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The European Seas and Territorial Development, Opportunities and Risks (ESaTDOR) project, financed by ESPON, was intended to analyze the current state of maritime regions, opportunities and risks for territorial development, as well as their effects on maritime regions under different scenarios until 2050. The paper aims to present the results of the project highlighting the most probable scenarios for future development of European coastal areas

The presence of risk in almost every human situation, activity and sector has determined the increasingly rapid development of the risk management discipline. Depending on the context, there are various descriptions of what risk management involves. Like in many other industries, oil and gas companies are facing many kinds of risks and uncertainties that make the execution of projects more and more complex and difficult. Taking into consideration the fact that in risk evaluation and treatment the potential impact is a key issue the oil and gas industry is one of the fields where addressing risks will remain one of the major concerns in order to assure the limitation of human life and environmental damages

Lean means creating more value for customers with fewer resources, by minimizing waste. Although traditionally this concept is applied in manufacturing, the Lean management improvement principles can be also applied in the case of educational institutions. This paper presents three case studies of implementing Lean in UK and USA universities that can be useful examples for implementing Lean in any university environment

South Caucasus (also referred to as Transcaucasus), is a region situated to the south of the Greater Caucasus Mountain Range, composed of Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia. Due to the rich oil reserves of the Caspian Sea basin and geostrategic importance of the Caucasus as a crossroad between Europe and Asia, this region has always constituted a pole of attraction for the great powers of the world after the collapse of USSR. Not only neighboring countries like Russia, Iran, Turkey and Central Asian states (Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan), but also the United States, European Union and China are becoming actively involved in this region. Thus, while Armenia has been allied with Russia and Iran, considering these two powers as a counterweight to Turkey - its main enemy in the region, Azerbaijan and Georgia have developed geostrategic alliance with Turkey, and the United States by promoting cooperation with NATO member countries. Moreover, the conflict in Nagorno- Karabakh had deprived Armenia of the possibility of cooperation with other South Caucasian states. Armenia, which bases itself mainly on the relationship with Russia, believes that maintaining good relations with Iran is vital in terms of its national security, therefore, Armenia encourages active presence of Iran in the region. Meanwhile, Azerbaijan and Georgia, which have developed geo-economic relations between them in course of time and expanded strategic partnership with Western democracies, particularly through the NATO alliance, put forth their best efforts in order to leave the sphere of influence of Russia

Business cycles are – as in definition of Burns and Mitchell -a type of fluctuation found in the aggregate economic activity of nations that organize their work mainly in business enterprises: a cycle consists of expansions occurring at about the same time in many economic activities, followed by similarly general recessions, contractions, and revivals which merge into the expansion phase of the next cycle; in duration, business cycles vary from more than one year to ten or twelve years; they are not divisible into shorter cycles of similar characteristics with amplitudes approximating their own. On the other hand, Julius Shiskin suggested several rules of thumb to identify a recession, which included two successive quarterly declines in gross domestic product (GDP), a measure of the nation's output. What about the present situation - a real, major and global recession or a different kind of business cycle particularity

The Black Sea region lies at the crossroads of major oil and gas export flows to the world energy markets. Wider Black Sea area is increasingly becoming very important in terms of energy production, transportation and distribution. Last global tendencies in energy field indicate that the Black Sea region plays an important role in formation of new energy map of the Eurasian continent, which in perspective will contain such aspects, as diversification of oil and gas supplies, new routes of transportation of energy sources to the European markets and ensuring security of these projects. The concept of wider Black Sea region implies along with Russian oil and gas resources an increasing role of the energy sources of the Caspian basin with participation of Trans-Caspian countries – Iran, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan in regional energy projects. The Black Sea region is a strategically important region as well as for own fossil reserves

Started in February 2009 the FP7 project RISING has for objective the development and testing of new River Information Services for the European inland water transport (IWT) sector. In contrast to other RIS projects, RISING focuses exclusively on the current and future needs of the European transport and logistics sector. Through the RISING project the European transport sector is kept informed on RIS and awareness is being raised on the potentials of RIS(ING) services for transport and logistics operations. IWT has become an integral part of co-modal transport and logistics chains. As such, the IWT sector has to comply with requirements of supply chain management (SCM). Effective transport infrastructure and high-performance intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) must be further developed which will play a key role in this process.

Among excellence models in public administrations in the EU, CAF and EFQM are used most. In use are also models that countries have adapted or designed themselves (for example: the Swedish Quality Model, used since 1992, INK developed by the Netherlands and also used by Belgium, and KVIK in Denmark)

The purpose of this paper is to perform an analysis of the history of the Total Quality Management (TQM) in the private sector, taking a closer look at its five stages in the Western hemisphere: quality inspection, statistical quality control, system-oriented quality assurance, company-wide quality control, total quality management

Traditionally and within theoretical approaches, examiner’s report on courses at final exam in the universities consists of two components: firstly, there is a summative assessment where a judgment is made on a thesis that has met the standards established by the discipline for the award of the degree; second there is a conception about the development and the formative aspects of the exam, where examiners provide feedback to assist the students to improve their learning tasks. The main objective of this paper is to determine if periodically exams ‘students are primarily assessment or feedback? In this paper it is used feedback term referring on the trajectory of professor-student reports, in an effort to distinguish it clearly a summative assessment form. The small-scale study of four examiner’s reports aimed to identify the nature of them and whether the reports provided are primarily summative assessment or feedback, Traditionally and within theoretical approaches, examiner’s report on courses at final exam in the universities consists of two components: firstly, there is a summative assessment where a judgment is made on a thesis that has met the standards established by the discipline for the award of the degree; second there is a conception about the development and the formative aspects of the exam, where examiners provide feedback to assist the students to improve theirlearning tasks. The main objective of this paper is to determine if periodically exams ‘students are primarily assessment or feedback? In this paper it is used feedback term referring on the trajectory of professor-student reports, in an effort to distinguish it clearly a summative assessment form.The small-scale study of four examiner’s reports aimed to identify the nature of them and whether the reports provided are primarily summative assessment or feedback.