FACING KNOWLEDGE ECONOMY CHALLENGES THROUGH SERVICE INNOVATION

The service industry demands innovation in the coming decades to reach competitiveness and success. Companies’ leaders must constantly innovate by redesigning their organizations to adapt to new conditions, while ensuring that the customer is highly satisfied. To face present challenges of knowledge economy, service firms of all types must start defending themselves which is about proactive, far-reaching, often draconian changes, focusing on customer preferences, quality and technological interfaces. Our paper focus on service innovation content and its key potential for the service companies, also discussing present challenges and future trends of innovation in Romania.service innovation, knowledge economy, product innovation, process innovation

Mechanisms of Fruit Ripening: Retrospect and Prospects

This paper aims at giving an overview of the progress made during the last decades on the mechanisms of fruit ripening and to present the most recent trends and prospects for the future. Important steps forward will be presented (respiratory climacteric, ethylene biosynthesis and action, isolation of genes involved in the ripening process, biotechnological control of fruit ripening....) by showing how the judicious exploitation of the data published previously, the strategies, methodologies and plant material adopted have been crucial for the advancement of knowledge. Opportunities of co-operation between geneticists and post-harvest physiologists as well as new possibilities offered by genomics, proteomics and metabolomics for the understanding of the fruit ripening process and the development of sensory quality will be developed

Safety-Critical Systems and Agile Development: A Mapping Study

In the last decades, agile methods had a huge impact on how software is developed. In many cases, this has led to significant benefits, such as quality and speed of software deliveries to customers. However, safety-critical systems have widely been dismissed from benefiting from agile methods. Products that include safety critical aspects are therefore faced with a situation in which the development of safety-critical parts can significantly limit the potential speed-up through agile methods, for the full product, but also in the non-safety critical parts. For such products, the ability to develop safety-critical software in an agile way will generate a competitive advantage. In order to enable future research in this important area, we present in this paper a mapping of the current state of practice based on {a mixed method approach}. Starting from a workshop with experts from six large Swedish product development companies we develop a lens for our analysis. We then present a systematic mapping study on safety-critical systems and agile development through this lens in order to map potential benefits, challenges, and solution candidates for guiding future research.Comment: Accepted at Euromicro Conf. on Software Engineering and Advanced Applications 2018, Prague, Czech Republi

The intelligent room for elderly care

Daily life assistance for elderly is one of the most promising and interesting scenarios for advanced technologies in the present and near future. Improving the quality of life of elderly is also some of the first priorities in modern countries and societies where the percentage of elder people is rapidly increasing due mainly to great improvements in medicine during the last decades. In this paper, we present an overview of our informationally structured room that supports daily life activities of elderly. Our environment contains different distributed sensors including a floor sensing system and several intelligent cabinets. Sensor information is sent to a centralized management system which processes the data and makes it available to a service robot which assists the people in the room. One important restriction in our intelligent environment is to maintain a small number of sensors to avoid interfering with the daily activities of people and to reduce as much as possible the invasion of their privacy. In addition we discuss some experiments using our real environment and robot

The decline of diadromous fish in Western Europe inland waters: mains causes and consequence

Relative to the overwhelming information available on marine fisheries, inland systems have received less attention within the global fisheries crisis. The present situation however, raises serious concerns and this chapter is an attempt to summarize the status of Western European inland fisheries focused on some of the most valuable species targeted in Western Europe: diadromous fishes, including shads, salmonids and the European eel. These species have been reported to be declining over the last decades and the underlying causes appear to be related with human impact on habitat, water quality deterioration, river regularizations, introduction of invasive species, and overexploitation whereas the effects of climate change are still under debate. Overall, these species not only have economic importance but also play fundamental ecological roles in inland aquatic habitats including nutrient cycling, trophic dynamics and overall productivity. Consequently, a decline of migratory fish populations may have important direct and future consequences on the economy. Nevertheless, it also means that fewer species are present to perform critical functions and the consequences may be severe when species with disproportionately influence on biogeochemical cycles, energy fluxes and trophic dynamics are lost. In view of this, the sustainable future of inland fisheries will certainly include a compromise with biodiversity maintenance. Since for different species and types of habitat the major impacts differ, some case studies are examined and management proposals are discussed

