Digitalisation and mainly artificial intelligence led to significant disruptions at all levels of society, changing how we live, communicate, build communities, work, and learn. In addition, digital ...technologies offer solutions to achieve sustainable development goals. Therefore, to benefit from this potential, it is vital to understand the skill needs associated with sustainable digitalisation. The impact of digitisation on the labour market is largely documented, but there are still important debates on what future jobs will look like. On the one hand, some scenarios announce massive shifts and destruction of jobs with rhythms that cannot be managed well by societies, while others point instead to transformations of skills needs. Therefore, our article aims to investigate the links between digitalisation and skills needs among digitalised enterprises, focussing on those implementing artificial intelligence solutions. In this respect, we use various multivariate techniques to analyse the data made public for the Flash Eurobarometer 486 (2020). Our findings suggest that digitalisation leads to skills shortages and skill gaps among companies adopting different digital solutions. In other words, digitalisation requires more workers with better digital skills.
Understanding human behavior in the decision-making process represents a challenge for researchers in the socio-economic field. The complexity comes from multiple criteria acting simultaneously. ...Hiring decisions are made on a set of criteria representing the attributes of the applicants. This study’s main objective is to investigate Romanian employers’ behavior when recruiting for jobs targeting graduates from economic studies. The method used to identify the weights employers assign to different skills was based on an experimental technique-choice based conjoint. A survey experiment was conducted to produce causal conclusions about the recruiting process. The estimation was performed with a methodology based on machine learning, which allows to investigate interactions between subjects’ characteristics and conjoint criteria. The findings of our experiment align with other studies pointing to the increased relevance of non-cognitive skills for employability. Additionally, our results show that criteria weights in hiring decisions depend on company size, ownership, activity sector or personal characteristics of the recruiter. Our research provides a mechanism for understanding employers’ perspectives. This is valuable for informing job seekers to adjust their job search strategies and to invest in the skills offering hiring opportunities. Moreover, universities can use the results to adapt their educational programs to labor market needs.
This essay examines the kaleidoscopic and abridged perspectives on three early modern principalities (Wallachia, Moldavia, and Transylvania), whose lands are now part of modern-day Romania. I examine ...travelogues and geography texts describing these Eastern European territories written by Marco Polo (1579), Abraham Ortelius (1601; 1608), Nicolas de Nicolay (1585), Johannes Boemus (1611), Pierre d’Avity (1615), Francisco Guicciardini (1595), George Abbot (1599), Uberto Foglietta (1600), William Biddulph (1609), Richard Hakluyt (1599-1600), Fynes Moryson (1617), and Sir Henry Blount (1636), published in England in the period 1579-1636. The essay also offers brief incursions into the representations of these geographic spaces in a number of Shakespearean plays, such as The Merchant of Venice and Othello, as well as in Pericles, Prince of Tyre by Shakespeare and Wilkins. I argue that these Eastern European locations configure an erratic spatiality that conflates ancient place names with early modern ones, as they reconstruct a space-time continuum that is neither real nor totally imaginary. These territories represent real-and-fictional locations, shaping an ever-changing world of spatial networks reconstructed out of fragments of cultural geographic and ethnographic data. The travel and geographic narratives are marked by a particular kind of literariness, suggesting dissension, confusion, and political uncertainty to the early modern English imagination.
Healthcare systems aim to provide access to good quality care, while ensuring equity and solidarity. The fiscal sustainability of healthcare systems has become a matter of concern in recent European ...Union (EU) debates, considering the ever increasing need for adequate healthcare determined by factors such as aging population, investments in technology and infrastructure, medical products and wages. Our paper seeks to measure the health system performances of the EU countries by building up a composite index, which will then be used as a tool in investigating the relationship between health performance and the fiscal sustainability of health systems. A principal components analysis (PCA) was applied to build the composite index through the use of the most relevant health indicators provided by Eurostat and the Sustainable Development Knowledge Platform. The composite index offers a comprehensive performance assessment and provides a clear ranking of the EU countries based on their health system performances. Further investigation of the link between health performance and fiscal sustainability revealed that higher ranks are associated with higher shares of health expenditures in gross domestic product (GDP), a large share of employment in the health sector, and higher duration of working life. These patterns are followed by efficient health systems, encountering reduced sustainability risks.
Ecosystem respiration (Reco) is the main contributor to carbon emissions from different types of aquatic ecosystems. For a better understanding of CO
2
emissions from the water-atmosphere interface ...of rivers and to evaluate the influence of meteorological factors and water quality parameters on Reco, in-situ measurements were carried out in Damboviţa River in the winter season when temperatures were up to freezing point as well as in the summer period, which is the most dynamic in terms of CO
2
exchange. Reco during the monitoring period ranged from 4.56 to 40.5 gm
-2
h
-1
. The statistical analysis of the data set showed that among the meteorological parameters, temperatures explain most temporal variability of CO
2
fluxes. By scaling the importance of the water quality parameters, the precision of the permutations indicated the pH as the most influential parameter in the analysis of the dependent factors. The analysed data indicates that aquatic ecosystems are highly sensitive to changes in the current context of climate change, which implies that these ecosystems can easily turn into important sources of carbon in the atmosphere.
