Building Research Skills: Course-Integrated Training Methods

An enriched syllabus has been experimentally introduced to undergraduate level students enrolled in a geotechnical engineering course. Two research assignments have been integrated in the course, which require students to find information on a geotechnical engineering topic using both print and electronic resources available at the university library and on the Internet. Aiming to foster the development of technical information literacy and communication skills, the students are required to prepare a report based on a specific set of guidelines, followed by oral presentations of the topics researched. Between the two assignments, a lecture on the subject of identifying and using information resources for geotechnical engineering is included in the syllabus. Preliminary results of the study are presented along with directions for designing and implementing an enriched curriculum for geotechnical engineering courses

Effect of undergraduate research output on faculty scholarly research impact

Objective – In the context of the ongoing discourse about the role of Institutional Repositories (IRs), the objective of the study is to investigate if there is any evidence of a relation between undergraduate student activity in an IR and the impact of faculty research. Methods – The data used for the study is representative of six academic departments of the College of Science and Mathematics (CSM) at California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly). Digital Commons@Cal Poly (DC) is the IR supported by the library. Regression analysis was used to investigate the interdependence between faculty research impact (dependent variable) and undergraduate student repository activity (independent variable). For each department, faculty research impact was quantified as a measure of the citation counts for all faculty publications indexed in Web of Science (WoS) between January 2008 and May 2017. Student repository activity was quantified for each department in two ways: (1) total number of student projects deposited in DC since 2008 (Sp) and (2) total number of student project downloads from DC (Sd). The dependent variable was regressed against each of the two elements of student repository activity (Sp and Sd), and the resulting statistics (sample correlation coefficients, coefficients of determination, and linear regression coefficients) were calculated and checked for statistical significance. Results – The statistical analysis showed that both components of student repository activity are positively and significantly correlated with the impact of faculty research quantified by a measure of the citation counts. It was also found that faculty repository activity, although positively correlated with faculty research impact, has no significant effect on the correlation between student repository activity and faculty research impact. Conclusion – The analysis considers two distinct groups of publications: one group of student publications (senior projects) from six academic departments, which are deposited in an open repository (DC), and one group of publications (not necessarily represented in DC) of faculty affiliated with the same six departments and whose citation impact is believed to be affected by the first group. The statistical correlation between student repository activity and faculty research impact can be seen as an indication that an active, open IR centered on collecting, preserving, and making discoverable student research output has a positive impact on faculty’s research impact. More research that includes additional factors and uses a larger data set is necessary to arrive at a definitive conclusion

Coordination of the Social Security Systems in the European Social Space

The free travel of workers is defined by the right to answer workplace offers, to travel for this purpose on the territory of the member states, to remain on the territory of the member states in order to perform an activity, as well as to remain of the territory of either such state, after the person performed an activity. As a corollary of this freedom, the member states are asked to eliminate any discrimination between workers, based on nationality, with respect to employment, remuneration and the other labour and employment conditions

Current Issues regarding Labour Inspection

Objectives: Labour inspection is the most important specialized organ of the state for intervention and control in the sphere of the work relations. In any state of law, it is impossible for a labour relation to occur, to attempt the eradication of the ”black work”, to protect the employees’ interests, to monitor the observance of the legal and/or contractual provisions, without regulating the institution of labour inspection. Prior Work:  I've tried to fiind the new regulation in this domain very important for those who practice labour law. Results: In the Romanian legislation, the enforcement of the court decisions in the matter of labour inspection is viewed by the lawmaker with great care, in certain cases the non-execution of a court decision being considered a felony. Value: We think this article is a small step in the disclosure of the problem eraised by the labour inspection. &nbsp

The Evolution of Professional Training of Employees and Public Servants on the Labour Market

The market represented in the beginning the place where the product supply and demand met. The relation between the labour force supply and demand represents what is called the labour force market. The labour force market cannot exist outside the legal regulations establishing it and, especially, organizing the relationship between demand and supply. Unfortunately, at present, one can no longer speak of an automatic adjustment being performed between the demand and the supply, the state having the role to strongly intervene on this market, organizing the employees’ professional training and taking measures to encourage employment. By professional training is defined the activity performed by a person prior to his/her employment, for the purpose of gaining general and specialty knowledge, necessary to exercise a new profession or trade. In Romania, professional training can be achieved in two variants: either through the national educational system, or outside the national educational system

Finite element assessment of the effects of seismic loading rate on soil liquefaction

The influence of frequency content of seismic excitation on the extent and pattern of pore-water pressure build-up in saturated soil deposits is addressed. Seismic acceleration time histories are generated as uniformly modulated nonstationary stochastic processes, in accordance with prescribed response spectra and prescribed modulating functions. Based on numerical examples, it is shown that the interplay between the frequency content of seismic excitation and the dynamic characteristics of the soil system and their evolution during and after the earthquake have important implications on the dynamic response.Key words: seismic motion, frequency content, finite elements, soil dynamics