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The foreign language class had to be re-invented during the last decade. This was mainly the result of the rapid development of technology. Foreign language teachers may have come to realize that the world was changing at full speed and, because of that, they had to keep themselves updated in order to face the challenges of the new world. The aim of this paper is to show how technology and the online medium have come to be used in the ESP classes (English for Specific Purposes – Medical English taught to medical students at the “Grigore T. Popa” University of Medicine, Iasi, Romania). The paper also discusses the role of the English language in the context of being the lingua franca of the Internet. In the latest years, the ESP classes have changed out of this necessity to understand the more complex role of the English teacher. Old methodologies were no longer sufficient to transfer an updated amount of information to our students. Therefore the paper also discusses how ESP teachers have started to use English as a medium of instruction in order to touch upon some various and relevant topics related to the medical field. In the new economy of things, by means of the English language, students may get useful knowledge related to their future profession, the ESP class becoming thus an opportunity to practice interdisciplinarity. Besides teaching ESP, we should also focus on how English may be used in order to make our students more aware of the challenges of their future profession and the impact and of the ways in which technology might have a great impact upon their medical activity.
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The professional biography of Nikola Hadzhi Slavchev – one of the pioneers of the brewing industry in our country is the embodiment of the life maxim that success begins with a fresh start. However, the guarantees for this are rooted in the leadership qualities of the entrepreneur – measured risk, effective solutions for the production and marketing, and a clear vision for the future. The well-educated Nikola h. Slavchev, a school alumnus of Robert College in Constantinople and the Military School in Sofia, changed his life in 1892, taking responsibility for his father’s heritage. Initially, the Hadzhi Slavchevi brothers in partnership with Ivan Halachev established a general partnership for the production and trading of beer. In 1906 the partnership was broken down. The crisis was solved by Nikola hadzhi Slavchev. He gathered the assets and liabilities of the company, invested his capital in the establishment of a limited company “Nikola Hadzhi Slavchev”. As an unlimitedly responsible member, he lead thoughtfully the brewing company until 1923. During the Balkan wars and the World War I (1912–1918), the production and consumption of beer increased enormously and the factory in Turnovo town became one of the most sought-after partners. In parallel with this activity Nikola h. Slavchev was a concessionaire of the coal mine “LEV” in the region of Tryavna. He made the first attempts to create a housing fund for his workers. Donation was not alien to him either. During his lifetime, he established a trustee fund for the education of poor children and support for cultural and educational institutions.
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As construction proves the most indicative economic marker, the correlation between architecture and economics outlines the overall political and economic context as the major factors that determined the architectural outlook of Veliko Turnovo and reveals symptomatic facts about the professional activities of the architects who worked there during the period of the Third Bulgarian State (1878-1944). The entrepreneurial activities of the Bulgarian architects, who constituted the modern townscape of Veliko Turnovo, are analyzed within the political, economic and legislative context in order to reveal concrete professional careers’ details. Comparison with the undertakings of the architects, born in Veliko Turnovo and the region, who migrated to other towns, serves as a base for summarizing major tendencies in the architectural profession in the period.
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This article reveals the activities of the Svishtov City Municipality related to the award of public contracts awarded through a public tender. The contracts concluded with the private entrepreneurs are considered, the difficulties in the realization of the projects are revealed. The research is based mainly on the valuable information from the preserved archives of the Svishtov city administration. Information from the State Gazette was attracted, as well as some local periodicals. Data from previous studies on the socio-economic development after the Liberation, as well as from local lore studies, were also used. The available information shows that, in general, local entrepreneurs do not have a strong interest in the public procurement of the Svishtov city administration. This is one of the reasons for the lack of arranged auctions, corrupt deals and benefits for people close to the government.
