As food loss and food waste continue to be social, economic, and environmental issues, governments, private companies, and nonprofit organizations have started initiatives in order to raise awareness about this topic. Food waste occurs mainly at the consumer level, so information campaigns have been carried out in the media, in shops, or online, in order to point out the extent of the problem, its effects, and to educate consumers as to how to generate less waste. Although some awareness campaigns were conducted in Romania, mostly by the private sector, but also by governmental institutions, these efforts are still few in comparison with other European countries. Research of this topic has also started to increase, but the effects of the campaigns conducted in Romania have not been thoroughly assessed. In an effort to evaluate the effectiveness of these campaigns on consumer food-wasting behavior, we have carried out a study among Romanian citizens, based on a survey. The data were analyzed using the chi-square test and the probit regression model. The results indicate that most respondents already self-assessed their food waste as small to moderate, regardless of their familiarity with food waste campaigns, and it might be the case that only their additional actions to reduce food waste are linked with them coming across food waste reduction campaigns.

Innovative digital technologies, together with new sustainable practices, push for new business models and skillsets, pressuring companies to adapt to external change in order to gain competitive advantage. Higher education institutions could offer support. More than 20% of university graduates in the European Union study “business, administration or law”, with some of them being future top-level managers and entrepreneurs. This paper aims to provide an understanding of the factors shaping business students’ perspectives and decisions in the modern business landscape. It reunites their career preferences, personality characteristics and knowledge regarding technology’s utility for business and compares them between two cohorts (i.e., first year bachelor students and second year master students). The results of an online survey with a sample of 154 respondents show that business students’ entrepreneurial intention is influenced by their entrepreneurial confidence, their boldness when considering risks, as well as by being further along their educational journey. While almost 80% of business students are daring, oriented toward results and confident in their entrepreneurial abilities, and around 50% would feel most comfortable having their own business, approximately half of first year bachelor students and 14% of second year master students tend to be “not sure” regarding how eight out of ten modern technologies mentioned in this paper (i.e., robotic process automation, big data, artificial intelligence, computer vision, industrial robots, internet of things, virtual reality, enterprise resource planning) could improve a company’s innovation and performance.

The metaverse is a controversial concept, hyped by some but viewed as a marketing strategy by others. Although the first mentioning of the metaverse dates back to 1992, it has gained attention in the last years, especially after Facebook changed its name to “Meta” in 2021. Based on immersive technologies such as AR and VR, digital interactions and commerce within the virtual world, the metaverse is expected to grow along with its enabling technologies. This article aims to discover the status of the adoption of the metaverse concepts in Romania, among people with digital skills. The analysis was performed based on an online questionnaire, posted on public social media accounts. The results of the study have shown that few people have tried applications within the metaverse, and even fewer have invested in metaverse tokens. People who played RPG or virtual world games seem to have used metaverse applications more than those who have not, thus, this could be a good driver for metaverse adoption. Awareness of the metaverse concept was not a driver of metaverse adoption. However, results show that people who purchase cryptocurrencies and NFTs would also be interested in the metaverse, more than people who have not transacted these digital assets.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, approximately one third of the food produced globally is wasted, by the private sector and consumers. Reducing food waste would have an essential role in fighting world hunger, by redistributing food that is not consumed. However, achieving this goal would not only have a positive social impact, but also an economic and environmental impact. The subject of food waste is strongly tied to the objectives of several international organizations and of public institutions that have lead awareness campaigns and have developed goals and policies for the reduction of the phenomenon. Reducing food waste would contribute to the achievement of the 12th Sustainable Development Goal of the United Nations, “Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns”. For an efficient strategy, it is necessary that organizations and the involved people analyze and eliminate research gaps and the barriers for the reduction of food waste, both among consumers and private companies, such as producers, distributors, retailers, as well as the food service industry. The present article reviews the main challenges and barriers in achieving the reduction of food waste, both in the private sector, and among consumers. Among the main challenges that need to be tackled are the quantification of wasted food along the value chain, systematic reporting of wasted food and the evaluation of the causes of food waste.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a transformative force driving innovation, yet tracking AI-related advancements remains challenging due to the rapid pace of development and unstructured data from platforms like GitHub. This paper proposes an AI-driven approach to innovation detection, leveraging GitHub as a data source to systematically identify and link AI projects to organizations. Key contributions include a domain-specific taxonomy comprising 7,490 AI topics, a modular pipeline for semantic annotation and entity linking, and a trend detection framework based on Singular Spectrum Analysis (SSA). A knowledge graph is constructed to represent relationships among AI topics, projects, and companies, thereby enabling structured innovation tracking. The approach addresses challenges such as data sparsity and noise, demonstrating strengths in semantic annotation and topic categorization. Results highlight the potential for accurately detecting AI innovations and linking them to organizational entities, offering valuable insights for researchers, companies, and policymakers. This work contributes a scalable, automated approach for AI innovation tracking, with future directions focusing on refining entity linking and expanding the knowledge graph to capture emerging trends.

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced education institutions to adapt by using online tools to continue teaching when distancing was required. While the pandemic has had a negative effect on education, online learning has proven to be better than learning alone. This new paradigm shift in the way teaching can be delivered has paved the way for online classes to be taken in consideration outside of the pandemic. For countries which have a poor infrastructure in some regions, that makes it hard for all children to arrive to school daily, especially during harsh winters, online teaching could be used to offer continuous learning to all students. It can also continue to be used in some cases where classes cannot be attended due to illnesses. It is relevant to further study the impact of online learning within different schools from different regions, and to recognize the shaping factors for online teaching. The present study was based on a survey, in which 522 teachers from different categories of schools participated. Differences between the teaching processes during the pandemic have been studied based on the school’s funding (public or private), the region the school is based in, and the level of education that teachers provide. Results have highlighted differences based on all the studied categories.