DEVELOPMENT OF ENTREPRENEURIAL ACTIVITIES â€" PREMISE OF THE INCREASE OF ECONOMIC COMPETITIVENESS

In the context of the integration into the European Union, the issue of the increase of firmsâ€(tm) competitiveness has become essential for Romaniaâ€(tm)s economy also, which requires as a mandatory condition the elaboration and application of certain clear strategies, both at the level of firms, and of the Government's, with specific goals and actions. Although it has made certain progress, Romania has significant competitiveness delays compared to the EU member states. In this context, development of entrepreneurial activities is a premise of the increase of economic competitiveness. Entrepreneurship is first of all a state of mind referring to the motivation and capacity of an individual to identify opportunity and follow it with the purpose of producing value or economic success.entrepreneurship, competitiveness, development

GENDER DISPARITIES IN THE ENTREPRENEURIAL FIELD IN WESTERN ROMANIA

The entrepreneurial spirit may develop in any economic sector and any type of business, both in the case of men and women, it is applied to a wide range of organisations, from family businesses to large companies, irrespective of the structure of shareholders, from NGOs to companies gone public on the capital market, firms from all sectors of activity. As regards the gender disparities in the entrepreneurial field, studies reveal the fact that although the two genders are similar, women entrepreneurs differ from men through motivations, their business ability and occupational past. Although the gender differences are still important, the number of women entrepreneurs has significantly increased compared to the previous period.entrepreneurship, gender disparities, motivations

A model for information retrieval driven by conceptual spaces

A retrieval model describes the transformation of a query into a set of documents. The question is: what drives this transformation? For semantic information retrieval type of models this transformation is driven by the content and structure of the semantic models. In this case, Knowledge Organization Systems (KOSs) are the semantic models that encode the meaning employed for monolingual and cross-language retrieval. The focus of this research is the relationship between these meanings’ representations and their role and potential in augmenting existing retrieval models effectiveness. The proposed approach is unique in explicitly interpreting a semantic reference as a pointer to a concept in the semantic model that activates all its linked neighboring concepts. It is in fact the formalization of the information retrieval model and the integration of knowledge resources from the Linguistic Linked Open Data cloud that is distinctive from other approaches. The preprocessing of the semantic model using Formal Concept Analysis enables the extraction of conceptual spaces (formal contexts)that are based on sub-graphs from the original structure of the semantic model. The types of conceptual spaces built in this case are limited by the KOSs structural relations relevant to retrieval: exact match, broader, narrower, and related. They capture the definitional and relational aspects of the concepts in the semantic model. Also, each formal context is assigned an operational role in the flow of processes of the retrieval system enabling a clear path towards the implementations of monolingual and cross-lingual systems. By following this model’s theoretical description in constructing a retrieval system, evaluation results have shown statistically significant results in both monolingual and bilingual settings when no methods for query expansion were used. The test suite was run on the Cross-Language Evaluation Forum Domain Specific 2004-2006 collection with additional extensions to match the specifics of this model

THE SAVING AND INVESTING CONSUMER BEHAVIOR ANALYSES ON THE ROMANIAN FINANCIAL MARKET.

This article aims to provide an analysis of the saving and investing consumer behavior, that where researched in a time of changes after a severe financial crisis. The analyses purpose was to determine the reasons, or the way that the reasons would change, for buying different financial instruments, and also the way that the consumer perceives investing and saving. Different demographical characteristics and their influence on the financial behavior of the consumers were also studied. The investor behavior on the developed markets is being studied carefully for many years. The need to create financial products for each customer type, such as Generation Y, intensely investigated by various research teams, in different ways, resulting in different characteristics such as general proclivity to the marketing, advertising, consumerism, branding, environmental issues, fashion and even anxiety, begins to be felt also on the Romanian market. So, to better understand the actual degree of knowledge that the consumer have on the concepts of saving and investing and on that activities involved into this concepts is a very important step of the research. The research method is a survey based on a sample chosen with the simple random method undertaken in 2010. There were gathered 480 questionnaires. Research is not a statistical nationwide representative because of the lack of the financial and human capabilities. The developed questionnaire summarized 22 questions, in order to illustrate the way that saving and investing were seen, to see actual investing behavior and to measure the degree of trust given to the most known investing means. We expect that the methods of \"investing\" that are most known and used to be bank deposits because in Romania the risk appetite is a low one. The people’s appetite for saving activities we expect to be motivated by the need for purchasing consumer goods, and eventually buying a car or a house but not the desire to accumulate capital by making real investments such as those in financial assets. An important factor for the decision to invest should be a higher income and also the family structure. Study could be interesting for researchers because it offers an opportunity to view an analysis of the customer behavior on the financial market. The research instrument is complex, the mix and the large number of question should provide an accurate image of the way the Romanian consumer of financial products think and act on this market. The study also helps to understand consumers\' needs for practitioners, because this field is not a largely researched one. The originality of this article is given by the manner in which the questionnaire was made. The battery of questions, including a series of likert question, it should provide an accurate mirror of the know-how the Romanian consumer of financial products actually possess, the reasons on with their behavior is based on, and what are the most important characteristics that influence the purchase behavior.   consumer education, saving, investing, marketing research, financial market

Exchange of stability as a function of system size in a nonequilibrium system

In equilibrium systems with short-ranged interactions, the relative stability of different thermodynamic states generally does not depend on system size (as long as this size is larger than the interaction range). Here, we use a large deviations approach to show that, in contrast, different states can exchange stability as system size is varied in a driven, bistable reaction-diffusion system. This striking effect is related to a shift from a spatially uniform to a nonuniform transition state and should generically be possible in a wide range of nonequilibrium physical and biological systems.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures. Supporting Material included in same file with main tex

Natural killer (NK) cells and their involvement in different types of cancer. Current status of clinical research

Natural killer cells are the main agents of innate immunity. Since 1970, various studies have repeatedly confirmed their involvement in decreasing local tumor growth and also decreasing the risk of metastasis, due to their cytotoxic effects and also through the release of immunostimulatory cytokines such as IFN-gamma. In the 1990s, several studies demonstrated the existence of certain inhibiting and stimulating receptors of these cells, leading to the concept of “induced self”, thus explaining why tumors with MHC-1 are destroyed and autologous cells without it are saved out. Recognition and destruction of tumor cells by the NK cells are the result of complex interactions between inhibiting and activating factors. This paper, based on extensive research of currently available studies, summarizes the mechanisms employed by the NK cells to destroy the cancer cells, thus highlighting their role in the risk of tumor recurrence as well as their use and handling in certain types of immunotherapy