The Quality of Educational Services in Higher Education – Assurance, Management or Excellence?

The present paper has as its target to present the regulations characterizing the quality of educational services in higher education, with a view to identifying the system which is the most efficient and revealing for their real quality. This approach also takes into account the central role that key intellectual and cultural responsibilities play in the development of modern society, as well as the moral impact of higher education on society as a whole. The authors reach the conclusion that, in order to have real quality in higher education, it is important to introduce a quality management system and to constantly improve it, using as feedback the satisfaction of clients and other interested parties, with the intention of attaining performance and excellence.excellence, performance, quality management, quality assurance, quality indicators

The Impact of Financial Diplomacy and the Effects of Financial Crisis on Norwegian Firms' Capital

This research focuses on investigating changes in the financial diplomacy of the Norwegian firms’ leverages due to the decrease in banks’ lending as a consequence of the financial crisis shock wave. The research question is whether the leverage ratio measured as debt-to-equity significantly declined as a consequence of the credit crunch. Its purpose is to analyze the relationship between firms, financial diplomacy and banks and find out its implications on the capital structure, answering to the question whether firms whose bank received a large shock after Lehman Brothers’ default changed their capital structure or they found substitutes for bank lending. This paper does not study whether the changes in financial leverage led to a decreased performance of the companies, the research focuses on the relationship between Norwegian financial diplomacy and firms, emphasizing how performance of the banks influences the way in which a company finances its assets and which substitutes does it have when there is a credit crunch

Modélisation simplifiée à 7 DDL des vibrations verticales des vutomobiles

Ce travail concerne un modèle simplifié 7 DDL pour étudier les vibrations verticales de l'automobile. Les 7 DDL classiques considérés par le modèle vertical simplifié sont: le déplacement vertical du centre de masse de la caisse automobile (masse suspendue), l'angle de roulis de la masse suspendue, l'angle de tangage de la masse suspendue et les déplacements verticaux des centres des 4 roues. En ce qui concerne les 2 DDL rotation de la masse suspendue, en utilisant la paramétrisation par une séquence de rotations x-y-z et dans le cas où le mouvement de lacet autour de l'axe z est négligé, on obtient facilement les deux équations d'Euler concernant l'angle de roulis et celui de tangage. Des petites différences sont observées entre ces deux équations des angles de roulis et de tangage et les équations similaires décrites par Demić et al. Les 5 autres équations dynamiques scalaires du modèle 7 DDL, concernant les déplacements verticaux du centre de la masse suspendue et des roues, s'obtiennent facilement et ne sont pas sujet à polémique. Le modèle simplifié 7 DDL pour étudier les vibrations verticales de l'automobile, comprenant deux équations différentielles rotation pour le roulis et le tangage et cinq équations différentielles concernant les déplacements verticaux, a été facilement intégré utilisant Matlab. Les résultats obtenus concernent un automobile de masse 1276 kg (les caractéristiques géométriques et inertielles sont détaillées dans le résumé étendu), roulant avec une vitesse constante de 10km/h sur une route assez dénivelé (en principal des sinusoïdes d'amplitudes 5-10cm et de fréquence 1 Hz, en antiphase entre les roues droite et gauche). Les résultats obtenus en utilisant le code de calcul propre écrit en Matlab sont presque identiques avec ceux utilisant le logiciel commercial CARSIM. Puisque les simulations CARSIM peuvent être assimilées à une expérience virtuelle, les résultats obtenus valident le code de calcul proposé, basé sur un modèle simplifié 7 DDL pour la dynamique verticale de l'automobile. Afin de mettre en évidence les performances des suspensions, une analyse quantitative des caractéristiques en amplitudes et fréquences des déplacements verticaux de la masse suspendue et des roues a été effectuée et sera développée dans la présentation

Horizontal Flight Dynamics Simulations using a Simplified Airplane Model and Considering Wind Perturbation

