Chemicals Migrating from Food Contact Materials: European Regulations, Characterization and Human Exposure (An Overview)

Food contact materials have high societal importance due to their influence on food quality and safety. In the food chain production, food matrix may interfere with many types of materials, particularly with food packaging. During the last decades, the concerns related to food packaging (especially plastics) and the migration of chemicals from food contact materials increased significantly, being affected by the nature and complexity of the food, the contact time and temperature, the type of food packaging material and the molecular size of the migrators. Some of these migrators are toxic and/or have endocrine disrupting activity. This overview reveals recent data (since 2015) about food contact materials as a source of food chemical contamination, their compliance in Europe, the analytical characterization of chemicals migrating from food contact materials as well the human exposure to such chemicals. There are mentioned the most recent scientific articles and experimental data on these topics, available from official, public reports or web sources. The major point in defining shortcomings in the current food contact risk assessment mechanism and legislation is that safety of food contact materials is currently less guaranteed due to different risk assessment, authorization processes across the Europe and their problematic enforcement

Integrated Administration of the Organizations Informational Resources

Organizations grow and develop continuosly and information volume grows in the same rythm, which makes from improvement or changing the old counting systems an imperative. More and more companies, instead of continuing to invest in small applications choose integrated informational solutions, which are adapted to the user’s daily needsfrom, all decisional levels. Although apparently profitable from the costs point of view, small applications assure only the simple economical solutions between clients, partners, furnisors, and employees. For high business volume companies, this kind of applications become useless in a short time, fact that involves extra sustained investitionsorganization management, informatic solution, data volume, information system, benefit and economic performances.

A Structural Equation Model of the Factors Influencing British Consumers’ Behaviour towards Animal Welfare

Results of national and pan-European consumer surveys and the growth in the demand for so-called “animal friendly” food products suggest that consumers within the European Union show a high level of concern for the welfare of farm animals. This paper analyses the determinants of British consumers’ behaviour towards animal welfare using structural equation models (SEM) with observed and latent variables. SEM is a statistical technique for testing and estimating relationships amongst variables, using a combination of statistical data and qualitative causal assumptions. We used a data set collected in 2005 through face-to-face interviews of 654 consumers in England. We analysed the range of statements in existing literature on consumers’ behaviour towards animal welfare and then used SEM to test and estimate these a priori determinants of behaviour. The models include observed and latent variables representing behaviour (stated purchases of free-range and organic chicken meat) and its underlying determinants (attitudes towards animal welfare and socio-economic factors). The models have an adequate overall fit to the data. The significance tests for the structural equation model on free-range chicken meat purchasing behaviour show socioeconomic group, education, attitudes towards animal welfare, reasons for buying chicken meat, access to information on animal welfare issues, number of children and price as significant determinants. All of these (with the exception of reasons for buying chicken meat) were found significant also in the model on organic chicken meat purchasing behaviour.animal welfare, consumers’ behaviour, structural equation models., Agricultural and Food Policy,

Vineyards’ restructuring and conversion through national support programmes - the case of Romania

Wine industry is considered to be a traditional industry, where the potential for growth is still important for the existing wine producers and new entrants, based on strategies for increasing international awareness, technological innovation and financing program. The paper aims to explore the evolution of the determinants of wine and vineyards industry from a macroeconomic perspective, in order to assess the efficiency of the National Support Programmes, financed by the European Union. The exploration intends to cover the tendency of the following indicators: areas under vines, areas under vines for wines, wine producers, wine consumers, wine imports and wine exports, in order to explore new opportunities for growth and develop future orientation. Moreover, the analysis intends to address the importance of National Support Programmes 2009-2013; 2014-2018; 2019-2023, whose evolution is currently considered a key research question in the field. Romania is an important European country from the point of view of wine industry, the various wines it produces are known for their quality. With an area of around 180.000 ha cultivated with vines which, in 2016, represented 1,42% of its agricultural area and 2,28% of arable area, Romania ranks the 5th position in the European Union, after Spain, Italy, France and Portugal. However, the countries that took advantage of the financial funds allocated to the National Support Programmes, were: Italy, Spain and France, which together spent more than 70% of the total amount for each of these programmes

