EXTERNAL BORROWING – A SOLUTION IN OVERCOMING THE CURRENT ECONOMIC CRISIS?

The government decisions to call, in recent years, more and more reimbursable financing gave birth to fierce reactions among politicians and economy specialists. The present article aims to analyze how the external borrowing may be a solution to overcome the difficult situation where we are.government, financing, external borrowing, economic crisis

Identity Politics under National Communist Rule: the Rhetoric Manifestations of Nicolae Ceauşescu's "Nationality Policy" in 1970s Romania

This article aims to identify and analyze the variations of Nicolae Ceauşescu’s rhetoric concerning the ”co-inhabiting nationalities” during the 1970s as a legitimacy-seeking gambit. The article argues that two of the key explanatory variables that influenced the escalation of anti-minority discourse and measures were the Romanian-Hungarian interstate relations and the resistance of the ethnic Hungarians in Romania to aggressively assimilationist strategies. This analysis is inscribed into a wider field of research (Critical Discourse Analysis), and is aimed at ascertaining political discourse as a key generator and projector of political-societal developments and determinant of identity formation

Political violence in the late 1940s' Romania: regime power and peasant protests

This article explores the relationship between the type of power exercised by the political elites in the early stages of development of the communist regime in Romania and the reactions to peasant riots during the collectivization process. I focus on a single case study (riots in Arad county, in the summer off 1949) and elaborate on the use of political violence as a resource aimed at securing social control in the absence of strong institutional capacity. I review the first stages of collectivization (1949-1956), I identify and analyze short and longterms measures taken against the peasants who participated in the riots and their families; and I examine some of the measures taken to consolidate and expand the functions of the Secret Police as a direct consequence of the riots. The findings reflect on the weaknesses of a despotic regime that had not yet fully developed its infrastructural powers and relied on a high level of physical violence against actions it perceived as threats to its authority

Evaluation of the fracture performance of different rubberised bitumens based on the essential work of fracture

The fracture performance of rubberised bitumen in addition to one pre-treated with a Warm Mix Additive (Sasobit®) was investigated using different test methods measuring different damage mechanisms. Two Recycled Tyre Rubber (RTR) modifiers together with two base binders were blended in the laboratory to produce various combinations of Recycled Tyre Rubber Modified Bitumens (RTR-MBs). The first RTR is a standard recycled polymer derived from discarded truck and passenger car tyres by ambient grinding. The second RTR consists of 100% recycled truck tyres derived by cryogenic grinding and pre-treated with special oil and WMA to allow further decrease of asphalt mixture production temperatures. A fracture mechanics testing approach was used for evaluating the binder fatigue resistance; consisting of the double-edge-notched tension (DENT) test. The critical tip opening displacement (CTOD) obtained from the DENT test was used for fracture characterization of the binders within the ductile failure region. The study applied the partitioning concept of the total energy of bituminous binders to have a more reliable parameter that could be independent of the stress state of the ligament. The results show that generally the addition of RTR improves the fracture properties of binders indicating better fatigue performance. Pre-treatment with Sasobit® makes the materials more brittle and hence more susceptible to fracture

AmbiStream: A Middleware for Multimedia Streaming on Heterogeneous Mobile Devices

Part 5: Notification and StreamingInternational audienceMultimedia streaming when smartphones act as both clients and servers is difficult. Indeed, multimedia streaming protocols and associated data formats supported by today's smartphones are highly heterogeneous. At the same time, multimedia processing is resource consuming while smartphones are resource-constrained devices. To overcome this complexity, we present AmbiStream, a lightweight middleware layer solution, which enables applications that run on smartphones to easily handle multimedia streams. Contrarily to existing multimedia-oriented middleware that propose a complete stack for multimedia streaming, our solution leverages the available highly-optimized multimedia software stack of the smartphones' platforms and complements them with additional, yet resource-efficient, layers to enable interoperability. We introduce the challenges, present our approach and discuss the experimental results obtained when executing AmbiStream on both Android and iOS smartphones. Our results show that it is possible to perform adaptation at run time and still obtain streams with satisfactory quality

