Insight into the Greek electric sector and energy planning with mature technologies and fuel diversification

The numerous available options for the development of the Greek electric sector in combination with the various techno-economic and political constraints make energy planning rather complex. Furthermore, as full auctioning of CO 2 allowances shall be the rule from 2013 onwards for the electric sector following free allocation, even more uncertainties emerge. This work aims at investigating the main characteristics of the Greek electric system taking into consideration the various allowance allocation schemes, evaluates fundamental energy scenarios and ultimately performs energy planning. The reliability of the algorithm utilised is assessed by predicting successfully key figure energy results for years 2004-2008. Main parameter under investigation in the study is the cost of CO 2 emissions allowances, while expansion scenarios are evaluated according to a newly developed set of indices standing for feasibility, environmental performance, cost effectiveness and energy safety. Many expansion scenarios examined were proved unrealistic as led to extremely high utilization of imported fuels for electricity production, while others proved inefficient on environmental or economic basis. Finally, it was proved that if a "conservative" energy planning is adopted, emissions reduction in 2020 can reach 6.3% over 2005

PALAEOCLIMATIC EVOLUTION IN LOUTRA ARIDEAS CAVE (ALMOPIA SPELEOPARK, MACEDONIA, N. GREECE) BY STABLE ISOTOPIC ANALYSIS OF FOSSIL BEAR BONES AND TEETH

Carbon and oxygen stable isotope values (δ13C, δ18O) were obtained from structural carbonate in the bioapatite of bear bones (Ursus ingressus) from Loutra Arideas cave, Almopia Speleopark, Macedonia, N. Greece. Samples of Late Pleistocene bear bones were studied for palaeoclimatic reconstruction of the area. The age range of the fossil layers is from 32ka BP to a maximum of 38ka BP. Generally, the palaeoclimatic proxy is correlated with literature data for climatic variations in the area during Late Pleistocene, whereas dietary behavior was investigated taking into account possible diagenetic processes that may have affected the carbonate matrix of the bones

Molecular profiling and genomic microarrays in prostate cancer

In the present review article a global approach regarding the usefulness of genomic microarrays in prostate cancer management, is attempted. Cancer is a multistep process of mutations in key regulatory genes and epigenetic alterations that result in loss of balanced gene expression. A complete knowledge of the interaction between the genetic variability of the neoformation (tumor profiling) and the genetic variability of the host (inherited genome profiling), will be able to determine the better strategy against the cancer and the less toxicity for the patient. Alterations in the sequence of the hormone binding domain of the androgen receptor as well as mutations in some genes, determine radioresistance and resistance or sensitivity to some chemotherapeutic drugs. New therapies using monoclonal antibodies directed against specific extracellular binding domains of some receptors are based on molecular alterations observed in tumors.В обзоре обсуждается целесообразность применения геномных микрочипов для выявления рака предстательной железы. Рак является многоэтапным процессом мутаций в ключевых регуляторных генах и эпигенетических изменений, приводящих к утрате сбалансированной экспрессии генов. Фундаментальные знания о взаимосвязи между генетической вариабельностью опухолевых клеток (молекулярном профиле опухоли) и генетической вариабельностью хозяина (наследуемый геномный профиль) позволит выбрать наилучшую стратегию противоопухолевой терапии при низкой токсичности таковой. Изменения последовательности гормонсвязывающего домена рецептора андрогена наряду с мутациями некоторых генов определяют устойчивость к лучевой терапии и устойчивость или чувствительность к ряду химиопрепаратов. Новые виды терапии с использованием моноклональных антител против специфичных внеклеточных связывающих доменов ряда рецепторов основаны на данных о молекулярных особенностях новообразований

Micronuclei to detect in vivo chemotherapy damage in a p53 mutated solid tumour

Apoptosis induction and micronuclei formation were compared following cytotoxic treatments in two rat glioma differing in p53 integrity. In vitro, micronuclei emergence but not apoptosis was linked to the p53 mutated status. In vivo, micronuclei assays were more sensitive to evaluate DNA damage induced by chemotherapy in a p53-mutated solid tumour.Journal ArticleResearch Support, Non-U.S. Gov'tinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

Pulsar Scintillation through Thick and Thin: Bow Shocks, Bubbles, and the Broader Interstellar Medium

Observations of pulsar scintillation are among the few astrophysical probes of very small-scale ($\lesssim$ au) phenomena in the interstellar medium (ISM). In particular, characterization of scintillation arcs, including their curvature and intensity distributions, can be related to interstellar turbulence and potentially over-pressurized plasma in local ISM inhomogeneities, such as supernova remnants, HII regions, and bow shocks. Here we present a survey of eight pulsars conducted at the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST), revealing a diverse range of scintillation arc characteristics at high sensitivity. These observations reveal more arcs than measured previously for our sample. At least nine arcs are observed toward B1929$+$10 at screen distances spanning $\sim 90\%$ of the pulsar's $361$ pc path-length to the observer. Four arcs are observed toward B0355$+$54, with one arc yielding a screen distance as close as $\sim10^5$ au ($<1$ pc) from either the pulsar or the observer. Several pulsars show highly truncated, low-curvature arcs that may be attributable to scattering near the pulsar. The scattering screen constraints are synthesized with continuum maps of the local ISM and other well-characterized pulsar scintillation arcs, yielding a three-dimensional view of the scattering media in context.Comment: 20 pages, 14 figures. Submitted to MNRAS and comments welcome. Interactive version of Figure 12 available at https://stella-ocker.github.io/scattering_ism3d_ocker202

Compression of volume-surface integral equation matrices via Tucker decomposition for magnetic resonance applications

In this work, we propose a method for the compression of the coupling matrix in volume\hyp surface integral equation (VSIE) formulations. VSIE methods are used for electromagnetic analysis in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) applications, for which the coupling matrix models the interactions between the coil and the body. We showed that these effects can be represented as independent interactions between remote elements in 3D tensor formats, and subsequently decomposed with the Tucker model. Our method can work in tandem with the adaptive cross approximation technique to provide fast solutions of VSIE problems. We demonstrated that our compression approaches can enable the use of VSIE matrices of prohibitive memory requirements, by allowing the effective use of modern graphical processing units (GPUs) to accelerate the arising matrix\hyp vector products. This is critical to enable numerical MRI simulations at clinical voxel resolutions in a feasible computation time. In this paper, we demonstrate that the VSIE matrix\hyp vector products needed to calculate the electromagnetic field produced by an MRI coil inside a numerical body model with $1$ mm$^3$ voxel resolution, could be performed in $\sim 33$ seconds in a GPU, after compressing the associated coupling matrix from $\sim 80$ TB to $\sim 43$ MB.Comment: 13 pages, 11 figure