Urban/ Regional Co-Operation in Greece: Athens, a Capital City under the Shadow of the State

The main purpose of the paper is to demonstrate the difficulty of urban/ regional co-operation in Greece focusing on the overshadowing of its capital Athens by the state. The main outcome of this process is the responsibility of many organisations and actors for the same issue, thus acting as a living proof of the proverb ‘too many cooks spoil the broth’. The first part of the paper presents the basic characteristics and trends in terms of the population, economy, society, environment, spatial structure, transport and international role of the Athens Metropolitan Area. On the basis of these some of the key problems are discussed, particularly in relation to the role of the metropolitan area at a national level. The second part involves an introduction to the basic policy context, particularly the one that has a major impact on the structure and function of the metropolitan area. Existing policies and programmes are briefly presented with a view to assess their influence on the potential role of the metropolitan area at a national context. There is also reference to selected case studies such as transport planning, water management and risk management (natural disasters e.g. earthquakes). The third part discusses the basic institutional context, i.e. the administrative and organizational arrangements and the way they influence the function and the role of the metropolitan area. The frame and the conditions of urban/ regional co-operation are analysed, a typical example being the problematic relationship between the private and the public sector: the public sector is unable to press the state and vice versa (e.g. the case of demanding permissions for new hotels in the saturated Athens Metropolitan Area because of the 2004 Olympics). The last part analyses the main scenarios for urban/ regional co-operation referring to the indications for innovative elements and to the prospects of various new fields for Greece such as place marketing and leisure planning (tourism, culture, sports). The focus of this paper is not on the documentation but rather on a synthesis of strengths and weaknesses, opportunities and threats for the metropolitan area in a national context.

Impacts of the economic crisis on access to healthcare services in Greece with a focus on the vulnerable groups of the population1

Το 2010, η ελληνική οικονομία εισήλθε σε μια βαθιά, δομική και πολύπλευρη κρίση, τα κύρια χαρακτηριστικά της οποίας είναι το μεγάλο δημοσιονομικό έλλειμμα και το πολύ υψηλό δημόσιο χρέος. Αρνητικές επιπτώσεις παρατηρούνται και σε κοινωνικό επίπεδο, καθώς όλοι οι κοινωνικοί δείκτες έχουν επιδεινωθεί. Το άρθρο αυτό εξετάζει την επίπτωση της οικονομικής κρίσης στην πρόσβαση των υπηρεσιών φροντίδας υγείας ιδιαίτερα των ευάλωτων ομάδων του πληθυσμού. Οι ανασφάλιστοι, οι άνεργοι, οι ηλικιωμένοι, οι μετανάστες, τα παιδιά και οι πάσχοντες από μακροχρόνιες ασθένειες και ψυχικές διαταραχές είναι οι ομάδες που επλήγησαν περισσότερο από την οικονομική κρίση στην Ελλάδα. Το υψηλό κόστος, η χαμηλή εγγύτητα και οι μεγάλες λίστες αναμονής είναι μερικά από τα εμπόδια στην πρόσβαση των υπηρεσιών υγείας που αντιμετωπίζουν οι παραπάνω ομάδες.In 2010, the Greek economy entered a deep, structural and multi-faceted crisis, the main futures of which are a large fiscal deficit and huge public debt. The negative effects can also be observed at the societal level, as all social indicators have deteriorated. The present paper discusses the impact of economic crisis on access to healthcare services especially for the vulnerable groups. Uninsured, unemployed, older people, migrants, children and those suffering from chronic disease and mental disorders are among the groups most affected by the crisis in Greece. High costs, low proximity and long waiting lists are among the main barriers in accessing health care services

The symphony as a form, as a compositional process and as a means of representative style research: analysis of the first symphony for large orchestra and voice

This text constitutes the accompanying statement of the main part of the doctoral thesis in Composition (First Symphony) and is divided into three main chapters. The first chapter describes the aesthetic starting point, which determined the composition techniques developed during the preparation of the doctoral thesis. Next it presents the techniques that became concrete in the composition of the First Symphony and all parallel works written during the same period. The second chapter deals with the First Symphony systematically for each movement, presenting the practical application of the techniques, and the overall morphology of the work. The third chapter finally, approaches the work poetically, analyzing the use of the voice and presenting it’s overall aesthetic characteristics.Το παρόν κείμενο αποτελεί συνοδευτικό υπόμνημα του κύριου μέρους της διδακτορικής διατριβής στη Σύνθεση (Πρώτη Συμφωνία) και χωρίζεται σε τρία κύρια κεφάλαια. Στο πρώτο κεφάλαιο περιγράφεται αρχικά η αισθητική αφετηρία, η οποία και καθόρισε τις τεχνικές σύνθεσης που αναπτύχθηκαν κατά τη διάρκεια εκπόνησης της διδακτορικής διατριβής. Στη συνέχεια παρουσιάζονται οι τεχνικές που συγκεκριμενοποιήθηκαν κατά τη σύνθεση της Πρώτης Συμφωνίας αλλά και όλων των παράλληλων έργων που γράφτηκαν κατά την ίδια χρονική περίοδο. Στο δεύτερο κεφάλαιο αναλύεται η Πρώτη Συμφωνία συστηματικά ανά μέρος, παρουσιάζοντας την πρακτική εφαρμογή των τεχνικών, και τη γενικότερη μορφολογία του έργου. Στο τρίτο κεφάλαιο τέλος, προσεγγίζεται το έργο μουσικοποιητικά, αναλύοντας τη χρήση της φωνής και παρουσιάζοντας τα συνολικά αισθητικά χαρακτηριστικά του

