One of the most relevant characteristics of Callimachus’ hymnic poetry is, among other aspects, its manifest heterogeneity of forms and themes in each of the six poems that compose the collection. In particular, this study proposes an analysis of the presence of metamorphic processes which occurred in the Arcadian region in the Hymn to Zeus (Hy. 1, 29-32 and Hy. 1, 37-41). These mythical episodes manage to attract all the attention of the first part of the aretalogy of the Callimachean poem, bringing together some of the literary interests most pursued by the Alexandrian scholar: the etymological, aetiological and geographical component.
Papaioannou AI, Loukides S, Vassilakopoulos T
et al.
Andriana I Papaioannou,1 Stelios Loukides,2 Theodoros Vassilakopoulos,3,4 Nikolaos Tzanakis,5 Konstantinos Kostikas,6 Georgios Hillas,7 The triple therapy for COPD Delphi expert panel members who have contributed to this study.Petros Bakakos1 1, Konstantinos Bartziokas2 2, Afroditi Boutou3 3, Evangelia Fouka4 4, Irini Gerogianni5 5, Athina Gogali6 6, Konstantinos I Gourgoulianis5 5, Paraskevi Katsaounou7 7, Epameinontas Kosmas8 8, Georgios Krommidas9 9, Miltiadis Markatos10 10, Antonios Papaioannou11 11, Konstantinos Porpodis4 4, Nikoleta Rovina1 1, Ioanna Sigala7 7, Paschalis Steiropoulos12 12, Grigorios Stratakos1 1, Dimitrios Toumpanakis13 13, Stavrvos Tryfon14 14, Eleni Tzortzaki15 15, Eleftherios Zervas16 16 On behalf of the Triple Therapy for COPD Delphi Expert Panel1 1st Department of Pulmonary Medicine, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Medical School, “Sotiria” Chest Hospital, Athens, Greece; 2 2nd Department of Pulmonary Medicine, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Medical School, Attikon’ University Hospital, Athens, Greece; 3Laboratory of Physiology, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Medical School, Athens, Greece; 4Critical Care and Pulmonary (2nd) Department, HENRY DUNANT Hospital Center, Athens, Greece; 5Department of Respiratory Medicine, University of Crete Heraklion, Crete, Greece; 6Department of Respiratory Medicine, University of Ioannina, Ioannina, Greece; 7 5th Pulmonary Department, “sotiria” Chest Hospital, Athens, Greece; 1 1st Department of Pulmonary Medicine, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Medical School, “Sotiria” Chest Hospital Athens, Greece; 2 2nd Department of Pulmonary Medicine, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Medical School, “Attikon” University Hospital Athens, Greece; 3Respiratory Medicine Department, “Hippokration” General hospital of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece; 4Pulmonary Department, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, G. Papanikolaou Hospital, Thessaloniki, Greece; 5Respiratory Medicine Department, Faculty of Medicine, University of Thessaly, Larisa Greece; 6Department of Respiratory Medicine, University of Ioannina, Ioannina, Greece; 7 1st Department of Critical Care Medicine, Evangelismos Hospital, Medical School, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens, Greece.; 8Department of Pulmonary Medicine “PNOH”, Metropolitan Hospital, Athens, Greece; 9Private Practice, Athens, Greece; 10Private Practice, Chania, Greece; 11Private Practice, Katerini, Greece; 12Department of Respiratory Medicine, Medical School, Democritus University of Thrace, University General Hospital Dragana, Alexandroupolis, Greece; 13 2nd Department of Critical Care Medicine, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, “Attikon” University Hospital, Athens, Greece; 14Pulmonology Department, “G. Papanikolaou” General Hospital of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece.; 15Private Practice, Heraklion Crete, Greece; 16 7th Respiratory Clinic, “Sotiria” Chest Hospital, Athens, GreeceCorrespondence: Andriana I Papaioannou, 1 st Department of Pulmonary Medicine, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Medical School, “Sotiria” Chest Hospital Athens, Greece, Tel +30 210 7489671, Email papaioannouandriana@gmail.comBackground: In recent years, COPD treatment has become more personalized considering specific patient’s characteristics.Aim and Methods: We have performed a DELPHI consensus project to assess the level of consensus among Greek experts on the use of triple therapy in COPD as an initial and follow-up treatment. A three-round Delphi online survey was developed. The questionnaire was developed by a 6-member steering committee, included 54 statements, and divided into 3 domains: (A) triple therapy as initial treatment (divided into subdomains examining the impact of exacerbations based on lung function, bronchodilation reversibility and/or blood eosinophil count, smoking, symptoms, and comorbidities), (B) escalation to triple therapy from dual bronchodilation and (C) de-escalation from triple therapy to dual bronchodilation. The survey was funded by AstraZeneca and was hosted and analysed by an independent external company.Results: Consensus was reached in 84.8%, 63% and 80% of statements for domains A, B and C, respectively. Experts agreed that initial treatment with triple therapy is a reasonable option for specific patients, while escalation from dual bronchodilation to triple therapy could be considered, besides frequent exacerbators, also in patients with a history of one moderate exacerbation, mainly in the presence of marked bronchodilator reversibility or high blood eosinophil count. Finally, there was a consensus that de-escalation from triple therapy to dual bronchodilation was inappropriate in patients who had experienced one moderate exacerbation in the previous year.Conclusion: Although consensus was generated in several statements, panelists failed to reach consensus in many aspects of the use of triple therapy, identifying areas for further research.Keywords: COPD, inhaled corticosteroids, exacerbations, dual bronchodilation, triple therapy
