The exhibition is organized under the patronage of the Mayor of the city of Sofia, Mrs. Yordanka Fandukova, and the Director of Ikuo Hirayama Museum of Art, Mr. Yoshio Hirayama.
The event is organized by the Ikuo Hirayama Center in Sofia, the First School for Arts and Cultural Exchange between East and West at “Prof. Vasil Zlatarski” 138th General Education School, and the Ikuo Hirayama Museum of Art in Setoda Japan. The Embassy of Japan in Sofia and the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences are co-organizers of the exhibition. Before the official opening, Mrs. Yordanka Fandukova and BAS President, Academician Nikola Sabotinov, met with His Excellence Takeda, Ambassador of Japan to Bulgaria, and his wife.
The exhibition includes paintings by Japanese children, winners of the Ikuo Hirayama competition in Japan in 2009, as well as paintings that are part of the collection of Ikuo Hirayama Museum of Art in Setoda, Japan. Paintings and art objects are also included produced by the children in the First School for Arts and Cultural Exchange between East and West

This widespread practice relevant to the labor conditions in Bulgaria was emphasized during a discussion organized by the Institute of Economics of BAS. The meeting of experts was held to present the monograph of Labor Conditions Employment Quality in Bulgaria: Trends and Interactions, authored by Iskra Beleva, Vasil Tsanov and Dochka Velkova.
The shear in the “produced-paid” values is different in the different sectors, explained Senior Research Associate Vasil Tsanov. In his opinion, it is the widest in the agriculture, hotels and restaurants, commerce, and the textile and chemical industries, where in recent years one could observe a sharp rise in the production, while salaries have remained unchanged or have risen only slightly.
The research carried out by the three scientists from the Institute of Economics of BAS also revealed that, besides being at the payment ranking bottom, the sectors mentioned are characterized by the lowest degree of labor protection. These activities are distinguished by relatively adverse labor conditions, but the workers hired are not compensated for prolonged working hours, night shifts and are not insured on the full salary. In contrast, compensations of employees in the financial sector have increased from 14% to 25%.
The most disadvantaged in terms of the payment relative fraction with respect to the economic results achieved are the agricultural workers. In the past decade they have been receiving scarcely one-tenth of the added product.
The comparative study of the salaries in 14 types of economic activities makes it clear that employees in the state subsidized sectors, such as administration, health care and education, receive the greatest proportion of the added product. Moreover, they are the most privileged in what concerns social protection.
The discrepancy between the salaries in the highest paid sector - financial brokerage, and the lowest salaries in hotels and restaurants, reaches a factor of 3,2 to 3,7.
As was pointed out during the discussion, besides the lowest value of labor in Bulgaria, the other major problem is that the funds “economized” from the salaries are not invested back with the purpose of technological renovation or improvement of the occupational health and safety, but are usually transformed into investments with no economic return related to increasing the owners’ personal living standards.
Another observation reported by the BAS economists has to do with the low level of work time usage by the employee; the employees work efficiently for only five hours out of the 8-hour work day, the BAS economists said.
The Bulgarian labor market is characterized by inequalities between the employment contracts. The tendency is that the full-time workers would get higher pay per hour compared with those hired for flexible working hours. This leads to a widespread unwillingness to enter into part-time contracts, in spite of these being one of the measures recommended for times of crisis.
As a whole, the global economic crisis resulted in the employment quality collapsing down to the level of 2005, pointed Senior Research Associate Iskra Beleva, Deputy Director of the Institute of Economics. She added that three years of effort, programs and funds invested in this field were thus wasted.
On the other hand, this created opportunities for training and re-qualification of the workers made redundant, which could make them more competitive in the labor market. This, however, would necessitate an adequate and purposeful state policy, the BAS economists recommended.

The solemn opening ceremony was attended by Bulgaria’s Vice President, Mr. Angel Marin, the Minister of Culture, Mr. Vejdi Rashidov, the Minister of Education, Youth and Science, Mr. Sergey Ignatov, the President’s wife, Mrs. Zorka Parvanova, BAS scientists and public persons.
The exhibition is organized by a team from BAS Institute of Archeology with Museum; some of the exhibits are provided by the Regional History Museums in Veliko Turnovo and Shoumen, the Archeological Museum in Veliki Preslav and by the Pliska National History and Archeology Reserve. The Bulgarian statehood is presented by archeological findings, posters with schemes, reconstructions, models and photographs. Coins and seal of Bulgarian rulers from 681 to 1393 found in the ancient Bulgarian capitals Pliska, Veliki Preslav, and Veliko Turnovo are also

