Ανεξαρτησία και λογοδοσία των κεντρικών τραπεζών

Η διπλωματική εργασία αναφέρεται στις λειτουργίες και αρμοδιότητες των σύγχρονων Κεντρικών Τραπεζών, στους λόγους που οδήγησαν στην ανεξαρτησία τους και στον τρόπο λογοδοσίας τους.The thesis has to do with the functions and tasks of modern Central Banks, the reasons having led to their independence and the means of their accountability

Immune Aspects and Myometrial Actions of Progesterone and CRH in Labor

Progesterone and corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH) have a critical role in pregnancy and labor, as changes related to these hormones are crucial for the transition from myometrial quiescence to contractility. The mechanisms related to their effect differ between humans and other species, thus, despite extensive research, many questions remain to be answered regarding their mediation in human labor. Immune responses to progesterone and CRH are important for labor. Progesterone acts as an immunomodulator which controls many immune actions during pregnancy, and its withdrawal releases the inhibitory action on inflammatory pathways. In humans, a “functional” progesterone withdrawal occurs with onset of labor through changes in progesterone metabolism, progesterone receptors, and other molecules that either facilitate or antagonize progesterone function. Placental CRH acts on the fetal pituitary-adrenal axis to stimulate adrenal production of androgens and cortisol and also acts directly on myometrial cells via its receptors. CRH also affects inflammatory signals and vice versa. Interactions between progesterone and CRH additionally occur during labor. We describe the role of these two hormones in human myometrium and their interactions with the immune system during labor

Machine Learning for Fatigue Detection using Fitbit Fitness Trackers

Fatigue can be a pre-cursor to many illnesses and injuries, and cause fatal work-related incidents. Fatigue detection has been traditionally performed in lab conditions with stationary medical-grade diagnostics equipment for electroencephalography making it impractical for many in-field scenarios. More recently, the ubiquitous use of wearable sensor-enabled technologies in sports, everyday life or fieldwork has enabled collecting large amounts of physiological information. According to recent studies, the collected biomarkers related to sleep, physical activity or heart rate have proven to be in correlation with fatigue, making it a natural fit for applying automated data analysis using Machine Learning. Accordingly, this paper presents our novel Machine Learning-driven approach to fatigue detection using biomarkers collected by general-purpose wearable fitness trackers. The developed method can successfully predict fatigue symptoms among target users, and the overall methodology can be further extended to other diagnostics scenarios which rely on collected wearable data.acceptedVersio

Upon Improving the Performance of Localized Healthcare Virtual Assistants

Virtual assistants are becoming popular in a variety of domains, responsible for automating repetitive tasks or allowing users to seamlessly access useful information. With the advances in Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing, there has been an increasing interest in applying such assistants in new areas and with new capabilities. In particular, their application in e-healthcare is becoming attractive and is driven by the need to access medically-related knowledge, as well as providing first-level assistance in an efficient manner. In such types of virtual assistants, localization is of utmost importance, since the general population (especially the aging population) is not familiar with the needed “healthcare vocabulary” to communicate facts properly; and state-of-practice proves relatively poor in performance when it comes to specialized virtual assistants for less frequently spoken languages. In this context, we present a Greek ML-based virtual assistant specifically designed to address some commonly occurring tasks in the healthcare domain, such as doctor’s appointments or distress (panic situations) management. We build on top of an existing open-source framework, discuss the necessary modifications needed to address the language-specific characteristics and evaluate various combinations of word embeddings and machine learning models to enhance the assistant’s behaviour. Results show that we are able to build an efficient Greek-speaking virtual assistant to support e-healthcare, while the NLP pipeline proposed can be applied in other (less frequently spoken) languages, without loss of generality

Bilateral herpes simplex virus-related peripheral ulcerative keratitis leading to corneal perforation in a patient with primary herpes simplex virus infection

Purpose: To present a case of bilateral peripheral ulcerative keratitis (PUK) caused by primary herpes simplex virus-1 (HSV-1) infection resulting in corneal perforation. Case Report: A 24-year-old man presented at the eye casualty of our clinic, with a 20-day history of severe pain, redness, photophobia, and tearing in both of his eyes. Slit-lamp examination revealed bilateral superior corneal perforation. A laboratory work-up that included immunological testing for infectious and autoimmune factors showed primary HSV infection. Positive PCR analysis of corneal scrapings for HSV confirmed initial end-organ ocular infection. Because the patient showed progressive HSV-1-related PUK resulting in bilateral superior corneal perforation with iris prolapse, he was prescribed both systemic and topical acyclovir and prednisone. He then underwent bilateral surgical intervention, namely eccentric penetrating keratoplasty in one eye and a two step procedure in the other, whereby two corneal patch grafts and an amniotic membrane transplant were initially used, followed 1 month later by a large diameter penetrating keratoplasty. Conclusion: In cases of PUK, differential diagnosis should include infectious and autoimmune diseases. Primary HSV should also be considered as a potential cause of this form of keratitis, which, if left untreated, can lead to devastating outcomes. To our knowledge, this is the first published case of bilateral PUK caused by primary HSV-1 infection

