Agriculture not only supplies food and fibre to the society, but also provides other services, which are not revealed in the market prices. The role of agricultural activities is essential in forming and improving the landscape, in particular, for Lithuanian case study. Therefore, the paper focuses on development of the framework for estimation of consumers’ willingness to pay for agricultural landscape improvements. The objectives of this paper are to present construction of the estimation framework for eliciting willingness to pay (WTP) for non- market agricultural landscape goods through choice experiments (CE) in Lithuania; then, to show the results of framework pre-test, and identify applicability of the framework designed. CE is a survey-based method implying creation of repetitive choice situations about alternatives of agri-environmental schemes for revealing how inhabitants of Lithuania value public goods from agricultural landscape (scenic views, variety of flora and fauna species, recreational infrastructure and services, the objects of cultural heritage), enabling to estimate Lithuanian residents’ WTP and the demand for improvements of agricultural landscape. The results of the pilot survey have shown that the questionnaire was comprehensible and interesting to the respondents, revealing that the valuation of agricultural landscape is in demand by the society. The results of modelling, applying conditional logit, have shown a good model fit, allowing the usage of the estimation framework for the main survey and an estimation of consumers’ willingness to pay for public goods/improvements from agricultural landscape.

Enhanced forest growth may respond to demand of woody resources and contribute to the climate change mitigation. Forest soil treatment with fertilizers, as well as drainage and thinning enhance forest growth. The analysis of needles is an established method in forest science to identify the nutrient status in the forest stand and need for forest soil enrichment with fertilizers. The aim of this research is to estimate the efficiency of forest soil enrichment with wood ash and ammonium nitrate in order to eliminate nutrient deficiency in forest stands. Forest soil was enriched with wood ash fertilizer or ammonium nitrate in 2016–2017. The current year needles were collected from fertilized and control plots, from three trees in each plot. The samples were collected in the period 2018–2019. Total nitrogen (g kgE−1), calcium (g kgE−1), magnesium (g kgE−1), and potassium (g kgE−1) were analysed in the collected samples. The chemical properties of collected needles were compared at the individual object level to estimate the impact of fertilizer on forest stand. A statistically significant increase in the concentrations of potassium and phosphorus was detected in some plots treated with wood ash and ammonium nitrate. In addition, a correlation analysis conducted between the variables of chemical properties of needles and soil showed few significant correlations between nutrient content in needles and in soil samples.

In our republic in the process of preparing students for professional activity one of the urgent tasks is considered to be the development of their professional speech. It is very important for todayʼs specialist to be competent, competitive and able to communicate effectively in his future activity. However, the main problem is the teaching of professional culture and the holistic development of professional communicative competences. The aim of the article is to develop recommendations and methodological guidelines to ensure the cultural communication of future professionals. In particular, the experiment proves that the student should feel the benefit of learning a foreign language in the future and get used to independent work on the subject, and gradually the motivation to learn the language will appear. The study highlights the role of foreign language teaching in the interdependence of ‘language – communication – profession – cultureʼ, the interdependence of language and culture in the development of language skills, the systematic approach to the study of professional terms. It is a well-known fact that students, in addition to acquiring lexical and grammatical knowledge of a foreign language, should also have a perfect command of the culture and values of their country and of the country where the language is learnt. In order to effectively implement the business communication situation in the classroom, it is desirable for the student to ‘understand the foreignerʼ, to study and master the culture of the foreign country, the accepted rules and values. While doing research, the methodological recommendations and instructions for the systematic organization of foreign language teaching are given.

Social protection for families with children is one of the priorities Latvia has highlighted in its strategic planning documents. Moreover, the priority being advanced for several planning periods indicates on the necessity to improve social security and foster the birth rate in the country. The research aim is to develop priority scenarios for possible improvement of social protection for families with children in Latvia. The authors put forward four scenarios for the improvement of social protection for families with children in Latvia, of which the experts in the field recognised the replacement of the personal income tax relief for children with a larger family state benefit as the priority. This would ensure fairer support for all families with children, including those on low incomes. Also, increasing the minimum wage and reducing the shadow economy would improve the social protection of families with children. Evaluating the criteria of population interests, the experts recognised the increase of family social security as more important than the increase in the number of children in the family, as the increase of social protection would contribute to the increase in the number of children in families thereof.

Cyberattacks have become a regular part of network activity. To mitigate the risks from possible threats, organisations have implemented firewalls and intrusion detection systems, which can help stop network attacks. The problem is that often the accuracy of these systems is not effective enough. Another part of network security is security information and management platforms. These systems are more advanced versions of Threat Intelligence Platforms, because it is possible to make in-depth analyses of real-time events in a network. This research paper proposes improving intrusion detection system functionality using Open-Source Intelligence. Anomaly-based intrusion detection systems often generate alerts, but these alerts require deeper analysis to understand whether it is a real attack or just a false alarm. By making Open-Source Intelligence requests and evaluating extra information, it is possible to make more precise rules to stop attacks against network infrastructure. Open-Source Intelligence requests are generated directly from the intrusion detection system or with Python scripts based on the organisation’s infrastructure profile. The proposed architecture was experimentally tested by automating Open-Source Intelligence requests and intrusion detection rule generation by Python scripts.