We are unpleasantly surprised by Minister Ignatov’s statement before the mass media on January 20 and January 22, 2010, which contradict Minister Ignatov’s own earlier statements and reveal his unfamiliarity with the Academy’s activities and management.
We feel obliged to declare the following:
- BAS continues to implement a procedure on restructuring of its research activities and scientific management in conformance with the terms announced and in line with the agreements reached with the Prime Minister and Minister Ignatov himself. This restructuring does not consist in mechanical mergers and closing of research units, but is a reform based on clear motives and principles which will shortly be made available to the public;
- In what concerns the proposal for concluding framework agreements with universities in view of providing practical experience to the students and opportunities for research activities to the lecturers, we must remind the Minister that this has been a long established practice in BAS. Similarly, BAS scientists have for many years now taken part in the teaching activities of many universities. As presented, the idea of concluding agreements has no relevance to the future development of the highly qualified scientific personnel of the academic institutes, which is expected to be transferred to universities;
- In response to the fears expressed by Minister Ignatov in relation with the loss of “the brand” of institutes connected with the Bulgarian identity, we should emphasize once more the reform’s underlying idea of preserving and strengthening the strategic research having to do with our national identity and cultural and historical heritage;
- The statement makes it clear that no thoughts have been geared toward reforming effectively BAS scientific research, but rather to breaking BAS scientific potential and redirecting the respective financial means to the universities. This is a very primitive way of instigating confrontation between BAS and the universities, which we cannot accept. The same applies to the universities community’s disagreement, emphasized by Minister Ignatov, with BAS scientists holding the titles of “Professor” and ”Docent”. It is hard to believe that some university lecturers would be offended by such equalization, bearing in mind the long years of successful cooperation between BAS and many universities;
- The continuing pressure on the Academy for separating research units and transferring them to universities is not an expression of concern about the development of scientific research in Bulgaria, but clearly a crude interest in the material and scientific assets of these institutes. Besides being improper, all kinds of such proposals, thrown in the public space by the Minister of Education, Youth and Science without any prior discussion with the scientific community, make senseless the efforts for consistent and real reforms.

Prof. Emmanuel Gdoutos of Greece - a lecturer in Democritus University of Thrace, Xanthi. Active in the field of micromechanics, he has studied the mechanisms of destruction of polymer composites and nanocomposites. He has also made significant contributions to the development of the experimental mechanics, materials sciences and materials fatigue research in Bulgaria and delivered a cycle of lectures on mechanics of destruction in Bulgarian higher schools. He has been instrumental in arranging the participation of Bulgarian scientists in international scientific events.

Prof. Gerhard Ertl of Germany – a physical chemist, Nobel Prize laureate in Chemistry for 2007. His research is in field of catalysis and physical chemistry of solid surfaces and has led to the clarification of important aspects of catalytic and corrosion processes and toxic gases elimination in internal combustion engines, where he has proposed innovative experimental techniques combined with in-depth theoretical interpretation. Prof. Ertl’s study of ammonia synthesis (a very important industrial process) has been widely accepted as his most important achievement. For many years Prof. Ertl has maintained close scientific ties with Bulgarian scientists, has been a reviewer of many doctoral and professorial theses and has contributed to the participation of many Bulgarian researchers in various international scientific events.

Prof. Dr. Dirk Inzé of Belgium – a leading young researcher in the field of plant biology, Scientific Director since 2002 of the Department of Plant Systems Biology, University of Gent. Prof. Inzé has studied the processes taking place in soil and has developed technologies for transfer of foreign useful genes increasing the stress resistance of plants (stress related to high or low temperatures, ozone stress, drought, etc.). Prof. Inzé is a member of the International Advisory Committee of the Bulgarian Agrobioinstitute. In this capacity, Prof. Inzé has contributed to increasing the level of scientific research in Bulgaria on plant molecular biology and genomics and assisted in the training of Bulgarian scientists in this field.

