Poems 2019-2025 "photos of moments, all the sparks, metaphoric paintings explanations, within the rhythm of my heart" Poetry created as metaphoric explanations to other arts & crafts created by the author, or older and newer references in time. Edition without visuals, left to the imagination, interpretation and emotion of the reader.

The current volume represents the outcome of the international conference “National and European Values of Public Administration in the Balkans,” organised in Bucharest on 15-16 July 2011. The conference has been organised by Jean Monnet research network dedicated to “South-Eastern European developments on the administrative convergence and enlargement of the European Administrative Space in Balkan states,” representing the third edition of the events organised under the above aegis. The research network, comprising the National School of Political Studies and Public Administration (NSPSPA), Bucharest, Romania, University of the Aegean, Mytilene, Greece, New Bulgarian University, Sofia, Bulgaria, University of Rijeka, Croatia and the European Public Law Organization (EPLO) with headquarters in Athens, Greece has developed and continues to develop studies and researches specific for the development of public administration in the Balkan states. The keynote speakers of the conference included Mw. Dr. Helena Raulus, EU Law Docent, Faculteit der Rechtsgeleerdheid, Erasmus Universiteit, Netherlands, Prof. Dr. Spyridon Flogaitis, Director, President of the BoD, European Public Law Organization, Greece and Prof. Dr. Lucica Matei, Dean, Faculty of Public Administration, National School of Politica Studies and Public Administration, Romania. The contents of the papers presented have been focused on the following topics: EU normative support for sustaining the process of administrative convergence; European Administrative Space principles - pillars for the mechanisms of evaluation of public administration reforms; Balkan priorities for European Administrative Space enlargement Other two sub adjacent topics have been added, aiming especially the doctoral students, emphasising the following themes: The process of administrative convergence at EU level; Efficiency, effectiveness and responsibility in the European Administrative Space; European Administrative Space. Priorities of the future. For the international conference, 88 abstracts were received, of which due to the first selection achieved by the Conference Scientific Committee, 56 papers were accepted After presentation, the papers have been improved and subjected to double review, so that there were accepted for publication 36 papers, having 46 authors from nine countries: Romania, Greece, Bulgaria, Netherlands, Albania, France, Croatia, Italy and USA and two European organisations: EPLO and EIPA. The general conclusion expected for the final of our conference could refer to the existence of a Balkan Administrative Space as part of the European Administrative Space. Even if the area of the Balkan Administrative Space is confined, we have to highlight the unity in diversity as a fundamental feature. The unity derives from the ideals of European integration of the Balkan states and the diversity derives from the national histories, cultural diversity and their national identity. The connections of the Balkan Administrative Space become day by day more powerful related to the European Administrative Space. They are determined by the development of the processes of convergence and administrative dynamics as well as by the internal developments induced by the administrative reforms in the mentioned states. In this context, we could assert that by means of the research proposed and achieved, our project has open new agendas of research, that partially have been expressed in our research reports, publications etc. At the same time, as remarked from the contents of this conference, the national and European values of the Balkan Administrative Space are substantiated on the regulatory framework of the European Union, the processes of convergence and administrative dynamics, as well as on the principles of the European Administrative Space. In fact, as it is well known, the latter becomes a non-formalised acquis of the European Public Administration, representing a standard for assessing the progress in the reforms of the national public administrations. Our conference has taken place under the auspices of this generous perspective.

The solid-state process has been successful in creating microcellular foams in a number of thermoplastic polymers using sub-critical CO2 in the 3-5 MPa range. In this process, the polymer film or sheet is first saturated with CO2 in a pressure vessel. The gas saturated film is then removed from the pressure vessel and heated in a suitable medium (liquid or hot air, for example) to create a microcellular structure. The time elapsed from depressurization of the pressure vessel to the heating of the gas-saturated film, known as the \textit{desorption time}, is an important process parameter that can range from a few minutes in a laboratory environment to tens of minutes in a manufacturing environment. During the desorption time, the absorbed gas leaves the polymer film. This loss of gas becomes increasingly critical as the film thickness is reduced; polymer films below 0.010" in thickness are difficult or impossible to foam in the current solid-state batch process. To successfully foam thin films it is necessary for the polymer to retain the absorbed gas prior to heating. Towards this end, a dynamic seal was developed that allows a polymer film/filament to be smoothly drawn out of a pressure vessel while preventing the pressurized gas from escaping. The dynamic seal is based on the idea of using a liquid (e.g. water) to provide a seal and keep the pressurized gas from escaping. The liquid thus experiences the same pressure as the gas. Liquid leakage is controlled to within an acceptable limit by designing sufficient resistance to the flow. The early prototypes showed that a pressure of 5 MPa could be maintained in a small pressure vessel, while a 0.4 mm nylon fishing line was drawn through the seal. Water was used to seal the gas in this case. It was quickly apparent that the key challenge would be to move, or draw, the polymer film through the seal mechanism while keeping its integrity. The key is to strike a balance between sealing forces that keep the leakage rate low and the frictional forces that result on the polymer film as it moves through the seal. To explore the parameters that influence the seal performance, a lab scale pressure vessel and seal mechanism was designed, built, and tested. The vessel with 5 inch ID and 7.5 inch OD was machined from Aluminum. The vessel had a clear polycarbonate window of 3.5 inch diameter embedded in the lid, with 30 LEDs illuminating the inside of the vessel. This design allowed for visual observations of the seal performance during testing. Various materials, both porous and nonporous, were investigated as seal materials. It was found that porous materials allow more control over the leakage rate and the resulting pressure drop in the flow direction is linear, consistent with Darcy's law. However, the porous material (a polyurethane foam) resulted in a large frictional force on the film. On the other hand, the nonporous material (also a PU foam but with a closed-cell structure) resulted in reduced frictional resistance on the film, however there was less control on the leakage rate and the pressure distribution was non-linear. The basic feasibility of the dynamic seal idea was demonstrated. Further work is needed to reduce the frictional resistance on the polymer film and reduce leakage rates. Several ideas for improving the seal are presented.

