People with Alzheimer’s disease are at risk of malnutrition, overeating, and dehydration because short-term memory loss can lead to confusion. They need a caregiver to ensure they adhere to the main meals of the day and are properly hydrated. The purpose of this paper is to present an artificial intelligence system prototype based on deep learning algorithms aiming to help Alzheimer’s disease patients regain part of the normal individual comfort and independence. The proposed system uses artificial intelligence to recognize human activity in video, being able to identify the times when the monitored person is feeding or hydrating, reminding them using audio messages that they forgot to eat or drink or that they ate too much. It also allows for the remote supervision and management of the nutrition program by a caregiver. The paper includes the study, search, training, and use of models and algorithms specific to the field of deep learning applied to computer vision to classify images, detect objects in images, and recognize human activity video streams. This research shows that, even using standard computational hardware, neural networks’ training provided good predictive capabilities for the models (image classification 96%, object detection 74%, and activity analysis 78%), with the training performed in less than 48 h, while the resulting model deployed on the portable development board offered fast response times—that is, two seconds. Thus, the current study emphasizes the importance of artificial intelligence used in helping both people with Alzheimer’s disease and their caregivers, filling an empty slot in the smart assistance software domain.

Background: In contemporary economies the migrant workforce is increasing around the world and represents a challenge both for domestic economies, companies and economic flows. The emergence of the European labor market highlighted a major lack of a qualified workforce and a rapid spread of migrant workers especially in the labor intensive economic sectors. In this perceptive, by striving to attract foreign workers with unique and complementary skills, knowledge, and ideas to the workplace, managers encounter many obstacles. Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to identify challenges managers in European companies face in the process of attracting and managing migrant workers. In this article, we analyze the impact of the migrant workforce on the internal labor market transformations and identifying the main managerial challenges for the European companies and management during the attracting, mobilizing and managing the migrant workers in economic system. Study design/methodology/approach: The authors evaluate both the existent assumptions in literature and conduct a systematic review of the managerial approaches in the field. A quantitative approach was employed. The data that contains responses from 1,127 managers from ten European countries, five EU and five non-EU member states, was collected between August 2021 and April 2022. Findings/conclusions: The main study results reveal that the most common obstacles and challenges that managers face occur in the process of recruitment, socialization and integration, training and development, workplace operations, and innovation. The study recommends a permanent focus of company management on these issues. It also lays the foundations for a theoretical framework that provides a better understanding of the significance of creating efficient and specific management policies for foreign workers based on employee diversity. Limitations/future research: The present study is limited in scope as the sample only includes managers from ten countries. Each research question can represent a broad enough basis for independent research, so this work opens up the possibility for numerous researches that can be treated as a continuation and expansion of the existing work.

Although the European business environment induces important premises and assures conditions in determining economic growth and social well-being, the determinant and existent connections between the evolution of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), business demography characteristics and the European socio-economic model have been scarcely studied in recent years. The dimensions of the European socio-economic model design a very specific framework in developing business demography and assuring a favorable environment for future SME development. The main aim of the manuscript is to investigate the evolution of the European SMEs sector and the perspective of business demography evolution to converge with exigencies of the European socio-economic model. In order to argue the research objective, eight specific and representative business demography variables were employed, from 12 European Union member states (EU-MS), during 2009–2017. Further, the SMEs’ performances, determined by changing the economic functional paradigm, were assessed. For proving this, an econometric model was designed considering labor productivity as an endogenous variable. Our preliminary analysis shows considerable differences in business demography indicators and SMEs development among all five socio-economic sub-models of the main European socio-economic model, proving a tight connection between European socio-economic models and SMEs’ performance and arguing the necessity of a paradigm convergence. Within some sub-models, there is clear evidence of clustering and convergence in terms of business demography and SMEs future development.

Background: The evolutions of the inputs price and investment indices of the products in agriculture are not only determinant elements in understanding the fluctuations of the food price and the market instability, specific to the agricultural sector but also affects the agricultural production and traceability. Analyzing the European evolutions of the inputs price indices of agricultural products offer the possibility to understand the main trends and tendencies in the agricultural system by reviling the main trend tenancies during a nine year period long. Purpose: The main aim of the study is to investigate the evolution of input price indices of agricultural products in order to underline the specific patterns, trends and implications of the agricultural policies. In addition, the research pays a special attention to the investigation of the Romanian agricultural policy evolution on the most relevant time frame of economic conformity with the European agricultural model. The descriptive analysis is based on the specific annual datasets of price indices of the means of inputs in agricultural production, and the index of real prices of goods and services for investments in agriculture during 2008 - 2017, reported to 2010 as the baseline year. Findings/conclusions: The analyses confirms that the agricultural sector evolution has generated significant input and investment prince changes and unprecedented trend evolutions that led to the massive changes on the agricultural pattern. We strongly advocate and recommend for promoting a solid capacity and durable agricultural production systems and policies through sustainable and long term investments in order to avoid disruptive tendencies in the agricultural market system. Limitations/future research: The research explore the evolutions of the inputs price and investments indices of the products in the European agriculture only form the descriptive analysis without covering an extensive framework or considering other additional variables which consist the main limitation of this study. In a future research the authors will address and extend the research framework by inserting additional variables and items and propose a large and integrative model of analysys.

The main aim of this study is to access possibilities of organic production of lavender in Serbia. As a result that 1999 and 2020 have been dubbed the "Year of Lavender" in the US, researchers and practitioners focused various aspects lavender production and cultivation. Lavender is an aromatic-medicinal plant, cultivated in Mediterranean region. The plants have used twofold: as an essential oil as well as a flower. In this study, the authors use a comparative analysis and feasibility study as research methods. The results of comparative analysis revealed that the main countries in organic production of lavender were Bulgaria, France, China, Ukraine, Spain and Morocco. Also, the feasibility study in Serbia showed positive effect on organic lavender production in Serbia. This can be the case study for organic production of lavender to other farmers in Serbia. The limitations and future research agenda will be presented, too.

Competitiveness has always been considered a vector of innovation that is centered around economic performance; constantly pushing companies to achieve better performance results. In such a modern society deeply marked by digitization, value creation has expanded its scope and it is no longer involving only harnessing customer satisfaction through the quality of the products or services marketed to customers, but it is also involving the permanent digital connection and engagement between the links of any value chain. Digital platforms, including social networks, are major sources of economic concentration where different forms of value emerge. For example, Facebook Inc. runs a business model that involves selling online media space for companies willing to pay money to have consumers of goods and services engage with the ads displayed on Facebook platforms, based on specific group targeting. Taking all of this into consideration, the scientific interest in exploring the nature of an emergent form of value along the chain is implicit. This paper brings its unique contribution to the existing literature concerning the topic of agri-food value chains by providing a niche marketing approach on a paradigm shift at the level of the nature of value generated in the chain in the case of highly digitized societies. The research objective was to bring the sustainability factor into the spotlight of the analysis concerning the paradigm shift of the nature of the value generated in the agri-food value chain. Research results show that some multinational corporations active in the Romanian agri-food sector use the Facebook Ad Market to reach consumers and call for them to engage in activities specific to building a sustainable agri-food system. Thus, by engaging in such activities, consumers feel that they contribute to the corporations’ effort in achieving sustainability. Consequently, a different form of value is generated along the chain.