A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF SYSTEMS USED IN ASSESSING LANGUAGE PROFICIENCY

Author(s): Catalin BURSUC,Luiza-Maria COSTEA,Orlando Radu / Language(s): English / Issue: 01/2017

Linguistic skills are a set or a category of skills that are distinct and of common importance recognized in the linguistic competence. At community level the "Common European Framework of Reference for Languages", published by the Council of Europe in 2001 highlights the "way of mastering" a foreign language, a concept that is more appropriate than "the knowledge level" of a foreign language. The subtle difference between the two concepts is based within the generality of language proficiency that describes what you can do in various areas of expertise in a foreign language. CEFR scales that reveal the levels of mastering a foreign language represent a standardized system, applicable to any European language, which was assimilated by national or supra-state actors and allow the evaluation with other national or international instruments. The purpose of the article is to carry out a comparative analysis of European standards and similar linguistic standard within North-Atlantic Alliance. Potential benefits and limitations of STANAG 6001 standard, resulted from this analysis will provide conclusions on the optimization of foreign language learning programs in the Romanian Army.

A Comparative e-Demonstration of Using Advanced Construction Techniques for Developing Patterns of Flexible Garments for Women

Author(s): Manuela AVADANEI,Emil Constantin LOGHIN,Irina Ionescu,Mariana URSACHE,Savin Dorin IONESI,Ionut DULGHERIU / Language(s): English / Issue: 14/2018

Fashion trends vary year by year and from a season to another. These trends are expressed by different combinations of materials, colours, lines, styles, and finally, all of these lead to new models of garments. Designers must understand and transpose all this information into useful, unique and desirable models of clothes for all consumers. They must also have a good intuition and perception of the lines and shadows (2D/3D geometry for fashion), as well as skills and competencies in patterning and knowledge in technology. By understanding and processing all the data, the designers have to elaborate the proper solution for sizing and shaping the new patterns, by taking into consideration the shape of the human body and the properties of the materials from the structure of the garment. Nowadays, they often have to use advanced construction techniques in developing ready-to-wear products by using tools and functions from two CAD systems. The virtual environments allow the user to define a garment surface in relation with the 3D body model and to verify the dimensional correspondence and balance of the product on the human body. The designer also checks if the virtual prototype looks the same as its picture representation and if there is something to be changed. This paper presents comparative e- demonstrations of how to select and use functions and tools from two CAD systems in order to design a specific model of a garment, in a proper and logical sequence of steps, with a good quality level from the designing stage.

A COMPARATIVE STUDY ON THE INDIRECT ASSESSMENT OF LEG EXTENSOR POWER USING SIMULTANEOUSLY THE JUMP-AND-REACH TEST FROM ALPHA-FIT AND THE OPTOJUMP SYSTEM

Author(s): Liliana BECEA,Raluca Anca Pelin,Camelia BRANE?,Iancu RACHITA / Language(s): English / Issue: 01/2017

The ALPHA-FIT Project, completed in 2009 and funded by the European Union, aimed at providing a set of validated tools to assess levels of physical activity and fitness. This study seeks to assess indirectly a component of muscular fitness, namely the leg extensor power in young Romanians aged 20-29 years and also to compare the two methods of measurement using the metric band and optical sensors. The research was conducted within the UPB Sports Complex between 15 October and 1 December 2016. There were investigated 493 young people, of which 334 were males and 159 females. Indirect assessment of leg extensor power was achieved simultaneously through two tests: Jump-and-reach, according to instructions specified in the Tester’s Manual for ALPHA-FIT Test Battery for Adults Aged 18-69, and Vertical Jump, using the Optojump system and the Optojump Pro software. To analyze the results in the Jump-and-reach test, they were processed by quartile, according to the analysis used in ALPHA-FIT. Values achieved by male subjects are: 44, 48,5, 54 and 72cm for the first, second, third and fourth quartiles. Female subjects achieved the following results: 27,5, 31,5, 37 and 54 cm for the first, second, third and fourth quartiles. Simultaneously with the application of Jump-and-reach test, it was used the Optojump system, namely the Vertical Jump test. Results for the Vertical jump assessed using the Optojump system are significantly lower than those assessed through the Jump-and-reach test, between 32.18 % (female subjects, first quartile) and 23.71% (male subjects, fourth quartile).Since the ALPHA-FIT Test Battery has no reference values for the population aged 20-29 years, as regards the Jump-and-reach test, the results of this research can represent, due to the specificity and size of the investigated sample, a baseline for both Romania and other European countries.

