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Nature along with its functioning way has become a role model for the modern scientists and engineers. This paper provides an overview of the most important interdisciplinary scientific disciplines, in which scientific studies, designs and innovations are inspired by solutions existing in the natural world. This paper – based on examples taken from the world around us – presents the basic methods and algorithms, which in their action refer to biological laws. Moreover, examples of innovative research directions and inventions imitating the functioning of living organisms have been presented.
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The aim of the present study is to analyze the impact of the decrease in oil prices on the general budget of Iraq and to raise awareness over the importance of activating non-oil income sources in order to provide resources for the budget. The study reached several conclusions from which the most important was that the volatility of oil prices between 1921 and 2012 generated a lot of confusion regarding public budgets of Iraq, as well as real challenges, such as budget surplus or deficit. The research concludes that it is necessary to activate alternative sources of income, or non-oil resources, for financing the general budget in Iraq, especially taxes, in addition to the development of productive and service sectors.
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The countries of the world, especially the developing countries, including the Gulf countries, which suffer from imbalances in the diversification of sources of financing their public budgets, have realized their dependence on a single budget source. This fact comes from the existence of large natural wealth, primarily oil, which resulted in single-source budget financing. The danger of relying on this resource is linked to the prices of international markets, fluctuations in prices and the impact on the public budget in these countries, which prompted the International Monetary Fund to issue warnings for the diversification of sources of funding in the public budget in order to handle these imbalances. Therefore, many countries have sought to implement a strategy to successfully diversify sources of finance by adopting a package of reforms aimed at raising the contribution level of the economic sectors and improving the efficiency of these sectors, especially the manufacturing sector. It is important that in the efforts of diversifying the sources of funding in the public budget, all countries should rely on the expertise and competencies of their economy planners. Many countries have implemented such plans and thus achieved economic developments reflected in reaching an acceptable degree of diversification of sources of funding, to ensure continuity and sustainability of the public budget.
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This present investigation examined the degree to which humor, among various characteristics, is desired in two types of relational partners. We expected to find that humor would be perceived as more desirable (or necessary) for a romantic relationship than friendship. We also tested whether there were significant gender differences in assessing humor in these two types of relational partners. Additionally, we attempted to assess whether a lower discrepancy between the scores of the ideal and actual partner regarding sense of humor in romantic relationships, indicates a higher dyadic adjustment. The participants (n=120) indicated their preferences for various attributes (among which was sense of humor), in either an ideal partner, actual partner or best friend on a Five-point Likert-type scale. In order to assess dyadic adjustment, the participants filled in the revised Dyadic Adjustment Form [1]. Sense of humor was rated as a significantly more important (necessary) characteristic in romantic relationships than friendships. As regards to gender differences, no significant differences were found for sense of humor, and the discrepancy of assessment sense of humor in both cases (ideal partner vs actual partner) did not significantly correlate with global dyadic adjustment or with any of its dimensions. The results suggest that a sense of humor is a characteristic acknowledged as important across relationship types, and more in-depth investigations should be advanced.
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The regression analysis is statistical method of extensive use, which illustrates the relationship between the explanatory variables and the dependent variable in the form of a model useful in the interpretation of scientific phenomenon, bringing also benefits to society. In this paper we study the most important factors affecting the cost production of cement (Muthanna Factory) by using the ridge regression. The factors are described as follows: we consider the cost of production amount as response variable and factors that affect or may affect the explanatory variables are labor, Price per ton, Electric power, Quantity consumed. They all suffer from high correlation, indicating a problem of multicollinearity .The data analysis is included in the study of the ridge regression as the best approach in case of a multicollinearity problem in the context of financial and economic data being associated with each other often. We used R packages (MASS).
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The factorial of experiments assume that the response variable is a distributed one with normal distribution, thus, the dependence of the technique of analysis of variance (ANOVA), assumes the response variable are normally distributed. However, there are many situations where the response variable is non-normal. There are many methods that help us process this problem, the log transformation method for the responses due to the fact that distribution of this responses is non- normal. In this paper we are studying the most important factors affecting the production of the Iraqi dates using factorial experiments. The five factors have been described as the following: (Fertilizers, Dates Type, Number of times vaccinate, Watering the Palm, Pesticides) and each factor has two levels. The ways used to determinate the most important factors are the traditional methods (ANOVA) and adaptive Lasso method for determine important factors. We used program R to analyse the data.