GIS in seismology: contributions to the evaluation of seismic hazard and risk

In this paper we highlight the capabilities and advantages of GIS, through an explicit analysis of its contribution within different studies of seismic hazard and risk assessment. These studies are related to Romania – one of Europe’s countries with the highest seismic risk, mainly due to intermediate-depth earthquakes originating in the Vrancea Zone. We provide examples of how GIS contributes and enhances the evaluation of seismic hazard, the development of vulnerability spatial datasets, multicriteria analysis, real-time estimation of seismic risk, assessment of road network failure susceptibility and implications, mapping or others. The role of free data and contribution capabilities are discussed. In recent projects such as Bigsees and Ro-Risk, GIS was one of the elements that lead to innovation, and we aim to present the experience and results. Another important aspect is referred to: the importance of GIS to a research dissemination with great impact

'Yes We Vote': Civic mobilisation and impulsive engagement on Instagram.

Social media have become increasingly central to civic mobilisation and protest movements around the world. Emotions, symbols, self-presentation and visual communication are emerging as key components of networked individualism and connective action by affective publics challenging established political norms. These emerging repertoires have the potential to reignite civic engagement, although their coherence and sustainability have been questioned. We explore these phenomena through an examination of Instagram use during the 2014 Romanian presidential election. Voting irregularities during the 1st round, particularly affecting the diaspora, gave rise to an impulsive civic movement utilising social media to express solidarity and drive turnout in the 2nd round. Using an original coding framework, we look at how narratives of identity, community and engagement were visually constructed by users on Instagram; the activities, settings, spaces, objects and emotions that comprised this multi-authored story. Our analysis reveals the creation of a loose “me too” collective: an emotionally charged hybrid of self-presentation and participation in a shared moment of historic significance, which otherwise lacked particular norms, political agendas or hierarchies. The civic movement on Instagram materialised primarily through photos documenting the act of voting; an imagined community that combined co-presence in physical space with virtual solidarity through photos of ballots, flags and landmarks. The platform appears to favour impulsive, symbolic and affective expression rather than rational or critical dialogue. As in other cases of post-systemic grassroots engagement, individuals came together for a short period of time and expressed the need for change, although this remained largely an abstract signifier