A COMPETITIVE SERIOUS GAME FOR POTENTIAL AND YOUNG ENTREPRENEURS

Author(s): Eliza-Olivia Lungu / Language(s): / Issue: 01/2014

In this article we present a serious game for potential and young entrepreneurs, developed as part of an ongoing Leonardo da Vinci Transfer of Innovation project, Entrepreneurship in Serious. The game is an online adaptation of a board game developed in a Grundvig project funded by the European Commission and it aims to help entrepreneurs improve a series of key soft skills though a realistic gaming experience.

A Comprehensive Analysis of the Students` Perception Referring to the Elearning Platform from Alexandru Ioan Cuza Police Academy

Author(s): Georgica PANFIL / Language(s): English / Issue: 14/2018

Current paper concerns a recent analysis developed within Alexandru Ioan Cuza Police Academy. The study, developed thru 2017 (during three months period) is mainly focused on the questionnaire method and is concentrated on a survey related to the degree of satisfaction linked to the usefulness, degree of usage, positive and negative aspects, as well as the main improvements related to the eLearning platform used by Alexandru Ioan Cuza for the training of students from distance-learning modules. The questions used both "open" and "closed" systems, as they were physically applied to different categories of students. The distance-learning module is of a high interest for the tackled institution, as it is one of the limited ways for constables to become superior police officers directly, following a three-year course. As most of the modules are based on the e-tutoring system and most of the materials are available online (except, for example, the classified contents), this platform represents a very important resource for the students enrolled to such course. The usefulness of such study is mainly related to the identification of the main strengths and minuses of the platform or its administration, contents, usability etc. Furthermore, the study also contains main aspects to be improved, as well as suggestions for further development for this platform, as it is expected that within the near future, the number of enrolled students to be increased (the Ministry of Internal Affairs` development strategy is focused on a superior number of graduates for the distance-learning module, making it the main source of superior officers promoted from constables).

A COMPREHENSIVE ANALYSIS ON CYBER-THREATS AGAINST ELEARNING SYSTEMS

Author(s): Ioan-Cosmin Mihai,Stefan Pruna,Gabriel Petrica / Language(s): English / Issue: 01/2017

The cybercrime phenomenon is becoming more offensive and the number of cyber-attacks against eLearning systems is growing in number and diversity. Cybercrime nowadays represents an industry; the Cybercrime-as-a-Service model offers easy access to illegal products and services. Unexperienced cybercriminals from different states can join together in underground forums and share information and tools for cyber-attacks. They can easily spread dangerous malware or launch big-scale attacks anywhere in the world with less resources and sizeable profits for them. This article analyzes the cyber threats that can affect eLearning systems. Malware represents one of the most important threat areas within cybercrime. There are many kind of malware that can be uploaded on the compromised eLearning systems like viruses, trojans, worms, adware, spyware, and ransomware, which can infect all the users that have access to the infected files. Compromised eLearning platforms can be used by cybercriminals for malware infections, redirections to malicious websites or for phishing or spamming activities. Social engineering is an attack vector that refers to manipulation of people into performing actions in order to compromise the systems security and can affect the eLearning systems security. Regarding communications, more and more eLearning systems use encryption to protect the traffic between the platform and its users. The benefits of encryption for eLearning systems are clear, but for law enforcement is a big disadvantage, when they have to investigate some encrypted communications. This paper indicates also the importance of the international cooperation in the process of fighting and combating the cyber-threats against eLearning systems, for a safer cyber environment.

