TOURIST ENTERPRISES FINANCING IN GREECE

The main purpose of our paper is to examine the financing framework of the Greek tourist enterprises. More specifically, in the first part of this paper we analyze the sector of the Greek tourism market in order to be able to define its operational framework. Then, we examine the structural problems of the sector and analyze the relevant Institutional financing framework. In the second part we work out a critical assessment of the tourist enterprises existing financial framework, focussing on the financial difficulties that they face. In the last part of our paper, we set out our proposals concerning the adoption of the appropriate tourism policy that will contribute to the supporting of the aforementioned firms and especially to their access to finance (through Developmental Laws, E.U’s programs, financial Institutions like Credit Guarantee Fund for Small and Very Small Enterprises, etc). The most important conclusions that come out of the whole analysis of our paper, show that the majority of Greek Tourist Industry are small enterprises that they have the same structural characteristics (e.g: seasonal bussiness, mainly situated in insular regions, stayed behind large companies in terms of productivity, technological experience, financial and other areas. Particularly, they often lack creditworthiness and have trouble securing funds needed for their business activities). Furthermore, tourist enterprises, like most small companies have only limited capital resources. So, they have to rely on banks and other financial institutions for their funds. Banks require sufficient collateral or a well-established surety for their debtors to secure a loan. The lack of such assets or appropriate surety makes it difficult for many small tourist business to obtain loans from financial houses. Thus, it is obvious that the pin pointing of the financial problems that the tourist enterprises face, facilitates the planing of the appropriate mix of tourism policy measures, that can lead to a more effective running of tourist enterprises and also contribute to the reinforcement of local entrepreneurship.

The role of learning in the selection for dietary protein by sheep

The purpose of this thesis was to investigate in a series of five experiments the role of learning in the selection for dietary protein by sheep.Experiment 1 investigated whether an ‘unlearned’ appetite for dietary protein exists in sheep, and whether such an appetite depends on the previous protein feeding of the animal and the source of dietary nitrogen. No evidence was found for such an unlearned appetite; selection for protein was a learned response, which depended on the source of dietary protein of the foods offered as a choice. Subsequently, emphasis was given to the dietary factors that affect learning to select for dietary protein by sheep. This was done by the use of a classical conditioning methodology.Experiment 2 tested the hypothesis that a continuum links the development of learned preferences and aversions towards a food flavour associated with the post-ingestive consequences (PIC) induced by the administration of a rumen degradable protein (RDP) source. The results showed that sheep are able to distinguish between two flavoured foods associated with increasing doses of a RDP; whereas small doses led to the conditioned flavour preferences (CFPs), higher doses led to conditioned flavour aversions (CFAs). It was concluded that the diet selection for protein by ruminants could be influenced quantitatively by RDP provision. A model to account for the conditioned response of an individual sheep towards administration of increasing doses of the same nutrient was put forward.Experiments 3 and 4, tested whether a delayed type of learning could account for the development of CFPs and CFAs by sheep towards food flavours associated with PIC induced by the administration, at different points in time, of either a low or a high dose of RDP, respectively. The results showed that the temporal contiguity between the consumption of the flavoured food and the administration of the low or the high dose of RDP did not affect the development of either CFPs or CFAs. It was concluded that a process of delay learning applied to both the development of CFPs and CFAs by sheep.The final experiment tested whether sheep are able to develop conditioned responses for food flavours when they are associated with a protein source that is undegradable in the mmen, but readily digestible (DUP) within the post-ruminal digestive tract. In particular, the relative importance of either RDP or DUP as well as their concurrent administration (RDP+DUP) in the development of conditioned responses were investigated. Sheep developed CFPs towards food flavours associated with the administration of both RDP and DUP. In addition sheep were able to distinguish between food flavours associated with the administration of either RDP or DUP; they preferred flavours associated with DUP over flavours associated with RDP. Flowever, such preferences did not develop when DUP was administered concurrently with RDP.The results of the above experiments were characterised by a considerable variation in the feeding responses between individual sheep. To see clearly the effects of the variation between individuals on the diet selected by groups, a model of group diet selection was developed. Based on simple assumptions about the characteristics of the individuals in a population, including the variation between them, the model confirms the view that their feeding responses could be masked by averaging the data from animals which are treated the same. Possible extensions of the model to allow such variation to be accurately estimated were proposed.The role of conditioned feeding responses in the control of food intake and diet selection of ruminants for a diet, which meets their requirements at a particular point in time, is considered in the General Discussion

