INNOVATIVE AND CROSS-SECTORAL CLUSTERS AS FACILITATORS OF VALUE ADDED CHAINS IN AGRICULTURE - SMART AGRO CLUSTERS IN ROMANIA

Clusters play an important role in driving competitiveness, innovation and jobs creation in the EU. Romania currently has successful clusters in various economic sectors and services, including 7 clusters in agro-food. Agriculture has been and remains the support of the human existence, which is an important pillar of the Romanian rural economy. The agro-food sector had oscillating evolutions in the post-accession period, mainly generated by the need to get in line with the EU requirements. Stimulating smart technology assimilation across all economic sectors including agro-food value chains, promoting enterprise growth and clusters 4.0 is critical to many EU Member States. Partnerships between countries, regions, cities and clusters are essential in the next industrial modernization process, based on innovation. Clusters 4.0 calls for development of a generation of advanced cluster policies to respond to these new industrial challenges by facilitating cross-sectoral value chains, fostering internationalization, stimulating inter-regional investment and accelerating entrepreneurship and skills in digital production, environmental production, circular economy, service innovation and creative economy. In order to be ready for the future, clusters must be geared towards creating a smart value chains, international cooperation and cross-sectoral partnerships. This research paper proposes a model  as a tool for agro-clusters to become “smart”, also this proposal providing information on the most important steps in the creation and development of smart agro-clusters. The used research methodology was based on analysis and synthesis of the information on the economic and social aspects of the development of the agro-food sector and of clusters in Romania. In conclusion, the authors of this paper wanted to emphasize the necessity of the development of smart agro-clusters for the future smart specialization of the regions

How to deal with wicked anaphora

This paper revises a framework (called AR-engine) capable of easily defining and operating models of anaphora resolution. The proposed engine envisages the linguistic and semantic entities involved in the cognitive process of anaphora resolution as represented in three layers: the referential expressions layer, the projected layer of referential expression’s features and the semantic layer of discourse entities. Within this framework, cases of anaphora resolution usually considered difficult to be tackled are investigated and solutions are proposed. Among them, one finds relations triggered by syntactic constraints, lemma and number disagreement, and bridging anaphora. The investigation uses a contiguous text from the belletrist register. The research is motivated by the view that interpretation of free language in modern applications, especially those related to the semantic web, requires more and more sophisticated tools.

About the effects of using Anaphora Resolution in assessing free-text student answers

In this paper we present a possibility for integrating Anaphora Resolution (AR) in a system to automatically evaluate students ’ free-text answers. An initial discussion introduces some of the several methods that can be tried out. The implementation makes use of the AR-Engine RARE (Cristea et al. 02), integrated into the free-text answers assessor Atenea (Alfonseca & Pérez 04) to test these methods. RARE has been applied to find coreferential chains, and it has been found useful to extend the set of reference answers used by Atenea, by generating automatically new correct answers.

Innovative and cross-sectoral clusters as facilitators of value added chains in agriculture – smart agro clusters in Romania

Clusters play an important role in driving competitiveness, innovation and jobs creation in the EU. Romania currently has successful clusters in various economic sectors and services, including 7 clusters in agro-food. Agriculture has been and remains the support of the human existence, which is an important pillar of the Romanian rural economy.The agro-food sector had oscillating evolutions in the post-accession period, mainly generated by the need to get in line with the EU requirements. Stimulating smart technology assimilation across all economic sectors including agro-food value chains, promoting enterprise growth and clusters 4.0 is critical to many EU Member States. Partnerships between countries, regions, cities and clusters are essential in the next industrial modernization process, based on innovation. Clusters 4.0 calls for development of a generation of advanced cluster policies to respond to these new industrial challenges by facilitating cross-sectoral value chains, fostering internationalization, stimulating inter-regional investment and accelerating entrepreneurship and skills in digital production, environmental production, circular economy, service innovation and creative economy. In order to be ready for the future, clusters must be geared towards creating a smart value chains, international cooperation and cross-sectoral partnerships. This research paper proposes a model as a tool for agro-clusters to become “smart”, also this proposal providing information on the most important steps in the creation and development of smart agro-clusters. The used research methodology was based on analysis and synthesis of the information on the economic and social aspects of the development of the agro-food sector and of clusters in Romania. In conclusion, the authors of this paper wanted to emphasize the necessity of the development of smart agro-clusters for the future smart specialization of the regions

Obtaining thermal energy from renewable sources in rural areas using a combined energy system

The article presents an energy system solution in which the heat energy required to get domestic hot water needed for a family home is obtained by the cumulative conversion of energy from 2 renewable sources: solar energy and biomass energy. Compared to the classic variants of thermal systems, which exploit a single source and provide only partially the energy needed, the combined use consists of energy supply from one source when the other is unavailable or insufficient. In the present case, when the domestic hot water requirement is no longer covered by the solar thermal panels (consumption during the night, days without sun or temporary consumption higher than the usual one), energy from biomass is used in the same system. It is converted to thermal energy using a generator where the gasification module uses the TLUD process. In addition to a higher yield of biomass, this process allows the use of a wide range of biomass types, existing in rural areas. The article presents the results obtained from the experimentation of the system that uses 4 solar panels and a thermal energy generator with a power of approx. 10 kW