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Due to the spread of the Covid-19 virus, all countries began to introduce quarantine measures, which led to the closure of all higher education institution indefinitely. They were forced to switch to a distance learning process in a short time. The readiness for this process was different, purely technical problems arose - the lack of the Internet, computers, educational materials on the network. And most importantly, the teachers are not ready for distance learning. The IT industry was the first to respond to the needs of teachers and students in physical culture and sports: the power of channels was increased, a large number of services and tools for teaching appeared. For video conferencing, the ZOOM tool turned out to be very popular, a large number of blogs with training recommendations were published on social networks, distance courses were held on the development of training resources and the organization of training. After the weakening of quarantine in the world, it became clear that humanity has entered a new stage of development, where distance learning will play a big role. Therefore, it is important to analyze the results of the distance learning process and determine the priority ways of developing online education in training future managers of physical culture and sports. The article is devoted to the problems of using distance work in the training of future managers of physical culture and sports.
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The text describes the essence of tourism. The statistical researches for the development of tourism and its digitalization are considered. The characteristics of the old and the new tourist are analyzed and compared. Statistical data related to the number of tourists who visited Bulgaria for the period from January 2019 to July 2021 are presented. Visits to Bulgaria as a tourist destination are considered in comparison with the visits of tourists from other countries. The number of Bulgarian tourists visiting other countries is also reported.
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This article wishes to investigate the phenomenon of folk music research in relationship to archive-specific activities, more precisely to the context of the technological development that led to the digitalization of archives. The importance of this endeavour is reflected by the multiple benefits offered by an archive comprising folk music content that goes through a digitization process. In the introduction, I offer an explanation of certain terms that describe the central points of this research, as well as some neologisms that are frequently used in the process of technological development (digitalization vs. digitization). I provide a brief descriptive framework of the beneficial effects brought about by the involvement of digital technologies in the ethnomusicological research, which are related to the study of an archive. Thereafter, I highlight the contribution made by Constantin Brăiloiu by means of his professional pursuits, to the development of folkloristics, referring mainly to the founding of Archives Internationales de Musique Populaire. Based on my personal experience, I present the research conducted in the Geneva archives and present its content. By describing the “steps” that preceded the visit, the archives structures by providing personal observations, we can regard this paper as a brief handbook, the perusal of which may be helpful before a research visit to this important archive.
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Objective: The article presents the results of experimental research on the influence of various levels of motivational synergy (the combination of external and internal motivation) on the effectiveness of motivating people to do creative work under time pressure and in remote conditions. Research Design & Methods: The study used a pre-experimental, static group scheme covering 107 people. Three hypotheses on various degrees of the motivational synergy were verified for the criteria of evaluating the products of creative work. The criteria included originality, fluidity, and ideational flexibility. Findings: The research shows that, when fully using motivational synergy, remote motivation has a bigger impact on ideational fluidity than when it does not. Implications / Recommendations: The conclusions of the research assess the impact of full and incomplete motivational synergy in remote conditions on ideational fluidity and the diversity of the effects of creative work. Contribution: The article contributes to the research on motivational synergy as it pertains to creative work, in remote conditions, using an experiment. Thus, it goes beyond the exclusive opposition of external and internal motivation for this type of work, referring to modules of experience. This is the novel contribution of the work. The results can be used to program processes for developing, appraising, and remunerating employees.
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The growing use of electronic devices along with the anxiety resulting from the COVID19 pandemic set the ground for cybercriminals to take advantage of a larger number of victims and undertake their massive phishing campaigns. Technical measures are widely developed, and the human factor is still the weakest link in the chain. Whilst existing literature suggests that the effect of neuroticism, as one of the Big-Five personality traits, might play an important role in human behaviour in the phishing context, results do not provide uniform outcomes with regards to the influence of this trait in phishing victimisation. With the aim to analyse those results, this article provides a synthesis of the studies aimed at improving the understanding of this trait, and collects evidence that the small samples size used in most of the studies along with their lack of uniformity are behind the contradictory conclusions found on the role of neuroticism and human susceptibility to phishing attacks.