The Fiscal Dimension of the Environment Policy

Present for the first time on the European order of business at the beginning of the ‘70s, the concern for the environment gains a distinctive nature as the Rome Club signalled the diminishing of the natural resources and the rapid deterioration of the quality of water, air and soil, of climate in general. Starting with 1972 the community environment policy was created and developed as one of the most important common policies. Although it does not match the funding for the regional or the agricultural policies, the environment policy has become important due to the fact that it has to be approached when conceiving and applying the rest of community policies. The sustainable development strategy, the way it was adopted and (re)confirmed at the international summits in the last two decades (Rio – 1992, Johannesburg – 2002 and the Kyoto protocol), has become the main element of action of the environment policy measures. The preoccupation for nature precedes and accompanies all actions and orientations of social and economic policies because it is motivated by the care for the primordial heritage of the future generations: the planet’s health. The environment policy reflects the interest of the entire society in nature and the numerous green movements, environment organizations and political parties, that display a successful raise on the political arena, express the evolution of mentalities and attitudes as well as the degree of accountability of the governors and the governed towards this vital aspect for the present and the future

Analysis of the evolution and impact of product quality in business

The notion of Product Quality has been explored from different perspectives such as Total Quality Management (TQM), an approach that has emerged in parallel with the development of new technologies. The vast amount of research on this subject has yielded an overload of information making it necessary to develop and apply bibliometric techniques to manage it, assess its scientific performance and identify the thematic areas and their evolution over time. Thus, the present study carried out a bibliometric analysis of 3484 published documents spanning 1989–2019 related to Product Quality in the field of business. The tools serving for the analysis were the Web of Science (WoS) Analyze Results and Science Mapping (SciMAT). The results highlighted the themes of greatest interest and their interconnections throughout each of these three last decades. It is noteworthy that the theme of Price stands out throughout the three decades. The tools also shed light on the evolution of the different themes, the inception of new motor themes and the areas devoid of indepth analyses that require further investigation. The present study therefore serves as a starting point for future research in this field

The changing patterns of architectural design education

Digital technologies have been introduced to students of architecture for over two decades and at present it could be argued that students are producing some of the highest quality designs, and some of the most interesting forms ever to come from University Schools. The value of computer aided design (CAD) is also being demonstrated in architectural practice, with high profile, large budget, bespoke and iconic buildings designed by internationally renowned architects. The value of computer aided design (CAD) is also being demonstrated in architectural practice, with high profile, large budget, bespoke and iconic buildings designed by internationally renowned architects. This paper reviews the changing patterns of architectural design education and considers the contribution digital technologies could make to buildings with more commonplace uses. This paper reviews the changing patterns of architectural design education and considers the contribution digital technologies could make to buildings with more commonplace uses. The study offers a perspective on different kinds of buildings and considers the influence that emerging technologies are having on building form. The study offers a perspective on different kinds of buildings and considers the influence that emerging technologies are having on building form. It outlines digital technologies, alongside students application for architectural design and considers the role they could play in the future, in developing a shared architectural language. It outlines digital technologies, alongside students application for architectural design and considers the role they could play in the future, in developing a shared architectural language. It is suggested that some of the biggest opportunities for future research will be in the design of external spaces, often a neglected part of architectural design education. It is suggested that some of the biggest opportunities for future research will be in the design of external spaces, often a neglected part of architectural design education

Changes in the forest ecosystems in areas impacted by aridization in south-western Romania

BACKGROUND: In the past few decades, global climate change has accentuated the intensification of aridization in South-Western Romania, with direct and indirect consequences on the quality of forest ecosystems. In addition to qualitative deterioration, the quantitative changes brought about by intensive anthropic deforestation have created the conditions for a decline in the size of forest areas on vast tracts of land. The paper aims to analyze the qualitative and quantitative changes in the forest ecosystems in South-Western Romania, changes due to the synergic context of the global climate changes and the anthropic pressures of the past three decades. In order to capture the evolution of aridization in the study area, specific aridization indexes have been calculated, such as the De Martonne index and the UNEP aridity index. 1990 and 2011 satellite images have been used in order to quantify the qualitative changes. RESULTS: The results obtained indicated that, in the past two decades, the quality of the biomass declined as a result of the increase in the climatic aridity conditions (De Martonne si UNEP aridity index, indicating in the last decades, annual values under 15 mm/°C, and under 0.5 mm/mm, that means that the values situated under these thresholds, describe arid and semi-arid climate conditions). Also, the uncontrolled logging across vast surfaces caused the loss of forest ecosystems by 7% in the overall study area, during the last three decades. CONCLUSIONS: The severe effects of aridization meant, first of all, a significant decline in the quality of the ecosystem services supplied by forests. In the absence of viable actions to correct the present situation, the extremely undesirable consequences of an ecological and social nature will arise in the near future