Konstantina Kyriaki, Dimitrios Koukopoulos, Christos A. Fidas
Preprocessing electroencephalographic (EEG) signals during computer-mediated Cognitive Load tasks is crucial in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). This process significantly influences subsequent EEG analysis and the efficacy of Artificial Intelligence (AI) models employed in Cognitive Load Assessment. Consequently, it stands as an indispensable procedure for developing dependable systems capable of adapting to users’ cognitive capacities and constraints. We systematically analyzed fifty-seven (57) research papers on computer-mediated Cognitive Load EEG experiments published between 2018 and 2023. The preprocessing methods identified were multiple, controversial, and strongly dependent on the particularities of each experiment and the derived experimental dataset. Our investigation involved the meticulous classification of preprocessing methods based on distinct parameters, namely the degree of user intervention, the noise level, and the subject pool size. Particular attention was paid to semi-automated denoising technology since conventional methods, advanced approaches, and standardized pipelines overwhelm research, but no optimum solution is available yet. This survey is anticipated to provide a valuable contribution to the rising demand for an efficient and fully automated preprocessing approach in EEG-based computerized Cognitive Load experiments.
Ekaterina Kozuharova, Giuseppe Antonio Malfa, Rosaria Acquaviva
et al.
Mediterranean countries are a cauldron of cultural exchange, with a strong emphasis on wild plants in cuisine traditions. Many of these plants belong to the family Apiaceae. The common climate determines the common range of distribution. While many plants have wide distribution, the range of distribution of others is restricted to Western Mediterranean or North Africa. This review investigates wild plants from the family Apiaceae traditionally used as food in 13 study sites—11 countries in the Mediterranean and adjacent territories—the mainland and 3 islands. The aim is to trace patterns of native distribution versus consumption. As a result, 81 wild umbellifers are listed, traditionally used as food. Their consumption and distribution patterns are described and discussed. Interestingly in 8 of the 13 study sites (61.5%) are recorded 50 plant taxa (66.7% of all wild umbellifers, traditionally used as food) which are consumed in only one particular country. These are as follows: 8 taxa in Morocco, 9 taxa in Spain, 2 taxa in Sicily, 3 taxa in Bulgaria 3 taxa in Crete, 8 taxa in Armenia, 14 taxa in Turkey, and 3 taxa in Jordan. However, these 50 restrictedly consumed plants are distributed in more than one country (except 15 taxa, which are endemics). Many of the plants that are used in certain countries are not consumed by the neighboring people. The results of the two statistical tests, namely Jaccard index and heatmap clustering (double dendrogram), are discussed. The presence of an outlier, such as Bulgaria, which shares borders, history, and culture with Greece and Turkey, emphasizes the importance of local climate for plant distribution and consumption over cultural interactions. The same was observed for some pairs of countries, such as Spain and Morrocco and Turkey and Armenia, although they had the highest number of common plants that are both distributed and consumed as food.
Georgios Lazaridis, Emmanouil Katrivanos, Despoina Dora
et al.
Caves serve as time capsules, preserving significant markers of tectonic activity and offering insights into geological history. Fault geometries and past activations found in caves can be correlated with known deformational events in the broader area, temporally delimiting the speleogenesis. More specifically, cave passage formation is suggested to be affected by the regional stress-field. The Asprorema Cave in Northern Greece is a typical example of a fracture guided cave, with passage geometry influenced by relative sidewall movements, revealing these discontinuities as faults. This study constructs the timeframe and conceptual model of speleogenesis in relation to tectonic events, geomorphological evolution and hydrological zones, and verifies its relation to the stress-field. Active tectonics, mineralogy and cave geomorphology are investigated. Results suggest syntectonic speleogenesis under phreatic and epiphreatic conditions. The absence of corrosion on fault slip surfaces implies recent activations post cave’s shift to the vadose zone. Structural analysis identifies three main neotectonic phases: NNW-SSE striking faults (oldest group of structures), NE-SW striking faults with dextral strike-slip movement (post-middle Miocene), and NE-SW striking normal faults indicating extensional stress-regime (Quartenary). The last two phases affect cave passage shape causing wall displacement, highlighting passage formation along discontinuities perpendicular to the horizontal minimum stress axis.
