Comparison of Psychological Distress between Type 2 Diabetes Patients with and without Proteinuria

We investigated the link between proteinuria and psychological distress among patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). A total of 130 patients with T2DM aged 69.1±10.3 years were enrolled in this cross-sectional study. Urine and blood parameters, age, height, body weight, and medications were analyzed, and each patient’s psychological distress was measured using the six-item Kessler Psychological Distress Scale (K6). We compared the K6 scores between the patients with and without proteinuria. Forty-two patients (32.3%) had proteinuria (≥±) and the level of HbA1c was 7.5±1.3%. The K6 scores of the patients with proteinuria were significantly higher than those of the patients without proteinuria even after adjusting for age and sex. The clinical impact of proteinuria rather than age, sex and HbA1c was demonstrated by a multiple regression analysis. Proteinuria was closely associated with higher psychological distress. Preventing and improving proteinuria may reduce psychological distress in patients with T2DM

DeSyRe: On-demand system reliability

The DeSyRe project builds on-demand adaptive and reliable Systems-on-Chips (SoCs). As fabrication technology scales down, chips are becoming less reliable, thereby incurring increased power and performance costs for fault tolerance. To make matters worse, power density is becoming a significant limiting factor in SoC design, in general. In the face of such changes in the technological landscape, current solutions for fault tolerance are expected to introduce excessive overheads in future systems. Moreover, attempting to design and manufacture a totally defect-/fault-free system, would impact heavily, even prohibitively, the design, manufacturing, and testing costs, as well as the system performance and power consumption. In this context, DeSyRe delivers a new generation of systems that are reliable by design at well-balanced power, performance, and design costs. In our attempt to reduce the overheads of fault-tolerance, only a small fraction of the chip is built to be fault-free. This fault-free part is then employed to manage the remaining fault-prone resources of the SoC. The DeSyRe framework is applied to two medical systems with high safety requirements (measured using the IEC 61508 functional safety standard) and tight power and performance constraints. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

Wheat supply response in Greece and the European Union policy

This paper attempts to estimate the supply response for wheat production in Greek agriculture. In our analysis we use the rigorous cointegration and the error correction method, as it is superior to the generally used Nerlovian partial-adjustment model. Since wheat is one of the most important commodities in the Greek agriculture, comprising 26 percent of the total cultivated land, the estimation of its price responsiveness is vitally important in supporting agricultural policy decisions. The results of our analysis reveal that there is a long-term stable relationship between the supplied quantity of wheat and real gross revenue of wheat producers, suggesting that in order to raise wheat yield and farmer incomes, considering the European Union agricultural policy, productivity increases play a vital role. The government’s policy should therefore be channelled through measures that will encourage productivity increases.peer-reviewe

Corruption, globalization and development: How are these three phenomena related?

This paper examines the existence of any relations between globalization and corruption using cross-section data for 127 countries. The estimation results indicate that, under the assumption of a linear model, a positive correlation between corruption and globalization exists, while when linearity is dropped there seems to be no significant effect of globalization on corruption. According to our analysis, linearity is a good approximation only for middle and high income countries. Hence, our main conclusion is that globalization is a powerful weapon against corruption only for middle and high income countries, while for low income countries globalization has no significant impact on corruption. For such countries fighting corruption requires additional global action aiming at the reduction of poverty.Corruption Globalization Anti-corruption policies Public sector Institutional reforms

Lost in protest, found in segregation: Divided cities in the light of the 2015 "Οχι" referendum in Greece

6sinoneThe referendum held in Greece on the 5th of July 2015 about the rejection of the conditions for a new loan sought by European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund, become an event of great symbolic importance to national and even continental scale, although its precise scope and meaning were to a large extent loose. Participation to vote was rather high (62.5% of the electorate) and the electorate spoke widely in favour of the 'no' (61.3%). The concentration of 'no' and 'yes' votes followed a polarized distribution in the urban area of Athens. The present study analyzes the geographical distribution of 'no' votes at the municipal scale in the metropolitan region of Athens testing for the influence of the local socioeconomic context considering 67 indicators explored through the use of multivariate statistics. The polarization of the referendum vote reflects territorial disparities observed at both urban scale (distinguishing urban districts east, north and south of Athens from those situated west of Athens) and metropolitan scale (based on the urban-rural gradient). The percentage of 'no' votes at the municipal scale was correlated negatively with average per-capita declared income. Concentration of farmers and tourism activities, population growth rate and the enforcement of a municipal master plan were additional predictors of the spatial variability of 'no' votes. Going beyond the traditional division between 'left' and 'right' urban neighbourhoods, the spatial distribution of 'no' votes in Athens reflects socioeconomic disparities consolidated during recession.noneRontos K.; Grigoriadis E.; Sateriano A.; Syrmali M.; Vavouras I.; Salvati L.Rontos, K.; Grigoriadis, E.; Sateriano, A.; Syrmali, M.; Vavouras, I.; Salvati, L

Development of a Wearable System Based on Smart Textiles and GPRS Transmission for Remote Multiparametric Monitoring of Cardiac Patients: Preliminary Results of the WEALTHY Project

No abstract availabl