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The article presents an empirical research carried out on a sample of 156 middle and high school teachers from the Republic of Moldova. The study was conducted in two stages: the first stage aiming to investigate to what extent school teachers are affected by burnout and what are the main symptoms they typically manifest in their teaching activity. The second stage was focused on examining a range of organizational and person related burnout factors in accordance with the conceptual framework of organizational health, which suggests adopting a more comprehensive approach to issues related to stress and burnout. Thus teacher’s motivation as a person related factor and the psycho-emotional climate along with the satisfaction of basic needs in the work place as organizational factors were investigated. It was found that majority of teachers display such symptoms of burnout as the feeling of overload due to excessive involvement in their job tasks resulting from their strong need to demonstrate high performance. The lack of control over the results of their teaching activity and the lack of acknowledgement of the efforts invested are other two major symptoms of burnout. Teaches with lower level of burnout demonstrate a stronger motivation for competence, they manage better to satisfy their basic needs of autonomy, competence and relatedness in the organizational context and also perceive as more favorable the psycho-emotional climate in their job place. These teachers stay longer in their profession (have more years of teaching experience) thus demonstrating a higher resilience to stress and burnout. Some suggestions for future research are also provided.
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Designing teams is quite important besides the dedication of the specialists’ team to the design thinking creativity, knowing that results to achieve and reality to build are not the only weights to balance. More, selecting a team is a matter of drafting the project design and following the rules with creativity, and finally, reaching objectives and managing results for the future. Dedication to necessary (professional) specialties is a criterion for first selection. The next criteria are related to the quick understanding of design, innovation and/or customization, speed and difficulties to meet. Designing a building, a project or a research is not very different in architecture field. Each focuses on several successive phases: defining the inputs and correlated contexts; pre-designing the targets-final products and their nature; forming the best team according to best expectations; planning the design. Since planning the design and the design itself are two products that are the dedicated work of the design leader/and PM, the team has to relate to the sense of conceptual, concrete and knowledge contents. The value of the design -understood as its planning as well as drafting- resides in the nature of advanced design thinking. Also the quality of the team derives from pairing specialties/specialists, co-working and the value of collaborative added value to the initial design theme. Mediating the two – teaming and design thinking- as components of performance in Project Management could lead to best/better architectural results, by testing the partial deliverables in reformatting drafting, communication, expectations and long terms maintenance. In parallel it might lead to decreasing the conflicts and saving time in manufacturing and scheduling the processes in between by oriented common targets. The points of convergence and divergence between practice, theory and architectural inquiries will be highlighted within extended article
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The strategic objective of the contemporary era is to increase the intellectual potential of society. Starting from this, the XXI century draws a priority to create a modern industry education, which will become an important area of investment, more advantageous than the development of a science, knowledge and education. The quality of education and training has become an area of particular interest, given, first of all to national gap with the developed countries and the need to make an integrated finality in the European context. European Commission’s concerns regarding the importance of education and vocational training is reflected within the Europe 2020 Strategy by developing and adopting ‘guidelines’ concerning the quality of services provided by educational institutions. In a world rapidly changing, the European Union wishes to become a smart and favourable economy for the inclusion by creating a “knowledge triangle” of education, research and innovation, to function properly and to help young people to improve their skills, essential in terms of competitiveness, equity and social inclusion. Being responsible for preparing young generations of graduates in various fields of knowledge, the university is also responsible for the future of society and of the future state of the nation. Quality of education and training is an essential process of maximum importance for becoming, progress of learners and society at the same time. Among the motivational factors that determine universities to worry about the quality of education and training are: orientation towards performance and increase market competitiveness of universities and graduates of educational services in the market of labour resources; the expansion of investment in education research and process development; European market recognition of qualifications (degrees, diplomas) by institutions in the country; development of an institutional culture of quality, fully involved in obtaining staff performance; increased responsibility for quality of academic benefits.
