Learning Leadership: The Five Fundamentals of Becoming an Exemplary Leader. By James M. Kouzes & Barry Z. Posner

LEARNING LEADERSHIP: THE FIVE FUNDAMENTALS OF BECOMING AN EXEMPLARY LEADER. By James M. Kouzes & Barry Z. Posner. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley (2016). Hardcover, 272 pages. The central theme of this great book orbits around the message that leadership is everyone’s business, pulverizing the five myths that keep people from boarding the vessel of leadership: talent, position, strengths, self-reliance and it-comes-naturally. “Leadership potential isn’t something that some people have and other people don’t”

Options for Long Distance Passenger Land Transport Infrastructure Expansion. Analysis Regarding Network-based Sustainable Development

AbstractIn the global reality of intense competition for financial resources, models for transport infrastructure and operational technologies development are to be taken into consideration in order to ensure that both service and physical network provision serves society's wider need. Proposed paper presents a detailed methodology for the substantiated choices of transport infrastructure development in case of long distance haul and high speed passenger travel, adequate for efficient resources consume (space, energy, finances). Practical aspects are revealed in the present comparative study regarding space and equivalent energy consumption, conducted for two land infrastructures, highway and high speed rail, connecting the same origin and destination points. As a result, although both services have their benefits and costs, high speed rail is recommended as a sustainable development action, ranking better than highway infrastructure. Recommendations concerning methodological clarifications and practical aspects are made in order to insure the best practice considering a sustainable network based transport infrastructure assessment process

Moderate associated fetal ventriculomegaly: prenatal diagnosis

Ventriculomegaly (VM) is a descriptive term, indicating the enlargement of the ventricles of the brain. We present the case of a 32-year-old primiparous women, at 18 weeks of pregnancy, who was referred in our clinic for a routine prenatal ultrasound examination. The ultrasound scan highlighted a single malformed fetus with several major abnormalities of the fetal head: hypoplastic nasal bone, agenesis of corpus callosum, choroid plexus hyperplasia, solid hypoechoic mass on the external wall of the left ventricle, no visible cavum septum pellucidum, third ventricle visible, moderately enlarged and VM with evolution to bilateral hydrocephalus. The parents were informed about the major severity of anomalies and decide to terminate the pregnancy. Prenatal ultrasound examination was decisive in the early prenatal diagnosis and optimized management of the malformed fetus with VM

Fetal Central Nervous System Abnormalities

Central nervous system (CNS) is one of the most frequent sites for prenatal diagnosed congenital abnormalities (10 per 1000 live births, much higher than the heart—eight per 1000, kidneys—four per 1000, and other fetal systems). Due to the evolving pattern, ultrasound screening for fetal brain malformations is usually performed at 19–22 weeks’ gestation, but severe congenital anomalies can be diagnosed much earlier. This chapter is a short review, structured in eight subchapters: the first one is dedicated to the normal ultrasound aspect of different CNS segments, and the following ones are to detect pathology in prenatal life. We used many ultrasound images and tried to correlate the prenatal findings with the ones obtained postpartum/postabortum for each case, by means of pathology/imaging techniques

New opportunities for the integration of microorganisms into biological pest control systems in greenhouse crops

Biological pest control with mass-produced arthropod natural enemies is well developed in greenhouse crops and has often resulted in the evolution of complex ecosystems with persistent populations of multiple arthropod natural enemy species. However, there are cases where arthropod natural enemies are either not effective enough, not available, or their use is rather costly. For these reasons, biological control based on microorganisms, also referred to as ‘microbials’, represents a complementary strategy for further development. Although commercially available microbials have been around for quite some time, research on and the applied use of combinations of arthropod natural enemies and microbials have remained relatively under explored. Here, we review current uses of entomopathogenic fungi, bacteria and viruses, and their possible direct and indirect effects on arthropod natural enemies in European greenhouses. We discuss how microbials might be combined with arthropod natural enemies in the light of new methodologies and technologies such as conservation biological control, greenhouse climate management, and formulation and delivery. Furthermore, we explore the possibilities of using other microorganisms for biological control, such as endophytes, and the need to understand the effect of insect-associated microorganisms, or symbionts, on the success of biological control. Finally, we suggest future research directions to optimize the combined use of microbials and arthropod natural enemies in greenhouse production.</p

Examining the practical side channel resilience of arx-boxes

Implementations of ARX ciphers are hoped to have some intrinsic side channel resilience owing to the specific choice of cipher components: modular addition (A), rotation (R) and exclusive-or (X). Previous work has contributed to this understanding by developing theory regarding the side channel resilience of components (pioneered by the early works of Prouff) as well as some more recent practical investigations by Biryukov et al. that focused on lightweight cipher constructions. We add to this work by specifically studying ARX-boxes both mathematically as well as practically. Our results show that previous works\u27 reliance on the simplistic assumption that intermediates independently leak (their Hamming weight) has led to the incorrect conclusion that the modular addition is necessarily the best target and that ARX constructions are therefore harder to attack in practice: we show that on an ARM M0, the best practical target is the exclusive or and attacks succeed with only tens of traces

The Xeno-tolerance project- a useful tool in doing quality research

The article presents some ideas promoted by the European project Xeno-tolerance 2015-1-FR01-KA202-015143 as they were implemented by EuroEd Foundation Iasi. The paper narrows down the project’s ambitious goal (prevention and fight against radicalisation) to one aspect where any student may be vulnerable: the authenticity and credibility of internet resources and databases. The experiment carried out on students (studying medicine and oenology) familiarised them with the criteria they could apply in assessing the credibility of websites they often use when doing research on the internet. It also helped them distinguish between facts and opinions. This ability enhanced their chances to distinguish opinion from informationwhich sometimes aims at manipulating readers’ opinions. The activities suggested enabled students not only to enrich their vocabulary and practise language structures in the target language but also to diagnose the social realities of the environment, detect unauthentic sources, evaluate and select the most adequate resources, including social media

Impact evaluation of some crops integrated pest management systems on microorganisms and soil arthropods

The paper presents the results of experiments aimed at determining the ecologicalfunctionality of pests management model in order to stimulate the biological control agents in sunflower, barley and peas crops. The environmental quality and bio-monitoring of the experimental parcels by identifying communities of soil microorganisms and arthropod populations was performed. For microbiological characterization of experimental fields, representative samples of soil were collected and analyzed. The main groups of microorganisms isolated from samples analyzed are entomogenic microorganisms belonging to the following genera: Aspergillus, Bacillus, Penicillium, Beauveria, Alternaria, Trichotecium, Trichoderma and Fusarium. Entomological methods of observation and sampling of biological material were used to studied the arthropod populations

Artificial Intelligence as a Substitute for Human Creativity

Creativity has always been perceived as a human trait, even though the exact neural mechanisms remain unknown, it has been the subject of research and debate for a long time. The recent development of AI technologies and increased interest in AI has led to many projects capable of performing tasks that have been previously regarded as impossible without human creativity. Music composition, visual arts, literature, and science represent areas in which these technologies have started to both help and replace the creative human, with the question of whether AI can be creative and capable of creation more realistic than ever. This review aims to provide an extensive perspective over several state-of-the art technologies and applications based on AI which are currently being implemented into areas of interest closely correlated to human creativity, as well as the economic impact the development of such technologies might have on those domains