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The university admission test comes after the high school graduation exam - the baccalaureate. The baccalaureate results of each candidate must be known by the university admissions committee. They provide information on the degree of intelligence, the skills acquired up to this date, but also the presence of inclinations and skills indispensable to the fulfillment of professional aspirations. The university entrance exam should not be focused only on quantity and quality of knowledge. Besides that, one of the objectives of this exam must be to test the interest in completing the studies through the university level for which he opts, but also the candidate's skills that "offer" him the productive and satisfying course of the entire cycle of higher education, even the perspective of future achievements. To realize that three psychological investigation tools of candidates (tests) can be used, necessary to highlight: (1) personality profile of the candidate; (2) interest profile, motivational; and (3) aptitude profile. The paper proposes a new admission methodology: the data collected through the proposed tests and correlated with the high school graduation data can accept the candidates, as admitted to the profile they opted for, or can redirect them to choose the right path. [For the full proceedings, see ED630948.]

The didactic strategy is given by the set of methods and techniques by which the cooperation between the teacher and students, between students and teacher, between students and students is achieved to obtain the anticipated results. For a positive result of the didactic approach, there must be a good didactic strategy capable of leading to the achievement of the proposed objectives and competencies. Didactic methods and procedures take the main place because they contribute to stimulating the student's thinking and feelings and lead him to develop learning techniques capable of increasing his chances of success in the profession for which he is preparing. In the didactic process, a multitude of methods are used, either traditional or modern. The multitude of methods forces the selection of the appropriate ones for the types of lessons, the proposed objectives and competences, the established learning methods. The category of traditional methods cannot be abandoned, nor can only modern methods be used. Each of these has their role in the learning paradigm that cannot be ignored but, on the contrary, considered. Following the pandemic, communication and teamwork problems appeared in student lives. In the present work, some modern methods adapted to university education are presented. [For the full proceedings, see ED630948.]

The past decade bore witness to fast-paced development of digital technologies, especially in the domain of mobile technologies. The banking sector, renowned for being quite traditional and not in favor of frequent changes, is also adapting to new market trends. New FinTech technologies emerged, technologies that intensively use information-communication and digital technologies to transform traditional business practices of the banking sector. The present paper deals with FinTech technologies, mobile business practices of banks and numerous innovations in mobile banking apps. The primary research that was conducted on a sample of mobile banking users in the Republic of Croatia shows how mobile banking is used and the respondents' views on how digital technologies in the banking sector would be used in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present report follows an ENQA (European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education) Workshop on Quality Assurance and Postgraduate Education, hosted by the Romanian Agency for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (ARACIS) in Brasov, Romania on 12-13 March 2009. The workshop was an excellent opportunity for ENQA members to exchange information, define concepts and examine best practice related to quality assurance of postgraduate education. Articles included in this report are: (1) Forces Shaping Postgraduate Education: Academic Credentials in a Global Context (Mary-Louise Kearney); (2) Master and Doctoral Education in Europe: Key Challenges for Quality Assurance (Alexandra Bitusikova); (3) Quality Assurance at Doctoral Level: the case of England, UK (Janet Bohrer); (4) Quality Assurance from the doctoral candidates' and junior researchers' perspective (Karoline Hollander); (5) The Postgraduate Students Mirror 2008, a survey in Sweden (Gunilla Jacobsson); (6) Research Master's Programmes in the Netherlands (Fred Mulder); (7) Quality Assurance of Doctoral Education in Germany--Experiences, Standards and Challenges (Manuel Pietzonka); (8) Accreditation of doctoral schools in Hungary (Judith Negyesi); (9) Quality assurance of doctoral study programmes in Croatia (Ivan Filip Jakopovic and Ivana Borosic); and (10) About the role of ECTS regarding Quality Assurance of Postgraduate Education with a glance at Turkey in the Bologna Process (Kerim Edinsel). A conclusion by Nathalie Costes is included. A programme of the workshop is annexed. Individual articles contain tables, appendices, references, and figures. (Contains 28 footnotes.)