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The paper presents the results of a psychological and pedagogical study meant to reveal the importance and the shaping value of the spiritual intelligence on the formation/development of the human personality. The theoretical part of the paper presents scientific bases, significations, meanings and orientations regarding the status and structure of the spiritual intelligence. The practical part of the research pursued two objectives: - a survey of the teachers-to-be` perceptions on the personalized understanding of the concept, of their own explorative and self-reflexive behavior generated consequent to applying the Fr. Vaugham questionnaire - which is designed to identify the coefficient of spiritual intelligence; the discussions were also focused on those ways of the spiritual intelligence defined by Zohar and Marshall; - analysis of the reflections of those students participating into this study, on the qualities associated with spiritual intelligence in relation to age, gender, level of education and culture, spiritual maturity, personal experiences, and their opinions on the formative strategies that contributed, on different stages of life, to valuing some transpersonal ways and to understanding the extent to which spiritual intelligence manifests itself in everyone's life. The conclusions of this report highlight the theoretical and explanatory aspects with regard to understanding spiritual intelligence, characteristics and areas of positive forming and development, spiritual paths that have personalized relevance for the young students who took part into our research. The reflections of the respondents and their analysis – that was made together with experts - outline different perspectives on the internalizing of some spiritual values, and on the understanding of the personal experiences, of their own life style, reactions and behaviors, emotions, as well as the great influence of the interpersonal relationships on acquiring higher degrees of spiritual maturity etc
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This paper aims at monitoring the integral training through an efficient control and planning in the development of the female gymnasts’ motor skills complex within a training macro-cycle. For this purpose, an experimental ascertaining study was carried out throughout a training macro-cycle of the Olympic cycle 2013-2016, with a group of 20 athletes (n=10 – experimental group and n=10 – control group) belonging to women’s artistic gymnastics national team of the Republic of Moldova. The following methods were used: bibliographic study; pedagogical observation; method of specific tests; pedagogic experiment, statistical-mathematical method and method of graphical representation of data. In order to determine gymnasts’ motor training, 14 parameters were tested, highlighting the level of complex motricity needed to reach elite sports performances in women’s artistic gymnastics. Insignificant differences were revealed in the experimental group based on the results obtained and compared with each other during the 1st training macro-cycle. Following these results, some models and strategies meant to improve the control and planning system were proposed to the experimental group subjects. The implementation of the control and planning system of the activities for motor skills development provided useful information for the efficient monitoring of the full training of the female gymnasts under research.Keywords: Gymnastics
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This paper outlines the distinctive attributes of some presidential addresses offered on the occasion of New Year’s Eve. The article contains both theoretical and empirical parts. First we enumerate a number of general aspects that are characteristic to any political speech broadly speaking, then we contrast these with the results obtained from our discourses analysis applied to Romanian and Moldovan presidential speeches. A special focus has been placed on the argumentative structure, lexical traits, and the use of various types of modalization/modulation.
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The contract seems to be one of those self-explanatory legal notions, heavily relying on common-sense knowledge of everyday people involved in whirling spirals of polymorphic agreements, in both continental and common law legal systems. For a legal comparative endeavour, however, it is a dangerous pitfall, since it points to a misleading starting point – the common, practical understanding of contract is probably an effect of similar legal notions, and this may constitute a valid tertium comparationis. In spite of its intuitively powerful and broad everyday use, the contract is, nevertheless, a complex legal notion with detailed juridical articulations. It is from this specific legal angle of each continental and common-law legal family that the unifying common-sense understanding of the contract shows a pluralistic and at times irreconcilably divergent legal understanding of the very notion of contract. It is not the convergence of the legal doctrines of the continental and common-law legal families that this article intends to analyze, convergences which may very well be deducted from the common use of the notion and which find anytime support in most of everyday practice, but the specific differences in the two legal families which destabilize a potential unifying legal notion of contract. The article does not intend to refute nor correct the common European understanding of a contract, but merely to investigate the fact that, although there is a common everyday understanding of what a contract is, and although different legal systems get to similar results, it is not necessarily because identical legal notions are employed.
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The Roman law institution stipulatio alteri, introduced as an exception to the unyielding contractual principle Res inter alios acta, aliis nec prodesse, nec obesse potest, can be found in most of the contemporary European legal systems, in the same legal position, as an exception to the principle of contracts taking effects only between parties. This principle, which takes its unaltered substance from the Roman law, is differently referred to in continental and common law legal systems – if in the first legal family it is referred to as the relativity of contracts, the equivalent notion applied in common law legal systems is the privity of contracts. All contemporary European legal systems, however, recognize both the overarching principle of contracts producing binding effects only between the parties and the exception to this principle, the contract in favour of third parties, as it is provided in the French Code Napoleon of 1804 and in its Romanian acculturation, the 1864 Civil Code, just as it is in the contemporary French and Romanian Civil codes, articles 1121, respectively articles 1284-1288, in the Bürgerliche Gesetzbuch, the German private law code, § 328 I, and in common law legal systems as jus quaesitum tertio. This article investigates the structure stipulatio alteri had in Roman law, the arguments and debates surrounding this institution as an exception to the inter partes effects of contracts, and the legal configuration it has in some contemporary European legal systems.
