Dispatches from Greece: ‘‘We were sleeping as Individuals and we woke up as Citizens’’

The universalistic understanding of the subject embedded in the Liberal and Marxist traditions together with contrasting accounts of unconstrained agency fail to explain the contingencies of ground responses that call for social change. The paper makes a case for the opening of the understanding of the human subject when placed in the theoretical terrain of radical political philosophy elaborated by thinkers such as C. Castoriadis, M. Hardt & A. Negri, E. Laclau and C. Mouffe. The conceptualisation of the human subject as both a creative and constrained agent rescues it from deterministic excesses and accounts of unlimited power. Within these confines, the purpose of this paper was to explore the project of autonomy as conceptualised by Castoriadis and relate it to a new articulation of human development. Through a case study of the social movement in Skouries, Chalkidiki, the democratic openings realised by the creative human praxis and the re-politicisation of individuals, were explored. The self-organised communities call for a creation of public spaces where deliberation and self-reflection can take place, resulting in a re-thinking of the developmental paradigm applied in the years of Greek austerity. The question that remains open is how the new social relations manifested in the area can foster principles of social and individual autonomy in all spheres of social life. The paper concludes that processes of uniformity tend to eliminate the multiplicity embedded in social ambiguity resulting in forms of social exclusion

Η επιρροή των ανισοτήτων στην προσφορά και τη ζήτηση για αναδιανεμητικές πολιτικές.

Στην παρούσα μελέτη εξετάζεται η σχέση μεταξύ των οικονομικών ανισοτήτων και των αναδιανεμητικών πολιτικών. Ειδικότερα, απώτερος σκοπός της μελέτης είναι να αναδείξει την επιρροή που ασκούν οι ανισότητες στην προσφορά και τη ζήτηση για αναδιανεμητικές πολιτικές. Αρχικά, η έρευνα ανέδειξε την έντονη αύξηση των ανισοτήτων τόσο ως προς το εισόδημα, όσο και ως προς τον πλούτο, από τη δεκαετία του 1980 μέχρι και σήμερα, ως αποτέλεσμα της έντονης αύξησης του εισοδήματος στην κορυφή της κατανομής. Στη συνέχεια, εξετάστηκε το θεώρημα του διάμεσου ψηφοφόρου, το οποίο είναι απαραίτητο για την μετέπειτα ερμηνεία της ζήτησης και της προσφοράς για αναδιανεμητικές πολιτικές, εφόσον σύμφωνα με το θεώρημα αυτό, τα άτομα επιλέγουν το επίπεδο της αναδιανομής που μεγιστοποιεί την ωφελιμότητά τους. Παρ’ όλα αυτά, εξετάζοντας τη ζήτηση για αναδιανεμητικές πολιτικές, φαίνεται πως το θεώρημα του διάμεσου ψηφοφόρου αμφισβητείται, καθώς στην τελική απόφαση των ατόμων για το επίπεδο της αναδιανομής επιδρούν κι άλλοι παράγοντες, όπως οι αντιλήψεις τους για το εισόδημα και η προοπτική για ανοδική κινητικότητα. Επιπλέον, από την ανάλυση προκύπτει ότι από τη δεκαετία του 1980 και μετά, η αποτελεσματικότητα των αναδιανεμητικών πολιτικών που προσφέρονται από τις εκάστοτε κυβερνήσεις έχει μειωθεί. Το συμπέρασμα, πάντως, στο οποίο καταλήγουμε είναι ότι, παρά τις αρχικές προσδοκίες, οι αναδιανεμητικές πολιτικές του κράτους ευημερίας δεν επιτυγχάνουν την μείωση των ανισοτήτων της αγοράς και, επακολούθως, την επαρκή μείωση της ανισότητας στο διαθέσιμο εισόδημα.In this study we look into the relation between economic inequalities and redistributive policies. Namely, the ultimate aim of our study is to stress the extent to which inequalities affect the supply and the demand for redistributive policies. Initially, the survey highlighted the sharp increase in the level of income and wealth inequality since the 1980s, resulting from the surge in top incomes. Then, we examined the median voter’s theorem, which is considered essential to the subsequent interpretation of demand and supply for redistributive policies, seeing as it denotes that, individuals choose the level of redistribution that maximizes their utility. Yet, while examining the demand for redistributive policies, it appears that the median voter’s theorem is being questioned, seeing as other factors, such as income perceptions or the prospect of upward mobility, also affect individuals’ final decision on the level of redistribution. Moreover, the results ensued from the analysis show that since the 1980s, the effectiveness of redistributive policies has diminished. Be that as it may, it seems that the welfare state’s redistributive policies fail to reduce market inequalities and, therefore, they fail to adequately reduce disposable income inequality

Antagonistic discourses in Greece at the time of the Movement of the Squares. The case of the Greek television channel MEGA.

