Search

Even though in 2021 many universities have decided to resume teaching activities face to face, we believe that the use of online applications will remain a feature of the educational system due to the flexibility offered and the learning possibilities. We aim to analyze the predictive role of personal factors, such as self-efficacy, technostress creators, technostress inhibitors, and tolerance to uncertainty in the use of e-learning tools for teaching and in the use of these applications in the context of the uncertainty generated by the pandemic. The sample consisted of 1,517 academics. The results showed that technostress creators mediate the relationships between technostress inhibitors, technology self-efficacy, use of applications, and satisfaction with the use of e-learning platforms. Although the current context is dominated by uncertainty, the hypotheses regarding the direct and indirect effects of uncertainty in the use of online s in education were partially sustained. The most important finding of our study is that, although the current context is characterized by uncertainty, the negative impact of the resulting higher levels of stress can be counteracted by a high level of technology self-efficacy which, in turn, predicts a greater extent the use of platforms and the satisfaction of using these platforms. Si bien en 2021 muchas universidades han decidido retomar la actividad docente presencial, creemos que el uso de aplicaciones en línea seguirá siendo una característica del sistema educativo por la flexibilidad que ofrece y las posibilidades de aprendizaje. Nuestro objetivo es analizar el papel predictivo de factores personales, como la autoeficacia, los creadores de tecnoestrés, los inhibidores del tecnoestrés y la tolerancia a la incertidumbre sobre el uso de herramientas de e-learning para la enseñanza y sobre el uso de estas aplicaciones en el contexto de la incertidumbre generada por la pandemia. La muestra estuvo conformada por 1.517 académicos. Los resultados mostraron que los creadores de tecnoestrés median las relaciones entre inhibidores de tecnoestrés, autoeficacia tecnológica, uso de aplicaciones y satisfacción hacia el uso de plataformas de e-learning. Aunque el contexto actual está dominado por la incertidumbre, las hipótesis sobre los efectos directos e indirectos de la incertidumbre sobre el uso de la aplicación en línea en la educación se sustentaron parcialmente. El hallazgo más importante de nuestro estudio es que, aunque el contexto actual se caracteriza por la incertidumbre, el impacto negativo de los mayores niveles de estrés resultantes puede ser contrarrestado por un alto nivel de autoeficacia tecnológica que, a su vez, predice en mayor medida el uso de plataformas y la satisfacción de usar estas plataformas.

This paper aims to determine the level of motivation in the case of both professional and amateur female soccer players in Romania. We have designed and administered a motivation questionnare (“Assessing motivation for soccer practice”) to a sample of 75 female subjects, comprising 25 professional and 50 amateur soccer players in the Romanian league. The results obtained for the general score of the questionnaire show no relevant differences between the experimental group and the control group (p > 0,05). However, the analysis of the scores for each motivational dimension shows that the experimental group obtained higher values for the dimensions „Self esteem” and „Necessity of movement” (p < 0,01). No relevant differences between the two groups were visible for the dimensions “Affiliation need” and “Combativeness; aggressivity”. The control group scored better than the experimental group for the dimension “Competition interest”. The analysis of the results indicates that, no matter which group they belong to, the players present a high level of motivation for soccer practice.

Background In a countrywide study aiming to update the knowledge on diversity of sand fly species in Romania, a sand fly population was observed in an isolated system of cave microhabitats. The caves are located in the protected area of Canaraua Fetii, Dobrogea region, southeastern Romania. The highest sand fly diversity was recorded in this area between 1968 and 1970. This work presents a study conducted to estimate the seasonal variation of the sand fly species in correlation with the particular environmental factors of the isolated system of cave microhabitats. Methods Sand flies were collected between May and October 2020 from one trapping site of interest in Canaraua Fetii. The trapping site consisted of a cave entrance. CDC miniature light traps and sticky traps were used to collect insects from the exterior walls of the cave entrance. Species identification of collected sand flies was done using morphological keys. Statistical analysis of the trapping and climatic data was performed. Results From all collected sand flies, 99.7% (818/822) were Phlebotomus neglectus, 0.1% (1/822) Ph. balcanicus and 0.2% (2/822) Sergentomyia minuta. Sand fly activity was first observed on 2 July and last on 24 September. A monomodal abundance trend was present, with the peak activity between 16 and 17 July. The analysis of the climatic data showed correlations between the total number of captured sand flies and both average temperature and average relative humidity. The total number of collected specimens was statistically higher when CDC miniature light traps were used compared to sticky traps. The number of females on the sticky traps was significantly higher than the number of males on the same trap type. Compared with the sticky traps, significantly more males were collected by CDC miniature light traps. This is the first record of Se. minuta in Romania after 50 years of no records (despite the trapping effort of the last 5 years in the country). Also, Ph. sergenti, previously present in this location, was not found. Conclusions In the investigated natural habitat, the diversity of the sand fly species appears to have changed, with the predominance of Ph. neglectus instead of Ph. balcanicus and Se. minuta (recorded as the two predominant species in 1968–1970). A monomodal abundance trend was observed as in other regions of the country. The sand fly activity in this particular cave microhabitat appears to be longer than in other regions in Romania. Longer sand fly activity increases the zoonotic risk of various pathogenic species’ transmission, with an impact on public health, as sand flies are important insect vectors. Graphical abstract

