Model for Profiler Agent during unexpected educational circumstances

[EN] Nowadays distance education helps when no other traditional possibility is allowed. But is it a good alternative to replace entirely the traditional education? Could it provide at least the same level of quality or it brings problems that we are not prepared for? The paper presents an observation of a problem with keeping students focused on their education – constant dropping of engagement and unintentional loss of attention during situation of distance learning. Appling measures to keep students’ attraction led to the need of some aspects’ automation – a model for a new intelligent assistant, software agent, was developed, along with the current ones in the existing system. This assistant will create profiles of students, helping with personalized tracking of each student’s progress in specific subject, recommending topics to improve knowledge and fill knowledge gaps. It will “live” in the extension of an existing system and cooperate with other agents to accomplish its goals, proactively assisting in students’ learning aspects, as well as teachers’ efforts to prepare better and more suitable educational materials.The research is partly supported by the project FP21-FMI-002 “Intelligent innovative ICT in research in mathematics, informatics and pedagogy in education" of the Scientific Fund of the University of Plovdiv “Paisii Hilendarski”.Cholakov, G.; Stoyanova-Doycheva, A. (2021). Model for Profiler Agent during unexpected educational circumstances. En 7th International Conference on Higher Education Advances (HEAd'21). Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. 975-982. https://doi.org/10.4995/HEAd21.2021.12841OCS97598

Bronze Age and Early Iron Age sickles in the evolution of the prehistoric аgricultural toolkit from Bulgaria

Use-wear studies have identified a long-lasting system of agricultural practices (harvesting) from the very beginning of the Early Neolithic in Bulgaria. For almost two millennia during the Neolithic and Chalcolithic (6th and 5th millennia BC), the archaeological evidence suggests the use of sickle elements based on blade segments and tools on blades inserted obliquely in a curved handle – the well-known Karanovo type of sickle. Post-Chalcolithic times are marked by a shift in the harvesting toolkit. This paper focuses on agricultural toolkits from three recently discovered and excavated sites in north Bulgaria: Oreshets near Belogradchik, Rasovo near Montana, and Chavdartsi in Lovech district. The sites are multilayered, the flint assemblages presented here belong to the LBA (Oreshets and Chavdartsi) and LBA/EIA (Rasovo). No structures or features directly associated with the flint artefacts were identified, but the assemblages exhibit most (if not all) of the characteristics of the BA and post-BA agricultural repertoire. This repertoire includes varieties of denticulates (mainly blades) which from the beginning of the BA became diagnostic finds and marked a momentous shift from the preceding style of sickle. During the BA sickle inserts and blades were increasingly shaped through truncation and backing, both of which aided the accommodation of the implements in grooved handles and handheld tool manipulation. As an innovation, the emergence of which is difficult to fix chronologically within the BA, large, curved blades (ca 15 cm) appear in the agricultural toolkit during the LBA, with reminiscent use in the EIA as well

Influence of co-solvents on the supercritical extraction kinetics of spent coffee grounds: experimental and modelling studies

Coffee is one of the most widely used beverages. An estimated 3.5 billion cups of coffee are drunk worldwide every day. In EU alone, for the period 2011-2013, 2.5 Mt of coffee were consumed. Taking into consideration that the production of coffee in 2015 was approximately 9 Mt and that from each kg of coffee 0.91 kg of solid waste is produced, the importance of a further valorization of this residue becomes obvious. In recent years, the biorefinery concept has been identified as the most promising route for employment of the full potential of a biomass by maximizing its conversion into high value products. Its main bottleneck, however, is how to extract the energy and non- energy compounds from the biomass without damaging one or more of the components, e.g. those which are heat sensitive. Spent coffee grounds (SCGs) contain large amounts of fatty acids, lignin, cellulose, hemicellulose, etc. and can be exploited as an excellent source of value-added energy and non-energy related products (e.g, antioxidants and other functional additives).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Using data analysis to predict the students’ trend of choosing preferred data storage