The tragic period of the Civil War and Cold War in Greece generated much poetry of lasting value, mostly from the Left . The poet T. K. Papatsonis (1895–1976), a fi gure with (among Greek poets) an idiosyncratic political and religious perspective, produced a response of quite a diff erent kind: an 'instant poem' written ira et studio as soon as the show trial of the Hungarian Joseph Cardinal Mindszenty (1949) was concluded. The present discussion provides a reading of Papatsonis' unusual poem within its Cold War context, with attention to its allegiances and its possible contradictions.
The author was encouraged to write this review by numerous enquiries from researchers all over the world, who needed a ready-to-use algorithm for the inversion of confluent Vandermonde matrices which works in quadratic time for any values of the parameters allowed by the definition, including the case of large root multiplicities of the characteristic polynomial. Article gives the history of the title special matrix since 1891 and surveys algorithms for solving linear systems with the title class matrix and inverting it. In particular, it presents, also by example, a numerical algorithm which does not use symbolic computations and is ready to be implemented in a general-purpose programming language or in a specific mathematical package.
Based on a bibliography of translations from Czech into Modern Greek created by the author of the article, the text offers insights into the appearance of Czech literature on the Greek book market since the beginning of the 20th century. It first briefly compares the book markets in both countries and subsequently analyses the content of the bibliography from the following angles: The existent translations are projected onto a timeline with a historical explanation of the resulting pattern. An overall commentary is given on the publishers involved in producing these translations, the source languages with which the translators worked and the subsequent editions and new translations that have appeared in Greece. The final chapter presents the most significant translations and the possible motivation for their creation, the most translated authors and the most active or otherwise important translators.
Georgios Mylonas, Lidia Pocero Fraile, Stelios Tsampas
et al.
Monitoring noise pollution in urban areas in a more systematic manner has been gaining traction as a theme among the research community, especially with the rise of smart cities and the IoT. However, although it affects our everyday life in a profound way, monitoring indoor noise levels inside workplaces and public buildings has so far grabbed less of our attention. In this work, we report on noise levels data produced by an IoT infrastructure installed inside 5 school buildings in Greece. Our results indicate that such data can help to produce a more accurate picture of the conditions that students and educators experience every day, and also provide useful insights in terms of health risks and aural comfort.
Ioannis T. Christou, Evgenia Vagianou, George Vardoulias
We model the problem of optimizing the schedule of courses a student at the American College of Greece will need to take to complete their studies. We model all constraints set forth by the institution and the department, so that we guarantee the validity of all produced schedules. We formulate several different objectives to optimize in the resulting schedule, including fastest completion time, course difficulty balance, and so on, with a very important objective our model is capable of capturing being the maximization of the expected student GPA given their performance on passed courses using Machine Learning and Data Mining techniques. All resulting problems are Mixed Integer Linear Programming problems with a number of binary variables that is in the order of the maximum number of terms times the number of courses available for the student to take. The resulting Mathematical Programming problem is always solvable by the GUROBI solver in less than 10 seconds on a modern commercial off-the-self PC, whereas the manual process that was installed before used to take department heads that are designated as student advisors more than one hour of their time for every student and was resulting in sub-optimal schedules as measured by the objectives set forth.
Anthony Marteau, Elise Ouedraogo, Guillaume Van der Meersch
et al.