The present study is based on the social-cognitive perspective of self-regulated learning and focuses on its development in academic settings. This study examined the impact of an intervention on the development of self-regulated learning strategies at a course-specific level. The transferability of the trained strategies on different learning context and the possibility that the training lead to the improvement of learning motivation and behavioural strategies, although they were not explicitly trained were also examined. In addition, the effects of a prolongment of the intervention in the second semester were investigated. The improvement of the learning skills was also assessed through the content analysis of the learning journals competed by the students during the intervention program. We used a mixed method design to examine the changes in students’ self-regulated learning produced before and after the intervention. The participants were first year Psychology and Education Sciences students. During an academic year, the students were trained to use techniques combining cognitive and metacognitive skills. All the strategies were implemented through implicit training, being included as course tasks, and practiced in a domain specific context. The study revealed that the intervention had positive effects on self-regulated learning skills, the students in the intervention group differed significantly at the end of the intervention from the students in the control group. Another finding was the transferability of the trained strategies to different learning contexts. Even if self-regulated learning skills are practiced implicitly in a context, their practice could lead to generalization and increase the transfer opportunities.

The study aimed to test the impact of a career counselling intervention program(JOBS - Job Orientation. Training in business and schools) intended to improve students’ knowledge and skills related to employability’ preconditions. The intervention program was implemented as an optional subject for lower secondary and secondary education. Data were collected using a Solomon design from 1737 students, distributed in intervention and control groups, with and without pre-test, over one school year. The results showed no interaction between treatment and pre-test when self-assessed skills were tested and a small significant effect in case of self-assessed knowledge, but pre-test simple effect was not significant. Two conclusions emerged: intervention was effective, and pre-test did not improve the results by itself. The intervention program had significant effects on enhancing students’ knowledge and skills that are useful in career decisions. Taken outside the classroom, a career counselling intervention could offer more valid research data, but it also might have a smaller impact on student ability to cope with the requirements of social and work environment., +repphzhbib2022A

The main aim of the present research is to analyze the predictive value of individual characteristics such as online self-efficacy, adaptability to uncertainty, and sources of stress during online learning on learning engagement. We also aimed to highlight if these relationships could be mediated by the online self-regulated learning strategies, during the COVID-19 pandemic. The participants were 529 university students and the design was cross-sectional. The results showed significant associations of the sources of stress in online learning with self-efficacy, leaning engagement and self-regulated learning strategies. Self-regulated strategies—task strategies and goal setting represent mediators of stressors perceived by the students under the conditions of the sudden shift to online activity and online learning engagement. The most relevant self-regulation strategies seemed to be goal setting and task strategies, which confirm the need for a clear structure of learning in the context of online activities. The implications of this study reside in the increased awareness regarding how learning engagement in online learning can be predicted by individual characteristics.

Stress and burnout are present in every aspect of an individual’s life, and the growing number of employed students raises certain concerns about their engagement in academic tasks and finishing their studies. Our study aims to analyze the differences between student burnout in different contexts, work- and academic-related burnout, and examine the predictive role of burnout in academic maladjustment, including test anxiety as a mediator and occupational status as a moderator. The sample consisted of 151 students from different universities in Romania. Consistent with previous studies, the results showed that academic burnout is higher than work-related burnout. High levels of test anxiety explain high levels of academic burnout, which in turn explains low levels of academic adjustment. The results highlight the mediating role of anxiety in the relationship between academic burnout and academic maladjustment with occupational status as a moderator. Future research should focus on the type of students’ job, the mediating relationship between self-efficacy and academic burnout, and the relationship between burnout and personality traits.

