Thirty Years Later: Being Orthodox in Romania, Then and Now

Romanians know themselves to be traditionally Orthodox, so they declare themselves in censuses as belonging to the majority religion. But in fact, in practice, only about 30 percent are Orthodox practitioners.... If I, as a Romanian, belong to the two-thirds who have only declared themselves Orthodox without living the faith in its true dogmatic dimensions, this means I have replaced God in my life with the Internet, with the psychologist, with my job, with trips, with activities which distract my attention from myself and from my own identity

“Sense and Sensibility” at an Event in Digital Media

For thousands of years, people have been talking about emotions, from Plato and Aristotle’s theories till Ellis’s cognitive theory. Plato believes that emotions disturb the mind and Kant argues that emotions are diseases of the soul. Darwin integrates them into valuable adaptive behaviors and into evolutionary species, while JP Sartre considers them a way of keeping consciousness awake.             Emotions constitute a significant component, dynamic-human  energy of the psychic system. It reflects the subjective interrnal experience  through social behavior, how to adapt to objective reality in which man lives. Current Man lives in a dense, predatory media environment, its adaptation to the objective reality is decisively influenced by the proximity media system. Reality of Media is contained in both the cognitive system, and in displaying the emotional and volitional, motivational symptom. Emotions themselves are processes in which the functions of consciousness are activated. They are the effect of the confrontation between the individual and the actual/presumptive needs of the environment. Emotions are pluritonale and they develop gradually. They are situational and they frequently occur as a result of satisfied or unsatisfied biological needs. Consequently, emotions can be experienced only in the cognitive context. Thus, we distinguish between provoked, evoked and anticipatory emotions. People are rarely surprised by the course of events. Normally, they try various methods to determine the course of events, without expecting something in particular to happen. Depending on how adequately they predict and how close they are to the reality in progress, they build their optimal scenario for each situation. The affective element is essential (attraction or repulsion, fear or fear of domination, a motivating feeling or a blocking effect). Perception, representation or thinking is images of the objects. Affective processes reveals the suitability / opposites between the data subject and the external world needs. It reflects the relationship between the individual and ambience events

Evaluation of a cross-lingual Romanian-English multi-document summariser

The rapid growth of the Internet means that more information is available than ever before. Multilingual multi-document summarisation offers a way to access this information even when it is not in a language spoken by the reader by extracting the GIST from related documents and translating it automatically. This paper presents an experiment in which Maximal Marginal Relevance (MMR), a well known multi-document summarisation method, is used to produce summaries from Romanian news articles. A task-based evaluation performed on both the original summaries and on their automatically translated versions reveals that they still contain a significant portion of the important information from the original texts. However, direct evaluation of the automatically translated summaries shows that they are not very legible and this can put off some readers who want to find out more about a topic.Published versio

Second-order flexibility-based model for nonlinear inelastic analysis of composite steel-concrete frameworks with partial composite action and semi-rigid connections

[EN] This paper presents an efficient computer method for large deflection distributed plasticity analysis of 3D semi-rigid composite steel-concrete frameworks. A novel second-order inelastic flexibility-based element has been developed by combining the Maxwell-Mohr rule and the second-order force based functions for computation of the generalized displacements. The proposed model allows explicit and efficient modeling of the combined effects of nonlinear geometrical effects, gradual spread-of-plasticity, partial shear connection of composite beams, finite-size joints and joint flexibility by using only one 2-noded beam-column element per physical member. For composite beams, based on elasto-plastic cross-sectional analyses the model is able to take into account the effects of partial composite action between the concrete slab and the steel beam. At the cross-sectional level the proposed method addresses computational efficiency through the use of path integral approach to numerical integration of the cross-sectional nonlinear characteristics and residual stresses, enabling in this way the accurate geometrical specifications and precise modeling of cross-sections. The proposed nonlinear analysis formulation has been implemented in a general nonlinear static purpose computer program, NEFCAD. Several computational examples are given to validate the accuracy and efficiency of the proposed method.Some of the results presented in this paper were obtained with the support of the Technical University of ClujNapoca through the research Contract no. 2009/12.07.2017, CICDI-2017.Chiorean, C.; Buru, M. (2018). Second-order flexibility-based model for nonlinear inelastic analysis of composite steel-concrete frameworks with partial composite action and semi-rigid connections. En Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Advances in Steel-Concrete Composite Structures. ASCCS 2018. Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. 213-220. https://doi.org/10.4995/ASCCS2018.2018.721321322