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The article uses a case-study of a Slovenian secondary school to discuss national specifics and European trajectories of entrepreneurship education. It is based on an historical overview of its development in Slovenia and narrative interviews with educators, headmasters, mentors, and students to illustrate how educational opportunities shape students’ agency. Adding to the standard argument of the neoliberalisation of contemporary education in which students are seen as human capital, the article analyses how the school works with them in regular programmes and extracurricular activities to avoid neoliberal labelling. It fosters volunteering, addresses local problems, and encourages the critical assessment of the need to intervene.
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The paper outlines various concepts of rationality, their characteristics and consequences. In the first, most general part, the metaphysical, instrumental and discursive rationality is distinguished. The following part focuses on instrumental rationality and the rational choice theory and ordinal and cardinal utility, expected utility and game theory, respectively. All those concepts are summarised as being the most mathematically elegant and mostly decidable and helpful in the decision-making process. Giving primacy to individual preferences and withholding the judgment on their “objective” value, they are also devoid of double standards. They are, however, strongly normative and weakly coincide with actual agents’ behaviour. Empirical findings on agents’ decision making seem to demonstrate their irrationality, unless we introduce into the analysis different concepts of rationality, namely based on costs efficient heuristics, inclusive fitness and ecological rationality. They are discussed respectively, and although they seem better to explain the set of humans’ seemingly irrational behaviour, they are likely week in predicting that behaviour. They are also losing their normative dimension and thus cease to be helpful in decision making. Applying the particular theory of rationality, either descriptively or normatively, seems to depend strongly on the environment, which can be characterised by its extension from a small to a large world. The more the small world’s features an environment reveals, the more effective is the application of the particular model of rationality. Beyond the small worlds, rule stochasticity, underspecification and misspecification and the only reasonable method are consecutive trials and errors, which eventually may reduce the large world to the small one.
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The paper addresses some issues related to the status of agricultural activity in the light of the ‘Business Constitution.’ It discusses the conditions that an individual needs to meet in order to become an entrepreneur in the context of the Entrepreneurs’ Law, and the scope, categories and nature of exemptions to the application of economic activity regulations. The concepts of agricultural activity provide a background for these considerations. Also, this paper makes an attempt to answer the question of whether, in the light of legal acts included in the ‘Business Constitution,’ an agricultural activity can be considered an economic activity and a farmer, who is a natural person, can be considered an entrepreneur. The above classification is related to the problem of applying the ‘Business Constitution’ to agricultural activities. The author concludes that the new legal regulation comprehensively governs matters related to the establishment and pursuit of an economic activity, and, through the legal instruments it implements, helps entrepreneurs to support the development of economic activity. The definition of entrepreneur provided for in the Entrepreneurs’ Law is of a more general and universal dimension. The author finds that in some cases, the legislator extended the definition of agricultural production activity with the sale of partially processed plant and animal products made by the farmer. The paper also addressed the classification of agricultural producers by production size and by the exemptions applicable to certain operators.
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The cooperative movement has played a significant role in increasing the competitiveness of the economy and has promoted the European values of solidarity, self-government and democracy. In recent years, the cooperative idea has been linked with the local energy sector – in Europe and in Poland. The decentralization of energy production to local communities – thanks to the incredible development of new technologies in renewable energy – is now becoming a standard in Western Europe. These trends have also been visible in Poland for some time. Unfortunately, in Polish conditions the institution of cooperatives, including energy cooperatives, is negatively associated with the communist era. The main research question, around which the considerations in this article revolve, is as follows – why, despite the existence of a legal basis in Poland from 2016, energy cooperatives have not been created. The article will analyse the legal regulations relating to the functioning of the energy cooperative, taking into account its current status in the energy law.