Medical personnel in the field of dental medicine are associated with an increased risk of occupational exposure to infections. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the level of knowledge of the students in the final years, within the Faculty of Dental Medicine, on preventing the transmission of infection in the dental office. Material and method: The evaluation was carried out on the basis of a questionnaire that included 22 questions regarding measures to prevent the transmission of infections in the dental office. Data was recorded using Microsoft Excel / 2010 spreadsheet and the statistical processing was performed with SPSS 22. Although the subjects had a positive attitude regarding the treatment of patients, they need to have better knowledge and adopt attitudes in order to minimize to the maximum, only at accident level, the transmission of infection in the dental office. In conclusion, the students’ level of knowledge must be constantly improved and evaluated.

Sand flies were collected in a location from Romania in order to estimate their abundance and seasonal variation in correlation with environmental and anthropic factors. From May to October 2017, eight premises with different animal species were sampled for sand flies in a household from Fundătura village, Vaslui County, in North-Eastern Romania. Animal-related data, shelter-related data, and climatic parameters were recorded. All (n = 150) collected sand flies were Phlebotomus perfiliewi. A mono-modal type of abundance trend has been recorded (a single peak at the beginning of August). The first day of capture was in mid-July. The total number of females during the peak season was significantly higher than the total number of males. The highest percentage of males was recorded at the beginning and at the end of the sand fly activity. Only the traps placed in the poultry enclosure built from clay and wood were positive. A strong positive correlation was recorded between the total number of collected sand flies and the minimum and the maximum temperature. The analysis of the climatic data shows that the first presence of sand flies was registered only after the average minimum temperature for the previous 7 days was above 15 °C.

Background A study conducted at the International Airport of Cluj-Napoca, Romania, with the aim of investigating the presence/absence of invasive Aedes mosquito species resulted in finding Aedes japonicus japonicus (Theobald 1901) eggs in one of the ovitraps placed on site. Methods The study was carried out between 30 June and 29 September 2020. On 24 August, 26 eggs were collected and later hatched at the University of Agricultural Sciences and Veterinary Medicine of Cluj-Napoca’s insectary. On 15 October another adult female Ae. japonicus was caught entering a building in the center of the city, about 7 km from the first sampling spot. Results The mosquitoes were identified morphologically and confirmed by molecular analysis, based on the genetic analysis of the mitochondrial gene cytochrome c oxidase subunit 1 (COI). Conclusion This is the first report of the species in Romania, highlighting the need for surveillance and implemented control methods. However, in Romania to our knowledge only Aedes albopictus has been established; further studies are required to learn about this new invasive species' status in Romania. Graphical Abstract

Over the recent years, the communication and collaboration based on online applications has been ubiquitous, being used in teaching, learning and research. In this context, the present study analyses the attitudes and perceptions of the teaching staff and researchers from several higher education institutions in Romania with respect to online collaboration and communication applications, and the impact these applications have on their work (teaching and research). The findings have revealed that the email is still the main communication and collaboration application in both teaching and research, but other, newer applications are not far behind. The extent to which these applications are accepted and used seem to depend directly on personal variables, the most significant ones being the technology anxiety and self-efficacy. The relationship between personality traits and the use of online communication and collaboration applications in the professional academic life has been shown to be mediated by work engagement, which enhances the teachers' personal resources, enhancing their levels of achievement. The findings have also demonstrated that the use of online communication and collaboration applications is part of the factors predicting the teachers' and researchers’ success in academic life.

The ownership of smartphones has become usual, research showing associations between smartphone usage, addiction, and the users' individual characteristics. Our first objective is to examine the short form of Smartphone Addiction Scale. We also aimed to examine the relationships between smartphone addiction and the use of various smartphone applications. The findings show that the Smartphone Addiction Scale has good psychometric qualities. The number of hours spent using the smartphone, its general use, the positive attitudes towards it and the anxiety without technology mediate the relation between personality traits and the risk for addiction. Neuroticism, openness and conscientiousness predict the risk for smartphone addiction negatively. Although the present research is conducted in a new cultural context, the findings confirm several privious studies. The usefulness of technology cannot be challenged, but we believe it is necessary to pay more attention to the young people in lower educational cycles to prevent the excessive use of smartphones.