Conversion in laparoscopic cholecystectomy for acute cholecystitis

Scopul lucrării. Colecistectomia laparoscopică a devenit o operație curentă în practica chirurgicală zilnică și este considerată în prezent un standard de aur, oferind posibilitatea de a rezolva aproape toate litiazele veziculare simptomatice. În anumite cazuri totuși, condițiile tehnice particulare creează riscuri specifice, ce impun conversia la tehnica deschisă.Materiale și metodă. Studiul nostru se întinde pe o perioada de 5 ani, fiind incluși următorii factori: forma anatomopatologică, motivele și rata conversiei, complicațiile postoperatorii și durata medie de spitalizare.Rezultate. În perioada decembrie 2018- decembrie 2022 au fost efectuate 3576 de colecistectomii laparoscopice din care 2848 au fost realizate pentru colecistita acută (79,6%). Din punct de vedere al formelor anatomopatologice au predominat colecistitele acute catarale (52%), urmate de cele flegmonoase (37%) și gangrenoase (11%). Rata conversiei a fost de 5,4% (156 cazuri), cu o tendință constantă la descreștere corelată cu îmbunătățirea experienței echipei chirurgicale. Printre cele mai întâlnite cauze ce au dus la conversie putem enumera: anatomie incertă datorită proceselor inflamatorii importante (62 de pacienți), fibroza la nivelul triunghiului Calot (43 de cazuri), dar și alte cauze (hemoragie, ciroză hepatică, sindrom aderențial – 51 de cazuri ). La pacienții la care s-a realizat conversia, complicațiile postoperatorii au fost întâlnite în 18% din cazuri, durata medie de spitalizare a fost de 13 zile, cu o mortalitate de 1,28%.Concluzii. Conversia în colecistectomia laparoscopică pentru colecistita acută reprezintă o dovadă a maturității chirurgicale şi nu trebuie considerată un eșec al tehnicii laparoscopice, fiind salutată în situații în care avantajul abordului laparoscopic este depăsit de riscurile unor situații întâlnite în practică.Aim of study. Laparoscopic cholecystectomy is now the “gold standard” operation for patients with gallstones disease. However, a number of patients require conversion to open cholecystectomy for the safe completion of the procedure, generally being certified that untransparency in operative field, unclear anatomical proportion , are the most frequent causes of conversion and postoperative complications.Materials and methods. From 3576 patients who underwent laparoscopic cholecystectomy between 2018-2022, we selected a lot of 2848 cases of acute cholecystitis and evaluated the conversion rate encountered. The patients were selected according to the morphopatological form of cholecystitis as: catarrhal cholecystitis – 52% (1436 cases), phlegmonous cholecystitis - 37% (1275 cases) and gangrenous cholecystitis – 11% (896 cases). The conversion rate was 5,4% (156 cases) Results. In this paper the modalities, the technical particularities and the causes that can lead to conversion in laparoscopic cholecystectomy for acute cholecystitis are discussed.Conclusions. Laparoscopic cholecystectomies can be safely performed for almost all patients with acute cholecystitis by an experienced surgical team, although unclear anatomy secondary to inflammation remains the most common reason for conversion leading to higher rate of postoperative complications and a longer hospital stay, the overall impact of acute cholecystitis on the operative outcome has decreased with time

Dynamic Connector Synthesis: Principles, Methods, Tools and Assessment

CONNECT adopts a revolutionary approach to the seamless networking of digital systems, that is, onthe- fly synthesis of the connectors via which networked systems communicate. Within CONNECT, the role of the WP3 work package is to devise automated and efficient approaches to the synthesis of such emergent connectors, provided the behavioral specification of the components to be connected. Thanks to WP3 scientific and technology development, emergent connectors can be synthesized on the fly as networked systems get discovered, implementing the necessary mediation between networked systems' protocols, from application down to middleware layers. This document being the final report about WP3 achievements, it outlines both: (i) specific contributions over the reporting period, and (ii) overall contributions in the area of automated, on-the-fly protocol mediation, from theory to supporting tool

Experiment scenarios, prototypes and report - Iteration 2

The task of WP6 is to evaluate the CONNECT technologies under realistic situations. To achieve this goal, WP6 concentrated its 3rd year effort on the development of a main scenario in the context of GMES, which requires the connection of highly heterogeneous and independently built systems provided by the industry partners. The resulting scenario allows the consortium to assess the validity of CONNECT claims and to investigate the exploitation of CONNECT technologies in the context of the integration of real systems. Another objective of this report is to provide a first assessment of CONNECT solutions against the project's objectives stated in the DoW. The proposed assessment spans: (i) the project's overall objective of enabling on-the-fly interoperability among heterogeneous networked systems as well as (ii) the project's specific objectives related to the foundations and associated enablers to be elaborated for learning and reasoning about the interaction behaviours of networked systems and for synthesizing mediators so as to make systems interoperate

Final CONNECT Architecture

Interoperability remains a fundamental challenge when connecting heterogeneous systems which encounter and spontaneously communicate with one another in pervasive computing environments. This challenge is exasperated by the highly heterogeneous technologies employed by each of the interacting parties, i.e., in terms of hardware, operating system, middleware protocols, and application protocols. The key aim of the CONNECT project is to drop this heterogeneity barrier and achieve universal interoperability. Here we report on the revised CONNECT architecture, highlighting the integration of the work carried out to integrate the CONNECT enablers developed by the different partners; in particular, we present the progress of this work towards a finalised concrete architecture. In the third year this architecture has been enhanced to: i) produce concrete CONNECTors, ii) match networked systems based upon their goals and intent, and iii) use learning technologies to find the affordance of a system. We also report on the application of the CONNECT approach to streaming based systems, further considering exploitation of CONNECT in the mobile environment