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Background: To reduce behavioral risk factors is a priority of health policies in the Republic of Moldova. However, the promotion of health is a prerogative of the health system and less in educational activities in schools or universities.The aim: to identify medical students’ behavioral risks and their perception in health promotion.Materials and methods: A cross-sectional study was performed using the CORT questionnaire (elaborated and validated at UMF “V. Babeş”, Timişoara, Romania). Data on demographic and socio-economic characteristics and student’s behaviors were collected: dietary habits, drugs, smoking, family and school environment etc. A structured interview with 473 students was performed. This study was conducted according to the principles of the Helsinki Declaration (1996) and approval of the Nicolae Testemitanu SUMPh ethics committee no.16 from 14.11.2016.Results: There were 473 students integrated into the study, including 359 (75.9%) females and 114 (24.1%) males, mean age 20.42±1.57 years old. The anthropometric indices showed that the average height was 1.69±0.09m and the body mass was 61.31±0.53kg (σ=0.089). The nutritional status with a deficit is 16.1%, the surplus status is 25.2%. Non-smokers – 59.1%, who do not consume alcohol – 28.8%, who do not consume drugs – 95.1%.Conclusion: Our results require us to develop measures to reduce and, in some cases, eliminate health problems, students’ negative behavioral attitudes and risk factors responsible for the health condition, mental health and health culture.
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The psychology of physical culture and sports highlights contemporary claims that there is a correlation between personality and model athlete model society among economic, cultural, social and attitudes of character and athletic ability. Understanding personality sportsman as a product of interaction with the environment but also as a system of values which allow the trading athlete to impose and contribute creatively to its development opposes both exaggerated the role of heredity in defining the personality of the athlete, and the attempts to reduce the level determining personality traits of behavior. Temperamental peculiarities sportsman is an important prerequisite for the formation of sports. There aren’t temperaments favorable or unfavorable, because each type of temperament has positive aspects and without to orient ourselves towards change temperamental traits less favorable (which is impossible, because of their hereditary) effectively monetise traits of temperament and level negatives. To this end, physical culture and sports psychology studies the ways of influencing humanly favorable in terms of bio-psycho-social attitudes and using a systematic exercise and sports. Thus, by studying sporty highlights the influence of sports on mental qualities in athletes, are specific mental peculiarities and formative forms and characteristics of sport.
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The degree of graduates’ employability in the labour market is one of the main criteria, according to which shall be evaluated and assessed a university. It is basically a criterion as important as local or international accreditation agency. Unfortunately, higher education in Moldova has no tradition and practice of development the relations between the graduate and the university after his departure from academic medium, tradition very well developed in other states. It is important to know the career development of graduates through the active involvement of the university in this process. The State University of Physical Education and Sport operates a system of mechanisms that monitor the careers of its graduates. The analysis of the results of this action reflects several important issues for the University, such as: the level of employability of its graduates; the market need for qualified specialists in the fields of training of the University; identify problems in the study programs of the University; satisfaction degree of former university students on the quality of education; teachers who provide quality implementation of the program; utility program for employment and career development etc. The success of this exercise depend on the degree of motivation and conviction of young people to get involved in the life of the graduated University and help to improve its activity. At the same time, the University wants to get the graduates involved, to come up with suggestions, with an objective assessment of the realities where they had studied, without fear of any consequences and propose ideas for continuous improvement of studies. Thus, by maintaining a working relationship with the University and even after studies, the graduate becomes an active partner in ensuring the quality of education at the University
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Inquiry-based education has long been used to teach science-based and technical subjects. However, problems often arise during the process of implementing this educational concept into school practice. One cause of this problem may be a lack of development of substantial competences: educational theory does not yet provide a generally valid competence framework, except in a few limited studies. This problem causes difficulties during teachers’ initial and life-long education and is the primary motivation for our research. Based on our results, we created a competence model for identifying the key competences for realizing inquiry-based education may be concluded. In the first phase, published research conclusions connected to the competences of teachers of science-based and technical subjects—accentuating inquiry-based education—were analysed. Accordingly, we conducted research that helped both to establish the importance of individual competences and (subsequently) to create the competence model. The Q-methodology was used for the purpose of obtaining data, and statistical methods (e.g., Cronbach’s alpha, split half, chi squared and Spearman’s correlation coefficient) were used for the purpose of evaluating that data. The research took place in the Olomouc region of the Czech Republic, with 54 expert teachers (from basic schools) participating.Keywords: Teacher’s competences, inquiry-based education, constructivism, science education, Q-methodology.
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