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EU planning for the years 2014–2020 introduced a new instrument for financing territorial cohesion policy – namely Integrated Territorial Investments (ITI). There is a notable lack of analyses concerning the evaluation of Poland’s use of this innovative instrument for the uptake of EU funds. The aim of the article is to evaluate the implementation of ITI in Poland in the context of the system of obtaining and spending EU funds for the territorial cohesion policy in the years 2014−2020. The analyses were carried out in a normative economic perspective using secondary data on EU funds within the framework of regional operational programs. The research shows that the implementation of ITI in Poland has had the intended effect of meeting the conditions for obtaining EU funds for integrated territorial investments. However, this opportunity was not fully exploited due to the lack of tradition of cooperation between local government units other than in urban functional areas. Furthermore, the implementation of ITI in Poland indicates the danger of evaluating the effects of ITI in the context of contracting or certification of EU funds, which is not in line with the European Commission’s guidelines for this instrument. Thus, the 2014–2020 period was not fully used by Polish beneficiaries to prepare for the new rules for receiving EU funds under the regional cohesion policy.
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Modern reality is oriented towards the effectiveness of achieving goals and the optimization of busi-ness processes. Organizations are increasingly looking for ways to create a competitive advantage in the area of organizational culture, interpersonal relations, relational capital, etc. There is a question of whether economic entities that prosper on the market, such as corporations, persuade their employees to adopt specific pro-innovation behaviours. The research was carried out on a representative sample of 1,100 micro, small and medium-sized enterprises in the West Pomeranian Voivodeship. The basic method used in this research is the quantitative method (CATI – computer-assisted tele-phone interviewing). The results indicate that people with experience of employment in corporations exhibit behaviours proving the multiplication of social capital, based on relations with the companies in which they were employed. Moreover, this group showed a greater inclination to adopt pro-innovation behaviour than the rest. The research results indicate the effect of socialization corporations to a specific type of business behaviours. It is also an exemplification of the concept of social capital and its conversion to other forms.
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Scientific journals are and probably will remain the key research communication channel. In the social sciences and humanities, journals will not eliminate or marginalize books (monographs). Although measuring research results by means of lists and points is probably necessary, attempts should be made to at least counteract the downsides of running after points and impactitis. Publishing in prestigious international journals in English is important for participation in international research, but good journals in Polish should also be supported, especially those focused on the social sciences and humanities and addressing issues associated with culture and society. There are no strong arguments for the bureaucratic assigning of scientific disciplines to journals on the Minister’s list, and multidisciplinary journals should be supported. Open access to scientific journals has advantages, but it raises concerns about equal access of authors from poorer countries, and about quality. The joint efforts of researchers, publishers and governments are needed to fight against the pathology of predatory journals. Scientific journals in the field of the social sciences and humanities could accept shorter, concise texts, taking the role of books in these sciences into account.
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A triple goal was set for this article: (i) identifying the functions fulfilled by scientific journals in the system of science and higher education in Poland; (ii) diagnosis and assessment of the performance of the evaluation function by the current system of journal evaluation – a critical analysis of the applicable solutions; (iii) outlining the directions of the evolution of the journal evaluation system in Poland. As far as the methodology is concerned, a critical analysis of the literature on the subject as well as a critical analysis and evaluation of applicable legal regulations played a leading role. Moreover, elements of the diagnostic approach (the description and assessment of existing solutions) and the prognostic / prospective approach (an outline of proposed changes to existing solutions) were used in the considerations. Additionally, the work uses the method of legal and dogmatic analysis of legal provisions, which allows for a critical assessment of the legislator's intentions.
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The study aims to explore the divergences around the implementation of the Basel III agreement, since this agreement is considered the core of the international regulatory response to the financial crisis, setting the strictest criteria for capital structure and risk assessment. This paper explains the current level of legislation that applies in Kosovo, as well as possible divergences with the criteria set by Basel III. It is argued that the national authority, explicitly the CBK, to decide on the implementation of Basel III, had to agree on three aspects and potentially conflicting between them: the stability of the banking sector, competition, and care for economic growth. Finally, the study concluded that Kosovo is implementing Basel III regulations with greater ease and attention, contributing to banking sector stability, competitiveness, and economic growth.
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