Anadromous sturgeon populations in the Lower Danube are in severe decline, and this is due to a combination of anthropogenic and natural factors that have a major impact on the life cycle of the ...species. Stationary swimming parameters, namely water temperature and depth, represent the starting point for developing the best procedures to identify breeding habitats and subsequently develop the best conservation measures in the context of anthropogenic impacts and climate change. According to current data,
Acipenser gueldenstaedtii
is the most endangered species, as it is the rarest species captured through scientific fishing and has highest temperature sensitivity of the three taxa studied.
In the context of the continuing decline of the species belonging to the order
Acipenseriformes
on a global level, the anadromous sturgeon species sturgeon species in the Lower Danube have been ...affected by a significant reduction in historical migration routes and fragmentation of breeding habitats. This paper presents the stages of the methodology for identifying areas that present a possible risk of interruption of sturgeon migration in correlation with satellite images and daily values for discharge/water level databases. In order to determine the two ranges of values that characterize the extreme phenomena (high/low flows), a hydrological statistical analysis was carried out for the most extensive period of time covered by recorded data (January 2011 – May 2023) in the hydrometric station located in Calarasi, Romania. Based on the 4524 values from the series of average daily discharge values, the discharge hydrograph, the empirical curve of insurance/exceedance probability and the frequency and duration curves using 200 m3/s discharge steps were determined and represented. Correlated with satellite imagery recorded during the determined time intervals with extreme phenomena, there were identified areas with possible risk for sturgeon species migration disruption.
The LULUCF sector (land use, land use change and forestry) can act as a carbon dioxide (CO2) sink, either by increasing the removal of greenhouse gasses from the atmosphere or by reducing their ...current emissions. This paper intends to analyze the results of the CO2 monitoring methodology by the chamber method in order to estimate the effect of different land use cover and management techniques. For this purpose, seasonal CO2 efflux field measurements were conducted in two types of ecosystems (forested land and wheat crop) located in the adjacent area of Bucharest. CO2 efflux was analysed for each land cover in relation to the physical characteristics of the soil, respectively soil temperatures and humidity, but also together with the main weather parameters. The measurements were performed simultaneously in both land covers at relevant time intervals. The difference in measured values between the two ecosystems was recorded but the results of the statistical analysis showed a lack of differences in the correlation between the CO2 efflux. This indicates that the CO2 efflux can be affected by particular elements of the environment which facilitates differences in soil temperature and humidity in the same weather conditions.
This essay looks at the 2001 Romanian production of Hamlet directed by Vlad Mugur at the Cluj National Theatre (Romania) from the perspective of geocriticism and spatial literary studies, analysing ...the stage space opened in front of the audiences. While the bare stage suggests asceticism and alienation, the production distances the twenty-first century audiences from what might have seemed difficult to understand from their postmodern perspectives. The production abbreviates the topic to its bare essence, just as a map condenses space, in the form of “literary cartography” (Tally 20). There is no room in this production for baroque ornaments and theatrical flourishing; instead, the production explores the exposed depth of human existence. The production is an exploration of theatre and art, of what dramatists and directors can do with artful language, of the theatre as an exploration of human experience and potential. It is about the human condition and the artist’s place in the world, about old and new, about life and death, while everything happens on the edge of nothingness. The director’s own death before the opening night of the production ties Shakespeare’s Hamlet with existential issues in an even deeper way than the play itself allows us to expose.
Microplastics (MP) are widely present in both outdoor and indoor environments. Extensive research has thoroughly documented the potential negative impacts of MPs on human health. This study utilized ...a deposited sample method for 3 weeks, with eight-hour daily exposures, using funnels and bottles to investigate the properties of MPs in the office and laboratory settings of the Faculty of Civil Engineering & Technology (FCET), Universiti Malaysia Perlis. The characteristics examined included the deposition rate, size, form, and colour of the microplastics. Samples were collected at three different heights. The samples underwent pre-treatment procedures, such as physical counting and categorization (size, colour and shape). Micro-Raman analysis was performed to determine the primary polymer types. The deposition rate in the office was found to be 4,960 counts/(m
2
.h), while the rate in the laboratory was 6,940 counts/(m
2
.h). Human activities and the appearance of synthetic materials, especially from textiles, play a big role in the deposition rate of MPs in the environment. During the day, the rates were higher than at night. The results of the study showed that indoor MPs come in many different colours, with transparent and black being the most common. About 42% of the size range of fibrous MPs was between 200 µm and 2000 µm, and more than 15% of the particles were between 20 µm and 200 µm. Most of the time, fragments were smaller than strands. The most abundance polymers detected in both rooms were polycarbonate (PC), pigments and polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA).
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