The European Union is the organization that currently has in its structure most countries of the European continent. Founded initially as a trade union between Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg after the Second World War, it has evolved over time to the political union accomplished in 1993, along with the organization name change from European Economic Community (EEC) into the European Union (EU). Simultaneously with the EU expansion by adopting new member states continued sustainable development of economic activities within the community. The rural European area includes most EU territory and the main component of the population. Therefore, an analysis is required to be made on economic indicators that define EU rural areas, for the highly developed regions in the West and for the new member states from the Central and Eastern European region. The objective of this paper is to provide a comparative analysis on specific economic and social indicators for the rural area of the countries positioned in Central and Eastern Europe which are in the position of new EU full members and the level of their contribution to the economy of the union. The paper has an interdisciplinary character by the fact that reunites principles of disciplines as economics, social and political sciences.
Part of the book: Proceedings of the International Conference on Interdisciplinary Studies (ICIS 2016)
The construction of bridges or viaduct structures represents major infrastructure works of vital importance for human communities, and therefore they must be made to withstand both the traffic and the seismic events. Therefore, all necessary measures should be taken so that these structures can remain functional even after the action of earthquakes of considerable magnitude. A high level of safety for these structures can be ensured if within the resistance structure some special mechanical systems are mounted, which will be able to improve the building assembly behaviour when an earthquake occurs. This kind of mechanical system capable of ensuring a high level of safety for the isolated structure is described in this paper. The isolation system assembly consists of a rolling pendulum device combined with elastomeric system. This system was built and experimentally tested at random vibrations. The experimental results are presented regarding motion parameters recorded at the pier and superstructure level. The combination between effects of the two dissipating system types represents the optimum solution intended to achieve an improved response of the isolated structure when subjected at dynamic actions. Therefore, it represents a special system which can be successfully used in the endowment of bridge or viaduct structural type.
Part of the book: Proceedings of the International Conference on Interdisciplinary Studies (ICIS 2016)