GENETIC POLYMORPHISM OF THE CSN1S1 GENE IN THE GREEK-INDIGENOUS SCOPELOS GOAT

The objective of this study was to evaluate the variability of the αs1-casein locus in the Scopelos breed. Skopelos is an indigenous Greek dairy goat breed that is characterised by high milk yield and robusteness. The notion is that the extensive polymorphisms of the caprine gene (CSN1S1) that encodes the aS1 casein (CN) fraction in different goat breeds is associated with milk yield and composition. The latter are investigated and discussed for Skopelos goats

Recommendations to the formulation of EU regulation 2092/91 on livestock production

Within the SAFO network, the workpackage on standard development has focussed on the topic, on how and to what degree the EU-Regulations con-tribute to the objective of a high status of anima health and food safety in organic livestock production. Results and conclusions from the discussions at 5 SAFO workshops are presented

Domain adaptation, Explainability & Fairness in AI for Medical Image Analysis: Diagnosis of COVID-19 based on 3-D Chest CT-scans

The paper presents the DEF-AI-MIA COV19D Competition, which is organized in the framework of the 'Domain adaptation, Explainability, Fairness in AI for Medical Image Analysis (DEF-AI-MIA)' Workshop of the 2024 Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) Conference. The Competition is the 4th in the series, following the first three Competitions held in the framework of ICCV 2021, ECCV 2022 and ICASSP 2023 International Conferences respectively. It includes two Challenges on: i) Covid-19 Detection and ii) Covid-19 Domain Adaptation. The Competition use data from COV19-CT-DB database, which is described in the paper and includes a large number of chest CT scan series. Each chest CT scan series consists of a sequence of 2-D CT slices, the number of which is between 50 and 700. Training, validation and test datasets have been extracted from COV19-CT-DB and provided to the participants in both Challenges. The paper presents the baseline models used in the Challenges and the performance which was obtained respectively

TOURIST ENTERPRISES FINANCING IN GREECE

The main purpose of our paper is to examine the financing framework of the Greek tourist enterprises. More specifically, in the first part of this paper we analyze the sector of the Greek tourism market in order to be able to define its operational framework. Then, we examine the structural problems of the sector and analyze the relevant Institutional financing framework. In the second part we work out a critical assessment of the tourist enterprises existing financial framework, focussing on the financial difficulties that they face. In the last part of our paper, we set out our proposals concerning the adoption of the appropriate tourism policy that will contribute to the supporting of the aforementioned firms and especially to their access to finance (through Developmental Laws, E.U's programs, financial Institutions like Credit Guarantee Fund for Small and Very Small Enterprises, etc). The most important conclusions that come out of the whole analysis of our paper, show that the majority of Greek Tourist Industry are small enterprises that they have the same structural characteristics (e.g: seasonal bussiness, mainly situated in insular regions, stayed behind large companies in terms of productivity, technological experience, financial and other areas. Particularly, they often lack creditworthiness and have trouble securing funds needed for their business activities). Furthermore, tourist enterprises, like most small companies have only limited capital resources. So, they have to rely on banks and other financial institutions for their funds. Banks require sufficient collateral or a well-established surety for their debtors to secure a loan. The lack of such assets or appropriate surety makes it difficult for many small tourist business to obtain loans from financial houses. Thus, it is obvious that the pin pointing of the financial problems that the tourist enterprises face, facilitates the planing of the appropriate mix of tourism policy measures, that can lead to a more effective running of tourist enterprises and also contribute to the reinforcement of local entrepreneurship