A COMPUTERIZED SYSTEM FOR JUDGING DANCESPORT COMPETITIONS - AN INNOVATIVE APPLICATION

Author(s): Adrian Nicoara,Silvia TEODORESCU,Constanta Urzeala / Language(s): English / Issue: 01/2017

Dancesport involves a variety of body movements performed to the rhythm of a song that is materialized in a choreography piece where the two partners try to convey emotions in a unique and personal way, which leads us to assert that dance has no boundaries, no barriers, it is simply felt and expressed. Dancesport provides the necessary framework to transmit a compositional message, trigger emotions, present an artistic creation, generate a show, that is why assessing the dancers’ performance often has a subjective character as regards technical execution, artistic mastery, plasticity and beauty of movement, shortly, the quality of dance. In this research, we developed and used an evaluation/ judging system which included five criteria: movement to music, posture and coordination, quality of movement and balance, partnered relationship and leading, choreography and presentation, and a larger or smaller number of sub-criteria. The aim was to prove the efficiency of a computerized system intended to reduce subjectivity in the evaluation of dancers’ competitive performance. Transposition of the evaluation/judging system to a computerized application using Web-based technology with extension for tablet ensures effectiveness for the judging panel, reducing the time needed to establish rankings, facilitating the work of the competition Secretariat and removing the possible human errors. The application summarized information on organized competitions, users, couples of dancers, dances, classes, age categories, to which each judge can login to access scoring sheets/per criterion/dance and check each sub-criterion for each component, male and female counterparts. The major difference between the two evaluation systems (one used by the DanceSport Federation, the other developed by us) could be noted in the hierarchy of couples in the mid-ranking, where the value level of dancers was close and their order in the ranking was decided by a few tenths or hundredths of a point.

A Content Analysis of the Results from the State Matriculation Examination in Mathematics

Author(s): Elena Karashtranova,Nikolay Karashtranov,Vladimir Vladimirov / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2019

This paper presents an analysis of the results from the State Matriculation Examination in Mathematics achieved by the students from the Science and Mathematics High School “Acad. S. Korolyov” within the period of 2012 – 2014.

A criterion for realism, with an application to behavioral economic models

Author(s): Gustavo Marques,Diego Weisman / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2015

Many economists working within the framework of behavioral economics (BE) label the conventional way of modeling as unrealistic, and consider their own approach as more realistic than the standard practice. However, a criterion for realism is lacking in behavioral economics literature. This paper offers a simple criterion for predicating realism to economic models, and provides an illustration of such criterion at work on a particular BE model.

A Critical Review of the Development of the Research and Innovation Policy Practice in Yugoslavia in the Period 1945–1991

Author(s): Ðuro G. Kutlaca,Dušica M. Semencenko / Language(s): English,Serbian / Issue: 4/2018

Our assumption and the first hypothesis of the research is that prior development of the science and technology system in former Yugoslavia had a major impact on the current status of the national innovation systems of countries which are former Yugoslav republics. The second hypothesis, which we elaborated in this paper, is that the science system in former Yugoslavia was strongly influenced by the sociopolitical and economic framework. With these aims, we analysed and presented four characteristic periods of the Yugoslav science and technology system after the Second World War. In conclusions we emphasized the key inherited practices and repercussions on the management of research and innovation systems in former Yugoslav countries, which can be grouped around five main issues.

A demographic portrait of Romanian immigrants In California

Author(s): Dan Valeriu VOINEA / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2014

The most numerous Romanian community in the United States of America is in the “Golden State”, California – a state that is a traditional immigration state since the beginning of the gold rush. Officially, there are currently over 60.000 people of Romanian origin established in California, although that number might be much higher because of two factors: undocumented migration and the loss of gradual loss of identity through each generation. Starting from as little as 15-16 families back in 1912 (Alecse, n.d.), Romanians established in California make up 14.5% of the 449,928 immigrants of Romanian origin living in the the United States of America (Voinea, 2014, 62). The aim of this paper is to analyze the current demographic portrait of Romanian immigrants in California, using data from the 2013 American Community Survey.