Indexul Integrării Imigranților în România 2017

Last years brought about, again, the topic of migration to the mainstream Romanian media. The media rearticulated some themes that were already discussed and brought to the public attention in the past ten to fifteen years. When in 2002 Romanian citizens obtained visa-free agreement to the EU, the main theme was the large number of Romanians who have left the country. In 2007, when the country joined the EU as a member state, the discourse on migration was about anti-immigration debates in the Western Europe and the expulsion of Romanian citizens back to Romania. Today, the discourse revolves around the refugee crisis and the fact that Romania started to receive migrants and refugees, and that in the future it may host large amounts of Muslims. Most probably, this last topic will continue to stir up heated debates in the Romanian public space. According to various data, the number of international immigrants arriving in Romania is of about 370,000 people. This means that migrants make up about 2 % of the country’s population. Even though this number is not that high and it draws not much attention, it is still of utmost importance that Romania has started to develop migration policies and methods to measure migrants’ integration before facing large-scale migration. The current report and the index of migrants’ integration therein is such a measurement and it provides a general image of how migrants’ fare in Romania. It was constructed using other similar tools (MIPEX, Zaragoza indicators, and so on) and aims at adapting them to the Romanian context. It focuses on migration policy, labor market adaptation, and the relationship between migrants and the institutions dealing with immigrants’ integration. This synthetic data allows us to obtain a longitudinal image of immigrants’ integration, compare data from different regions and cities, as well as compare the Romanian data to the data from other older and newer countries of immigration. Such data on immigrants’ integration is not just needed for policy purposes, but for public debates also. Given that the Romanian public debates started to be shaped by populist stances and fears of refugees and “Muslim invasion”, or of “disappearing European culture”, analytic data is useful in countering such speculative claims. The analysis carried out in this report provides a different perspective in which immigrants, even though they arrived in the past years only, tend to integrate well in the Romanian society. On the other hand, one shall state the limits of this type of approach. The report does not focus on specific groups, or specific places; it only aims at providing a general image of immigrants’ integration in Romania, and more fine-grained analysis is needed for specific topics. And, in order to obtain such information, especially on immigrants’ integration difficulties, addtional qualitative and quantitative research is needed. The report offers, though some surprising data on immigration to Romania. We thus first noticed a high rate of employment among asylum seekers and third country nationals; and not only they are employed, but tend to fare better than the average Romanians. Given that the country has a huge number of unemployed and underemployed persons, this result came actually as a surprise. Looking at the data, though, we realized this is so due to the fact that migrants went to Romania’s major cities, such as Bucharest, Timişoara, Cluj, Constanţa, or Iași, were salaries are higher. In a country with stark inequalities, such as Romania, there is no wonder then, that a person in a large city has a better job than someone living in a small city in a disadvantaged region. And that migrants tend to integrate rapidly on the labor market is actually not a novelty in migration studies. A second surprising data is also related to Romania’s social and ethnic inequalities. The survey data revealed that immigrants are favorable to the Roma people and that the social distance between immigrants and the Roma is by far much smaller than between majority Romanians and the Roma. In itself this data does not allow us to speculate on the future interethnic relationships in the country, or if the racist attitudes will be countered by more tolerant ones, however we may hope to be so. Thus, the index we managed to build, the survey data and the interviews we carried out gatheres the first set of data in the field of immigrants’ integration in Romania; it may help policy makers to build informed policies about migration in Romania and it presents novel data that the Romanian public is not aware of. As a matter of fact, international migration, to which Romania has to adapt as a country of origin, will generate new challenges, this time as a country of transit and destination. In this vein, the present research is a first step in this process

Excerpts from "Instruments interface standards for interoperable ocean sensor networks"

Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

The impact of comorbidities on the physical and psychological dimension in heart failure patients

Assessing patients' quality of life is frequently used in medical research. Patients di-agnosed with heart failure (HF) have reduced exercise tolerance and reduced quality of life due to reduced heart pump function. The objectives of the study are (i) to assess quality of life and comorbidities in HF patients; (ii) to compare quality of life in the physical and psychological do-mains according to drug treatment followed and (iii) to identify predictors of the two domains as-sessed. Methods. A cross-sectional study was conducted between February 2023 and May 2024. A total of 169 patients with HF were included and were distributed into two groups: the HF -S/V group (N=64) who received treatment with sacubitril/valsartan and the HF -CT group (N=105) received treatment with conventional therapy. Two questionnaires were used to assess patients: the World Health Organization's Quality of Life Questionnaire (WHOQOL-BREF) questionnaire and the Charlson Comorbidity Index (CCI). Results: The values determined for physical and psy-chological health were significantly lower for Group HF - S/V (51.391 ± 22.232 vs. 61.79 ± 20.04, p=0.002, respectively 59.203 ± 16.871 vs. 64.933 ± 17.448, p=0.038). Approximately 25% of all re-cruited patients distributed in the 2nd CCI category (CCI score 3-4) have an overall poor and moderately poor perception of quality of life vs. 35.5% of patients distributed in the 3rd CCI cate-gory (CCI ≤ 5); 55% of them belong to the HF - S/V group. A good perception of health status is held by 29 (17.16% of the HF group) of the patients distributed in the 2nd CCI category and 28 (16.56%) have a low and moderate perception. Conclusions: The values for the Physical health domain are moderately low, while the values obtained for the psychological domain show that this domain is less affected. Predictors identified for physical health and psychological well-being are patient age, weight, CCI