlichen Prozessen in der Geologie zusammenbringt. Durch die Fokussierung chemischer Prozesse gelingt es ihm – so die These – die Prozessualität organischer und anorganischer Erscheinungen nachzuweisen und dadurch sein Projekt einer „innern Naturgeschichte der Erde“, die sowohl Anorganisches als Organisches umfasst, zu realisieren.

National musical instruments are part of the culture and history of the people. They reflect the characteristics, temperament and mentality of the people, the conditions for their formation as an ethnos. Variety, rich sound, unusual melody pattern – national musical instruments create all this. Every ancient musical culture has its origins in ancient rites. Folk music of the Turkic peoples of the Volga region and the Urals was no exception. Singing was accompanied by pagan and mystical sacraments, holidays, household and daily rituals such as hunting, harvesting and much more, including military campaigns.
 The sound of folk instruments has a specific musical pattern and voice that distinguishes the musical instruments of the Turkic peoples from other ethnic groups that have settled since ancient times in the Urals and the Volga region. This is due to the fact that the Tatars and Bashkirs have always preferred melodic musical instruments that allow performing a branched, rich melody in a wide range. Although the list of musical instruments has about fifty varieties, this article analyses the most characteristic and ancient ones.

ABSTRACT The paper focuses on the negative aspects of artificial intelligence in higher education such as biases in the datasets and algorithms, plagiarism, factual incorrectness, micromanagement of students and employees, manipulation of behaviour, überveillance, overreliance on AI, lack of or low explainability and transparency of AI’s decisions, loss of skills, and privacy concerns. The paper adopts an operations management perspective and discusses the negative aspects of AI in the various processes in higher education institutions such as enrolment of students, hiring of employees, teaching/learning/assessment, administrative activities, research, socialisation and well-being of students, remuneration, appraisal and wellbeing of employees. Special attention is paid to AI’s impacts on ethics, creativity and critical thinking. Potential solutions to avoid or mitigate the negative impacts of AI, theoretical, managerial and policy implications are discussed as well.