Traditionally, intelligence has nothing to do with emotions. Intelligence means the ability to have thinking skills, to find solutions to problems. There are studies that show that a high IQ does not guarantee success in a person's life, IQ contributes 20%, while 80% is attributed to other forces. In the present research, we aim at answering the question: "What is the relation between the level of emotional intelligence of a leader and the type of leadership it exercises?". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over time, organizations have invested in knowledge, knowledge representing an essential aspect of their development, developing concepts such as knowledge management and knowledge management systems (KMS). Knowledge management is a branch of knowledge management that involves capturing the explicit knowledge of individuals or teams within organizations, extracting tacit knowledge, and sharing it through various methods to all members of the organization for use. The contribution of information technology in the organization's knowledge management is the knowledge management system (KMS) that captures, stores and disseminates important expertise throughout the organization, generating a series of positive effects related to the knowledge sharing process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Solid protocol aims to let people take back control over their personal data by allowing them to store this data in personal data vaults called pods. While this has advantages in terms of data ownership, it also imposes new challenges when developing applications that use the protocol for data storage. Some auxiliary software libraries already exist in most popular programming languages for handling functions like authentication or basic file management, however, to the best of our knowledge, there is currently no toolkit available that provides a more integrated developer environment with features like data validation, code completion, and package management. In this paper a Solid Development Experience or SDX is presented, which uses SHACL shapes and GraphQL as the basis to provide a type-safe programming environment for both Javascript and Java projects. SHACL shapes can be downloaded and installed, after which GraphQL schemas can be generated based on them. Next, queries can be defined on these schemas to retrieve RDF data stored in a pod. The use of SHACL and GraphQL allows a mapping of dynamically typed RDF models to statically typed Java/Typescript constructs, with the goal of leveraging full type-safety when interfacing with RDF data. This mapping was found to incur a limited overhead during performance testing, the results of which are presented in this paper. Additionally, a detailed overview of the main components that make up the SDX and the design and technology choices that were made for each of them is provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Along with the economic expansion which started at the beginning of the new millennium, Croatia and other new European union members from Central and Eastern Europe simultaneously accumulated internal and external imbalances. These imbalances materialized after the global financial crisis of 2009 in the form of a recession, high unemployment, growing public debt and instabilities in the financial sector. External imbalances such as continuous current account deficits were decreased in the period after the 2009 crisis and are thoroughly researched in the existing literature. The literature mostly points out that competitiveness did not have a significant impact on the development of external imbalances, and instead emphasizes the role of other factors such as domestic demand. On the other hand, the impact of competitiveness shocks on domestic production and the internal imbalance (output gap and price stability) remains relatively unexplored. This paper seeks to assess the impact of price and cost competitiveness shocks on domestic economic activity in the selected new EU member states: Czech Republic, Croatia, Estonia, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovenia. Based on the estimated sign restricted vector autoregression models for individual countries, impulse response functions indicate that the negative impact of cost competitiveness (unit labor costs) on the development of domestic GDP is more clearly pronounced than the negative impact of price competitiveness (real effective exchange rate). Moreover, there are significant heterogeneities in output responses to competitiveness shocks between countries. These results should be interpreted with caution since the paper did not identify sources of the deterioration of competitiveness – the nominal exchange rate shocks and relative prices shocks both represent a shock in the real exchange rate, while the unit labor cost shock can originate either in the productivity or wage shock. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital technologies become an integral part of business activities of a large number of market players in the past fifteen years. Technologies that we used to consider as distant future, such as handheld computers or smart cars, are now considered common and are used on a daily basis. Dynamism, innovation and adaptation are but a few of the features of digital technologies. They constantly change and monitor their users' needs, trying to create a positive user experience, which would eventually provide the most benefits to their owners - by increasing the number of users and reaching the desired financial objectives. Digital technologies penetrated almost all sectors of the economy, from the primary all the way to the quaternary sector. The banking sector is no exception as financial institutions are forced to make use of digital technologies as competitive advantage at the ever more competitive market. Banks, as the most relevant actor at the Croatian financial market, are also no exception; their mobile apps are perhaps the best indicator of how much they are able to keep up with worldwide trends in doing digital business. The conducted survey leads to the conclusion that the respondents are satisfied and have positive opinions about Croatian banks' mobile apps. With regard to the trends concerning the application of digital technologies in Croatian banks, we can say that, when it comes to the context of mobile app digitalization levels, the banks are up-to-date with the trends and innovations implemented at the worldwide banking scene. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a result of the spread of infection with the new Coronavirus (COVID-19) throughout the world, the social impact can create more problems than the virus itself. The outbreak of panic is the essential element in the spate of problems. Disruptions in international trade, availability of resources and goods lead to disruptions in international relations. COVID-19 demonstrated the limitations of political systems in addressing such outbreaks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Individual differences affect how individuals perceive others, their behaviour and situations. In this process of perception, attributions help us to explain how individuals assign and understand the causes of their own or others behaviour. Therefore, it is necessary to note the importance of attribution as well as the presence of attribution errors that an individual mostly makes unconsciously and that are often present in the situation of conflict. This paper provides insight into the importance of attribution, attribution biases and their role in conflict and connection with specific conflict management styles. Results of empirical research on a sample of 182 students from the University of Zagreb provide additional data on the connection between the attribution process, attribution errors and conflict management styles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After the Cold War and more specifically at the beginning of the 21st century we are witnessing a resurgence of Anti-Americanism in the West. This paper explores the origins of Anti-American ideas and discourse, arguing that they go beyond just a simple reaction to various U.S. decisions and actions on the world stage. Drawing upon constructivist theories and approaches in the study of international relations that put a premium on the role of heuristics and ideas in international politics, it attempts to uncover the cultural substratum that lies underneath current criticism oriented against the U.S., focusing on two significant actors of the Euro-Atlantic community: Germany and France, The main findings of this historical approach highlight the existence of a negative cultural predisposition when considering U.S. behavior and mere existence in the world. As such, Anti-Americanism generates cognitive biases which are greatly inflated due to the technological tools available in the information era. Moreover, this predisposition may be unintentionally or willingly activated, given the increasing impact of public opinion on the preferences of democratic states in the realm of international relations. Hence, the study may be of use not just for research dedicated to history and international relations, but also for academic and decision-making circles interested into information warfare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study focuses on the kinetic mechanism of mercury removal from contaminated solid waste generated by chlor-alkali plant using pyrolysis. A mechanism involving 6 heterogeneous and homogeneous reactions was proposed to represent the behaviour of mercury compounds in the solid matrix during thermal treatment. The proposed model was compared to nine models previously reported in literatures to elucidate the controlling reaction mechanism. The D1-diffusion mechanism could be considered the controlling step of the process at high retention times while at low thermal decomposition times (<15 min) the diffusion mechanism (D1) as well as the third order reaction mechanism (F3) could be controlling the process. Nevertheless, as a first depth-in to the knowledge of this polydisperse and multicomponent system (mercurial sludge), the diffusion mechanism (D1) can be considered the overall controlling stage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study focuses in to assess the environmental impact that represents the mercurial sludge generated in a Chlor-Alkali industry of Cuba. Analytical techniques were applied in order to characterize the compound sample of the mercury solid waste. The toxicity of the sample was determined using TCLP U.S. EPA Method. The environmental impact study was carried applying the leaching DIN 38414-S4 test. High values of total mercury content were obtained in the sample (2276 mg/kg) classifying the sample as hazardous and high mercury waste. The analysed sample failed to the permissible level of mercury in the leachate (0.2 mg L-1) according with the TCLP. DIN test results showed that the accumulated Hg content in the leachate increases with the time, effect which is strongly negative. This research demonstrates that the stabilization treatment employed by this industry no guarantee any protection for the environment at medium and long term. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study focuses on customers' level of satisfaction in the hotel industry. In this case, the level of satisfaction represents an index that links customers' satisfaction with the firm's effort to offer not only effective accommodation services, but other services as well. Under these circumstances, the hotel companies emphasize customers' satisfaction, realizing that customers' perception on the quality of products and services is a decisive factor in the size of the market segment and the level of profit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study focuses on the assessment of goodwill in the hotel business, an entity which brings together both tangible and intangible elements. Even though tangible elements are relatively easy to measure by typical accounting methods, the intangible part (which defines the most important feature of services) is rather difficult, if not impossible to measure. That is mainly the reason why the immaterial side, which defines famous businesses, brings the recognition of the image, advertisement, logo, emblem, fame or, in other words, all the elements that attract clients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper intends to explore why and how the U.S. government involved academic scholars in the policy-making process during the Progressive Era, with a focus on President Woodrow Wilson's formation and use of the Inquiry. It further attempts to draw upon the lessons learned from this case study in history in order to stimulate new thinking with regard to the interest of the governmental decision-makers in exploiting academic potential. The paper rests mainly on the research dedicated to Progressivism and Wilsonianism and it consists of an analysis based on the literature review and the case study of The Inquiry. The conclusions highlight the impact that the intellectual potential from within universities and research centres might have in informing policies, revealing alternative tracks and finally supporting the process as a whole. Thus, the paper aims to offer "food for thought" for further debates, raise the awareness on the issue of benefiting from a stronger and deeper government-academia relationship and nurture the mutual interest for partnership and even possible integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses research which examined the impact of various methods for modeling heat transfer between a pipeline and the ambient temperature. Topics discussed include the quantification of the differences in outlet temperatures between a steady and unsteady heat transfer model, effects of simulating the annual oceanic temperature cycle and seasonal difference between measured and modeled outlet temperature.