Prof. Dr. Timothy Rice, Professor of Ethnomusicology and Director of the Herb Alpert School of Music of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) – a leading American ethno-musicologist, closely related to Bulgarian culture for four decades. Beginning with his doctoral thesis on “Multi-voice Singing in Bulgarian Folk Music”, defended in 1977 in the University of Washington, his scientific research activities have been fully devoted to the Bulgarian musical folklore. Most of Prof. Rice’s field research has been carried out in Bulgaria. His monographs May it Fill Your Soul: Experiencing Bulgarian Music (University of Chicago Press, 1994) and “Music in Bulgaria: Experiencing Music, Expressing Culture (Oxford University Press, 2004) have found a wide audience. The problems of Bulgarian ethno-musicology have been central in his lecture courses at UCLA. Prof. Rice speaks fluent Bulgarian, plays the bagpipe and the clarinet, trains instrumentalists and has organized Bulgarian folk music orchestras.

Prof. Igor Sem’onovich Zekzer of Russia – Leader of a Laboratory at the Institute of Water Problems of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Prof. Zekzer is a scientist of international reputation in the field of studying the mechanisms governing groundwater formation. His major scientific contributions comprise clarifying the role of groundwater in the overall water balance, forecasting and mapping of the natural groundwater resources, and dealing with groundwater contamination in large regions. Prof. Zekzer’s collaboration with Bulgarian scientists started more than 40 years ago and has continued to the present. He has participated in studies of groundwater in the Bulgarian Black Sea shelf and of groundwater resources contamination, as well as in the publication of several monographs on these problems.
 

In BSHC – BAS, on the basis of Grant Scheme of the ONR, two international projects related to the hydrodynamic optimization of high-speed catamaran equipped with a water jet propulsors are being realized. These projects involve experts from USA, Italy, India, Japan and Bulgaria. The BSHC scientists presented results from experimental and numerical investigations of the basic version of the water jet propulsor, performed by them. Its working capability was demonstrated in the deep water towing tank of BSHC at speeds over 60 knots. The experimental investigations and the numerical simulations of the basic version water jet propulsor are conducted simultaneously in Italy, USA, and BSHC. The first stage of the project is envisaged for completion by the end of 2011.
The participants in the meeting discussed and agreed upon the projects’ development frames during 2011-2013 in the aspect of investigation of variations in catamaran’s behavior in waves and wind conditions.
Part of the results of the catamaran dynamics simulation investigations of maneuvering in heavy weather conditions, including shallow water, will be used for Bulgaria’s participation in the NATO Panel AVT-161 “Assessment of Stability and Control Prediction Methods for NATO Air and Sea Vehicles”.
An agreement was achieved on the BSHC participation in launching a cooperative program on ship maneuverability simulation - SIMMAN-2 of the International Towing Tanks Conference (ITTC). The University of Iowa is a major organizer of this initiative, which is aimed at validation the numerical methods, used in computational fluid dynamics.

The visitors were accompanied by BAS President, Academician Nikola Sabotinov. The purpose of the visit was familiarization with the activities and the scientific achievements of these institutes. The Prime Minister emphasized that effective dialog between the Council of Ministers and BAS was already established. In his words, on the one hand, the Academy has started the reforms required, and, on the other, the government has undertaken to assist in establishing the relations between the research results and the business. The Prime Minister also mentioned that the Council of Ministers was considering issuing a decree regarding the predominant utilization of BAS research results by the ministries.

A team of scientists of the National Museum of Natural History, led by Dr. Latinka Petrova, a paleontologist, Dr. Nikolay Tsankov and Andrey Stoyanov, herpetologists, Dr. Mario Langurov (of the Institute of Zoology) and Nikolay Simov, entomologists, together with two students, were able of recover the entire skeleton. This was a delicate and difficult task due to the high fragility of the bones. All important parts of the skeleton were successfully unearthed, which allowed the team to determine that the animal had belonged to the now extinct species Procapreolus.

On its meeting today, BAS General Assembly conferred the “For Merits to the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences” Medal to Senior Research Associate Dr. Eng. Kostadin Yosifov, Director of the Institute of Hydro- and Aerodynamics, for his outstanding contributions to the Institute’s incorporation in BAS and for his active organizational work to BAS benefit, to Mr. Gencho Ivanov, Director of Organization of Management and Information Department of BAS, to Mrs. Rumyana Radeva, Director of the International Affairs Department of BAS, and to Mrs. Zhivka Dinkova, Director of Finance and Economics Department of BAS, for the long years of extraordinarily useful activities in the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.

On October 26, 2009, Nikola Gyuzelev was awarded the prestigious rank of Doctor Honoris Causa of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. His pupils and all those who contributed to and participated in the Christmas concert dedicated the event to the Maestro’s award.