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The article substantiates the existence of convergence processes in the field of digitization of countries, taking into account the number of Internet users; people with advanced skills; and indicators of infrastructure (network coverage, population covered by at least a 3G mobile network, population covered by at least a 4G mobile network), access (access to ICT at home, active mobile broadband subscriptions, fixed broadband subscriptions), enablers (fixed broadband over 10 Mbps, mobile data and voice basket, high consumption) and barriers (improved broadband access from 256 kbps to 2 Mbps and from 2 Mbps to 10 Mbps mobile data and voice basket, low consumption) of digital development. The methodological basis for determining the sigma convergence of digitization processes is the coefficient of variation. The values of the coefficient of variation confirmed the high level of convergence between the studied countries in terms of the degree of use of the Internet for conducting digital transactions. The developed econometric model, which describes the influence of statistically significant integral indicators of the national cybersecurity level, ease of doing business, and the anti-money laundering index on the country's digital development level, made it possible to determine the average trend of dependence on the level of digital development. One hundred four countries were considered for the analysis. The conducted study of the impact of digitalization on economic transformations based on developed quantile regressions made it possible to analyze exactly how the level of digital development for countries with a high level of digitalization and for countries with a low level of digitalization development depends on the value of the national cybersecurity indicator and the ease of doing business, and which countries have the least resistance to the risk factors of their involvement in fraudulent schemes for the purpose of legalizing criminal income. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article is about the mini textile art development trends of the second half of the twentieth century as a scarcely studied branch of art. The transition from a large format textile to a miniature form developing as a separate variety is clarified. Recondite works of Eastern European artists are introduced through scholarly review for the first time. Artists from the USSR were under extraordinary pressure, and ideological prohibitions restricted artistic pursuits. However, Soviet artists managed to experiment, create and participate in exhibitions. The article contains an overview of the mini textile exhibitions in Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Ukraine, the Baltics in the second half of the twentieth century. It includes an analysis of works of leading artists and the notable features of their artworks, rethinking and transforming folk art traditions. Three main directions characterize mini textile art of the period: a planar composition with a combination of traditional weaving techniques and textures; the semi-spatial relief images made of non-traditional and atypical materials; the creation of miniature art objects or spatial compositions from various materials. It is proved that mini textile art is an independent type of textiles and continues its development in the twenty-first century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper summarizes the arguments and counterarguments within the scientific discussion on the issue of the need for an innovative policy in the area of health protection at the link with the transformation of the social and economic development of the country through the pandemic COVID-19. The main goal of this study is to predict two scenarios for the development of the main indicators of the country's socio-economic development: considering the pandemic COVID-19 and the possible course of events without the influence of epidemiological threats. The systematization of literary sources and approaches to innovation and the determination of the volume of negative consequences for the national economy, due to the introduction of quarantine restrictions, has shown that this issue is quite relevant around the world. The study of the transformation of the trajectory of economic development of Ukraine in the article was carried out in the following logical sequence: 1) collection of statistical information, including 118 indicators of social development, the state of capital investment and business expectations of Ukrainian enterprises and screening of multicollinear indicators among them; 2) performing a time series decomposition separately for the interval 5 years before quarantine and taking into account the impact of the pandemic; 3) forecasting the consequences of the pandemic according to the investigated indicators of economic development in 2020-2022 by turning the time series into the Fourier series. The methodological tools of the study were methods of checking for multicollinearity by Pearson coefficients, decomposition of additive models into trend and cyclic components, selection of cyclic oscillations by fast Fourier transform, extrapolation of constructed models for subsequent years and quality control of constructed models by F-test quarterly data for 2015-2020 are selected. The study empirically confirms and theoretically proves that among the socio-economic development factors studied, most experienced significant transformations due to the introduction of quarantine restrictions by the government. This leads to the need for innovation policy in the health sector in order to minimize such consequences in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article generalizes arguments and counter-arguments within the scientific discussion regarding the determination of the optimal decentralization level, which will provide the country's innovative development, since the key task of decentralization has to be not only to expand the income and expenditure powers of the subnational formations but also to understand the final goal of this process - qualitative transformation of the country's economic system towards improving its innovativeness and competitiveness. Thus, the decentralization reform has to be the driver of the innovative economic development, which is the expected result of the managerial decision-making freedom increase at the local level, the subnational formations' financial self-sufficiency increase and more effective spending policy (expansion of the innovative projects financing amounts that will promote the sustainable economic growth). Systematization of the scientific works on the above problems proves that there is no one idea regarding the decentralization impact on the country's economic and innovative development among scientists. That is why it is urgent to continue the empirical searching in this area, that will enable to take into account the dual nature of consequences regarding the activation of the decentralization processes. The empirical study is carried out through using of the non-linear analysis form of dependence (GLM regression, which enables to identify the linear and nonlinear character of the relationship between variables) based on the panel data, formed for set of 23 states-OECD members (Austria, Belgium, Canada, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Great Britain and the USA) during 2002-2015. The expenditure decentralization index, calculated as the ratio between the consolidated expenses amount at the subnational level and state consolidated expenses, expressed in parts of the whole, is chosen as the factorial variable model. The final variable (traditional for the economic growth models) is GDP per capita (dollars the USA). Besides, the set of control variables is added to this regression model (which explain the regularities of the resultative feature change and have a strong relationship with it). The control variables are selected on the basis of correlation analysis. The practical implementation of all stages in this research is performed using the software product Stata 12/SE. The results of