Full-system power analysis and modeling for server environments

Abstract — The increasing costs of power delivery and cooling, as well as the trend toward higher-density computer systems, have created a growing demand for better power management in server environments. Despite the increasing interest in this issue, little work has been done in quantitatively understanding power consumption trends and developing simple yet accurate models to predict full-system power. We study the component-level power breakdown and variation, as well as temporal workload-specific power consumption of an instrumented power-optimized blade server. Using this analysis, we examine the validity of prior adhoc approaches to understanding power breakdown and quantify several interesting trends important for power modeling and management in the future. We also introduce Mantis, a nonintrusive method for modeling full-system power consumption and providing real-time power prediction. Mantis uses a onetime calibration phase to generate a model by correlating AC power measurements with user-level system utilization metrics. We experimentally validate the model on two server systems with drastically different power footprints and characteristics (a low-end blade and high-end compute-optimized server) using a variety of workloads. Mantis provides power estimates with high accuracy for both overall and temporal power consumption, making it a valuable tool for power-aware scheduling and analysis. I

Autonomic power management schemes for internet servers and data centers

Abstract — We investigate autonomic power control policies for internet servers and data centers. In particular, by monitoring the system load and thermal status, we decide how to vary the utilized processing resources to achieve acceptable delay and power performance. We formulate the problem using a Dynamic Programming approach that captures the power-performance tradeoff. We study the structural properties of the optimal solution and develop low-complexity justified heuristics, which achieve significant performance gains over standard benchmarks. The performance gains are higher when the load exhibits stronger temporal variations. We also demonstrate that the heuristics are very efficient, in the sense that they perform very close to the optimal solution obtained via dynamic programming. I

SIFT-CNN: When Convolutional Neural Networks Meet Dense SIFT Descriptors for Image and Sequence Classification

Despite the success of hand-crafted features in computer visioning for many years, nowadays, this has been replaced by end-to-end learnable features that are extracted from deep convolutional neural networks (CNNs). Whilst CNNs can learn robust features directly from image pixels, they require large amounts of samples and extreme augmentations. On the contrary, hand-crafted features, like SIFT, exhibit several interesting properties as they can provide local rotation invariance. In this work, a novel scheme combining the strengths of SIFT descriptors with CNNs, namely SIFT-CNN, is presented. Given a single-channel image, one SIFT descriptor is computed for every pixel, and thus, every pixel is represented as an M-dimensional histogram, which ultimately results in an M-channel image. Thus, the SIFT image is generated from the SIFT descriptors for all the pixels in a single-channel image, while at the same time, the original spatial size is preserved. Next, a CNN is trained to utilize these M-channel images as inputs by operating directly on the multiscale SIFT images with the regular convolution processes. Since these images incorporate spatial relations between the histograms of the SIFT descriptors, the CNN is guided to learn features from local gradient information of images that otherwise can be neglected. In this manner, the SIFT-CNN implicitly acquires a local rotation invariance property, which is desired for problems where local areas within the image can be rotated without affecting the overall classification result of the respective image. Some of these problems refer to indirect immunofluorescence (IIF) cell image classification, ground-based all-sky image-cloud classification and human lip-reading classification. The results for the popular datasets related to the three different aforementioned problems indicate that the proposed SIFT-CNN can improve the performance and surpasses the corresponding CNNs trained directly on pixel values in various challenging tasks due to its robustness in local rotations. Our findings highlight the importance of the input image representation in the overall efficiency of a data-driven system

Optimization of Cultivation Conditions for <i>Tetraselmis striata</i> and Biomass Quality Evaluation for Fish Feed Production

The marine microalgae Tetraselmis striata was cultivated in drilling waters with different salinities. Growth substrate optimization was performed while the effects of different pH, temperature, photoperiod and CO2 flow rate on biomass productivity and its composition were studied. Results showed that the strain grew better in 2.8% drilling waters employing the fertilizer Nutri-Leaf together with ΝaHCO3. A pH value of 8 resulted in high biomass productivity (79.8 mg L−1 d−1) and biomass composition (proteins 51.2% d.w., carbohydrates 14.6% d.w., lipids 27.8% d.w. and total chlorophylls 5.1% d.w.). The optimum cultivation temperature was found to be 25 ± 1 °C which further enhanced biomass productivity (93.7 mg L−1 d−1) and composition (proteins 38.7% d.w., carbohydrates 20.4% d.w., lipids 30.2% d.w., total chlorophylls 5.1% d.w.). Photoperiod experiments showed that continuous illumination was essential for biomass production. A 10 mL min−1 flow rate of CO2 lead to biomass productivity of 87.5 mg L−1 d−1 and high intracellular content (proteins 44.6% d.w., carbohydrates 10.3% d.w., lipids 27.3% d.w., total chlorophylls 5.2% d.w.). Applying the optimum growth conditions, the produced biomass presented high protein content with adequate amino acids and high percentages of eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA), indicating its suitability for incorporation into conventional fish feeds. In addition, this study analyzed how functional parameters may influence the uptake of nutrients by Tetraselmis