John of Karpathos and the Florilegium On the Holy Communion

This paper focusses on an unedited florilegium on the Holy Communion which is attributed in certain manuscripts to the ascetic author John of Karpathos. Past scholarship had suggested and/or argued that this is a pseudonymous work derived from the respective florilegia of John Oxeites. The comparative examination of the three manuscripts allegedly containing the florilegium, as well as of certain Athenian manuscripts of Oxeites’ Hypothesis has led to a number of observations on the florilegium, including the confirmation of the older hypotheses with fresh evidence. It has also allowed the determination of the exact presence and placement of Karpathios’ passage(s) in what prove to be distinct versions of the florilegium and, at the same time, of Oxeites’ work.

Rethinking mythology in Greek museums through contemporary culture

This thesis investigates the character with which Greek mythology, one of the most durable manifestations of ancient Greek heritage, survives in the perception of contemporary Greeks, and the role that Greek museums do and could play in this. The starting point for this investigation is the appraisal of Greek mythology as an ideological creation of ancient Greece that bears pan-human and diachronie intellectual and cultural potency and, as such, constitutes a significant interpretative tool for the contemporary Greek individual. More specifically, this thesis reconsiders the relationships between Greek mythology, Greek museums and Greek people, using as a bridge contemporary Greek art. It does so in three main chapters, which investigate and analyze different parameters of this nexus of relationships. Greek mythology’s adaptations by contemporary Greek society are also explored in an attempt to establish the dominant contemporary meanings of Greek mythology. Then, the relation of a specific cultural manifestation of contemporary Greek society, that of contemporary art, to Greek mythology is extensively analyzed through a series of interviews that were conducted exclusively for this thesis. In these interviews, contemporary Greek musicians, authors and visual artists speak of the position that Greek mythology possess (or does not possess) in their artistic expression, and discuss the intellectual and cultural significance that Greek myths retain for contemporary society and people. From these investigations, two antithetic poles emerge. On the one hand, there is the trivializing way in which Greek society deals with its myths through their exploitation, for example, for commercial or nationalist purposes. On the other hand, there is the sensitivity with which my interviewees pored over Greek myths, enabling them to emerge full of dynamism, and illuminating them as ever-active negotiators of life and human nature. Thus, contemporary art is identified as a powerful conveyor of mythology’s potency for the contemporary individual. Next, the position of Greek archaeological museums, as major official institutions that do, or could, represent and safeguard Greek mythology is explored and critically assessed. It emerges that Greek museums are rather unconcerned with Greek mythology’s representation and communication and thus, confirm that Greek mythology is a dead and irrelevant representative of a glorious, yet remote and strange, ancient civilization

Galerkin methods for a Schroedinger-type equation with a dynamical boundary condition in two dimensions

This is the author's PDF version of an article published in ESAIM: Mathematical modelling and numerical analysis© 2015. The definitive version is available at http://www.esaim-m2an.org/In this paper, we consider a two-dimensional Schodinger-type equation with a dynamical boundary condition. This model describes the long-range sound propagation in naval environments of variable rigid bottom topography. Our choice for a regular enough finite element approximation is motivated by the dynamical condition and therefore, consists of a cubic splines implicit Galerkin method in space. Furthermore, we apply a Crank-Nicolson time stepping for the evolutionary variable. We prove existence and stability of the semidiscrete and fully discrete solution

Binary systems in the infrared

Near infrared (JHKL) photometry of RS CVn -type binary systems has been carried out to search for any evidence of circumstellar material in these systems and also for the existence of light variations outside eclipse similar to those observed in the visual. No apparent infrared excess has been observed in fourteen randomly selected systems.Infrared light curves of seven RS CVn binaries (HR 1099, UV Psc, SZ Psc, TY Pyx, AD Cap, HD 5303 and ER Vul) have been obtained, and nearly sinusoidal light variations outside eclipse have been detected for at least HR 1099, SZ Psc and TY Pyx. Irregular light variations have also been observed in the infrared as in the visual, and also a variation of the maximum brightness of HR 1099 and UV Psc. An esti- mate of the spectral types of the components of the seven extensively observed systems has been made using the current photometric data.Taking into account the current and other observations, possible models have been discussed, with a preference for the spot model. The active component has been shown to be a fast rotator.Another part of this dissertation is near infrared photometry of Wolf -Rayet stars. The most interesting result of these observations was the discovery of an increase in brightness of HD 193793 (WC7 +05) by 2m4 in L' (Xo = 3.8 pm) between June 1976 and August 1977. This has been attributed to the condensation of grains in the star's circumstellar shell

Efficiency of ETV diagrams as diagnostic tools for long-term period variations. II. Non-conservative mass transfer, and gravitational radiation

The credibility of an eclipse timing variation (ETV) diagram analysis is investigated for various manifestations of the mass transfer and gravitational radiation processes in binary systems. The monotonicity of the period variations and the morphology of the respective ETV diagrams are thoroughly explored in both the direct impact and the accretion disk mode of mass transfer, accompanied by different types of mass and angular momentum losses (through a hot-spot emission from the gainer and via the L2/L3 points). Mass transfer rates comparable to or greater than 10^{-8} M_sun/yr are measurable for typical noise levels of the ETV diagrams, regardless of whether the process is conservative. However, the presence of a transient disk around the more massive component defines a critical mass ratio q_cr ~ 0.83 above which the period turns out to decrease when still in the conservative regime, rendering the measurability of the anticipated variations a much more complicated task. The effects of gravitational radiation proved to be rather undetectable, except for systems with physical characteristics that only refer to cataclysmic variables. Unlike the hot-spot effects, the Lagrangian points L2 and L3 support very efficient routes of strong angular momentum loss. It is further shown that escape of mass via the L3 point - when the donor is the less massive component - safely provides critical mass ratios above which the period is expected to decrease, no matter how intense the process is.Comment: 13 pages, 6 figures, 10 tables, published in A&