Electrical storage technologies for high-density energy and power are crucial for the elaboration of electric vehicles with increased driving ranges. Not only improved charging while being connected to the electricity grid is demanded to facilitate a higher driving range, but also technologies for energy harvesting during driving offer great potential. Re-using braking energy during re-acceleration of the vehicle is currently one of these promising harvesting technologies being investigated. Because of the high-power currents generated during a braking event, the recovered energy can only be efficiently stored by a capacitor compared to traditional Li-ion batteries. However, the limited energy density of currently used capacitors prevent them from being a large-scale alternative to electrochemical batteries. This research is addressing this shortcoming and aims to establish fast, light and reliable capacitive energy storage while improving the energy density by boosting the maximal allowable voltage on top of an optimized capacitance. Multifunctional composite materials offer a unique integration method, which allows to embed the functional capacitor materials into structural fibre-reinforced polymers. In this concept, the composite material is not only the structural component, but also the storage capacitor, avoiding adding extra weight. Potential materials to be addressed are carbon fibres as structural electrode material and ceramic nanoparticles embedded in a polymer as solid dielectric in order to create a percolation network. The absence of any electrolyte allows significantly higher voltages to be applied, which can be fully exploited by the current trend in automotive of storing electrical energy at 100s of volts. Structural composite capacitors have been produced by optimized ultrasonication, solution casting and warm pressing of the dielectric polymer/nanoparticles film in between carbon weaves as illustrated in Figure 1a. Next to the commonly used conductive nanoparticles as percolative network, novel core-shell nanoparticles have been manufactured to introduce an insulating shell, as shown by figure 1b. The shell significantly reduces dielectric self-discharge currents while improved dielectric breakdown strength is expected. The electrical performance has been assessed by broadband dielectric spectroscopy at quasi-DC frequencies. As a result of the boost in dielectric constant also the energy density of percolation-based structural composite capacitors was increased significantly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Petri Nets-PN are a graphical formalism which is gaining popularity in recent years as a tool in Matlab for the representation of complex logical interactions among physical components or activities in a system. This notes are devoted to introduce the formalism of Petri nets with particular emphasis on the application of the methodology in the area of the performance and reliability modelling and analysis of systems. A technique is presented whereby queueing network models and generalized stochastic Petri nets are combined in such a way as to exploit the best features of both modeling techniques. The resulting hierarchical modeling approach is useful in the solution of complex models of system behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today there is a growing diversity in devices that support software applications in sectors such as mobile, automotive and home entertainment systems. Developing and testing an application for each existing and future device is inefficient and not scalable. We state that the web with its standardized technologies and powerful components will be the converged platform for ubiquitous application delivery. In this paper we propose a novel approach to ubiquitous application delivery using usability rules that combine the delivery context and web application semantics. We give an overview of the parameters that need to be taken into account when delivering applications ubiquitously. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to present in a comparative manner the law texts from different countries regarding the infraction of the checks' fraud. That is why we propose two objectives: to understand the evolution of the legal text regarding the above mentioned infraction of the Romanian Penal Code according to the society's evolution and, secondly, to put in parallel texts of law regarding this infraction in France and England with their particular social environment, the corresponding to this year. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scopul lucrării este prezentarea într-o manieră comparativă a textelor de lege din diferite ţări privind infracţiunea de înşelăciune prin CEC-uri. În acest sens ne propunem două obiective: să înţelegem evoluţia textului de lege privind infracţiunea mai sus amintită din Codul Penal Român în funcţie de evoluţia societăţii şi, în al doilea rând, să punem în paralel texte de lege privind această infracţiune din Franţa şi Anglia cu mediul social specific lor, corespunzător anului curent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of International Conference: Challenges of the Knowledge Society (CKS) is the property of Nicolae Titulescu University of Bucharest and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The aim of this paper is to motivate the need to protect the private property. The analysis focuses on two main objectives: first, corresponding to the first part, motivates the choice of private property to the detriment of the common property, in order to promote the progress. The second objective, corresponding to the second part, focuses on a specific part of the private property, that