The way events nowadays come to our attention through various media sources, could have led us Europeans to think that after centuries of attempts, transformations and assiduous research people had finally discovered the ideal form of government that would bring stability and the harmonious development of any community. But this dream seems to have crumbled with the transition to the information society. Yet rapid digitization, economic crises, migrant waves, hybrid wars, climate problems, the precariousness of classical resources and health hazards have once again raised the issue of building proper state structures capable of guaranteeing fundamental civil rights and freedoms. In this article, we will address the issue of the principles of cultural rights that are at the forefront of the current debate on the changes and reforms that national public administrations are called upon to implement in order to meet the needs of future generations.

In this work, experimental techniques, equipment, apparatuses, models, algorithms, and software codes were developed to explore the nanoporous structure of polyetherimide (PEI) created using the solid-state foaming process. First reported in 2001, researchers have wondered about the transport properties of this skin-covered nanoporous structure but no one had successfully developed the means to reliably produce, access, or characterize it. In this work, I developed techniques and equipment to produce flat, uniform, and dimensionally stable specimens with low variance. Then, I developed two unique methods to selectively and robustly remove the solid skin without damaging the underlying porous nanostructure. The resulting geometry brought about a fluid problem with peculiar boundary conditions, which has nontrivial solutions. Therefore, I solved the partial differential equations for these geometries in order to compute transport properties from experimental data. The full solution to this problem made use of analytic and numerical methods, software algorithms, and image processing. After developing the complete experimental and theoretical tool-sets, I obtained data on a wide range of nanoporous PEI structures, including permeability, diffusivity, tortuosity, and thermal conductivity. Permeability was found to be in the range of 10^-16 to 10^-15 m^2, comparable to that of limestone, volcanic rock, and sandstone. Diffusivities were in the range 0.01 - 0.025, comparable to very dense soil. Tortuosity, a property often wondered about by researchers beholding scanning electron micrographs (SEM) of this nanostructure, was computed from diffusivity and porosity data to be in the range 20 - 40. These are the first results on transport properties, some 15 years after the discovery of the nanostructure. During this doctoral work, several major discoveries were made. First, I found that PEI's nanostructure is impermeable to liquid water, however it allows gasses and wetting liquids (such as acetone and isopropyl alcohol) to freely flow through the structure. This phenomenon is similar to that exploited in the commercial polytetrafluoroethylene membrane GoreTEX. This waterproof-but-breathable property has many practical applications, especially given that PEI's nanostructure was shown to be waterproof at pressures of over 50 atmospheres, whereas GoreTEX can withstand less than 3 atmospheres. Additionally, I developed a new method to achieve a completely novel nanostructure in PEI by using a two-state foaming technique. These new nanostructures have a very unique appearance and resemble a hybrid of closed-cell and open-porous morphologies. Perhaps most notably, I also discovered a processing condition which produces PEI foams that are transparent. This is the first known occurrence of polymer foams with cells so small that light scattering is diminished to the point of optical clarity. The cells are so small that our SEM techniques were inadequate in imaging the structure. Only a few voids on the order of 10 nanometers were visible. However, the structure was found to be open-porous as well as optically transparent, similar to Aerogel, but a polymer. Lastly, I performed a feasibility study on 3D printing polymer bubbles. The idea was to create a nozzle that jets a stream of individual liquid polymer bubbles at high frequency, and deposit them in layers to create a 3D object. Although further work is necessary, I demonstrated the vision using liquid latex, butter, and paraffin wax as working materials, having successfully developed nozzles and techniques to create and release bubbles encapsulated by these substances. The most significant aspect of my work isn't in the fact that I was first in 15 years to obtain transport property data on nanoporous PEI, but in creating the experimental and theoretical tools as a platform for much broader future research in this field.

L'Internet des Objets (IoT) vise à créer un eco-système global et ubiquitaire composé d'un grand nombre d'objets hétérogènes. Afin d'atteindre cette vision, le World Wide Web apparaît comme un candidat adapté pour interconnecter objets et services à la couche applicative en un Web des Objets (WoT).Cependant l'évolution actuelle du WoT produit des silos d'objets et empêche ainsi la mise en place de cette vision. De plus, même si le Web facilite la composition d'objets et services hétérogènes, les approches existantes produisent des compositions statiques incapables de s'adapter à des environnements dynamiques et des exigences évolutives. Un autre défi est à relever: permettre aux personnes d'interagir avec le vaste, évolutif et hétérogène IoT.Afin de répondre à ces limitations, nous proposons une architecture pour IoT ouvert et autogouverné, constitué de personnes et d'objets situés, en interaction avec un environnement global via des plateformes hétérogènes. Notre approche consiste de rendre les objets autonomes et d'appliquer la métaphore des réseaux sociaux afin de créer des réseaux flexibles de personnes et d'objets. Nous fondons notre approche sur les résultats issus des domaines des multi-agents et du WoT afin de produit un WoT Social.Notre proposition prend en compte les besoins d'hétérogénéité, de découverte et d'interaction flexible dans l'IoT. Elle offre également un coût minimal pour les développeurs et les utilisateurs via différentes couches d'abstraction permettant de limité la complexité de cet éco-système. Nous démontrons ces caractéristiques par la mise en oeuvre de plus scénarios applicatifs.