THE EVOLUTION OF THE INTELLIGENT CARDS AND THE ROMANIAN MARKET

This paper will try to describe the close relationship between the economic evolution and technology, especially how the technical aspects of debit/credit cards interact with the economical aspects. There are approached concepts related to smart card and especially the use of cards in different economic purposes. Since the introduction of the first cards there has been an accelerated growth of the use of smart cards. One of the essential growth factors has been the progress in the electronic industry and the accelerated development of the software companies, which allowed the emergence of interactive financial services such as e-banking, mobile banking, smart cards being considered the access key to these modern services.Smart cards, credit cards, debit cards, card market in Romania, card payments

The strategic marketing planning – General Framework for Customer Segmentation

Any approach that involves the use of strategic resources of an organisation requires a responsible approach, a behaviour that enables it to properly integrate itself into the dynamic of the business environment. This articles addresses in a synthetic manner, the issues of specific integration efforts for customers’ segmentation in the strategic marketing planning. The essential activity for any organisation wishing to optimise its response to the market, the customer segmentation will fully benefit from the framework provided by the strategic marketing planning. Being a sequential process, it not only allows time optimisation of the entire marketing activity but it also leads to accuracy of the strategic planning and its stages.  

The strategic marketing planning – General Framework for Customer Segmentation

Any approach that involves the use of strategic resources of an organisation requires a responsible approach, a behaviour that enables it to properly integrate itself into the dynamic of the business environment. This articles addresses in a synthetic manner, the issues of specific integration efforts for customers’ segmentation in the strategic marketing planning. The essential activity for any organisation wishing to optimise its response to the market, the customer segmentation will fully benefit from the framework provided by the strategic marketing planning. Being a sequential process, it not only allows time optimisation of the entire marketing activity but it also leads to accuracy of the strategic planning and its stages

IMPLICATIONS OF CONSUMER BEHAVIOR ON THE BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT DURING THE CRISIS

The business environment records changes from one year to another, due to the rapid changes occurring in the macro and microenvironment. As the economic crisis, the environment in which companies operate is turbulent, that is why the attitude of those involved in business should be mostly a "proactive" one. Thus, to counteract the effects of the crisis, all the companies should respond to one of the most important changes occurred following the recession: individual consumer behavior modification. This paper aims to identify the changes in the consumer behavior in Romania and the environmental and business implications of the economic crisis starting from the analysis based on the "feel-good" factor of the consumer market and the link between it and insolvencies in the last years.consumer behaviour, business environment, challenges, economic crisis

The use of biomarkers in detecting subclinical cardiotoxicity in doxorubicin-based treatment for paediatric patients with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia

The international standard protocol for acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL), the most common haemato-oncological pathology at paediatric age, uses anthracyclines as antitumor agents, potentially associated with early or late onset cardiac damage. Currently, echocardiography is the gold standard in the diagnosis of cardiotoxicity, but several biomarkers are evaluated as a possible replacement, pending more extensive clinical studies. We started a prospective study in order to determine the role of two biomarkers, troponin and heart-type fatty acid binding protein, in the evaluation of cardiotoxicity in children over one year of age, diagnosed with ALL. Between February 2015 and April 2016, 20 patients were enrolled and monitored at diagnosis, during chemotherapy and four months after the end of reinduction, through cardiac evaluation and dosing of those two markers in five different points of the treatment protocol. During the first year of follow-up, the patients did not develop clinical signs of cardiac damage, but the study showed a slight increase in troponin levels during chemotherapy, with the return to baseline value after treatment cessation, and also a correlation with the total dose of anthracyclines given to the patient. On the other hand, the second biomarker, heart-type fatty acid binding protein, did not seem to be useful in detecting subclinical cardiac damage in these patients

Hyperglycosylated-hCG: Its Role in Trophoblast Invasion and Intrauterine Growth Restriction

Human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) is produced by the placenta and its roles have been studied for over a century, being the first known pregnancy-related protein. Although its main role is to stimulate the production of progesterone by corpus luteal cells, hCG does not represent just one biologically active molecule, but a group of at least five variants, produced by different cells and each with different functions. The hyperglycosylated variant of hCG (H-hCG) plays a key role in trophoblast invasion, placental development and fetal growth. During trophoblast invasion, H-hCG promotes extravillous cytotrophoblast cells to infiltrate the decidua, and also to colonize and remodel the spiral arteries in to low resistance, larger-diameter vessels. As fetal growth is heavily reliant on nutrient availability, impaired trophoblast invasion and remodeling of the uterine arteries, leads to a defective perfusion of the placenta and fetal growth restriction. Understanding the function of H-hCG in the evolution of the placenta might unveil new ways to manage and treat fetal growth restriction