At present, the global community uses a variety of indicators to assess the national brand and determine the country’s position relative to others’: Brand Finance’s Country Brand Index, Future-Brand’s Country Brand Index, Anholt’s Nation Brands Index, Bloom Consulting’s Country Brand Ranking, Global Competitiveness Index and so on. It is, however, appropriate to use the spatial set of brand and global competitiveness indexes combined with strategic analysis and planning models to develop country brand management models. This approach is based on the objective assessment and building of the integral Country Brand Index (CBI), distinguishing the main components affect-ing global competitiveness - macroeconomic, social, corporate and innovation components, as well as the analysis of the contribution of factors. This makes it possible to determine the position of countries in the world on the basis of comparison of the CBIs with the Global competitiveness Index, as well as quantitatively characterize the contributions of key factors forming the CBI in order to formulate appropriate strategies depending on the position of the country in the world. According to the author, the application of the proposed method will strengthen the soundness of determining the factors influencing on the county brand, enrich the theoretical and methodological principles of analysis of the country brand in the context of global competitiveness, expand the information base and increase the effectiveness of state policy in the field of forming a national branding strategy.

The research paper may be of interest to the representatives of the audit service, internal control par-ticipants, managers of all levels within the system of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine and the Armed Forces of Ukraine, and other interested parties directly involved in the implementation of internal control, which is oriented towards risk management. The timely detection and identification of threats and risks depends on the efficiency and timeliness of exercising functions assigned by the subject of internal control and acquiring the necessary capabilities for the accomplishment of assignments. The research paper formulates the scientific task of determining the necessary competencies of the members of the risk assessment group to the subject of internal control. In accordance with the Interim Procedure for the Organization of Internal Control in the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine and the Armed Forces of Ukraine, risk assessment groups are established, which require the inclusion of officials with the highest level of competence in the relevant field. At the same time, there was an urgent need during the formation of these groups for a scientific substantiation of the list of necessary competencies, whose carriers could effectively fulfil their assigned tasks in identifying risks in relevant processes. A partial analysis of the governing documents regulating the or-ganization and functioning of internal audit and internal control systems in the defense department is conducted in the course of the study. Based on foreign experience, functional responsibilities and guidance documents, 90 competencies were distinguished distributed according to the relevant blocks. The research paper uses the expert evaluation method to determine the key competences of members of the risk assessment group. The method of the mean scores, the median method, the determination of the coefficient of concordance and the Pearson’s fitting criterion were used for the analysis of the results of the expert evaluation. The research paper determines a number of priority competencies of the members of the risk assessment working group and elaborates appropriate con-clusions for further research.

The research has revealed connection and the influence degree of innovative and investment activi-ties on the efficiency of competitiveness management in the region. In this article, for the first time, economic and statistical methods are used to study the interaction between innovation and investment activity and competitiveness at the regional level. The Granger test and the correlation and re-gression analysis are applied for the comprehensive study of individual and joint impact on the re-gion's competitiveness and its innovation and investment activity. The Granger test provides an op-portunity to identify cause-effect relationships between the indicators of innovation and investment activity in the region. Accordingly, pairs of indicators of innovation and investment regional activity are identified and grouped together in accordance with the presence of connection, strength and direction of impact. Correlation and regression analysis are used to determine the regional impact of innovation and investment activity and competitiveness. Accordingly, the nature, the correlation ra-tio and the degree of impact of certain innovation and investment indicators on the gross regional product are determined. A three-year forecast for regional competitiveness management is carried out on the basis of the actual data of the obtained dependency models of the indicators under study.

The research paper studies the topical problem of increasing the competitiveness of modern enter-prises through the application of creative methods of innovation process management. The expediency of the use of creative methods of the innovation process management is revealed, which is predetermined by the necessity of the formation of long-term competitive advantages in the modern conditions of operation of the enterprises at the level of management tools. To achieve the goals set in the research paper, a system of general scientific and special methods of studying processes and phenomena in their interrelation and development is used, namely: system approach, methods of analysis, synthesis, modeling, systematization, grouping, logical generalization, structural and logical analysis. The research paper presents the role and place of creative management methods in an enterprise management system, which characterize the ways of influencing the management of an enterprise on the activity and interaction of employees of an enterprise involved in the creation of innovative ideas, products and solutions. The place of creative management methods as a tool for achieving the goals of providing innovation-oriented development of enterprises is grounded, which is a stable prerequisite for ensuring the competitiveness of companies in modern highly competitive innovative product markets. Recommendations for implementation of creative methods of innovation activity management of enterprises have been formed; the procedure and the main directions of the solution of existing problems of implementation of the innovation process at enterprises are proposed. The results of this research paper should be considered in the context of their importance to stimulate innovation-oriented development of enterprises, in particular, in the context of the vital need for the formation of sustainable competitive advantages under the conditions of liberalization of markets and globalization.