is the intellectual property's protection. In this section we distinguish between patents, inventions and copyrights, allocating more attention to the piracy problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper should be viewed as a summary of preliminary results for the purpose of establishing machinery parameters for an economic evaluation that will be conducted at a later time for three different harvesting systems. At no time were all three harvesters operated in the same field. Six "example fields" were chosen based on logistics and necessities of data management for the study presented in this paper. Field performance data from the actual harvester is included along with "predicted" calculations of what the other harvesters might be expected to achieve in this field for the same actual turning time row length and field geometry that was harvested. Down time was eliminated from the analysis; therefore, the actual field efficiencies and capacities reported will be lower than in actual harvesting operations. A more complete annual report for this project will be available at a later date from Cotton Incorporated. A half a million data points from three different harvester systems were collected over 28 days from a total of 14 different farm operations and 29 fields. Package and load weights were determined to be 3.74 bales/round module, 6.5 bales/half module and 16 bales/conventional module when adjusting to 480 lb net weight/bale for the John Deere 7760, Case IH 625 ME and conventional pickers, respectively. Truck loads were found to be 14.96 bales, 13 bales and 16 bales per load for the John Deere 7760, Case IH 625 ME and conventional pickers, respectively. When speeds were held constant at 4 mph and compared (without down time other than unloading and turning), the Case IH 625 ME achieved 7.5 ac/hr at 81% time on the row harvesting, compared to the JD 7760 which achieved 8.2 ac/hr at 89% efficiency when averaged over all six fields. The conventional picker attained 7.5 ac/hr at 81% field efficiency averaged over all six fields. Based on these average field capacity values, the JD 7760's ability to unload without needing time to get to a position to unload or stopping contributed to about a 9.4% increase in field capacity above the Case IH 625 ME and conventional machines when all were operated at a constant speed of 4 mph. When the John Deere 7760 was compared to the Case IH 625 ME for first gear picking, the added speed increase and the advantage of the unloading system amounted to 12.5% to 16.5% increase in field capacity (5% due to the speed increase) depending on the field characteristics and yield. Speed on the row had the second greatest effect on field capacity in comparison to the unloading system. Decreasing row length from 2538 ft to 1274 ft decreased field efficiency by approximately 3.2% (conventional), 4.2% (JD 7760) and 3.2% (Case IH 625 ME) depending on speed and unloading system and was 83.1% vs. 79.9%; 91.5% vs. 87.3%; 83% vs. 79.8% for the Case IH 625 ME, JD 7760, and conventional harvesters and longer rows vs. shorter rows respectively (first gear operation). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Randomized evaluations show that centre-based early childhood education programmes, as implemented, have at best modest direct effects upon children's cognitive, emotional and health outcomes. The effects are comparable in size to the generally small differences in child outcomes between children of divorced parents compared to children whose parents had not divorced. One explanation for this is that such programmes have been underfunded or incompletely implemented and/or that resources have been spread too thin; since intensity and very high quality are essential if they are to have the effects demonstrated in model programmes. A more sociological explanation is that community-level variables have moderating rather than direct effects upon child outcomes: that threshold levels of "institutional completeness", community capacity or "neighbourhood social capital" are necessary before families can make use of child-relevant local resources. This paper reviews a variant of this explanation: that families living in deprived areas have generally high levels of chronic stress and depression; and that this constitutes a barrier to poor families' access to and effective use of whatever resources might be provided in the community. This "biosocial" explanation emphasizes the economic and social costs of chronic levels of stress and depression in disadvantaged communities and suggests that the policy focus should be expanded to include public health measures aimed at reducing levels of chronic stress and depression in deprived communities. We discuss the implications for Head Start and Early Head Start in the US, Sure Start in the UK and Quebec's Centres de la Petite Enfance. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we present an approach for producing interoperable metadata by mapping metadata structures of application profiles into standard metadata structures. As a study case, we map the ARIADNE metadata structure into the LOM structure. We use XSLT to transform ARIADNE XML instances into IEEE LOM Instances. Finally, we validate the resulting LOM XML instances. The major contribution of this paper is that it explains how mapping and transforming metadata between different metadata specifications is not always a simple one-to-one process. We present and analyze different kinds of complications involved in such mappings. This work increases the interoperability between ARIADNE and other Learning Object Repositories that rely on IEEE LOM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]