CONTENTS
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Master Data Management in Higher Education: Enhancing
Effectiveness Study on Universities from Romania and Germany Matthias SCHMUCK, Mircea R. GEORGESCU 5 In the rapidly evolving European higher education landscape, effective data management is critical to achieving operational excellence and informed decision-making. Our study explores the importance of Master Data Management in European higher education, focusing on institutions in Romania and Germany. Using a maturity assessment framework, it evaluates current Master Data Management practices, identifies key gaps, and recommends strategic improvements to enhance data quality, consistency, and accessibility. These insights aim to help university administrators create efficient, data-driven educational ecosystems supported by modern IT infrastructure, ultimately aligning with academic and operational objectives. Keywords: Master data management, Assessment, Higher education, Data governance Transformative Advances in NLP and AI: Charting the Evolution of Technology Paul Gabriel TEODORESCU, Silvia OVREIU 22 This paper attempts to enter the world of NLP (human language processing) from the three perspectives of physics, mathematics and computer science. The article explains why science has chosen word-vectors and word vectorization in NLP and describes the 2 models that have established themselves in this world of words: Word2Vec and GloVe. After having a clear pic-ture of how artificial intelligence deals with words and human language processing, the topics of Time and Attention are treated in the new approach of Google which has already moved to another paradigm in word processing: the BERT models, transformers and Attention mecha-nisms. This answers the questions why Time and temporal recurrence have been abandoned in favor of models with transformers and Attention mechanisms. The paper also includes an ex-planation of the complex processes that take place inside the Transformer for a simple transla-tion from one language to another. Keywords: Human language processing, Artificial Intelligence, Transformers, Attention Exploring the Influence of Academic Self-Efficacy, Engagement, and Test Anxiety on Students’ Success at Exam Valentina Iuliana MANEA, Tudor MACAVEI, Costin PRIBEANU 35 Academic self-efficacy and engagement are closely related to successful results in exams. On the other hand, test anxiety may negatively affect students’ success. The negative effects of test anxiety are stronger at exams in fundamental disciplines, like mechanics for civil engineering students. In this case, passing the exam may be difficult and require a three-step trial. This re-search explores the relationship between success at exams and the students’ perceptions as re-gards their academic self-efficacy, learning engagement, and test anxiety. The approach is based on a comparison between students’ perceptions and multiple regression analysis. The findings show that students who passed this exam reported higher self-efficacy and engage-ment, and lower test anxiety. The regression analysis revealed that keeping up with academic work, getting involved in class discussions, and nervousness during the exam were the main predictors of test results. Gender analysis showed that male students reported higher involve-ment in class discussions and female students reported more time spent on their studies. Keywords: Academic self-efficacy, Student engagement, Test anxiety, Engineering students, Gender analysis, Exam, Mechanics, Civil engineering Comparative Analysis of The Digitization of the European Union and Serbia Based on the MEREC and MARCOS Methods Radojko LUKIC 45 In recent times, digitization is increasingly becoming a critical factor in business success. Given this, knowing the level of digitization is a key assumption for improvement in the future. Bearing that in mind, this study comparatively analyzes the level of digitization of the member states of the European Union (EU) and Serbia using the MEREC and MARCOS methods. The results indicate which member states of the European Union need to speed up the digitization process to achieve the optimal level of success in realizing the target business. A higher level of digitization means better business success. In the European Union, the highest level of digitization is in the Netherlands. Next: Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Spain and so on. The leading countries of the European Union are positioned: Germany is in eighteenth place, France is in fourteenth place and Italy is in twentieth place. In the European Union, in terms of digitization, Romania took the worst position. Serbia (twenty-eighth place) is therefore in a very bad position among the member states of the European Union and in the surrounding area (Croatia is in thirteenth place, and Slovenia is in sixteenth place). In Serbia, to achieve the desired business success, it is necessary to significantly increase the level of digitization. Keywords: Digitization, European Union, Serbia, MEREC, MARCOS Continuous Resilience: DevSecOps Strategies for Cloud and Quantum Platforms Robert TICU-JIANU 63 The state of the technological landscape in the software development field has been in a continuous change and evolution at a fast pace ever since its beginnings. Only a few decades ago, the waterfall model was the best-in-class approach to the Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) with most projects and teams being on the smaller side and the industry still making its baby steps. Nowadays, this approach is mostly seen as inefficient and adopted with disdain, since many projects use some form of an agile methodology. By synthesizing theoretical concepts with empirical evidence, this paper aims not only to investigate the benefits and drawbacks of implementing a DevOps methodology in software products, but also to act as a stepping stone for practitioners that want to accelerate the velocity with which a product goes from requirements to the production environment, regardless of the nature of the product: classic or quantum. Keywords: DevOps, DevSecOps, Continuous Integration, Continuous Deployment, Resilience, security, Quantum computing, Cloud computing OpenEdgeComputeFramework. A Framework for Seamless Edge-Cloud Computing Andrei-Robert CAZACU 74 With the advent of Internet of Things and the success of social media, the amount of data that is being sent to the cloud is ever-increasing. As such, finding possible solutions to alleviate the strain that is currently placed on our infrastructure is a hot topic both in the researcher’s com-munity as well as the enterprise solution vendors in pursuit of the next big breakthrough in computing. One such solution is edge-computing, first making its appearance in the 1990s when Akamai launched its content delivery network [1], moving the content source closer to the user to minimize latency and transmission costs. Today, this concept evolved into a computing paradigm [2], which supports deploying applications on nearby devices with near zero down-time. Among the emerging frameworks, be them open source such as EdgeX framework, re-search originating such as FogBus2, or enterprise solution such AWS GreenGrass, several common architectural patterns were identified such as the heavy use of Containerization, de-coupling of components by using message passing interfaces and network segregation among edge and cloud devices. The proposed solution aims to build on top of existing knowledge, by using lightweight peer-to-peer orchestration aimed at running centrally stored Java artifacts. Keywords: Edge computing, Cloud computing, Distributed computing Phishing Threats in the Age of Social Media: A User-Centric Approach Ruxandra BADESCU 83 Even today, phishing attacks continue to have a high success rate, using impersonation to trick users into revealing sensitive information. Despite the fact that the number of technology users is growing rapidly, this does not seem to provide individuals with sufficient knowledge and ex-perience to understand cybersecurity concepts. In addition to this, not only technological short-comings are exploited, but also human characteristics, weaknesses, that make users vulnerable when faced with potential threats. This study aims to provide an overview of phishing attacks and the rapid development of detection techniques and phishing tools in a context where cyber-security education or training is not compulsory. The article manifests the importance of educa-tion, regardless of the technological changes that influence the daily lives of countless individuals. The present research was conducted using a literature analysis and a survey. Keywords: Phishing, User susceptibility, Behavior, Human weaknesses Publishing Guide for Authors 102 INFOREC Association 104 |
