Enhancing Academic Advising In Credit Hours System Using Dss

Academic advising plays a vital role in achieving higher educational institution’s purposes. Academic advising is a process where an academic advisor decides to select a certain number of courses for a student to register in each semester to fulfil the graduation requirements. This paper presents an Academic Advising Decision Support System (AADSS) to enhance advisors make better decisions regarding their students’ cases. AADSS framework divided into four layers, data preparation layer, data layer, processing layer and decision layer. The testing results from those participating academic advisors and students considered are that AADSS beneficial in enhancing their decision for selecting courses.

Conservation and restoration of some icons from the collection of church objects of Agapia Monastery, Neamţ, Romania

Agapia Monastery – the remarkable Moldavian monastery painted by Nicolae Grigorescu – has a precious heritage of icons, books and documents, liturgical textiles, goldsmithing. Among these, the main place is occupied by the icons painted in the XV-XIX centuries, either in post-Byzantine style, in tempera technique, or in realistic style, in oil technique. Some icons from the XVIII-XIX centuries have been preserved and restored in the Icon Restoration laboratory of the Faculty of Theology in Iaşi. In time, the icons kept in the storage of the Monastery Museum have suffered of degradation caused both by the deficient author’s technique and by the exogenous, biotic and abiotic factors. The wooden supports of some icons were severely degraded by the attack of xylophagous insects, being affected both the mechanical resistance and the appearance of the wood. The numerous galleries immediately below the pictorial layer determined its deformation. The pictorial layer of some icons was degraded mainly due to the errors of the painters’ work technique: very thin and fragile preparation layer or excessive binder, which led to the formation of accentuated early cracks. The appearance of the icons was affected either by the chromatic alteration of the protective varnish, or by the deposits of dust and soot in the atmosphere. The interventions for the conservation of the icons consisted in biociding the painting support and in consolidating the pictorial layer detached from the wooden support. The restoration of the icons aimed at removing the dirt deposits from the painting by physico-chemical means, filling the gaps in the icons and their chromatic integration, with easily reversible materials. After conservation and restoration, the icons returned to the Agapia Monastery for use.

Village from Muscel by Ion Marinescu Valsan State of Conservation and the Chromatic Palette

Ion Marinescu V�lsan (1865 - 1936) was a Romanian painter belonging to the modern Romanian art from the beginning of the 20th century. Many of the paintings painted by him have picturesque landscapes in his native town, Malureni, Arges County. He was influencedby Nicolae Grigorescu. Village from Muscel painting, by Ion Marinescu V�lsan, was examined by several non-invasive techniques (Vis, UV &grazing light examination, IR reflectography, optical microscopy and X-rays fluorescence spectrometry) to obtain information on its chromatic palette and state of conservation. Zinc white, Lead white, Prussian blue, Cinnabar, Chrome yellow, Yellow ochre, Red ochre, Viridian and Burnt umber were used as the pigments, while the preparation layer is from Chalk, Zinc white, Lead white, identified by XRF analysis.

The Grolier Codex: A Non Destructive Study of a Possible Maya Document using Imaging and Ion Beam Techniques

The Grolier Codex has been a controversial document ever since its late discovery in 1965. Because of its rare iconographical content and its unknown origin, specialists are not keen to assure its authenticity that would set it amongst the other tree known Maya codes in the world (Dresden, Paris Codex and Madrid Codex).The document that has been kept in the Museo Nacional de Antropología in Mexico City, after its exposure in 1971 at the Grolier Club of New York, has been analyzed by a set of non-destructive techniques in order to characterize its materials including paper fibers, preparation layer and colors composition. The methodology included UV imaging, IR reflectography and optic microscopy examinations as well as Particle Induced X-ray Emission (PIXE) and Rutherford Backscattering Spectrometry (RBS) using an external beam setup for elemental analysis. All the measurements were carried out at 3MV Pelletron Accelerator of the Instituto de Física, UNAM. The aim of this work is to verify if the materials in the Grolier Codex match those found for other pre-Hispanic documents.From the elemental composition we concluded that the preparation layer shows the presence of gypsum (CaSO4), color red is due to red hematite (Fe2O3) and black is a carbon-based ink. These results agree with previous analyses carried out by Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM-EDX) on few samples. However, the presence of Maya Blue in the blue pigment cannot be assured. The examination using UV and IR lights shows homogeneity in the inks and red color but dark areas that contain higher amounts of K in the preparation layer. This paper discusses the results obtained for the UV-IR examinations and the elemental analysis. A comparison with other studies on pre-Hispanic and early colonial codex is presented.