A Design-Based Approach to Course Planning and Development

Author(s): Antti RIssanen,Kalle Saastamoinen / Language(s): English / Issue: 2/2018

The aim to refine education often leads to changes to curriculums, and the planning and implementation of educational changes can be approached in methodological and process-oriented ways. This study investigated how Bologna process and local needs lead to a new implementation. Case material presents how courses were planned for the Department of Military Technology at the NDU. The data was gathered from three courses related to science and technology, and a design-based research (DBR) concept guided the project. Specifically, work from 2007 to 2017 was examined, including preplanning and educational DBR cycles used to plan six courses, and team of different disciplines worked on the project. The purpose of planning courses was to construct a new science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education program for officers’ education; the aim was to offer officers adjustable but well planned, student centred, and interactive instruction. In principle, course planners were aware of the generic skill profile of the officer profession. Knowledge of STEM education from an earlier curriculum was provided to the officers by regular teachers. The use of a modern learning material portal (LMP) was considered for a student-centric teaching approach. Moodle was utilised, and a systematic student evaluation of teaching (SET) was conducted to assess the success of implementing the planned courses. DBR-framed approach gave useful guidance for the project. In the course development feedback from students offers necessary evidence but requires support from other sources for genuine and innovative educational re-engineering.

A Diachronic Study of Introduction Sections

Author(s): Fatemeh Bagheri,Liming Deng / Language(s): English / Issue: 2/2018

We analyzed the introduction sections of a hundred and eighty doctoral dissertations of L1 culture over the last fifty years to discover the change concerning the utilization of interactive markers. Interactive markers are employed by writers to guide the audience throughout the piece. More application of such markers makes the text reader friendly and easy to follow and the less application of them shows the respective writing is constructed to target a more specialized audience. Using Hyland (2005) model of meta discourse, we analyzed our 262,564 words corpus for hard and soft disciplines in the three time intervals of 1966, 1986, and 2016. Findings of the study confirm that due to the overall lower deployment of interactive markers in the introduction sections of our corpus, the genre is likely meant to be read by community members rather than a general audience of diverse disciplines.No evident disciplinary difference was found except for the overall trend change which is positive and negative respectively in the hard and soft disciplines.

A DIATRIBE IN FAVOR OF A PARADIGM SHIFT IN EDUCATION

Author(s): Silvia Osman / Language(s): English / Issue: 01/2017

We live in a day and age in which information and technology witness a huge leap of development. Entire generations of pupils and students are accustomed to using means and devices of the 21st Century in searching for information and general knowledge. Moreover, they are continuously bombarded with manipulative messages coming to them in an endless stream of data which pressures them to stay updated and connected to the source. Who is guiding them while surfing through this ocean of information and knowledge? Who is setting landmarks and guiding posts for them? Their rhythm and pace is alert and vivid and they expect nothing less from the schools and lectures they attend. Is education keeping up with the times? It is obvious that the good old ways don’t work anymore. The absolute need for a paradigm shift in education dawned a while back, while specialists in the field identified a deep fracture at the very core structure of a system in absolute need for deep reformation. Now is the time the paradigm shift in education becomes instrumental for the wellbeing of society at large, since the outcome of the obsolete educational processes affects generations of young, beautiful, restless minds, dependent on and glued to technology and modern virtual environments. We, educators, need to wake up and start changing and shifting things around or the future will vilify us. We need to realize that our job as education facilitators is to develop means to skillfully interact with these new generations, continuously bearing in mind that conveying information without building transformational relationships within the educational process, knowledge becomes void of valuable content. Boosting creativity through Blended Learning and Flipped Classroom, encouraging the use of Summative Intelligence and peer / self-evaluation within the learning environment are the building blocks of the Interactive Transformational Education method the present paper aims to briefly introduce and describe within the economy of this format.