the study confirm the non-linear character of dependence (the inverse U-shape) regarding the GDP change per capita on the expenditure decentralization level change, and also the maximum extremum of the function in the point with expenditure decentralization level 1.35. It means that excessive expenses load (above the specified norm) on the local budgets will be accompanied by inhibition of the innovative and economic dynamics, that should be taken into account by the relevant authorized executive bodies in investigation of the concrete measures regarding intergovernmental relationships reforming in direction of their decentralization, and in the formation of the well-balanced economic and innovative policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article aims to identify the relationship between energy efficiency and particular indicators of energy losses in Europe. The results of the bibliographic analysis showed a knowledge gap in energy losses in Europe regarding the new challenges of energy security. For the analysis, annual panel data from 32 European countries were collected from 1990 to 2019. The authors used the Jarque–Bera test to assess the normality of the residuals, utilized the Breush–Pagan test for heteroskedasticity check, and applied regression analysis to determine the relationship between energy efficiency and energy loss rates in Europe. To assess the effects of energy losses, the authors performed OLS modeling using the stats model's package in Python. According to the modeling results, an increase in distribution losses (% of available energy from all sources) by 1% in Europe leads to an increase in energy consumption by 17.16% under other constant conditions. There is significant heterogeneity between European countries concerning energy efficiency and energy loss coefficients. Such a situation requires the development of new strategies and mechanisms to reduce energy losses, considering the challenges of energy security in Europe in turbulent times. Further research can be devoted to clustering European countries according to the main groups of energy losses: in the extraction, distribution, storage, and transformation of energy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relevance of the study is conditioned upon the fact that outbreaks of anthrax are periodically recorded on the territory of Ukraine, not only in ruminants, but also in pigs, fur animals, dogs, and people. The purpose of the study is to investigate the protective properties of the experimental vaccines and the abacillary vaccine "Antracol" and to prove the immunogenic effect of the extracellular toxin from the B. anthracis K-79 Z strain. Cultures of vaccine strains of anthrax were used for the experiments: B. anthracis 55, B. anthracis SB, B. anthracis K-79 Z and the "Antracol" vaccine (experimental development). Microbiological, clinical-biological, and biotechnological research methods were used in the study. The protective effect was investigated on guinea pigs (Cavia porcellus). An acute experiment was performed with a virulent strain B. anthracis 92 Z. Exotoxin was obtained from the specified cultures. The titre of the exotoxin was found in the disk precipitation reaction. The highest result regarding exotoxin production was recorded in B. anthracis K-79 Z 1 : 128 with a total protein concentration of 0.19 mg/ml, while the exotoxin of B. anthracis strain 55 with a titre of 1 : 32 showed a high total protein concentration of 0.4 mg/ml. The effect of B. anthracis exotoxins on the body was investigated by administering them to laboratory animals in different titres of exotoxins, followed by infection with the pathogenic strain B. anthracis 92 Z. The exotoxin of the vaccine strain B. anthracis K-79 Z in a titre of 1 : 64-1 : 128 shows the best protective properties against the pathogenic strain. It was found that the vaccine strains of B. anthracis SB and B. anthracis K-79 Z have the same level of protection of laboratory animals during experimental infection, which is 60%, while the vaccine from the strain B. anthracis 34F2 showed a level of protection of 20%. Based on the results of the study, it was found appropriate to use exotoxin B. anthracis in the development of prophylactic preparations against anthrax. The research results can be used by scientists and specialists in the field of veterinary medicine to develop new and improve the available vaccines for effective anthrax prevention [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, in most countries of the world, it is observed the spread and change of the main paradigm of the education system, which involves the addition of classical formal education (in official educational institutions with the official document about a degree) with informal and informal types. The last two forms of education are the acquisition of knowledge, skills and abilities for comprehensive development and qualification development of a person, the formation of a civic position and the motivation for self-development and self-education, which is not necessarily accompanied by officially recognized documents but has no less value. This leads to the formation of a new system of learning that will operate throughout the life of a person and should become one of the strategic objectives for any state that strives for sustainable development. Such changes require an innovative approach at all stages of the new system formation, including its financial support. However, due to objective reasons for the limited budget funds, the state cannot independently provide financing for the lifelong learning system without involving additional economic entities. Thus, this article is devoted to building expenditure optimization model as the main innovation in the financing of the lifelong learning system. For this purpose, the authors define the stage of formation, the essence and basic characteristics of the lifelong learning system in the modern world. The next step was a providing of a comparative analysis of the main trends in financing education in the countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and their partners and Ukraine at the expense of various sources (public and private) and for different levels of education (primary education, secondary education, postgraduate education, elementary education higher education, higher education). On the results of analysing the absence of structured information about extra- budgetary funding of lifelong learning system is indicated. Thus, authors developed the approach to estimating potential volume of extra-budgetary sources of funding for a lifelong education system by using structured equation modelling method, where the informational basis are education expenditures of the Consolidated Budget of Ukraine and the Education Index (as a component of the Human Development Index). For calculations software, STATISTICA 6.1 was used. This approach allows to indicate the expenditure optimization model and to determine the financial potential of the lifelong learning system development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article aims to identify the latest trends in research on renewable energy, sustainability and the environment. A total of 92,873 publications from 123 Scopus sources for 2020–2021 are compared using the scoping review method. The results show that the most cited works in this sample are those by authors from the Asian region. The research of these authors focuses on the security, efficiency and reliability of separate elements in energy systems. Besides, the paper considers the problems regarding COVID disease along with the renewable energy sources, perovskite and organic solar panels, nanostructured materials and high energy density. Finally, the paper analyses applications of computer science methods in research on renewable energy, sustainability and the environment. The findings evidently show that recent advancements in computer science methods were not extensively used in the discussed research domain and give a great room for novel strategies of prognosing, simulation and processes optimisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]