The aim of the study was to evaluate our practice of self-directed learning (SDL) among pre-university students in Malaysia. Respondents provided data on their previous school learning experiences besides present SDL experiences in college. We carried out exploratory factor analysis based on the school data. We did a confirmatory factor analysis using College SDL experiences of students. Given high similarities between the measurement models, we decided to use the original structure of the instrument. Students provided feedback using a questionnaire based on Prociuk’s. A large majority declared that they needed SDL experiences which they lacked while at school. The study also showed that students had rated their SDL experiences in college more positively than in school, on four factors of SDL experiences. Pearson correlations showed that “knowledgeable and organised teachers” and “promotion of active learning” correlated significantly with students’ current satisfaction with SDL in college.

BACKGROUND: Currently considered an occupational disease, the burnout syndrome affects 13–27% of the active population in multiple occupational sectors of the modern world. OBJECTIVES: Considering the burnout syndrome from the new perspective of the predictive, preventive, personalized medicine concept as a pathological entity with a predictable appearance and evolution which allows a preventive approach and a personalized therapy, the main objective of the study is to highlight the possibility of psychotherapeutic interventions for producing measurable psychological changes in order to decrease the burnout level of hospital nurses. METHOD: The research design is experimental, the independent variable being the participation or non-participation of nurses in psychotherapeutic sessions where specific classical psychodrama techniques are originally used. Nurses previously identified with medium or high levels of burnout participated in the clinical study, split into two groups: the experimental one, with 150-min weekly sessions, and the control one, without any intervention. Pre- and post-intervention questionnaires were administered to the members of both groups. RESULTS: The statistical analysis of the differences between pre- and post-intervention revealed (a) the decrease of the levels of personal burnout and of burnout generated by the working conditions and (b) the decrease of the depression and of anxiety on four dimensions (self-awareness, ergic tension, veiled and general anxiety). CONCLUSIONS: The classical psychodrama method can be an effective solution in the prophylaxis and treatment of the burnout syndrome. The multidisciplinary approach according to the PPPM concept including changes of the environmental factors within the professional framework associated with stress control programmes can be promising solutions for the management of this syndrome.

This article presents a tool that provides reliable scores for studying the school climate from the students’ perspective, created for the Romanian context. The main aim of the article is to present the psychometric properties of the instrument. The participants were 605 students, enrolled in four secondary schools and four high schools, from an urban area. The exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses revealed a seven-factor structure: student–teacher relationships, headmaster’s involvement in school life, student–student relationships, school satisfaction, achievement motivation, student–form teacher relationship, and perceived safety. The results revealed that gender, school location, and parents’ educational level could significantly predict school performances.

Academic dishonesty in higher education is an increasingly visible problem throughout the world and in Romania in particular. A total of 1127 university students from six public Romanian universities were surveyed for their experiences and beliefs with 22 behaviors that might be considered academically dishonest. A five-factor solution to the frequencies of these behaviors was interpretable and accounted for more than half of the total variance. How acceptable students believed the behaviors were and how often students witnessed other students engage in these behaviors were consistent predictors of the frequency of the behaviors, with small to medium effect sizes. Demographic predictors of these behaviors, including gender, academic specialty, year in school, institution, grade average, and scholarship status, predicted very little variance in the behaviors. Implications and limitations of the study, as well as limitations of research in the field, are discussed.

BACKGROUND: The burnout syndrome is characterized by emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and lack of personal accomplishment. It was identified in some professional categories, the most often being affected those in public health services. OBJECTIVES: This study mainly aims to identify and analyze the value of the personality traits and work characteristics as predictive factors for the occurrence of the burnout syndrome in nurses, under the new approach of predictive, preventive, and personalized medicine. METHOD: A total of 192 nurses were included in the study. The NEO-Five-Factor Inventory, the Copenhagen Burnout Inventory, and the Inventory of Nursing Work Characteristics were administered to all of the participants. RESULTS: Some personality traits proved to be predictive factors for the occurrence of the burnout syndrome. Neuroticism, negative self-esteem, and negative emotionality predict burnout vulnerability. The negative correlations between sociability and the burnout dimensions show that the positive affectivity of the extraverted individuals and the strong positive orientation of the extraverts towards others are protective factors against burnout. There are also significant associations between certain personality traits and nursing work characteristics (work overload, the existence of problems in the department, and satisfaction in the professional and family life), which could be defined, also, as predictive factors for burnout. CONCLUSIONS: This study confirms the influence of the Big Five personality traits and nursing work characteristics as predictive factors of the burnout occurrence, opening real possibilities to perform a targeted prevention and provide personalized interventions as organizational services.

