Romania: Between East and West

PROFILE OF STABLE COPD PATIENTS IN COUNTRIES FROM CENTRAL EASTERN EUROPE: RESULTS FROM A LARGE OBSERVATIONAL STUDY

PHYSICAL ACTIVITY LEVEL IN STABLE COPD PATIENTS FROM CENTRAL EASTERN EUROPE: RESULTS FROM A LARGE OBSERVATIONAL STUDY

Since the beginning of the 21st century, we have been witnessing an increasing number of entries on the UNESCO list of intangible cultural heritage. With them, critical scientific trends describing its positive and negative effects began to emerge. In this article, I discuss the sense of such entries, showing their evaluative dimension as well as the difficulties of recognizing the areas of minority cultures as heritage - the areas which despite meeting all the entry criteria are in conflict with the modern ideas of European culture. I analyze these issues, using the Gypsy/Romani culture as an example - and more specifically the profession of bear handlers in Romania, which, due to its numerous similarities in history, training methods and folklore, I treat as representative of other European regions too. The text discusses the possible origins of this occupation, the place of the Ursari in the Romanian social structure together with their financial situation, and the attitude of the Church and State to bear handlers. It also presents the methods of animal training the Gypsies have used and passed on through the centuries, as well as the reasons why this profession has been disappearing in Romania. In the final (second) part of the article, I will discuss whether there is such a thing as the management of Ursari heritage (versus the management of inconvenient heritage), and if there is - what it entails. The article uses qualitative research methods, including the analysis of historical sources (documents from the offices of Moldovan, Wallachian and Transylvanian rulers and descriptions written by people travelling across former Romanian territories dated 14th-19th centuries) and ethnographic sources. In addition, the analysis also focuses on visual sources from Romanian territories associated with the Ursari as well as on the sources used during my own pilot ethnographic study on the cultural memory among the Roma from Romania.

∗ Romania applied to become a full-fledged member of the Council of Europe as far back as 1990 and it actually joined the Council only in 1993. The former Minister of Exterior Adrian Severin, who is very knowledgeable about these events, summed up this event as follows: “Romania was one of the first states to apply to join the Council, after the changes occurred at the end of the 80s. I believe that Romania’s advancement could have been faster had it not been for the miners’ coming to Bucharest. (…) Our way to the Council of Europe was blocked all of a sudden after the miners’ arrival to Bucharest on 13-15 June 1990. On 28 June, the very day on which the Government was formed, after the confidence vote, I left for Innsbruck together with other ministers and MPs, trying to join again the broken ends. But although we made some progress on the occasion of that meeting, it was clear that it would be very hard to re-enter the network at a normal pace. We made huge efforts in this sense. (…) Our efforts paid back faster than we expected: in January 1991, Romania was granted the status of special guest. (…) When the Prime Minister, Petre Roman, arrived in Strasbourg to advocate for Romaniai[i], the most optimistic of our diplomats gave him 50% chances to obtain the status of special guest and 50% not to obtain this status. Others credited him with even fewer chances. And I think they were absolutely right. It appears that the efforts made until then helped us recover to a certain extent the delay caused by the famous miners’ arrival to Bucharest in June 1990. But almost immediately afterwards, in September 1991, the miners came to Bucharest for the second time, which virtually took us back where we had started. Neither was our status of special guest suspended, not was our transition to the status of full-fledged member sped up. On the contrary, it was slowed down. The suspicion that we might not be honest, that we might not be capable to make a genuine progress on the path to democracy, to the rule of law and human rights turned 1992 into a year when nothing happened with regard to our accession. At the time I joined the Romanian delegation at the

Pinus sylvestris (Scots pine) is one of the most widespread conifer in the world occupying 37% of forest area and has relict populations from the Pleistocene in the Mediterranean region and central Europe. Variation in mitochondrial DNA (maternally inherited in pines) has indicated that the three major mitotypes are present in Europe, as well as microsatellite markers have revealed the expected heterozygosities to be between 0.50-0.80 (Keys et al ., 2000). In central and eastern Europe the gene pools of Scots pine were formed in postglacial times during the migration of the species from the glacial refugia and intensive gene exchange between populations and more recently by human activities. Some studies on macro and mega fossil data (Willis & van Andel, 2004) suggest that Scots pine survived in central Europe more than 30.000 years ago. Two mitochondrial markers nad 1 intronB/C, nad 7 intron1 and 9 SSR nuclear markers were used to determine the genetic variability and post-glacial colonization routs in six populations from Romania and 43 from Sweden. Half of the analyzed individuals in Romania populations had the haplotype-BA frequently found in North-East Europe, the other half had a haplotype-AA mostly found in West Europe (Naydenov, 2007; PyhA¤jA¤rvi, 2008). The haplotype found in Sweden populations was AA accordingly to the geographical range of this country. The glacial refugia for the haplotype-AA was proved to be South of Spain, Iberian Peninsula (Soranzo et al ., 2000), but for the haplotype-BA it was not found yet. To give a conclusion that the haplotype-BA survived in Hungary as well, and if this is the colonization source for Scots pine in Romania, the studies should continue with the analyses on at least two populations in this region.

