The transformation of the Union for the Mediterranean into an Energy Community

This article focuses on the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM), which celebrated ten years of life last year. The article examines whether the UfM may evolve into an Energy Community in order to keep together its member states when developing projects in the energy sector, in which they don’t have the same interests. To what extent can the UfM become a driver for peace, stability and prosperity in the region of the energy-rich Eastern Mediterranean? The article examines the multilateral and bilateral frameworks of cooperation in the Mediterranean basin. What is the institutional missing link that may unite these frameworks into a solid work platform? The Eastern Mediterranean Gas Forum is a recent Egyptian initiative, developed outside the multilateral framework of the UfM. This initiative questions the relevance of the multilateral institutions and the bilateral relations developed between the Mediterranean coastal countries.

Journeying through Space and Time with Pausanias’s Description of Greece

Sometime in the second century CE, Pausanias of Magnesia (modern-day Turkey) wrote the Description of Greece. Ostensibly a tour of the places to see on the Greek mainland, the Description also provides historical accounts related to the topography through which Pausanias moves. Little attention has been given to how these building blocks of narrative, the entities of place and time, relate to and intersect with each other. In this article, we establish a framework for systematically investigating Pausanias’s chronotopes through a process of semantic annotation. We describe our typology for categorizing place and time, with the aim of enabling this text’s database of information — the descriptions of the built environment, its temples, statues, etc. — to be mapped and analysed. Our emphasis, however, is on how the technology equally facilitates close reading, as we trace how individual locations, objects and people relate to each other through the unfolding of chronotopes, and examine how in turn these chronotopes transform our understanding of the spaces of Greece and Greece as a place. We conclude by offering reflections on the potential for semantic annotation of the kind documented here not only for conducting chronotopic investigations of literary geographies, but also for bringing the textualization of space into direct dialogue with the material culture on the ground

Journeying through Space and Time with Pausanias’s Description of Greece

Sometime in the second century CE, Pausanias of Magnesia (modern-day Turkey) wrote the Description of Greece. Ostensibly a tour of the places to see on the Greek mainland, the Description also provides historical accounts related to the topography through which Pausanias moves. Little attention has been given to how these building blocks of narrative, the entities of place and time, relate to and intersect with each other. In this article, we establish a framework for systematically investigating Pausanias’s chronotopes through a process of semantic annotation. We describe our typology for categorizing place and time, with the aim of enabling this text’s database of information — the descriptions of the built environment, its temples, statues, etc. — to be mapped and analysed. Our emphasis, however, is on how the technology equally facilitates close reading, as we trace how individual locations, objects and people relate to each other through the unfolding of chronotopes, and examine how in turn these chronotopes transform our understanding of the spaces of Greece and Greece as a place. We conclude by offering reflections on the potential for semantic annotation of the kind documented here not only for conducting chronotopic investigations of literary geographies, but also for bringing the textualization of space into direct dialogue with the material culture on the ground

Rapid Discovery of Aspartyl Protease Inhibitors Using an Anchoring Approach

Pharmacophore searches that include anchors, fragments contributing above average to receptor binding, combined with one-step syntheses are a powerful approach for the fast discovery of novel bioactive molecules. Here, we are presenting a pipeline for the rapid and efficient discovery of aspartyl protease inhibitors. First, we hypothesized that hydrazine could be a multi-valent warhead to interact with the active site Asp carboxylic acids. We incorporated the hydrazine anchor in a multicomponent reaction and created a large virtual library of hydrazine derivatives synthetically accessible in one-step. Next, we performed anchor-based pharmacophore screening of the libraries and resynthesized top-ranked compounds. The inhibitory potency of the molecules was finally assessed by an enzyme activity assay and the binding mode confirmed by several soaked crystal structures supporting the validity of the hypothesis and approach. The herein reported pipeline of tools will be of general value for the rapid generation of receptor binders beyond Asp proteases

A Digital Periegesis: Implementing Spatial Research Infrastructures for Classical History and Archaeology

Over the past ten years the spatial turn in the humanities in Scandinavia has resulted in a growing number of infrastructural projects aimed at facilitating interdisciplinary research into spatial aspects of a rich variety of materials, place-names, early modern inventories and cadastral maps, medieval literature and art, as well as Viking-Age and medieval runic inscriptions, to name just a few. This intensive development has brought about a number of challenges, as these projects differ with regard to their agendas, setups, and customized approaches to data, theories, and methods. This volume provides the research community with an opportunity to revisit traditional research questions in the context of new infrastructural environments. Although primarily aimed at medievalists and scholars of the early modern period, the volume offers a broader spatial and temporal scope with a contribution from classical studies. The classics have in many ways pioneered the application of digital methods to narrative spatial analysis and developed strong collaborative engagement with infrastructure, producing Pelagios, an ever-growing platform for a plethora of spatial databases and gazetteers, as well as Recogito, a digital annotation tool. These two successful examples show a pressing need for community building around SRIs for early modern and medieval Scandinavia to ensure sustainable design, long-term preservation, and further collaborative developmen