Research on methods, techniques and technologies of carbon sequestration in soil

Soil is one of the natural reservoirs of the carbon biogeochemical cycle, incorporating approximately 6000 billion tons of carbon. Given that with the industrial development more and more carbon is emitted into the atmosphere, solutions, technologies and methods are being sought to reduce this carbon or, where appropriate, it is not eliminated into the atmosphere. The purpose of this paper is to study and identify the simplest methods to be applied in agriculture, for soil processing, by identifying the techniques, technologies and equipment to achieve this without turning the furrow, so that the carbon incorporated in the soil by plants remains sequestered there

MAXILLARY GROWTH PATTERNS IN ROMANIAN CHILDREN WITH CLEFT PALATE AGED BETWEEN 0-6 YEARS

A study documenting spontaneous and coordinated growth changes in young Romanian children with cleft palate is developed, for identifying the functional adaptations of oral cavity to the disrupted architecture of palate in children with cleft palate, the 3D analysis of maxillary casts being applied to visualize, evaluate and measure maxillary growth in patients with cleft palate, as well as to identify the reactive morphological pattern that could be imagined from the dimensional changes produced in the first 6 years of life. Two experimental groups were involved in the study, a former one, including 44 patients with cleft palate (16 boys and 28 girls), aged between 2 months and 6 years, operated by the same surgical team in the St.Mary University Children Hospital from Ia[i. The resulting maxillary casts were 3D scanned at Multinr company, in Sf. Gheorghe. The maxillary alveolar arch lines, the 4 Stilmann points (TD, TS, CD, CS) and the maxillary interincisive point were identified and marked by the orthodontist, being reproduced with 6 degrees of tridimensional freedom. The coordinates of this point were transferred to the CAD system, to graphically recreate the computerized three-dimensional alveolar arch. 4 direct measurements have been made, namely: anterior and posterior diameter of the alveolar maxillary arch, length of the alveolar arch and depth of the palate. Student’s t test, both simple and bivariate, performed with SPSS 13.0 soft, showed statistic significance for the dimensional differences of the alveolar maxillary arch in children with cleft palate, comparatively with the healthy control group. Conclusion: Cleft palate patients have narrower and shorter maxillary alveolar arch and a flattened palate

Label-Free Electrochemical Aptasensor for the Detection of the 3-O-C₁₂-HSL Quorum-Sensing Molecule in <i>Pseudomonas aeruginosa</i>

Pseudomonas aeruginosa, an opportunistic Gram-negative bacterium, is one of the main sources of infections in healthcare environments, making its detection very important. N-3-oxo-dodecanoyl L-homoserine lactone (3-O-C12-HSL) is a characteristic molecule of quorum sensing—a form of cell-to-cell communication between bacteria—in P. aeruginosa. Its detection can allow the determination of the bacterial population. In this study, the development of the first electrochemical aptasensor for the detection of 3-O-C12-HSL is reported. A carbon-based screen-printed electrode modified with gold nanoparticles proved to be the best platform for the aptasensor. Each step in the fabrication of the aptasensor (i.e., gold nanoparticles’ deposition, aptamer immobilization, incubation with the analyte) was optimized and characterized using cyclic voltammetry, differential pulse voltammetry, and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy. Different redox probes in solution were evaluated, the best results being obtained in the presence of [Fe(CN)6]4−/[Fe(CN)6]3−. The binding affinity of 106.7 nM for the immobilized thiol-terminated aptamer was determined using surface plasmon resonance. The quantification of 3-O-C12-HSL was performed by using the electrochemical signal of the redox probe before and after incubation with the analyte. The aptasensor exhibited a logarithmic range from 0.5 to 30 µM, with a limit of detection of 145 ng mL−1 (0.5 µM). The aptasensor was successfully applied for the analysis of real samples (e.g., spiked urine samples, spiked microbiological growth media, and microbiological cultures)

Using Statistical Modeling for Assessing Lettuce Crops Contaminated with Zn, Correlating Plants Growth Characteristics with the Soil Contamination Levels

The aim of the study was to identify new mathematical models and strategies that can characterize the behavior of pollutants accumulating in the soil over time, considering the special characteristics of these chemicals that cannot be degraded or destroyed easily. The paper proposes a statistical model for assessing the accumulation of Zn in the lettuce (Lactuca sativa L.), based on three indicators that characterize the development of lettuce plants over time. The experimental data can be used to obtain interpolated variations of the mass increase functions and to determine several functions that express the time dependence of heavy metal accumulation in the plant. The resulting interpolation functions have multiple applications, being useful in generating predictions for plant growth parameters when they are grown in contaminated environments, determining whether pollutant concentrations may be hazardous for human health, and may be used to verify and validate dynamic mathematical contamination models