The Romanian fiscal code has been adopted by Law 571/2003 and amended by Law 343/2006 modifying 263 issues of the initial Fiscal code, normative documents having as fundamental objectives: adopting fiscal directives in the European Union legislation, perfecting and simplifying the legislative code in force; harmonizing with the fiscal legislation of the European Union and international fiscal agreements Romania takes part in; ensuring a unitary stable, coherent and clear code of the fiscal Regulations; Taxes and duties provided by this fiscal code are based on principles such as: neutrality of fiscal measures as compared to the type of property, categories of investors and capitals, the certitude of taxation by elaborating clear legal standards, fiscal equity of natural persons and the efficiency of taxation by ensuring a long term stability of Fiscal Code provisions. Good provision of such principles shall be achieved only by provision of Standards by Resolution and published in the Official Monitor. The current Romanian Fiscal Code is structured by 10 titles, each with its chapters, regulating the following taxes and duties:tax on profit, tax on income,tax on micro-companies income,tax on income obtained in Romania by non-residents,tax on representation, value added tax,excises, local tax and duties. Activities developed in agriculture display a series of particularitie, therefore to be necessary: correct interpreting terms such as: “person” (any natural or legal person); “activity” (any activity developed by a person to obtain income); “independent activity” (any activity regularly developed by any natural person, other than a dependent activity); “tax payer” (any Romanian or foreign person developing their activity in Romania). Any farming activities organised and developed in Romania by compliance of legal provisions in the matter, can be declared by the Fiscal Code at the Trade Register afterwards at the territorial Fiscal Administration by Declaration of fiscal registration (fiscal vector).

Oil and the Romanian State and Ceauşescu's Romania. A Political Documentary Get access Oil and the Romanian State. By Maurice Pearton. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1971. 361 pp. Maps. Bibliog. Index. £4.00.Ceauşescu's Romania. A Political Documentary. By Julian Hale. London, Toronto, Sydney: Harrap. 1971. 208 pp. Illus. Bibliog. Index. £2.20. D. C. Watt D. C. Watt Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar International Affairs, Volume 49, Issue 2, April 1973, Pages 290–291, https://doi.org/10.2307/2614084 Published: 01 April 1973

The Roman state is the last state of the slave-owning society. The slave-owning social and economic formation reached the peak of its development in the Roman state. That state had different forms of government during its more than thousand-year history: republic and monarchy. Rome imposed its will on the world three times, three times created a unity of peoples. The first time this unity was expressed in the Roman state, the second time in the Roman Catholic Church, the third time in law as a result of reception (imitation). Rome, as a slave state, entered the historical arena later and created more perfect slave relations in form. Roman law operated in Italy, Spain, France, and Byzantium during the feudal social relations. And in Germany, the collection of Justinian's laws only ceased to operate in 1900.

Introduction: In swine, Lawsonia intracellularis is known to be responsible for porcine proliferative enteropathy. The syndrome can be divided in an acute intestinal hemorrhage (proliferative hemorrhagic enteropathy) affecting naive adult pigs and a wasting disease (porcine intestinal adenomatosis) in growing pigs. As new diagnostic techniques develop, there is increased number of pig farms where L. intracellularis is being identified worldwide. Aims: There are few reports of L. intracellularis outbreaks in Romania. We aimed to describe the clinical signs, treatment, outcome, gross necropsy and histopathological lesions from an episode of proliferative hemorrhagic enteropathy associated with L. intracellularis in a farm from Transylvania. Materials and methods: A farm of 4000 pigs (TOPIGS line) from Bistrita-Nasaud County. The microscopical examination was composed of Hematoxilin and Eosin exam, Warthin-Starry silver stain and immunohistochemistry for Multi-Cytokeratin. Results: Over a period of 6 days, a total number of 10 pigs dyed (from 2000 animals in the age group 90-120 days), and 1 pig dyed (from 1000 animals in the age group 60-90 days) with pallor, anorexia or with no clinical signs. Gross lesions were represented by pallor of the carcass and were restricted to the ileum. The intestinal wall was thicker (cerebriform aspect) and turgid. A mixture of blood and fibrin was present in the ileum, impregnating the faeces in the large intestine. Histologically the mucosa was thicker due to epithelial proliferation (Multi-Cytokeratin positive), with few Goblet cells, with severe erosion, necrosis and haemorrhage. Curved rod-shaped bacteria with morphology consistent with L. intracellularis were observed in the apical cytoplasm of epithelial cells using the Warthin-Starry silver stain. The food was medicated with chlortetracycline (20 - 40 mg a.s./kg b.w./day) and the pigs remained healthy, with no further mortality. Conclusion: We report here an outbreak of proliferative hemorrhagic enteropathy associated with L. intracellularis in a pig farm from Romania, emphasizing the importance of early diagnostic and control measures for this disease.

