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Investing in research, development, education, and skills is a key policy area for the EU, as it is essential for economic growth and the development of a knowledge-based economy. But how investments in R&D and the most qualified segment of the workforce will influence innovation? Is there a link between these factors? In the last years, we investigated how Innovation and ICT are linked. Results obtained proved that there is a linear correlation between the two factors. In this paper we'll continue our research, extending the analysis with more recent data and using new indicators. The analysis presented here refers to the EU-27 Member States and the indicators used are the Summary Innovation Index, published by the European Commission in the European Innovation Scoreboard and two indicators that measure the ICT Readiness, namely: the Human Resource Science and Technology Index (HRST) and the Gross Domestic Expenditure on R&D (GERD), both published by the Eurostat organism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nowadays, artificial intelligence is everywhere around us: in our phone, in our tv set, in our car, in applications that sometimes we don't even know they are related to AI. In order to broaden the perception on the artificial intelligence -- what is, when is, when it's not -- the University of Helsinki and the Reaktor company joined forces and created a free online course: "Elements of AI". Later, the consortium attracted national organisms and created different language versions of the course, this way making the information more accessible across the Finnish borders. In this paper we discuss the opportunity of the "Elements of AI" course in the European context related to the artificial intelligence and analyse the impact of several national platforms, including the Romanian language platform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Competitive programming is that branch of programming that challenges the programmer to exceed his own limits, to push his creativity to a new level. It is a mind sport, where the programmers are challenged not only to solve algorithmic problems, but to deliver the most performant solution, that will fulfill the very strict specifications of the problems. This requires the programmer to have a very good knowledge of algorithms, data-structures, a strong mathematical foundation, and, not eventually, high programming skills. The revenue is not at all negligible: the programmer is rewarded with significant visibility, becoming the target of important software companies, not mentioning the personal satisfaction and increase of confidence. In this article, we try to focus on the main aspects of the competitive programming area, followed by a presentation of the most important competitive programming contests in the world. A distinct section is dedicated to fostering programming performance in Romania. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to analyze, process and interpret, from economic and statistical perspectives, the data regarding the quantity of electric energy, measured at the non-residential consumers' level. Our intention was to track and analyze the electric energy consumption level at hourly intervals for a real consumer in Romania. The measurements were carried out in MWh, and collected in databases, in order to facilitate the application of the calculation methods. The results and their interpretations facilitate the scientific substantiation of new policies in order to optimize the electric energy consumption. The statistical and mathematical methods employed represent viable tools in achieving an adequate data analysis on non-residential electricity consumption in view of devising appropriate consumption strategies. These will be transmitted and proposed to the real consumer as scenarios of its analyzed consumption profile. After having experimented several methods for approximating the data repartition, we have concluded that by adjusting the primary data with the estimated normal repartition one obtains the ideal model in the case of hourly electricity consumption of non-residential consumers offering valuable insights regarding the modelling of their consumption patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a new analysis over the relation between the ICT performance and the innovation level for the 28 EU Member States. Two indicators were used: (1) the ICT Development Index (IDI), a composite index that has been computed yearly, since 2009, by the International Telecommunication Union and published in the "Measuring the Information Society Report" (MISR), and (2) the Summary Innovation Index (SII), a 10-dimensions composite indicator for innovation, computed yearly under the auspices of the European Commission and published in the European Innovation Scoreboard. Several testes were verified: some analyzes between innovation and ICT development for the EU-28 Member States yielded to the conclusion that the two indicators follow a linear regression model with high confidence. This result is not accidental - over the past 7 years, IDI and SII have been strongly correlated, as related tests showed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The solution proposed here aims to optimize the electricity costs of a household, based on time-of-use rates, by reprogramming and automating appliances and devices that are major electricity consumers. It also offers real-time monitoring of the power usage, while providing predictive analyses and optimization solutions based on the collected data, to help the household occupants in making consumption-related decisions. A cloud platform is going to be used to connect home appliances, systems, sensors, and smart meter. The platform will combine the services offered by the Azure IoT Suite, chosen because it facilitates the rapid development of IoT solutions and provides several preconfigured solutions for quickly developing IoT systems. The solution is based on collecting disparate data from sensors and home appliances and processing and analyzing them, in order to assist the customer in identifying inefficiencies, setting specific sustainability goals, and balancing between the budget and the desired comfort. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to analyze the innovation performance of Romania, compared to other EU Member States, in order to detect the most significant strengths and weaknesses. There have been used the data provided annually by the European Innovation Scoreboard, namely the Summary Innovation Index (SII), which is a composite index, an aggregation of indicators grouped by dimensions and blocks, to measure the innovation performance at country level. A synthesis of the evolution of the SII since 2001 and analysis of the data in the period 2010-2016 have been performed. The focus was on the Modest innovators cluster - the least performing in innovation group of countries - which includes Bulgaria and Romania. Using a comparative, structural analysis of the SII and its components in both countries, and a time series analysis, the trends, similarities and differences have been identified. A 6-years evolution of the overall innovation performance in Romania has been modelled through linear regression, and the estimation for SII in 2017 was not promising. We've deepened the analysis of the innovation performance in Romania for the period 2010-2016, by studying the evolution of the 10 dimensions of the SII. Data show that 5 dimensions had an increasing evolution, 5 registered a decreasing trend, and 8 of them follow a linear regression model. The conclusions are similar to those obtained in other reports, such as those for competitiveness or doing business rankings. The analysis should be continued at indicator level to obtain a more insightful understanding of the phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous researches have shown that the Innovation performance is in a strong link with the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) readiness, at European Union level. In this article, we have investigated if these results still maintain in 2015, according to data published in 2016 reports, and whether they are dependent on the indicator used for measuring innovation. Using unifactorial linear regressions, a comparative analysis has been developed: we modeled the relationship between the Networked Readiness Index (NRI) - created by the World Economic Forum, in collaboration with INSEAD, and published yearly since 2002-and: (1) the Global Innovation Index (GII) - published yearly since 2007, by INSEAD in collaboration with WIPO, Cornell University and their Knowledge Partners, on one hand, and (2) the Summary Innovation Index (SII) - created on the initiative of the European Commission and computed yearly since 2001-on the other hand. The transversal linkage between the two pairs of indicators for the 28 Member States were tested. The results show a strong relationship between ICT and innovation in 2015. This relationship is not accidental - it has been verified using historical data for the last 8 years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we analyze the main characteristics and implementation requirements of the advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) systems in Romania, taking into account that the smart metering implementation enables the consumer to devise a custom-tailored strategy for his own energy consumption. First, we have studied a series of important aspects regarding the intelligent metering systems, then we highlight legal aspects regarding the implementation of AMI systems in Europe and in Romania. Afterwards, we have analyzed the types of energy consumers, their demands regarding the technological solutions for the assessment of their own consumption, registered by the smart meters and finally aspects regarding the emerging trends of the consumers' behavior. By implementing advanced metering infrastructure systems, through judicious investments and activities related to the consumers' behavior, one can obtain an improved energy efficiency at both national and international levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper aims to highlight certain relevant and new features revealed by the research on assisted training. The motivation is given by the necessity to efficiently develop the educational resources by combining reusable learning objects, and also by the need to customize training in order to meet specific user options. The main objective is to design a flexible framework for assembling and reusing learning objects, which can be successfully applied in developing an educational platform for mathematics teaching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]