The Oxytocin-Oxytocin Receptor System and Its Antagonists as Tocolytic Agents

Oxytocin, a hormone involved in numerous physiologic processes, plays a central role in the mechanisms of parturition and lactation. It acts through its receptor, which belongs to the G-protein-coupled receptor superfamily, while Gq/phospholipase C (PLC)/inositol 1,4,5-triphosphate (InsP3) is the main pathway via which it exerts its action in the myometrium. Changes in receptor levels, receptor desensitization, and locally produced oxytocin are factors that influence the effect of oxytocin on uterine contractility in labor. Activation of oxytocin receptor causes myometrial contractions by increasing intracellular Ca+2 and production of prostaglandins. Since oxytocin induces contractions, the inhibition of its action has been a target in the management of preterm labor. Atosiban is today the only oxytocin receptor antagonist that is available as a tocolytic. However, the quest for oxytocin receptor antagonists with a better pharmacological profile has led to the synthesis of peptide and nonpeptide molecules such as barusiban, retosiban, L-368,899, and SSR-126768A. Many of these oxytocin receptor antagonists are used only as pharmacological tools, while others have tocolytic action. In this paper, we summarize the action of oxytocin and its receptor and we present an overview of the clinical and experimental data of oxytocin antagonists and their tocolytic action

Bridging the Gap Between Java and Python in Mobile Software Development to Enable MLOps

The role of Machine Learning (ML) engineers in mobile development has become increasingly important in recent years, as more and more business-critical mobile applications depend on AI components. Many development teams already include dedicated ML engineers who aim to follow agile development practices in their work, as part of the larger MLOps concept. However, the availability of MLOps tools tailored specifically towards mobile platforms is scarce, often due the limited support for non-native programming languages such as Python, as well as the unsuitability of native programming languages such as Java and Kotlin to support ML-related programming tasks. This paper aims to address this gap and describes a plug-in architecture for developing, deploying and running data ingestion and processing components written in Python on the Android platform. With the possibility to pass a user-defined schema with the data format and structure, the proposed architecture ensures that time-series datasets are correctly interpreted by multiple ML modules dealing with both data ingestion and processing,. The proposed approach benefits from modularity, extensibility, customisation, and separation of concerns, which enable ML engineers to be fully involved in a mobile development lifecycle following agile MLOps practices.acceptedVersio

The Oxytocin-Oxytocin Receptor System and Its Antagonists as Tocolytic Agents

Oxytocin, a hormone involved in numerous physiologic processes, plays a central role in the mechanisms of parturition and lactation. It acts through its receptor, which belongs to the G-protein-coupled receptor superfamily, while Gq/phospholipase C (PLC)/inositol 1,4,5-triphosphate (InsP3) is the main pathway via which it exerts its action in the myometrium. Changes in receptor levels, receptor desensitization, and locally produced oxytocin are factors that influence the effect of oxytocin on uterine contractility in labor. Activation of oxytocin receptor causes myometrial contractions by increasing intracellular Ca+2 and production of prostaglandins. Since oxytocin induces contractions, the inhibition of its action has been a target in the management of preterm labor. Atosiban is today the only oxytocin receptor antagonist that is available as a tocolytic. However, the quest for oxytocin receptor antagonists with a better pharmacological profile has led to the synthesis of peptide and nonpeptide molecules such as barusiban, retosiban, L-368,899, and SSR-126768A. Many of these oxytocin receptor antagonists are used only as pharmacological tools, while others have tocolytic action. In this paper, we summarize the action of oxytocin and its receptor and we present an overview of the clinical and experimental data of oxytocin antagonists and their tocolytic action

Immune Aspects and Myometrial Actions of Progesterone and CRH in Labor

Progesterone and corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH) have a critical role in pregnancy and labor, as changes related to these hormones are crucial for the transition from myometrial quiescence to contractility. The mechanisms related to their effect differ between humans and other species, thus, despite extensive research, many questions remain to be answered regarding their mediation in human labor. Immune responses to progesterone and CRH are important for labor. Progesterone acts as an immunomodulator which controls many immune actions during pregnancy, and its withdrawal releases the inhibitory action on inflammatory pathways. In humans, a “functional” progesterone withdrawal occurs with onset of labor through changes in progesterone metabolism, progesterone receptors, and other molecules that either facilitate or antagonize progesterone function. Placental CRH acts on the fetal pituitary-adrenal axis to stimulate adrenal production of androgens and cortisol and also acts directly on myometrial cells via its receptors. CRH also affects inflammatory signals and vice versa. Interactions between progesterone and CRH additionally occur during labor. We describe the role of these two hormones in human myometrium and their interactions with the immune system during labor