A territorial analysis of the foreign direct investments (FDI) in Romania shows major differences at all levels and in many fields. Among the eight Romanian economic development regions, there are a few which have closer indicators with the level of other countries in European Union (EU), but still many other far from the requirements of a member state of EU. A sectoral analysis of the FDI in Romania demonstrates a big imbalance between branches. Some of them were more attractive compared with the others. The investments generally and the investments in rural area and agri-food sector especially, acquire a special importance, as they are closely linked to the natural environment and the population. In the context of the transformations in the last years, the agriculture needs major investments in order to recover the lost capital due to the lack of stability and clear policy in the first years of transition. The lack of domestic capital claims for international funds and foreign investments. These are only a part of the arguments supporting the idea that, the foreign capital in Romania is welcome and necessary for the recovery of some sectors of activity, for improvement of the state of regions and for evening out of the disparities between them. The analysis of the Romanian sectors and regions, together with the investment policy and foreign capital flow’s evolution in economy will strengthen the above-mentioned arguments and reveal the present drawbacks and the need to accelerate the investment process.

Two coniferous tree species, Norway spruce [Picea abies L. (Karst)] and silver fir (Abies alba Mill.), from Maramures Mountains Nature Park, in northern Romania, were examined by means off allozyme markers. For Norway spruce, the genetic structure was observed at 19 enzyme coding loci in two populations situated at different elevations above the see level. Moderate levels of genetic variation within populations (on average, the number of alleles per locus was 2.14, the expected heterozygosity was 0.144) and an extremely low variation (FST=0.003) between the two populations was found. The genetic diversity was slightly higher in the low elevated population as compared to the high elevated spruce population. The estimated values for genetic multiplicity and diversity were comparable with those reported for a series of populations from the nearby Ukrainian Carpathians. For silver fir, the genetic variation was estimated at five enzyme coding loci from two enzyme systems, peroxidases and esterases, in five populations distributed throughout Maramures Mountains. Only three out of five loci were polymorphic in at least one population. The genetic diversity within populations was low (on average, expected heterozygosity was 0.093) and genetic differentiation among populations was relatively high (FST=0.106) which is consistent with their geographical position in the region. The results may contribute to a better understanding of the genetic structure in two of the most important tree species from Romania.

Agricultural performance in Romania has been fairly weak. This lack of competitiveness is illustrated by low yields levels, low growth, and a worsening agri-food trade balances, as agriculture and the food industry can not keep up with increases in food demand driven by rapid overall economic growth, in the face of foreign competitiveness, particularly EU, competition. The activities of the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development will facilitate the transformation and modernization of the dualistic structure of agriculture and forestry, as well as its agro/wood-processing industry to ensure their competitiveness, contribute to growth and income convergence in rural areas, will maintain and enhance the quality of the rural environment in Romania, by promoting the sustainable management of both agricultural and forestry land and will manage and facilitate the movement of labour out of agriculture into other sectors that can ensure a adequate economic and social living standard

In order to further develop sustainable economic, environmental, social and rural areas in Romania, the overall strategy for rural development Romania should focus on increasing competitiveness, while taking into account the need for nature protection, environment, land and water resources in rural areas. Program developed by the European Community SAPARD in Romania during 2000-2006 was intended to create the necessary implementation of an advanced agriculture and sustainable development of rural areas to reduce disparities in development from the community and prepare them for the use of Structural Funds.

New Data about the Trifolium hirtum in Romania

The Black Sea (BS) region is the space where are situated the last former communist states, which one way or another are willing to join the European Union or to become more compatible with Western economic and social standards. The paper discusses the idea of model countries, of how, based on the concentric circles principle, new waves of countries are becoming closer to the EU, as now it is time for the new member states to offer their expertise and support to countries from the BS region and the Balkans. It is in this context that Romania’s role as an intermediary between these countries is analyzed, given its geographical position in the above-mentioned regions, interesting for specific sectorial cooperation such as energy. Through the AGRI project, Romania could become the second largest energy platform for the EU, after Turkey; and could become, making use of its membership, the EU’s main energy player in the region, becoming a nodal point for Caspian hydrocarbons transit to Central Europe.