The subject of electromagnetic compatibility is a compulsory one, taught to students from electrical engineering and applied electronics study programmes. We present a comparative study between the current teaching method of shielding calculation and a new simulation-based teaching approach. In the academic year 2013–2014, the effectiveness of the new method was evaluated by analyzing the answers provided by the students to the items in a questionnaire along with their final lab test scores.

This research investigates the relationship between emotional intelligence, burnout and satisfaction with life among university students. Emotional intelligence is related to better adjustment or success in academic settings. High levels of emotional intelligence are associated with lower levels of anxiety, stress, burnout and with higher levels of satisfaction with life. The results led to the idea of a mediation model, academic burnout mediating the relationship between emotional intelligence and life satisfaction. Overall, the results of this study highlighted the possibility to identify students who are at risk regarding their high level of burnout or their low level of life satisfaction.

The main objective of this study was to evaluate the factor structure of the DSQ-40 on a non-clinical sample of students. The participants were investigated with the adapted DSQ-40 and with the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire. Alfa Cronbach coefficients revealed a high internal consistency for the entire scale, but smaller for the mature and neurotic defenses scales. The present findings support the applicability of the Romanian version of DSQ-40 within the Romanian non-clinical population. However, the factor structure of the Romanian version needs further exploration, regarding the mature and neurotic defenses factors.

The research aims to explore the relationship between the entrepreneurial traits and the involvement in the development of entrepreneurial competences by means of training courses offered by the university. Significant relationships were identified between entrepreneurial potential and the following personality variables: entrepreneurial skills, resources organization, internal locus of control, and creativity. No significant relationship between average risk propensity and entrepreneurial potential was identified. The participants with high entrepreneurial potential proved to be more aware of the discrepancy in this respect.

In Communist Romania, 9,452 women died between 1966 and 1989 from failed attempts to terminate pregnancies (Draghici 2004). In the early 1990s, Romania recorded the highest maternal death rates in Europe (Population Reference Bureau 2003, 2). Severing access to legal abortion was instrumental in opening up venues where women could terminate their pregnancies through illegal means: "Although the abortion rate fell to 78 abortions per 1,000 women aged 15-44 by 1996, it remains by far the highest in Europe" (United Nations 2002). The legal prohibition against sexual and contraceptive rights at this time transformed abortions into de facto practices of active citizenship. In her essay, "Gendering Dissent: Of Bodies and Minds, Survival and Opposition Under Communism," Maria Bucur-Deckard argues that women's decisions to abort their fetuses constituted acts of dissidence, whether this decision stemmed from a refusal to engage in politics, from a disagreement with mainstream politics, from commitment to democracy, or from simply "acting while fully aware of the legal repressive consequences of ones actions" (Bucur-Deckard 2008, 12-22). Bucur-Deckard s analysis provides the means to understand abortion in the Romanian context in relation to Holloway Sparks s notion of dissident or democratic citizenship. Sparks defines dissident citizenship as "the practices of marginalized citizens who publicly contest prevailing arrangements of power by means of oppositional democratic practices that augment or replace institutionalized channels of democratic opposition when those channels are inadequate or unavailable" (Sparks 1997, 75). Building on Bucur-Deckard s and Sparks work, I am interested in analyzing representations of abortion as dissident citizenship in Cristian Mungiu s movie 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days (2007) and Gabriela Adamesteanus story "A Few Days in the Hospital" (1989), both of which take place during the final years of Communist rule in Romania.1 I proceed from the premise that some pregnant women who considered abortion in Communist Romania defied, among others, the states attempt to define their wombs as national spaces, that is, the site for the literal reproduction of future citizens.2 Their transgressing the law and risking their lives identified their wombs as the place of dissidence, and their bodies the first location where the clandestine space begins to take shape. Through such courageous abortive acts, these women reclaimed their ruined bodies and, in so doing, created what Sparks calls "channels of democratic opposition/ starting with the very site of maternity as an individual choice that they regain. Although not all women who terminated their pregnancies engaged in conscious political acts, they were well aware of the possible consequences that could have ruined their freedom and their public and private lives and those of the individuals witnessing the felony. In this way, abortion requires a certain amount of courage, which itself is the motor for dissident citizenship that "[contests] prevailing arrangements of power" (Sparks 1997, 75) and implements itself through the creation of clandestine spaces. Central to my analysis of gendered dissident citizenship is therefore this particular concept of the clandestine space, a transient zone of movement that becomes the site where women resist the states regulation of their bodies. Such a space is a conglomerate where one is both alone and simultaneously accompanied by all other women performing their dissent. I begin this essay by contextualizing my readings of Mungiu s film and Adamesteanus story as cultural texts and describing the background of the pronatalist policies imposed during the Romanian Communist regime prior to 1989. In order to underline "the arrangements of power" (Sparks 1997, 75) that refuse women primary rights over their own bodies, I also define the concept of citizenship prescribed by Communism. In the following section I explain my use of "clandestineness," the term for a category that highlights the patriarchal continuities of the private and public spheres, which are sometimes deemed as separate. …