Visualizing Pausanias’s <i>Description of Greece</i> with contemporary GIS

This progress article focuses on an overview of the potential and challenges of using contemporary Geographic Information System (GIS) applications for the visual rendering and analysis of textual spatial data. The case study is an ancient traveling narrative, Pausanias’s Description of Greece (Periegesis Hellados) which was written in the second century CE. First, we describe the process of converting the volumes to spatial data using a customized version of the open-source digital semantic annotation platform Recogito. Then the focus shifts to the implementation of collected and organized spatial data to a number of GIS applications: namely Google Maps, DARIAH Geo-Browser, Gephi, Palladio and ArcGIS. Through empirical experimentation with spatial data and their implementation in different platforms, our paper charts the ways in which contemporary GIS applications may be implemented to cast new light on ancient understandings of identity, space, and place

Heritage metadata: a digital <i>Periegesis</i>

This chapter aims to review the state-of-field for using digital heritage metadata in the context of GIS mapping and LOD and to identify key chal- lenges from both theoretical and practical perspectives. The chapter illus- trates these challenges and how they can be dealt with a case study of a project using cutting-edge methodologies, the Digital Periegesis project. This allows us to answer research questions about how to organise and link textual data in relation to archaeological material culture, generally, and with regard to Pausanias’s Description of Greece and places mentioned by him, specifically. This endeavour makes it possible to approach an overarching purpose and address larger issues related to information organisation from epistemological and technical perspective

Mediterranean monitoring and forecasting operational system for Copernicus Marine Service

The MEDiterranean Monitoring and Forecasting Center (Med-MFC) is part of the Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service (CMEMS, http://marine.copernicus.eu/), provided on an operational mode by Mercator Ocean in agreement with the European Commission. Specifically, Med MFC system provides regular and systematic information about the physical state of the ocean and marine ecosystems for the Mediterranean Sea. The Med-MFC service started in May 2015 from the pre-operational system developed during the MyOcean projects, consolidating the understanding of regional Mediterranean Sea dynamics, from currents to biogeochemistry to waves, interfacing with local data collection networks and guaranteeing an efficient link with other Centers in Copernicus network. The Med-MFC products include analyses, 10 days forecasts and reanalysis, describing currents, temperature, salinity, sea level and pelagic biogeochemistry. Waves products will be available in MED-MFC version in 2017. The consortium, composed of INGV (Italy), HCMR (Greece) and OGS (Italy) and coordinated by the Euro-Mediterranean Centre on Climate Change (CMCC, Italy), performs advanced R&D activities and manages the service delivery. The Med-MFC infrastructure consists of 3 Production Units (PU), for Physics, Biogechemistry and Waves, a unique Dissemination Unit (DU) and Archiving Unit (AU) and Backup Units (BU) for all principal components, guaranteeing a resilient configuration of the service and providing and efficient and robust solution for the maintenance of the service and delivery. The Med-MFC includes also an evolution plan, both in terms of research and operational activities, oriented to increase the spatial resolution of products, to start wave products dissemination, to increase temporal extent of the reanalysis products and improving ocean physical modeling for delivering new products. The scientific activities carried out in 2015 concerned some improvements in the physical, biogeochemical and wave components of the system. Regarding the currents, new grid-point EOFs have been implemented in the Med-MFC assimilation system; the climatological CMAP precipitation was replaced by the ECMWF daily precipitation; reanalysis time-series have been increased by one year. Regarding the biogeochemistry, the main scientific achievement is related to the implementation of the carbon system in the Med-MFC biogeochemistry model system already available. The new model is able to reproduce the principal spatial patterns of the carbonate system variables in the Mediterranean Sea. Further, a key result consists of the calibration of the new variables (DIC and alkalinity), which serves to the estimation of the accuracy of the new products to be released in the next version of the system (i.e. pH and pCO2 at surface). Regarding the waves, the system has been validated against in-situ and satellite observations. For example, a very good agreement between model output and in-situ observations has been obtained at offshore and/or well-exposed wave buoys in the Mediterranean Sea.PublishedVienna3SR. AMBIENTE - Servizi e ricerca per la Societ