Στη διατριβή αναλύεται ο λόγος του Κινήματος των Πλατειών, της λαϊκής κινητοποίησης ενάντια στην ψήφιση του Μεσοπρόθεσμου Προγράμματος στις 29 Ιουνίου του 2011. Αναλύεται επίσης ο λόγος με τον οποίο τα ΜΜΕ παρουσίασαν τα γεγονότα εκείνης της περιόδου. Οι δύο λόγοι θεωρούνται ανταγωνιστικοί στην πάλη για το ποια νοήματα θα έχουν την ισχυρότερη επίδραση στην κοινωνία. Γι' αυτό, εξετάζονται υπό το πρίσμα της ηγεμονίας του Αντόνιο Γκράμσι.The thesis examines the discourse of the Movement of the Squares in Greece, the popular mobilization surrounding the vote on the midterm program austerity measures on June 29, 2011. It also examines the discourse with which the media reported the events of those days. Τhe two discourses are regarded as contenders in the struggle over which meanings will have the most influence on society. It is due to the antagonism between the two discourses that they are related to one another through the prism of Antonio Gramsci's hegemony

Management practices influence the competitive potential of weed communities and their value to biodiversity in South African vineyards.

Weeds have negative impacts on crop production but also play a role in sustaining biodiversity in agricultural landscapes. This trade‐off raises the question of whether it is possible to promote weed communities with low competitive potential but high value to biodiversity. Here, we explored how weed communities respond to different vineyard management practices in South Africa's Western Cape, aiming to identify whether any specific practices are associated with more beneficial weed communities. Eight weed community characteristics representative of abundance, diversity and functional composition were used as indicators of competitive potential and biodiversity value. We explored how these responded to farm management strategy (organic, low input or conventional) and weed management practices (herbicides, tillage, mowing or combinations of these) using ordination and mixed models. Mown sites were associated with weed communities of high biodiversity value, with higher weed cover in both winter and summer, higher diversity and more native weeds. Mowing also promoted shorter weeds than either tillage or herbicides, considered to be less competitive with grapevines. However, high summer weed cover may be problematic where competition for water is critical, in which case tillage offers a method to limit summer weed cover that did not adversely affect diversity or native weeds. In contrast, herbicide‐treated sites had characteristics indicative of a lower biodiversity value and higher potential for competitiveness with few native weeds, lower diversity and relatively tall, small‐seeded weeds. Mowing in winter combined with tillage in spring may thus optimise the biodiversity benefits and production costs of Western Cape vineyard weeds

Shock After a Caesarian Section for Placenta Previa

A 34-year-old lady, pregnant at 32 weeks of gestation, with a history of bronchial asthma treated with bronchodilators was admitted in the Obstetrics Department with uterus contractions and a tamponading placenta previa. She was initially treated with tocolytics and a caesarean section was planned three weeks later. After the caesarean section and the placenta excision, severe hemorrhage occurred which made a hysterectomy necessary... (excerpt

Technostress and academic motivation: direct and indirect effects on university students' psychological health