Towards a Conceptual Framework Supporting Model Compilability

The ever-growing use of modeling languages today is largely due to a maturation of model-based development technologies. However, there is enough room for improving language specifications and consequently, the efficiency of their usage. The state of facts in specifying Well Formedness Rules is among the most important issues calling for improvements. Despite the fact that various papers have approached it, the topic is still open. To solve it, there is the need of a rigorous conceptual framework supporting the specification of modeling languages’ static semantics. This would stand as a basis for ensuring model compilability, a mandatory requirement in a model-driven context. Through this paper, we aim at providing core ideas that would contribute to the creation of such a framework. Our approach is testing-oriented and promotes the use of OCL specification patterns

The Finite Element Method Applied to a Problem of Blood Flow in Vessels

We use the finite element method to solve a convection-diffusion equation when convection is dominating, a problem which describes the behavior of the concentration of a solute in a blood vessel. A new technique for computing the discrete problem is used

CA19-9 decrease at 8 weeks as a predictor of overall survival in a randomized phase III trial (MPACT) of weekly nab-paclitaxel plus gemcitabine versus gemcitabine alone in patients with metastatic pancreatic cancer

BACKGROUND: A phase I/II study and subsequent phase III study (MPACT) reported significant correlations between CA19-9 decreases and prolonged overall survival (OS) with nab-paclitaxel plus gemcitabine (nab-P + Gem) treatment for metastatic pancreatic cancer (MPC). CA19-9 changes at week 8 and potential associations with efficacy were investigated as part of an exploratory analysis in the MPACT trial. PATIENTS AND METHODS: Untreated patients with MPC (N = 861) received nab-P + Gem or Gem alone. CA19-9 was evaluated at baseline and every 8 weeks. RESULTS: Patients with baseline and week-8 CA19-9 measurements were analyzed (nab-P + Gem: 252; Gem: 202). In an analysis pooling the treatments, patients with any CA19-9 decline (80%) versus those without (20%) had improved OS (median 11.1 versus 8.0 months; P = 0.005). In the nab-P + Gem arm, patients with (n = 206) versus without (n = 46) any CA19-9 decrease at week 8 had a confirmed overall response rate (ORR) of 40% versus 13%, and a median OS of 13.2 versus 8.3 months (P = 0.001), respectively. In the Gem-alone arm, patients with (n = 159) versus without (n = 43) CA19-9 decrease at week 8 had a confirmed ORR of 15% versus 5%, and a median OS of 9.4 versus 7.1 months (P = 0.404), respectively. In the nab-P + Gem and Gem-alone arms, by week 8, 16% (40/252) and 6% (13/202) of patients, respectively, had an unconfirmed radiologic response (median OS 13.7 and 14.7 months, respectively), and 79% and 84% of patients, respectively, had stable disease (SD) (median OS 11.1 and 9 months, respectively). Patients with SD and any CA19-9 decrease (158/199 and 133/170) had a median OS of 13.2 and 9.4 months, respectively. CONCLUSION: This analysis demonstrated that, in patients with MPC, any CA19-9 decrease at week 8 can be an early marker for chemotherapy efficacy, including in those patients with SD. CA19-9 decrease identified more patients with survival benefit than radiologic response by week 8

How My Favorite Tool Supporting OCL Must Look Like

At this time, to decide on which tool supporting OCL to use, is a difficult task. This is influenced by a number of objective factors, including: the user's needs, knowledge of existing tools, knowledge of the Object Constraint Language and of the various possibilities of using it. Today, each tool maker states about implementing new features compared with the existent tools; moreover, different tools return different results when evaluating identical OCL specifications in the same context. A reason of this state of facts is due to the concepts which are incomplete or ambiguous specified in the standard. Therefore, before describing the criteria proposed for assessing tools supporting OCL, the following topics are examined: features that distinguish OCL within the modeling languages family, some aspects incomplet or ambiguous described in the OCL specification, main functionalities that a tool supporting OCL should implement, the universe of tools supporting OCL. In the end, five representative tools are characterized with respect to the functionalities proposed to be implemented by an ideal tool

Avoiding OCL specification pitfalls

This paper discusses about teaching software modeling by using OCL specifications, in the context in which the web represents the main source of information. The raise of the interest for models induced a higher need for clear and complete specifications. In case of models specified by means of MOF-based languages, adding OCL constraints proved to be an interesting answer to this need. Several OCL examples posted on web include hasty specifications, that are often dissuasive with respect to complementing models with OCL specification. OCL beginners, and not only, need to know how to avoid potential specification traps.Our proposal is based on a complete and unambiguous description of requirements, that represents the first step towards good OCL specifications. The work highlights several major aspects that need to be understood and complied with to produce meaningful and efficient OCL specifications. This approach was tested while teaching OCL at Babes-Bolyai University of Cluj-Napoca