Study on the Information Level of Pupils and Parents Regarding the Effects of Unhealthy Food Consumption

During the past centuries, consumption has become both one of the most discussed and analyzed subjects in the literature and a mass phenomenon in society. In order to satisfy their needs and to improve the quality of their life consumers need information and education. Consumers’ information and education are promoted by a globally-developed consumer movement. The aims of our paper are to present the role of the consumer information and education in society, and to analyze and highlight the results of a national project regarding the information and education of Romanian young consumers, run by the Association for Consumers Protection (APC) Romania. By using primary data obtained from a survey based on a questionnaire, a set of three hypotheses was tested during our research. The results of our research shows that a relatively small number of Romanian pupils from the 5th grade to 8th grade were aware of the negative effects of unhealthy food consumption and of the fact that the unhealthy food consumption may give rise to obesity and ADHD (agitation with attention deficit).consumer information, consumption, consumer, consumerism, pupils

Nanoscale local modification of PMMA refractive index by tip-enhanced femtosecond pulsed laser irradiation

Investigation techniques based on tip-enhanced optical effects, capable to yield spatial resolutions down to nanometers level, have enabled a wide palette of important discoveries over the past twenty years. Recently, their underlying optical setups are beginning to emerge as useful tools to modify and manipulate matter with nanoscale spatial resolution. We try to contribute to these efforts by reporting a method that we found viable to modify the surface refractive index of polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA), an acrylic polymer material. The changes in the refractive index are accomplished by focusing a femtosecond pulsed near-infrared laser beam on the apex of a metalized nano-sized tip, traditionally used in scanning probe microscopy (SPM) applications. The adopted illumination strategy yields circular-shaped modifications of the refractive index occurring at the surface of the PMMA sample, exhibiting a lateral size <200 nm, under 790 nm illumination, representing a four-fold increase in precision compared to the current state-of-the-art. The light intensity enhancement effects taking place at the tip apex makes possible achieving refractive index changes at low laser pulse energies (<0.5 nJ), which represents two orders of magnitude advantage over the current state-of-the art. The presented nanoimprinting method is very flexible, as it can be used with different power levels and can potentially be operated with other materials. Besides enabling modifications of the refractive index with high lateral resolution, this method can pave the way towards other important applications such the fabrication of photonic crystal lattices or surface waveguides

Reducing Fuel Consumption in Bucharest Terminal Area for Flights Using a Standard Instrument Departure

Reconfiguration of the standard instrument departure and standard arrival routes at certain airports can bring significant reductions in fuel consumption and level of noise. This can be done either by implementing modern radionavigation aids for terminal areas or by eliminating the flying restrictions over cities and inhabited places and designing of low level of noise procedures for these areas. These solutions have other important benefits like decreasing the workload for the air traffic controllers and reducing the total flight time. The paper describes an operational solution in this manner for Bucharest Henri Coanda International Airport

Experimenting Liver Fibrosis Diagnostic by Two Photon Excitation Microscopy and Bag-of-Features Image Classification

The accurate staging of liver fibrosis is of paramount importance to determine the state of disease progression, therapy responses, and to optimize disease treatment strategies. Non-linear optical microscopy techniques such as two-photon excitation fluorescence (TPEF) and second harmonic generation (SHG) can image the endogenous signals of tissue structures and can be used for fibrosis assessment on non-stained tissue samples. While image analysis of collagen in SHG images was consistently addressed until now, cellular and tissue information included in TPEF images, such as inflammatory and hepatic cell damage, equally important as collagen deposition imaged by SHG, remain poorly exploited to date. We address this situation by experimenting liver fibrosis quantification and scoring using a combined approach based on TPEF liver surface imaging on a Thioacetamide-induced rat model and a gradient based Bag-of-Features (BoF) image classification strategy. We report the assessed performance results and discuss the influence of specific BoF parameters to the performance of the fibrosis scoring framework.Romania. Executive Agency for Higher Education, Research, Development and Innovation Funding (research grant PN-II-PT-PCCA-2011-3.2-1162)Rectors' Conference of the Swiss Universities (SCIEX NMS-CH research fellowship nr. 12.135)Singapore. Agency for Science, Technology and Research (R-185-000-182-592)Singapore. Biomedical Research CouncilInstitute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (Singapore)Singapore-MIT Alliance (Computational and Systems Biology Flagship Project funding (C-382-641-001-091))Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART BioSyM and Mechanobiology Institute of Singapore (R-714-001-003-271)

Cochlear implant in a 10 months old patient

Otorhinolaryngology Clinic, Targu Mures Emergency Clinical County Hospital, Romania, The 6th International Medical Congress for Students and Young Doctors, May 12-14, 2016Introduction: World Health Organisation declares that over 5% of the global population, 32 million children included, suffer from disabling hearing loss, meaning a loss greater than 30 decibels in the better hearing ear in children. Objective: The purpose of this study is to present the case of the youngest bilateral cochlear implant receiver in Romania and the correlations between the imaging and surgical findings.Results: Both findings, the imaging and the surgical ones, were concordant, no pathological modifications were found that could have discomforted the cochlear implantation. Conclusion: This is the first case of an infant patient under 12 months suffering bilateral cochlear implantation in Romania, with activation of the implant after 7 weeks from implantation, and having a favourable outcome subsequent to the surgery