Introduction: Research has well demonstrated that the pandemic entailed several implications among university students worldwide in terms of increased use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), technostress, disruptions in academic goals and motivation processes, and growing psychological suffering. Responding to the new research need to go in-depth into the processes linking technostress and motivation dimensions to inform current research/interventions, the present study aimed to explore the direct effects of perceived Technostress dimensions (Techno-Overload, Work-Home Conflict, Pace of Change, Techno-Ease, Techno-Reliability, and Techno-Sociality) and Academic Motivation dimensions (Amotivation, Intrinsic, and Extrinsic Motivation dimensions) on students' perceived levels of Anxiety/Depression and test the potential indirect effect (mediating role) of Academic Motivation dimensions in the associations between Technostress and psychological health conditions. Methods: Overall, 1,541 students from five European countries (Czech Republic, Greece, Italy, Serbia, United Kingdom) completed a survey comprising a Background Information Form, the Technostress Scale, the Academic Motivation Scale-College, and the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale. Hayes' PROCESS tool was used to test direct and indirect (mediating) effects. Results: Data revealed that Techno-Overload, Work-Home Conflict, Amotivation, and Extrinsic Motivation-Introjected had a direct negative effect, whereas Techno-Ease, Techno-Reliability, Techno-Sociality, all Intrinsic Motivation dimensions, and Extrinsic Motivation-Identified had a direct protective role for students' psychological health. The significant indirect role of motivation dimensions in the associations between Technostress dimensions and Anxiety/Depression was fully supported. Discussion: Findings allow gaining further insight into the pathways of relationships between technostress, motivation, and psychological health, to be used in the current phase, featured by the complete restoration of face-to-face contacts, to inform the development of tailored research and interventions, which address lights and shadows of the technology use, and which take into account the necessity to enhance its potentials yet without impairing students' motivation and psychological health

BHPMF – a hierarchical Bayesian approach to gap-filling and trait prediction for macroecology and functional biogeography

Aim: Functional traits of organisms are key to understanding and predicting biodiversity and ecological change, which motivates continuous collection of traits and their integration into global databases. Such trait matrices are inherently sparse, severely limiting their usefulness for further analyses. On the other hand, traits are characterized by the phylogenetic trait signal, trait–trait correlations and environmental constraints, all of which provide information that could be used to statistically fill gaps. We propose the application of probabilistic models which, for the first time, utilize all three characteristics to fill gaps in trait databases and predict trait values at larger spatial scales. Innovation: For this purpose we introduce BHPMF, a ierarchical Bayesian extension of probabilistic matrix actorization (PMF). PMF is a machine learning technique which exploits the correlation structure of sparse matrices to impute missing entries. BHPMF additionally utilizes the taxonomic hierarchy for trait prediction and provides uncertainty estimates for each imputation. In combination with multiple regression against environmental information, BHPMF allows for extrapolation frompoint measurements to larger spatial scales.We demonstrate the applicability of BHPMF in ecological contexts, using different plant functional trait datasets, also comparing results to taking the species mean and PMF. Main conclusions: Sensitivity analyses validate the robustness and accuracy of BHPMF: our method captures the correlation structure of the trait matrix as well as the phylogenetic trait signal – also for extremely sparse trait matrices – and provides a robust measure of confidence in prediction accuracy for each missing entry. The combination of BHPMF with environmental constraints provides a promising concept to extrapolate traits beyond sampled regions, accounting for intraspecific trait variability. We conclude that BHPMF and its derivatives have a high potential to support future trait-based research in macroecology and functional biogeography

Brain matters: unveiling the distinct contributions of region, age, and sex to glia diversity and CNS function

The myelinated white matter tracts of the central nervous system (CNS) are essential for fast transmission of electrical impulses and are often differentially affected in human neurodegenerative diseases across CNS region, age and sex. We hypothesize that this selective vulnerability is underpinned by physiological variation in white matter glia. Using single nucleus RNA sequencing of human post-mortem white matter samples from the brain, cerebellum and spinal cord and subsequent tissue-based validation we found substantial glial heterogeneity with tissue region: we identified region-specific oligodendrocyte precursor cells (OPCs) that retain developmental origin markers into adulthood, distinguishing them from mouse OPCs. Region-specific OPCs give rise to similar oligodendrocyte populations, however spinal cord oligodendrocytes exhibit markers such as SKAP2 which are associated with increased myelin production and we found a spinal cord selective population particularly equipped for producing long and thick myelin sheaths based on the expression of genes/proteins such as HCN2. Spinal cord microglia exhibit a more activated phenotype compared to brain microglia, suggesting that the spinal cord is a more pro-inflammatory environment, a difference that intensifies with age. Astrocyte gene expression correlates strongly with CNS region, however, astrocytes do not show a more activated state with region or age. Across all glia, sex differences are subtle but the consistent increased expression of protein-folding genes in male donors hints at pathways that may contribute to sex differences in disease susceptibility. These findings are essential to consider for understanding selective CNS pathologies and developing tailored therapeutic strategies