An in-house method of Newton-Euler inverse dynamics guidance based on a simplified airplane model in horizontal flight was proposed in a previous paper presented at NMAS 2018 workshop [1]. The goal was to guide the airplane between two locations situated at 100 km distance in the horizontal plane, considering some simplifying assumptions: the airplane was considered a material point (no motion equations involving torques are considered here); the thrust was constant in magnitude during the entire motion; the airplane is inclined at time t with the rolling angle (t); the main parameter for controlling the flight path was considered to be the sideslip angle (angle between the thrust vector and the velocity vector); the lift force balanced the weight, the centrifugal force and the wind perturbation lateral force; the wind perturbation was considered linear by pieces of 10 km distance. So, the horizontal flight guidance parameter is the sideslip angle , while the rolling angle is determined from the condition that the flight remains in the horizontal plane, which has to be permanently fulfilled. This paper presents several simulations validating the proposed inverse dynamics guidance tool for airplane horizontal flight. Various wind perturbation possibilities have been tested, considering this wind perturbation as linear by pieces during the horizontal flight. In conclusion, this guidance method worked well for the simplified horizontal flight case study

The Development of the Romanian Academic Research on the Academy of Economic Studies

Interdisciplinary academic research is one way to improve education quality via research as this implies scientific development, incorporating high technology into academic processes as well as formulating innovation-driven processes and services. Having these objectives in mind, the current project seeks to act along two major directions: on the one hand, improving the quality of academic research, on the other hand boosting its efficiency and noteworthiness on a world scale. The first vista aims to strengthen academic research capacities, which must be achieved by having education processes meet knowledge-based economy exigencies. From the perspective of this research under discussion, this paper explores the effects of European integration on the quality of Romanian economic higher education in its positioning on the European educational market and the attempts to define its specific profile in the central and eastern-European area. The authors raise questions regarding the roles universities want to play in the future, regarding the awareness towards the needs of the institutions, the needs of the teaching and research staff and, mainly, the needs of the students. On a particularly aggressive market, it becomes necessary that Romanian academic research and higher education on the Academy of Economic Studies should reflect on the first lessons which the new status of the country's European Union membership gives to the Romanian prestigious universities

Enhancing Brand Value of Modern Organizations through Digital Marketing Tools and Techniques: A Study on Top Ten Romanian Companies

The role and importance of the brand, in addition to better distinguishing the services or products of a modern organization from those of another, and to create a strong reputation, is also to protect the investments made in the name under which that organization carries on the business and to offer the premises for long-term profitability. The current paper discusses brand value related issues of modern organizations also in regard to their online presence strategies and makes a survey that analyses the top ten companies in Romania that have the strongest brand value. This analysis aims to identify the most important aspects that contribute in building the value of the respective brands from digital marketing tools and techniques (DMTTs) usage perspective. After processing and analysing the results, some observations are made in order to consolidate and improve the current methods of enhancing the value of a brand through DMTTs type of strategies

A pedunculated esophageal chondromatous hamartoma in a child

Esophageal tumors are uncommon in pediatric population and most of them are benign. Esophageal hamartomas have been reported extremely rare in children. These can present as intramural tumors of the esophageal wall or as polyps. Dysphagia is the main symptom described in their case, but other specific symptoms are also reported. Such symptoms encountered in clinical practice are represented by obstructive apnea episodes and bradycardia, poor weight gain, epigastric or retrosternal pain, hematemesis or melena, dysphonia or tracheal sounds. Diagnosis can be delayed due to the insidious onset and non-specific symptoms, therefore patient’s compliance to follow-up and broad, careful evaluation are mandatory. Preoperative imagistic assessment is extremely important for a precise definition of the tumor’s anatomical relations, especially when facing large tumors located in the posterior mediastinum. Herein we report a case of a large chondromatous polypoid hamartoma of the esophagus in a 9 years old boy, emphasizing over the diagnosis and surgical challenges we have met, along with comments on illustrative similar cases reported in the literature

Hepatitis C virus: host, environmental and viral factors promoting spontaneous clearance

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is a pathogenic entity which determines inflammation and liver damage through complex immune mechanisms. Although progress has been made in managing the disease course, chronic infection still remains a significant cause of morbidity and mortality to this day. Because both acute and chronic infection are often asymptomatic, chronic infection is frequently diagnosed when its complications have developed. In a small proportion of cases, the chronic infection does not develop, the immune system managing to cleanse the body from this silent pathogen in the absence of specific treatment, a process called spontaneous viral clearance, which occurs rarely, in about 20-30 % of cases. A competent immune response that manages to eliminate the virus from the organism was associated with IL-28B genetic polymorphism, female gender, young age, which often lead to clinical manifestations of acute hepatitis after initial exposure. Environmental factors such as limited viral exposure also play an important role. These factors and the mechanisms underlying spontaneous clearance are not fully understood but their action is complementary. In this paper, we review the concept of spontaneous clearance of HCV and assess the factors that have been associated with this clinical outcome of the infection