It is well established that bacteria engage in social behavior and form networked communities via molecular signaling. However, most studies published to date focus on the intracellular molecular networks rather than the intercellular networks formed across strains and species. Therefore, in this paper, we define for the first time a bacteria intercellular network and describe its dynamics and contribution to biofilm formation. We apply our methods to a heterogeneous bacteria population consisting of strains that are often identified from clinical isolates, namely, the wild-type (co-operator), and its signal-blind and signal-negative (cheater) mutants. We analyze the network dynamics and biofilm metrics, showing that our method can effectively reveal the underlying intercellular communication process and community organization within the biofilm. We claim that the application of social and network sciences to understanding bacteria population dynamics can aid in developing better drugs to control the many pathogenic bacteria that use social interactions to cause infections.

This study investigated the effect of maternal copper and maternal cadmium exposure on life history variables and population dynamics in a live-bearing fish species. Gravid females were exposed to copper, cadmium, or background metal levels (control); maternal transfer of the metals was previously demonstrated using the exact same design. Each female’s first brood, born after the exposure, was subdivided into two groups. One group was raised in the laboratory, to assess time-to and size-at sexual maturity, reproductive output and other life history variables. Offspring from the other group were used to start four mesocosm populations for each treatment. These populations were sampled monthly, for about 18 months, to assess population dynamics. For the laboratory-reared fish, offspring of copper-exposed females reached sexual maturity at a smaller size than did offspring from the other treatments. Maternal copper exposure and maternal cadmium exposure both resulted in fewer broods and an increase in gestation time. No impacts were detected for brood size, inter-brood interval, time-to-sexual-maturity, or life span. In the greenhouse population study, no effect of maternal copper or cadmium exposure was evident for population parameters, other than that the relative abundance of juveniles and/or newborns was reduced in populations established with offspring of the exposed females. This study provided evidence that a short-term metal exposure of gravid females can negatively affect their offspring’s life history variables and potentially influence population dynamics in a life-bearing fish species.