A Gui for Computing Aneurysm Geometry, a Possible Tool to Predict the Risk of Rupture of Blood Vessels

Author(s): Mihai ILEA,Mariana ROTARIU,Andrei GHEORGHITA / Language(s): English / Issue: 14/2018

The aneurysm geometry is an important factor in analyze and predict the risk of rupture but also in selection of patients suitable for surgical intervention, e.g. endovascular Guglielmi detachable coiling. The most used actually technique for evaluation the risk for abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) rupture is the maximum diameter (Dmax) of the aorta, but also other dimensions are used for assessment of risk for cerebral aneurysm. In most of the cases, the aneurysm geometry is measured manually using computed tomography (CT) or three-dimensional (3D) angiography. By this method, the accuracy and reproducibility can vary substantially from user to user and even in the case of the same user, during the repeatedly measurements. We propose software based on GUI for automatic and semi-automatic usage for processing of 2D images, containing aneurysm, useful in virtual education or e-learning process. The image is first segmented, and the user can select points to perform automatically extract of geometrical parameters using algorithms from computational geometry. The various parameters that describe the shape of reproducibility are statistically analyzed if the user selects this option. The software for intracranial aneurysm geometry quantification has a separate module used for prediction the risk of rupture. A specialized module is used for work with original image; the operations in this case are based on interactive selections made by user: points and polygons with option to extract different shape descriptor for feature selection. The prediction in this stage can be manually selected from two options related to a set of data: a liner one and a nonlinear one based of simple regressive nonlinear model. The results are very encouraging and the future developments are taken into account.

A LEARNING ENVIRONMENT FOR BUILDING AND EVALUATING ONTOLOGIES: CASE STUDY OF 2013 ONTOLOGY BUILDING COMPETITION

Author(s): Mario VACCA,Bernadette Varga,Adrian Groza / Language(s): / Issue: 01/2014

Teaching ontologies is part of the most general problem of designing new learning environments. In this line, the Business Process Modeling For Education (BPM4ED) project for design of 21st century schools comprehends the creation of models of new schools with new learning environments but also the different organization and structure. Ontology Building Competition (BOC) is a competition for developing ontologies, where the evaluation and the final ranking are computed automatically, based on five dimensions of evaluation: i) structural, ii) semantic, iii) design patterns, iv) worst practices, and v) the ability of answering to a set of competency questions. Ontology Building Competition is part of the BPM4ED as a new learning environment is proposed which allows students to manage ontologies and to assess the results automatically. Both ontology and automatic assessment are two important sectors for the 21st century school, and therefore they are part of the design of the BPM4ED tools.The learning environment gradually assess the work of the students. Hence, during the semester students are aware of the strong and weak points of their practical work, and also on the current hierarchy in the designed class. The learning tool was developed in LISP and exploits the RacerPro reasoning capabilities. The rules of the competition are described in a formal language, as a reference ontology. BOC2013 represents the first edition of the competition, which had 25 teams participating. In this paper we present the formal specification of the competition, the evaluation metrics that were used, and an analysis of the results of the BOC 2013 edition.

A Look at the Muslim Community in Bulgaria

Integration and Risks

Author(s): Boriana Dimitrova / Language(s): English / Issue: 05-06/2018

The article discusses key aspects concerning the social profile of Bulgarian Muslims – the second largest traditional religious community in Bulgaria. Based on two representative studies (2011 and 2016), the main features and trends in their social status, values, religious practices as well as political attitudes are analyzed against the background of the new geopolitical situation in Europe and the world. The results show that tradition and modernity co-exist in the value system of Bulgarian Muslims. They demonstrate a high level of adherence to religious practices, but also clearly express attitudes in favour of the secular state system. Like in 2011, they maintain very good interpersonal relations with Christians. But in 2016 there was a considerable change towards a greater community encapsulation. Despite good relations between religious communities in the country, against the backdrop of rising nationalism in Europe three major risks – both for Bulgaria and for the Balkan region –can be highlighted: The revival of fears and increasing tension between the ethnic and religious communities, a growing ethno-partisan corrupt clientele, and the radicalization of ghetto communities.

