Immigration in the Covid-19 Era: The role of Greece and Turkey, the necessity for a common European immigration and foreign policy

Immigration and refugee flows in the Eastern Mediterranean migration path have been increased the last two decades, a fact that created the need for coordinated political reaction from the EU, which now faces new challenges because of the Covid-19 pandemic. This article analyses the new challenges Covid-19 creates by focusing on the “lesson learned” of previous pandemics and their effect on mankind and also on the necessity of a common European policy both in the fields of immigration policy and foreign policy towards the stabilization in the Eastern Mediterranean, mainly by focusing on the role of Greece and Turkey

The Greece-Turkey dispute in the Aegean and the ICJ sea border delimitation case of Ukraine-Romania: similarities and differences in a comparative perspective

On 16 September 2004, Romania filed an Application instituting proceedings against Ukraine in respect of a dispute concerning "the establishment of a single maritime boundary between the two States in the Black Sea", thereby delimiting the continental shelf and the exclusive economic zones appertaining to them. Five years later, on 3 February 2009 the International Court of Justice (ICJ), issued a decisive decision on the simultaneous delimitation of the Continental Shelter and the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) between Ukraine and Romania, ending a long going dispute. In the case concerning Maritime Delimitation in the Black Sea between Romania and Ukraine the ICJ has delimited the sea borders of the two countries, mainly by using the middle line method, a delimitation method which is supported by Greece. The judgment of the Court directly affects the dispute between Greece and Turkey concerning the delimitation of the continental shelf and EEZ between both States. The reason is that there are many similarities but still many differences between the two disputes. The Court concluded that only the presence of Serpents Island required a minor adjustment of the provisional equidistance line. The result was that Romania won 79,3% of the disputed sea area. Also, the ICJ didn't take into account at all the Black Sea as a closed or semi-enclosed sea. This is a positive aspect for Greece, as Turkey's position is to insist that the Aegean Sea is a closed or semi-enclosed sea. The aim of this paper is to analyze how the ICJ sea border delimitation case of Ukraine-Romania affects the Greece-Turkey dispute in the Aegean in terms of a potential political solution

Rendering an online, subject-based navigation service compatible with linked data

Nowadays, an ever-increasing amount of libraries provide their data as linked open data - LOD. Subject headings and thesauri terms are provided online via Internet with the employment of adequate semantic technologies, such as triplestores of LOD and their corresponding SPARQL endpoints. Following the examples of major libraries worldwide, we decided to convert the existing service of interactive information retrieval that is provided by the University of Piraeus digital library of Thesis and Dissertations into a service compatible with LOD. The service through the Graphical User Interface – GUI gives the opportunity to the end-users to navigate to the subject headings of the digital library through the employment of broader and narrower terms and as well through the employment of any common subdivision that may share. At the same time, the users can find information from other repositories that provide their data as well as LOD (i.e. the articles’ database of New York Times). This paper is structured as follows: Initially, the basic principles and the components that are necessary to participate in the LOD cloud are analyzed. Then, the example of Library of Congress is presented, which provides subject-based information as LOD since 2008. The next section presents the process that was followed to create the local LOD triplestore and demonstrates its connection with other LOD-compliant data sources. Finally, the GUI of the service is presented, followed by some general conclusions

Manifold dynamics and periodic orbits in a multiwell potential

In this article, we explore the dynamics as well as the geometry of the invariant manifolds that determine the escapes from a multiwell potential. We also present the network of both symmetric and asymmetric solutions of the system, while at the same time we extract valuable information about the periodic solutions, such as their locations, multiplicity, and linear stability.The present research work was funded by Princess Nourah bint Abdulrahman University Researchers Supporting Project number PNURSP2022R106, Princess Nourah bint Abdulrahman University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

Posterior Instrumentation for Occipitocervical Fusion

Since 1995, 29 consecutive patients with craniocervical spine instability due to several pathologies were managed with posterior occipitocervical instrumentation and fusion. Laminectomy was additionally performed in nineteen patients. The patients were divided in two groups: Group A which included patients managed with screw-rod instrumentation, and Group B which included patients managed with hook-and-screw-rod instrumentation. The patients were evaluated clinically and radiographically using the following parameters: spine anatomy and reconstruction, sagittal profile, neurologic status, functional level, pain relief, complications and status of arthrodesis. The follow-up was performed immediately postoperatively and at 2, 6, 12 months after surgery, and thereafter once a year. Fusion was achieved in all but one patient. One case of infection was the only surgery related complication. Neurological improvement and considerable pain relief occurred in the majority of patients postoperatively. There were neither intraoperative complications nor surgery related deaths. However, the overall death rate was 37.5% in group A, and 7.7% in group B. There were no instrument related failures. The reduction level was acceptable and was maintained until the latest follow-up in all of the patients. No statistical difference between the outcomes of screw-rod and hook-and-screw-rod instrumentation was detected. Laminectomy did not influence the outcome in either group. Screw-rod and hook-and-screw-rod occipitocervical fusion instrumentations are both considered as safe and effective methods of treatment of craniocervical instability