Science park, a high tech fantasy?: an analysis of the science parks of Greece

The literature on science parks evaluation mainly covers the developed countries of OECD. There is a lack of evidence about the role of science parks in the less developed countries. This paper aims to partially fill this gap in literature by examining the science parks in a peripheral European country, Greece. The findings indicate that the picture of the three science parks of Greece is not the same in terms of the links between university and industry. Informal links have been developed between the firms and the local university, however. only the firms located at one science park have developed formal links, while the formal links of the companies of the other two parks are at the infant level at this time. Synergies between the on-park companies are limited only in commercial transactions and social interactions. The research type synergies are completely absent in all three parks. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved

Oxidant generation by particulate matter: from biologically effective dose to a promising, novel metric

Areas where urban and wildland intermingle, known as wildland-urban interface (WUI), are increasing worldwide over the last decades (Theobald and Romme 2007; Montiel and Herrero 2010). These WUI areas are of particular concern in forest fire risk management because the presence of housing developments in contact with forestlands increases the likelihood of a fire starting as a consequence of human activities. In Spain, for example, there is increasing evidence that the wildland-urban interface constitutes a highly risk prone area (Herrero et al. 2012; Chas-Amil et al. 2013). Given the recognised role of land cover distribution in fire risk (Bajocco and Ricotta 2008; Oliveira et al. 2013), this paper evaluates recent fire activity across different land cover categories, and the causes and motivations, comparing WUI and non-WUI areas. Fire data were collected in Galicia, Spain, where fires are mostly due to deliberately-caused ignitions. We show that arsonist are more likely to ignited a fire in WUI areas than in non-WUI; and the same seems to be true for fires ignited by agricultural activities. Moreover, land cover types only have a significant impact on the patterns of fire occurrence in WUI areas

Water pipe network reliability assessment using the DAC method

The Discriminant Analysis and Classification (DAC) method has offered remarkable results regarding the prediction of failures in an oil or a gas pipe network, based on the network characteristics. The DAC method also proved its ability to identify the most crucial network parameters affecting its behavior. The present study attempts to check whether the DAC method can provide safe results regarding the reliability assessment of urban water networks too. The DAC method aims at classifying the network pipes in two groups (failures/successes), based on simple or/and dimensionless joint variables. Serious problems related to the quality, reliability and compatibility of the data provided by the Water Utilities were tackled using dummy variables based on field data. The distinction between the meanings of 'failure' and 'success', for a water pipe network, was also crucial. For the case study water pipe network of Larisa city, in Greece, the criterion used to define the meanings of 'failure' and 'success' was "the total water volume being lost" through a leak or a break in a pipe. The available pipe failure data records for Larisa city were poor and not fully compatible to the DAC method demands. The results showed that discrimination is good enough and would be even better if additional data (in line with the DAC standards) was available. Thus, overall, the DAC method proved to be a useful tool for pipe reliability prediction in urban water pipe networks