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The paper presents the current development of the proposed by the authors approach to defining digital and e-learning accessibility for effective pedagogical rehabilitation of learners with special learning needs. A novel aspect – intrinsic accessibility – is proposed as complementary to the previously identified extrinsic aspects of accessibility – institutional, informational and cultural. The intrinsic aspects of accessibility – lack of skills, knowledge, or motivation – influence the process of pedagogical rehabilitation of children with special learning needs. Two different pedagogical scenarios implementing educational robots are discussed in a STEAM context. Изказваме своята благодарност към екипа на МЦ „Деца с проблеми в развитието” гр. София за дългогодишната ни съвместна работа и по-специално на д-р Даниела Миланова и г-жа Снежина Михайлова. Настоящата изследователска работа е частично подкрепена от Националния научен фонд на България за научен проект „Дигитална достъпност за хора със специални потребности: методология, концептуални модели и иновативни екосистеми“, № KP-06-N42/4, 08.12.2020 г.; ЕК за проект CybSPEED, № 777720, H2020-MSCA-RISE-2017 и ОП Наука и образование за интелигентен растеж (2014-2020) за проект Център по компетентност „Интелигентни мехатронни, еко- и енергоспестяващи системи и технологии“ № BG05M2OP002- 0023.

The paper provides a review of existing approaches to understanding and defining validity in child-robot interaction research. Two main approaches are contrasted: construct validity in defining the phenomena, emerging in the process of interaction of the child with the robot, and system validity, defining the robot solely as a technological device. Examples are provided within a newly proposed approach, aiming at overcoming the existing theoretical debate in understanding construct validity in child-robot interaction research.

The paper presents an opinion on the approach to endowing humanoid robots with ‘essential’ features for use in healthcare. The essential ‘human’ features of the cyber-physical nurse are defined on three levels of analysis - physical, social and/or psychological. It is argued that the deployed algorithms, beyond the physical level, have to perform on the social level of analysis, acting as high level synthetic sensors, not existing in nature, but mimicking complex subjective phenomena such as ‘affection’ detection.

The paper presents the main ideas, motivating two ongoing research projects, justifying the need to move to STEAM education. The proposed novel type of cyber-physical systems - for pedagogical rehabilitation in inclusive education - is outlined. The role of puppet theatre in maximising the learning outcomes in inclusive education is substantiated. It has been also shown that integrating game, puppet theatre and social robotics is beneficiary in the classroom. Social robots have a significant potential for transition of the cognitive analysis of the behaviour of humans and robots from the physical to the social level. This is the core of the proposed in the paper approach for the STEAM education of the future. Изследването е частично финансирано от проект CybSPEED на ЕК № 777720, H2020-MSCA-RISE-2017 (2017-2022), проект “Дигитална достъпност за хора със специални потребности: методология, концептуални модели и иновативни екосистеми” на ФНИ №КП-06-Н42/4 (2020-2023) и проект: Център за компетентност "Интелигентни мехатронни, eко- и енергоспестяващи системи и технологии" № BG05M2OP001-1.002-0023, ОП “Наука и образование за интелигентен растеж” (2014-2020).

In this chapter an approach to combine knowledge from computational memory and brain researchwith information extraction studies for the design of web agents is described.Our aim is investigating cognitive phenomena andcomputational algorithms applying to the intersection of three independent research areas – informationextraction research (IER), human memory modeling (HMM) and computational brain research (CBR).

A precise field experiment for studying the efficacy and selectivity of various systems for chemical weed control in a vineyard of Sauvignon Blanc cultivar was carried out in the region of Brezovo (Plovdiv District, Bulgaria) in the period 2017-2019. The established weed species composition in the plantation was different in the two years of the study, which was due to the difference in weather conditions over the period. Weed associations included the species Chenopodium album (L.), Solanum nigrum (L.), Portulaca oleracea (L.), Setaria viridis (L.), Xanthium strumarium (L.) etc. The following winter-spring species also showed high density – Capsella bursa-pastoris (L.) Medic, Erodium cicutarium (L.), Viola spp. (L). The following polycarpic species were found: Convolvulus arvensis (L.), Trifolium spp. (L.), Cynodon dactylon (L.) Pers., etc. The systems for chemical weed control included the following variants: 1. Smerch 24 EC (oxyfluorfen) – 3000 ml/ha+ Dual Gold 960 EC (s-metolachlor) – 1500 ml/ha – applied early in spring; 2. Stomp Aqua (pendimethalin) applied twice – early in spring (7000 ml/ha) and post-harvest (3000 ml/ha) in the first and the second years, and in the third once in spring early in a dose 7000 ml/ha; 3. Pledge 50 WP (flumioxazine) – applied once before vine vegetation, at a rate of 400 g/ha in the first year, 300 g/ha in the second and in the third year - 200 g/ha; 4. Pledge 50 WP (flumioxazine) applied twice – in spring, before vine vegetation and post-harvest at a rate of 400+400 g/ha in the first year, 300+300 g/ha in the second, and the third once – in the spring at dose 200 g/ha. It was established that the herbicides based on flumioxazine and oxyfluorfen in combination with s-metolachlor showed high efficacy within 56 days after treatment. At the Agricultural University-Plovdiv, Department of Microbiology and Environmental Biotechnology, in vitro biotest studies were conducted to obtain preliminary specific data regarding the effect of the introduction of various herbicides on soil microorganisms. Studies of each of the soil suspensions containing a representative sample of the respective microbial communities revealed a relatively small effect of the tested herbicides on them

Presentation at the IEEE CIST’18 , 5th edition international IEEE Congress on Information Science and Technology. Marrakech, Morocco, Otober 21 - 27, 2018