The study presented herein describes promising designs of shell vibration isolators. The feature of the proposed designs is the cut thin-walled shell usage as the main bearing link. These resilient elements have high load capacity and, on the other hand, can provide the desired level of damping. From the point of view of mechanics, shell resilient elements are considered as the deformable systems with dry friction. When simulating these systems, structurally nonlinear non-conservative mixed contact issues of cut shell – resilient body frictional interaction arise. In order to take into account all essential options of the aforementioned issues and specify shell resilient element peculiarities of behavior under operational loads, the authors used the method of laboratory experiments for research. We considered two different contact systems. The first one is a cylindrical shell cut along its generatrix, which contacts a deformable filler. The second system is a cylindrical shell with several incomplete slots interacting with the elastic filler. The stress state and radial displacements of the shells, pliability of the resilient elements, and energy dissipation in the contact systems were time-tracked. As a result, we obtained relations for monitored options of the contact bodies and deformation diagrams for different physical-mechanical and geometrical options of the systems It was found that for a fixed cycle asymmetry coefficient with an increase in the friction coefficient between the shell and the filler, the amount of energy dissipated per cycle gradually decreases. The idea of optimizing shell vibration protection devices according to the criterion of maximum absorption of energy from external influences by determining the required tribological properties of contacting pairs is declared.

This paper deals with retrial queues of the |MQ/M/c/∞|- type in which the rate of input flow depends on the number of sources of repeated calls and each call has only one retrial attempt. That is, if a call fails to enter the server facility at the retrial attempt, then it leaves the system without service. The existence conditions of stationary regime and the vector-matrix of the stationary probabilities of the service process are represented. This representation uses an approximation of the initial model by means of the truncated one and the directs passage to the limit. For these systems a threshold strategy for the rate of input flow is used. The multi-criterion optimization problem for finding optimal strategy of control is considered. The quality functionals of the optimization problem are represented through the stationary probabilities.

The interaction of (2-aryl-5-(hydroxyalkylamino)-1,3-oxazol-4-yl)phosphonates with hydrogen chloride, hydrogen iodide and hydrogen thiocyanate in anhydrous medium led to formation of new phosphorylated peptidomimetics containing C-terminal ω-haloalkyl and ω-thiocyanoethyl residues.

Five imidazo[1,2-c]pyrimidine and pyrimido[1,6-a]pyrimidine derivatives were designed, synthesized and evaluated for their antiproliferative activity and cytotoxicity. Primary bioassays in vitro showed that two of five synthesized compounds, 6-benzyl-8-(methylsulfonyl)-2,6-dihydroimidazo[1,2-c]pyrimidin-5(3H)-one, and 9-(methylsulfonyl)-7-propyl-2,3,4,7-tetrahydro-6H-pyrimido[1,6-a]pyrimidin-6-one possessed potent antiviral activity against BKV (EC50: 0.66 μM and 0.96, respectively). The selectivity index of these compounds is similar to that of cidofovir. Although antiviral activity was evident in secondary assays, significant virus inhibition occurred at or near the cytotoxic concentration (SI90=1). Here we show that substituted pyrimidine derivatives are a promising structure class of chemical compounds for the development of antiviral drugs against BKV infections. Hence these compounds may be taken as lead compounds for further development of novel antimicrobial and anticancer agents.

The paper shows the results of an empirical study on the optimization of polymer waste supply chains based on the circular economy in Ukraine. The research shows that the main links in the activity should be harmonized for quality and quick optimization of polymer waste supply chains, including the processes of collecting, sorting, treatment, processing, and recycling of resources for maintaining the quality by total cost reduction. The research argues that the circular economy that stipulates the easy processing, recycling, disassembling, and restoring of products replaced the traditional linear model “take, produce, and throw out” that has dominated the economy by now. The study shows that the transformation of supply chains in production ecosystems forms competitive advantages at the enterprises that allow them to be more productive through efficient use of resources.

O-Acyl substituted derivatives of 3-benzyl-5-(2-hydroxyethyl)-4-methyl-1,3-thiazolium chloride which is a structural analog of vitamin B₁ were synthesized and evaluated towards acetylcholinesterase and butyrylcholinesterase in vitro. The inhibition properties of the O-substituted compounds depend on nature of substituents at position 3 and 5 of the thiazolium ring. Some of the thiazolium salts showed high potency in the inhibition of only one of the two enzymes. The selective effects of these inhibitors are governed by substituent at position 5. Kinetic studies and molecular docking simulation were performed for elucidating mechanisms of enzyme-inhibitor complex formation.