Abstract Background Plasmodium malariae is the cause of the rare but severe form of malaria that sometimes affects individuals travelling to malaria-endemic regions. This report presents the unique case of a patient exhibiting severe malaria symptoms caused by P. malariae with no record of recent travel to any malaria-endemic areas. Case presentation An 81-year-old French woman was admitted to the emergency department with sustained fever and severe weakness for the past 5 days. She suffered from anaemia, thrombocytopenia, confusion, somnolence, pulmonary complications, and hypoxaemia. In the absence of any concrete aetiology that could explain the fever together with thrombocytopenia, physicians suspected malaria as a probable diagnosis. The LAMP-PCR and lateral flow test confirmed the presence of malaria parasite, Plasmodium sp. Microscopic examination (May-Grünwald Giemsa-stained thin blood smear) revealed the presence of trophozoites, schizonts, and gametocytes with 0.93 % parasitaemia. Conventional PCR amplification targeting 510 bp DNA fragment of small subunit ribosomal RNA (ssrRNA) and bidirectional sequencing identified the parasite as Plasmodium malariae. The travel history of this patient revealed her visits to several countries in Europe (Greece), North Africa (Tunisia and Morocco), and the West Indies (Dominican Republic). Of these, the latter was the only country known to be endemic for malaria at the time (three malaria parasite species were prevalent: Plasmodium falciparum, Plasmodium vivax, and P. malariae). The patient had most likely got infected when she visited the Dominican Republic in the summer of 2002. This time interval between the initial parasite infection (2002) till the onset of symptoms and its subsequent diagnosis (2020) is a reminder of the ability of P. malariae to persist in the human host for many years. Conclusions This report highlights the persistent nature and ability of P. malariae to cause severe infection in the host even after a prolonged time interval.
Arctic medicine. Tropical medicine, Infectious and parasitic diseases
Dimitris G. Kaskaoutis, Georgios Grivas, Eleni Liakakou
et al.
COVID-19 is evolving into one of the worst pandemics in recent history, claiming a death toll of over 1.5 million as of December 2020. In an attempt to limit the expansion of the pandemic in its initial phase, nearly all countries imposed restriction measures, which resulted in an unprecedented reduction of air pollution. This study aims to assess the impact of the lockdown effects due to COVID-19 on in situ measured aerosol properties, namely spectral-scattering (b<sub>sca</sub>) and absorption (b<sub>abs</sub>) coefficients, black carbon (BC) concentrations, single-scattering albedo (SSA), scattering and absorption Ångström exponents (SAE, AAE) in Athens, Greece. Moreover, a comparison is performed with the regional background site of Finokalia, Crete, for a better assessment of the urban impact on observed differences. The study examines pre-lockdown (1–22 March 2020), lockdown (23 March–3 May 2020) and post-lockdown (4–31 May 2020) periods, while the aerosol properties are also compared with a 3–4 year preceding period (2016/2017–2019). Comparison of meteorological parameters in Athens, between the lockdown period and respective days in previous years, showed only marginal variation, which is not deemed sufficient in order to justify the notable changes in aerosol concentrations and optical properties. The largest reduction during the lockdown period was observed for b<sub>abs</sub> compared to the pre-lockdown (−39%) and to the same period in previous years (−36%). This was intensified during the morning traffic hours (−60%), reflecting the large decrease in vehicular emissions. Furthermore, AAE increased during the lockdown period due to reduced emissions from fossil-fuel combustion, while a smaller (−21%) decrease was observed for b<sub>sca</sub> along with slight increases (6%) in SAE and SSA values, indicating that scattering aerosol properties were less affected by the decrease in vehicular emissions, as they are more dependent on regional sources and atmospheric processing. Nighttime BC emissions related to residential wood-burning were slightly increased during the lockdown period, with respect to previous-year means. On the contrary, aerosol and pollution changes during the lockdown period at Finokalia were low and highly sensitive to natural sources and processes.
Ancient Sparta has become a major field of study in ancient history over the last four decades. But so far it has largely remained an issue for Sparta specialists, while the rest of Greek historians have rarely put Sparta at the centre of their attention. The two-volume Blackwell Companion to Sparta, edited by Anton Powell, is a major contribution which should give Sparta its rightful place in the study of Greek history. This companion should stand as a model for companion volumes: the twenty-nine contributions manage to combine introducing beginners and non-specialists to the field, providing encyclopaedic coverage of the evidence and the aspects of the subject, and asking new questions and offering new points of view. The volume is divided into an introduction and four further sections: on Spartan origins and archaic Sparta; on political and military history from the Persian Wars to the Roman period; on the politics, economy, society, and culture of classical, Hellenistic, and Roman Sparta; and on the reception of Sparta in the modern West.
We continue our efforts to understand, within the framework of the quantum mechanics of the universe as a whole, the quasiclassical realm of familiar experience as a feature emergent from the Hamiltonian of the elementary particles and the initial condition of the universe. Quantum mechanics assigns probabilities to exhaustive sets of alternative decoherent histories of the universe. We introduce and define the notion of strong decoherence. We replace the notion of maximal sets of alternative decohering histories by defining the more useful concept of "full" sets of alternative strongly decohering histories. These full sets fall into equivalence classes each of which is characterized by a basis in Hilbert space. Finally we describe our continuing efforts to find measures of classicality --- measures that could be applied to such full sets of alternative strongly decohering so as to characterize a quasiclassical realm.