First-year students undergo several transformations like the transition from high school to university schedules, teaching methods, and discipline specificities to social changes that come with meeting new colleagues or moving to other locations far from family and friends. The COVID-19 outbreak brought additional concerns and uncertainties once educational systems implemented distance learning schemes for public health management. Nevertheless, higher educational organizations preferred to implement hybrid approaches for student engagement motivation and high dropout rate avoidance. In Romania, such an educational system has been applied with caution. Since the pandemic needs to be understood as an opportunity for adaptation and education improvements, the purpose of the present paper is to uncover lessons learned and to develop a systematized model based on students’ perception regarding face-to-face, online and hybrid systems. For this reason, a grounded theory approach has been preferred. Thus, 149 Romanian students enrolled in the first year in engineering specialities with ages between 18–26 years both male (50.3%) and female (49.7%) have answered the research questions in an online environment due to pandemic restrictions. Based on the online asynchronous student interviews, 220 codes and a further 13 categories have been developed. After a pertinent analysis of the relationships between categories and relevant literature sorting, a theoretical model for the Romanian higher educational current pandemic situation has been proposed. The main face-to-face and online education characteristics are outlined, the hybrid approach becoming a bridge between the two systems. Management implications are outlined together with further research directions.

The CAD/CAM techniques, especially additive manufacturing such as 3D printing, constitute an ever-growing part of obtaining different dental appliances and restorations. Of these, provisional restorations are of frequent use in daily dental practice and are the object of this study. Masticatory and parafunctional forces determine flexure on these prostheses. This study investigates the influence of the printing angle and loading direction of the applied force on the flexure strength of two commercially available printable resins—Detax Freeprint Temp and Nextdent MFH Vertex dental. Ten rectangular beam specimens printed at the angle of 0, 45 and 90 degrees were fabricated of each of these materials, with an addition of 10 at 0 degrees for the investigation of the load direction. Three-point bending tests were performed in a universal testing machine. Flexure strength, strain at break and Young’s modulus were determined and a statistical analysis was performed on the obtained data. According to the statistical analysis, the flexural strength has a significance dependence with respect to degrees of orientation, for both investigated materials.

Given the increased prevalence of thyroid nodules in the general population (~50%), the real challenge resides in correctly recognizing the suspicious ones. This study proposes to compare four important Thyroid Imaging and Reporting Data Systems (TI-RADS) and evaluate the contribution of elastography and 4D Color Doppler assessment of vascularity in estimating the risk of malignancy. In the study, 133 nodules with histopathological examination were included. Of these, 35 (26.31%) proved to be malignant. All nodules were classified using the four selected systems and our proposed improved score. The American College of Radiology (ACR) and EU TI-RADS had good sensitivity (94.28%, 97.14%) and NPV (93.33%, 95.83%), but fairly poor specificity (31.81%, 23.46%) and PPV (35.48%, 31.19%), with an accuracy of 42.8% and 45.8%, respectively. Horvath TI-RADS had better accuracy of 66.9% and somewhat improved specificity (62.24%), but poorer sensitivity (80%). Russ’ French TI-RADS includes elastography in the risk assessment strategy. This classification proved superior in all aspects (Se: 91.42%, Sp:82.65%, NPV:96.42%, PPV:65.30%, and Acc of 84.96%). The mean strain ratio (SR) value for malignant lesions was 5.56, while the mean SR value for benign ones was significantly lower, 2.54 (p < 0.05). It also correlated well with the response variable: histopathological result (p < 0.001). Although, adding 4D vascularity to the French score generated a similar calculated accuracy and from a statistical point of view, the parameter itself proved beneficial for predicting the malignancy risk (p < 0.001) and may add important knowledge in uncertain situations. Advanced ultrasound techniques definitely improved the risk estimation and should be used more extensively.

The concept of academic spin-off (AS) has witnessed an increase in attention due to its effectiveness in solving industry problems using core technology and knowledge from academia. Most studies based on US and western Europe experiences have presented the main key factors for academic spin-offs. The present study aims to address a literature gap regarding AS survival factor identification for central and eastern European countries, to relate resource groups with these key factors from a literature perspective, and to statistically investigate the long-term performance of academic spin-offs in Romania, an eastern European country that has only recently understood the opportunity academic spin-offs offer for national and regional development. Since EU programs are setting the scene for AS development, this research brings new insights for university strategic management to achieve sustainable regional growth by proposing a novelty spin-off key factor specific to central and eastern European countries: team competency in accessing government funds. Since these emerging economies face similar challenges regarding AS formation and development, statistical evidence from Romania is insightful and valuable. Data were collected on Romanian AS companies founded from 2006–2010, and eleven survival factors were investigated within a quantitative survey to understand which had a significant impact on AS performance. By using Pearson’s correlation matrix and a Cobb–Douglas nonlinear regression model, this study validated two research hypotheses that, in Romania, the quality of scientific support received from a university or research center during the development of a product and the competency of a team in accessing government funds were the most important factors having nonlinear influences on AS performance. Their positive and negative influences were furthermore discussed, and managerial implications were outlined.

The published data on the experimentally determined fracture toughness of foams are based on a small number of specimens, having a lack of statistical consistency. The paper proposes a statistical approach on the fracture toughness results of rigid polyurethane (PUR) foams of three different densities. Five types of fracture tests were considered. The results were statistically analyzed using six types of regressions and a meta-analysis to identify the factors influencing the fracture toughness. The statistical analysis indicates that the fracture toughness represents a material property because does not depend on the specimen type. The density plays a major role in the fracture toughness of PUR foams. The irregular shape of the cells induced small anisotropy for low-density foams (100 kg/m³ and 145 kg/m³). This effect could not be observed for the foam with 300 kg/m³ density, for which the cells have a more regular spherical shape. The statistical analysis indicates that the influence of the loading speed is very weak.