Assessment not only measures progress but also help e-instructors to identify effective assessment strategies. Online courses make possible new forms of working and learning together that would be difficult to use in the classroom-based course. Also, high quality formative assessment has a positive effect on student learning. The present study aims to investigate differences between online evaluation of learning and traditional evaluation. We also investigated the association between the various forms of evaluation, test anxiety and self-efficacy. The participants were undergraduate students at the Faculty of Psychology and Education Sciences, enrolled in online Moodle courses and non-enrolled students. For an entire semester, the students enrolled in online Moodle courses and completed in the Moodle format quizzes, as an instrument of formative assessment. For the non-enrolled sample, the evaluation was administered in a paper-pencil format, the traditional version. We used three scales; two of them were adapted from MSLQ (The Motivated Strategies for Learning Scale): - The Test Anxiety Scale (adapted from MSLQ) - The Academic Self Efficacy scale (adapted from MSLQ) - Attitudes towards online assessment scale The first two scales were administered before a formative assessment test for the subject matter Essential of psychological testing. The test was a 35 items quiz. The quiz was administered online using Moodle format for one group of students, and paper pencil for the second group. The content of the quiz was the same for both groups. The online students received after the test a third questionnaire regarding their satisfaction with the online assessment format. The results showed that there are no differences regarding the academic performances (the grades at the test) between the two groups of students, but the test anxiety and the self-efficacy were different, online students reporting higher levels of anxiety before taking the test and lower levels of self-efficacy. Although at the end of the test, online students reported a high satisfaction for the online assessment. The final questionnaire includes items such as: "My level of computer literacy limited my performance in the online assessment", "I felt under pressure taking the exam this way", "I enjoyed the exam process", "I would rather take the traditional exam, if I can choose". The results can be used in the implementation of future assessment methods, in order to reduce the test anxiety and to increase academic self-efficacy.

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is one of the neoplasic diseases that meet the requirements to become the target of surveillance in a screening program: it is a frequent condition; it has a high rate of mortality; it affects a very well defined at risk population (chronic liver diseases patients). This population can be closely followed-up using an ultrasonography method (US). Therefore, the improvement of the screening and surveillance system for the patients at risk for HCC is needed, so the early diagnosis is increased, as well as the chance for an efficient and curative therapeutic intervention. A possible choice would be a telemedicine network for the US screening of a large number of chronic liver disease patients for the early detection of HCC.

Neoplasic diseases are widely recognized as extremely disabling, requiring in advanced stages a large amount of medical, technical, and financial support and, eventually, leading to death. This is why it is recommended to early diagnose them, gaining time for proper care and/or cure. Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is one of these neoplasic diseases, meeting the requirements to become the target of a close surveillance: it is a frequent condition; it has a high rate of mortality; it affects a very well defined at risk population (chronic liver diseases patients). This population can be closely followed-up using a sensitive and easily accepted method (ultrasonography - US). Under these circumstances, the improvement of the screening and surveillance system for the patients at risk for HCC is needed, so the early diagnosis is increased, as well as the chance for an efficient and curative therapeutic intervention. A possible choice would be a telemedicine network for the US screening of a large number of chronic liver disease patients (especially liver cirrhosis) for the early detection of HCC.

Our study aims to highlight the relationship between students’ previous academic performances, psychological characteristics of the learning motivation, learning strategies, and the first year academic adjustment. We suppose that previous academic achievement, self regulated learning strategies and motivational orientations predict academic adjustment. The hierarchical regression technique highlighted that self regulated learning strategies, academic self efficacy and test anxiety are predictors of academic adjustment, the strongest predictors being the metacognitive regulation strategies.

Background Canine leishmaniasis is a severe, potentially life-threatening, systemic vector-borne disease of dogs caused by protozoan parasites of the genus Leishmania. Romania has been traditionally regarded as a non-endemic country for leishmaniasis with sporadic human disease cases. However, the recent report of an autochthonous canine leishmaniasis case (the first in the last 80 years) suggested the presence of an infection focus in the area of Râmnicu Vâlcea. The present study describes a survey of canine leishmaniasis in this geographical area with comparison to a georeferenced dataset of sand fly distribution based on historical literature records. Methods The study was carried out in Râmnicu Vâlcea and included samples (serum, blood and conjunctival swabs) collected from 80 dogs including client-owned dogs from two local practices and dogs from two public shelters. Serum anti-leishmanial antibodies were assessed by ELISA. All blood and conjunctival samples were assessed by real-time quantitative PCR, targeting the leishmanial kinetoplast minicircle DNA. Results Three dogs (3.7 %) were seropositive and another four (5.0 %) showed borderline results indicative of exposure or infection. TaqMan PCR was performed for all dogs, on both blood and conjunctival swabs. Seven dogs (8.7 %) were positive by conjunctival swab PCR and one dog (1.2 %) by blood PCR. None of the positive dogs presented clinical signs compatible with canine leishmaniasis. Conclusions This is the first study evaluating canine leishmaniasis in a dog population in Romania by both highly sensitive PCR and serology. Although the prevalence was relatively low compared to other endemic regions, our results clearly demonstrate the presence of a canine leishmaniasis focus in Romania. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s13071-016-1583-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.