[EN] Predicting trends is crucial for any business. No exception for education as well. Usually, this is a complex task that needs good planning and hard working to get to results. But sometimes luckily, a result from a study could be recognized as something that could reveal a potential trend, though it was not its primary goal, but spending some time digging deeper into data would pay off. This paper presents results from a study of the students’ trend for choosing favorite database type to learn and use, which was found during analyzing data from the software agents that work for our e-learning portal DeLC, serving as helpers for students and lecturers. These agents are there for very different purpose, but from the data they collect many interesting facts and behavioral patterns of our students could be revealed.The research is supported by the project КП-06Н36/2 “Competition for financial support of basic research projects – 2019” of the National Scientific Fund of the Ministry of Education and Science in Bulgaria.Cholakov, G.; Stoyanova-Doycheva, A. (2022). Using data analysis to predict the students’ trend of choosing preferred data storage. En 8th International Conference on Higher Education Advances (HEAd'22). Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. 177-182. https://doi.org/10.4995/HEAd22.2022.1419517718

Bronze Age and Early Iron Age sickles in the evolution of the prehistoric аgricultural toolkit from Bulgaria

Use-wear studies have identified a long-lasting system of agricultural practices (harvesting) from the very beginning of the Early Neolithic in Bulgaria. For almost two millennia during the Neolithic and Chalcolithic (6th and 5th millennia BC), the archaeological evidence suggests the use of sickle elements based on blade segments and tools on blades inserted obliquely in a curved handle – the well-known Karanovo type of sickle. Post-Chalcolithic times are marked by a shift in the harvesting toolkit. This paper focuses on agricultural toolkits from three recently discovered and excavated sites in north Bulgaria: Oreshets near Belogradchik, Rasovo near Montana, and Chavdartsi in Lovech district. The sites are multilayered, the flint assemblages presented here belong to the LBA (Oreshets and Chavdartsi) and LBA/EIA (Rasovo). No structures or features directly associated with the flint artefacts were identified, but the assemblages exhibit most (if not all) of the characteristics of the BA and post-BA agricultural repertoire. This repertoire includes varieties of denticulates (mainly blades) which from the beginning of the BA became diagnostic finds and marked a momentous shift from the preceding style of sickle. During the BA sickle inserts and blades were increasingly shaped through truncation and backing, both of which aided the accommodation of the implements in grooved handles and handheld tool manipulation. As an innovation, the emergence of which is difficult to fix chronologically within the BA, large, curved blades (ca 15 cm) appear in the agricultural toolkit during the LBA, with reminiscent use in the EIA as well

Consequences of property errors on the design of distillation columns

In modern design simulators, the initial input for the estimation of the phase behaviour of mixtures is a series of characteristic parameters of the pure species, such as the normal boiling point Tb, the critical temperature Tc and the critical pressure Pc. For many components encountered in practice, these parameters are not available from experiment, and therefore, they must be estimated.The study of the propagation of errors in these estimated parameters through to the final design of an item of process plant — a distillation column separating binary and ternary mixtures — is the purpose of the present work. The likely magnitude of uncertainties in the input Tb, Tc and Pc is generated by the application of several popular and accepted methods.Considerable uncertainties in the predicted designs are demonstrated. Greater attention should be devoted to the development and employment in modern simulators of more sophisticated methods ensuring better description of molecular structures and intermolecular interactions

Development of Ontologies in Different Domains for a Test Generation Environment

[EN] The purpose of the proposed article is to present the creation of ontologies for automatic generation of test questions from the Test Generation Environment, which was created as part of the Virtual Education Space. The ontologies presented in the article are in different fields and can be helpful to students in their exams or for self-study. The three ontologies are in the fields of botany, literature and history of Bulgaria, and architecture of Revival houses. The article presents examples of automatically generated questions for each of them.The research is supported by the project КП-06Н36/2 2019-2022 “Competition for financial support of basic research projects – 2019” of the National Scientific Fund of the Ministry of Education and Science in Bulgaria and the research is partly supported by the project FP21- FMI-002 “Intelligent innovative ICT in research in mathematics, informatics and pedagogy in education" of the Scientific Fund of the University of Plovdiv “Paisii Hilendarski”.Stoyanova-Doycheva, A.; Madanska, S.; Grancharova, M.; Glushkova, T.; Cholakov, G. (2022). Development of Ontologies in Different Domains for a Test Generation Environment. En 8th International Conference on Higher Education Advances (HEAd'22). Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. 925-933. https://doi.org/10.4995/HEAd22.2022.1420592593