A LOW-COST DEVICE FOR INVESTIGATING CHROMATIC VISION

Author(s): Daniela Mariana BARBU / Language(s): English / Issue: 01/2017

The retina is the light sensitive portion of the eye that contains cone cells responsible for color vision and cone cells responsible for order in darkness. When the rods and cones are stimulated, light signals are transmitted successively by neurons retina, optic nerve fibers then finally reaching the cerebral cortex. Normal eye retina shows three types of color light-sensitive cells; cone cells are sensitive to red light, green or blue. View color deficiency is the inability or decreased ability to see colors or the perception of differences between colors. Depending on the number of cells absent or impaired color vision impairment operation is called: monocromatism, when all the cones are missing or not working, dicromatism when one of three types of cells and tricromatism missing or when one of three cell types has a poor spectral sensitivity. In 1802, Thomas Young consider that all human sight is produced by combining sensitivity to red, green and blue. This theory, amended by Hermann von Helmholtz in 1852, it is known as Young-Helmholtz theory or trichromatic color vision. The fundamental idea was that the eye responds to the three primary colors and combining the three primary colors through additive synthesis of colors forms all other colors. These theories underlie the eye color deficiencies investigation. The paper aims to provide an inexpensive device necessary to investigate color vision in humans. This is achieved in the components recovered from the other old systems, reconditioned and assembled using a simple technology. Research presented the paper will refer both to the device and for tests with it. Studies will be made on different age groups in order to detect any abnormal chromatic vision.

A MATHEMATICAL METHOD TO VALIDATE NEW ROMANIAN SPEECH AUDIOMETRY MATERIALS FOR EVALUATION THE HEARING LEVEL IN YOUNG AND ADULTS

Author(s): Cristina Gena DASCALU,Sebastian Cozma,Gabriel DIMITRIU,Mihaela MOSCALU,Raluca Olariu / Language(s): English / Issue: 01/2017

The hearing assessment is an important step in detecting any possible hearing loss which leads to specific communication and speech pathologies. Different speech intelligibility tests have been developed for some languages, but calibrated materials for Romanian language were not validated until now. We used a new originally kit test containing monosyllabic and bisyllabic words from spoken language, corresponding to the normal speech. The words were filtered by special software in order to select the most common and frequency spectrum homogeneous word lists, and the audiological assessment was made in standard test conditions. The aim of the study was to mathematically assess and validate this material in Romanian language for speech audiometry. In order to do this we recorded for each list the percentage of words correctly identified by different subjects with normal hearing at different sound intensities (in dB) and we generated the corresponding curve, which was then compared with the ideal curve known from literature, corresponding to a normal hearing. The difference between these curves was calculated as a normalized root mean squared error (NRMSE), and a tested list was validated when this difference was small enough. The simulations were made in MATLAB, and we wrote a dedicated algorithm in order to generate the curves and to calculate the proposed error. We tested 260 lists, among them 85.4% were identified with a NRMSE error smaller than 15%; these lists were kept as valid, the others being reformulated. The behaviour of the valid lists was further statistically analysed, in order to prove its usefulness as a clinical tool for widely use in the evaluation of hearing loss or communication disorders.

A multidisciplinary-economic framework of analysis

Author(s): Piet Keizer / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2017

Human motivation offers energy, and circumstances offer possibilities. Only in combination, human motivation and circumstance yield action. Over time, desires and opportunities, to satisfy them closely, interact with one another. Orthodox economics analyzes economic motivation in interaction with scarce natural resources. It assumes that perfect rationality and non-sociality create a so-called economic world and analyzes the economic mechanism of allocation of scarce resources. Neoclassical economists use this world as a theoretical foundation for their empirical research. Heterodox economics rejects this strategy of isolating one motivation, a strategy that ignores the psychic and the social problem. However, the heterodox idea of human motivation, being variable and endogenous, is badly analyzed. This leads the author to construct a psychic and a social world that is completely comparable with the agent-structure model of the economic world. The three isolated worlds are integrated by analyzing the interactions between the three worlds. In the integrated world, the economic structure, the psychic structure and the social structure are one another’s foundations. This human world gives familiar economic concepts such as utility, efficiency, rationality, price, value, cost and benefit, a different meaning. Similarly, psychic concepts such as Self, willpower and personality and social concepts such as status, power, culture and morality, are given different meanings. To make the model more realistic, it should be made dynamic and historical and be placed in the context of the world as an open system.