The Developmental Effectiveness of Remittances: Case Study on Huedin Town, Romania

Relying on survey data from Huedin, a town in Romania, we seek to provide an empirical evidence for the hypothesis according to which remittances could have either a positive or negative developmental impact at community level. For this, we inquire about the perceptions of migratory processes with focus on the possible effects of remittances in the local economy. Our first finding is that residents share a common view on the reasons of migration, namely that it has been triggered by the large pay levels that exists between the level of local and the Western European labor markets and that migration opportunity was enhanced by the lifting of visa requirements for Schengen countries. We have also found that remittances constitute a significant source of liquidity inflow and that the ways in which repatriated earnings were spent have influenced the performance of the local economy. We conclude that a reinterpretation of migration is required in order to capture the investment and entrepreneurial aspects of the phenomenon. In the formal model proposed in Appendix 2, we make a first attempt to conceptualise migration as a sector of the local economy in which migrants are entrepreneurs, who invest in migration activities to produce the composite commodity remittance.Remittances, migration, development, Romania

Guest-worker Programs and the Propensity to Emigrate: Evidence from the Work-and-travel USA program in Romania

Targeted seasonal guest-worker program replace wider scope immigration policy and are expected to formalize irregular migration flows, to recruit sufficient numbers of seasonal migrants, and to provide critical revenues of source countries following the return of migrants with their earnings. Understating temporary migrant selectivity, the experience of engaging in work-and-travel abroad programs (for instance, in contrast to the existing evidence of study-abroad programs) is important for capturing the role temporary guest-worker programs could have in the extent at which the supposed “triple win” achieved. This research found that college students that participated in the work & study abroad seasonal guest-worker programs for college students are 38% less likely to emigrate compared to those that did not participate in the program.

THE SOVEREIGN DEBT CHALLANGE: AN OVERVIEW

Recent years have seen profound changes in country risk and its components, in the context of crises multiplication and diversification; the sovereign risk, a main country risk component, has undergone important changes, mainly given by mutations in its determining factors; the economy of \"indebtedness\" represents a reality of the recent years. In this context, our paper aims to capture new issues related to sovereign risk and its manifestations, and to bring to the fore a number of relevant indicators concerning the indebtedness problems. Currently, the increasing sovereign obligations, the Greece 2010 episode and the real sovereign debt crisis testify the important implications that the national economic policy decisions have on entire nations. In general, the countries with servicing difficulties present a total external or public debt that overcomes the average of the emerging states; however, we can not accurately identify a threshold beyond which we can say that a state is overly indebted. Therefore, questions such as "Starting from what point is a state overly indebted?" or "What is the cause of the excessive debts of a state?" are fully justified and the answer or answers deserve being sought. Studies on the relationship between various economic variables and the countries ability to deal with external debt problems are present in the country risk literature since the 1970s; beginning with authors such as Frank and Cline (1971), which gave priority to external debt service indicators such as Exports, Imports / GDP, Imports / Reserves, and continuing with other specialists, among whom we mention Saini and Bates (1978), Abassi and Tafler (1982), Haque, Brewer and Rivoli (1990), North (2001) Bouchet (2003), Meunier (2005), Longueville (2010) and many others, many ratios and indicators were carefully analyzed. In our short study, we also present a number of recent aspects concerning sovereign risk, and we analyze some relevant indicators, using statistical data, for four countries: Romania, Greece, Hungary and Bulgaria. We underline the fact that, even if sovereign risk indicators are in the good intervals, the crisis risk remains present, especially because of the liquidity issues. For us, this brief paper opens the way for a much broader study, which aims to develop a model of sovereign risk analysis, the dependent variable, the probability of default, being explained by the evolution of the selected relevant indicators.sovereign risk, external debt, sovereign crisis, external debt indicators, thresholds.

Minimus: a fast, lightweight genome assembler

BACKGROUND: Genome assemblers have grown very large and complex in response to the need for algorithms to handle the challenges of large whole-genome sequencing projects. Many of the most common uses of assemblers, however, are best served by a simpler type of assembler that requires fewer software components, uses less memory, and is far easier to install and run. RESULTS: We have developed the Minimus assembler to address these issues, and tested it on a range of assembly problems. We show that Minimus performs well on several small assembly tasks, including the assembly of viral genomes, individual genes, and BAC clones. In addition, we evaluate Minimus' performance in assembling bacterial genomes in order to assess its suitability as a component of a larger assembly pipeline. We show that, unlike other software currently used for these tasks, Minimus produces significantly fewer assembly errors, at the cost of generating a more fragmented assembly. CONCLUSION: We find that for small genomes and other small assembly tasks, Minimus is faster and far more flexible than existing tools. Due to its small size and modular design Minimus is perfectly suited to be a component of complex assembly pipelines. Minimus is released as an open-source software project and the code is available as part of the AMOS project at Sourceforge

Unhealthy lifestyle and the risk of metabolic syndrome- the Romanian experience

Background. Metabolic syndrome (MetS) represents a clustering of metabolic risk factors for cardiovascular disease. Many studies have shown the influence of an unhealthy lifestyle on the risk of MetS, yet some aspects remain controversial. Aim of the study: to investigate the relationship between an unhealthy lifestyle and the risk of MetS. Materials and Methods. The study was conducted using a sample of 181 patients, 54 (29.8%) males and 127 (70.2%) females, aged 59.95±10.8 years. The baseline survey involved the completion of structured questionnaires and clinical examination. Results. Rural environment, lower education level, past smoking, the absence of fruit/vegetables in the diet, carbonated soft drinks, and the consumption of significant amounts of alcohol were risk factors for the MetS. Conclusion. A precise etiology for the MetS remains unclear, but it is known to result from a complex interaction of genetic, metabolic, and socio-economic and environmental factors

STUDY ON THE MILK QUALITY PARAMETERS IN THREE FARMS FROM SÄ‚LAJ COUNTY

Milk quality is influenced by many factors including rank lactation. This study aims to present the evolution of the main quality parameters of milk as the fat, protein, lactose, dry matter and the number of somatic cells for the first five lactations in Bălţată Românească breed during twelve official controls, starting in June 2015 until the month of April 2016. The biological material studied was represented by herds of dairy cows in three farms from Sălaj County (Crasna, Marin and Bodia villages). Analyzing qualitative parameters of milk obtained from the herd in lactation 1 during the 12 controls, there was a percent of 3.50% fat, 3.05% protein, 4.49% lactose and 8.48% dry substance in farm from Crasna. These parameters varied over the five lactations, the highest values being ranked in lactation five. Herd from Marin farm presented a fat content of 4.44% in lactation 2, while the lowest percentage of fat was recorded in lactation 3 (3.66%). Regarding the protein, the highest percentage was obtained in lactation 2 (3.70%) and the lowest in lactation 1 (3.39%). Lactation rank affects milk quality, so in lactation 1 there were recorded the lowest values of quality parameters of milk