Supplier-retailer collaboration in food networks: a typology and examination of moderating factors

The aim of this study is to examine Supplier-Retailer Collaboration (SRC) in food networks. Based on an extensive literature on the structural characteristics of trade collaborations, we develop a three dimensional construct of SRC which includes trade marketing, supply chain coordination, and relationship quality. We surveyed a large sample of Greek food retailers and their supplier and found that all three variables are positively related to collaboration efficiency. The findings were verified by a qualitative follow-up study. The differences between retailers and suppliers regarding collaboration factors are also discussed

Η ψυχοδυναμική των διαπολιτισμικών επαφών

Please note: this article is in Greek. Psychodynamics of inter-cultural encounters (Greek presence in Australian society and the emergence of Greek/Australian subjectivity): The paper explores the discursive practices introduced by the Greek Australian communities over a long period of time in order to express their experience of migration and relocation. It observes that throughout the existing narratives the most obvious trope of articulation is that of “the rhetoric of the victim and of self-victimisation” which permeates most forms of historiography and literature which came out of the Greek-Australian experience. The paper analyses how this trope of representation incapacitated Greek language for establishing symbolic connections and places of convergence with the Australian otherness and consequently how otherness itself remained inarticulate within the creative imaginary of the community. The paper argues that such existential silencing of the Other was due to the interests of the Greek-Orthodox Church which imposed an introverted fear of the Other and to the inability of civil organisations to secularise the political discourses within the Greek-Australian community. Finally the papers cites two testimonies from an ordinary woman and from a prominent politician relocating the centre of the problematic relationship within the Greek-Australian subject itself and its inability to see the different social structure and political representation of the self in liberal democracies of the Anglo-Saxon tradition, having itself being formed under conditions of social oppression and psychological repression. It concludes that migration is an experience which alters both the migrating and the host traditions by fostering a creative osmosis of cultural variables and culture is the space between the institutions of the state which make possible the rise of individuating processes, giving thus the ability to fulfil and develop the potential of the individual

Oscillatory architecture of memory circuits

The coordinated activity between remote brain regions underlies cognition and memory function. Although neuronal oscillations have been proposed as a mechanistic substrate for the coordination of information transfer and memory consolidation during sleep, little is known about the mechanisms that support the widespread synchronization of brain regions and the relationship of neuronal dynamics with other bodily rhythms, such as breathing. During exploratory behavior, the hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex are organized by theta oscillations, known to support memory encoding and retrieval, while during sleep the same structures are dominated by slow oscillations that are believed to underlie the consolidation of recent experiences. The expression of conditioned fear and extinction memories relies on the coordinated activity between the mPFC and the basolateral amygdala (BLA), a neuronal structure encoding associative fear memories. However, to date, the mechanisms allowing this long-range network synchronization of neuronal activity between the mPFC and BLA during fear behavior remain virtually unknown. Using a combination of extracellular recordings and open- and closed-loop optogenetic manipulations, we investigated the oscillatory and coding mechanisms mediating the organization and coupling of the limbic circuit in the awake and asleep brain, as well as during memory encoding and retrieval. We found that freezing, a behavioral expression of fear, is tightly associated with an internally generated brain state that manifests in sustained 4Hz oscillatory dynamics in prefrontal-amygdala circuits. 4Hz oscillations accurately predict the onset and termination of the freezing state. These oscillations synchronize prefrontal-amygdala circuits and entrain neuronal activity to dynamically regulate the development of neuronal ensembles. This enables the precise timing of information transfer between the two structures and the expression of fear responses. Optogenetic induction of prefrontal 4Hz oscillations promotes freezing behavior and the formation of long-lasting fear memory, while closed-loop phase specific manipulations bidirectionally modulate fear expression. Our results unravel a physiological signature of fear memory and identify a novel internally generated brain state, characterized by 4Hz oscillations. This oscillation enables the temporal coordination and information transfer in the prefrontal-amygdala circuit via a phase-specific coding mechanism, facilitating the encoding and expression of fear memory. In the search for the origin of this oscillation, we focused our attention on breathing, the most fundamental and ubiquitous rhythmic activity in life. Using large-scale extracellular recordings from a number of structures, including the medial prefrontal cortex, hippocampus, thalamus, amygdala and nucleus accumbens in mice we identified and characterized the entrainment by breathing of a host of network dynamics across the limbic circuit. We established that fear-related 4Hz oscillations are a state-specific manifestation of this cortical entrainment by the respiratory rhythm. We characterized the translaminar and transregional profile of this entrainment and demonstrated a causal role of breathing in synchronizing neuronal activity and network dynamics between these structures in a variety of behavioral scenarios in the awake and sleep state. We further revealed a dual mechanism of respiratory entrainment, in the form of an intracerebral corollary discharge that acts jointly with an olfactory reafference to coordinate limbic network dynamics, such as hippocampal ripples and cortical UP and DOWN states, involved in memory consolidation. Respiration provides a perennial stream of rhythmic input to the brain. In addition to its role as the condicio sine qua non for life, here we provide evidence that breathing rhythm acts as a global pacemaker for the brain, providing a reference signal that enables the integration of exteroceptive and interoceptive inputs with the internally generated dynamics of the hippocampus and the neocortex. Our results highlight breathing, a perennial rhythmic input to the brain, as an oscillatory scaffold for the functional coordination of the limbic circuit, enabling the segregation and integration of information flow across neuronal networks

Eleni Prokou, Adult Education and Lifelong Learning in Europe and in Greece. Dionicos Publishers, Athens 2009, (in Greek)

Μη διαθέσιμη περίληψηNo abstrac

Disambiguating the Sublime and the Historicity of the Concept

In his article Disambiguating the Sublime and the Historicity of the Concept Vrasidas Karalis explores the notion of sublime or sublimity as the field of colliding signifiers and of experiential frameworks in conflict. Instead of treating the traditional notion as a structural element of style of ideology, he analyses it from the point of its contextual validation and its very historicity: what makes sublimity emerge is the extra-lingual unease, the existential dysphoria of the world outside the text, as refracted through specific works of art. Such dysphoria is expressed through ungrammatical language or/and through the attempt in specific moments in history to reclaim a totalising vision of experience. Through examples from various cultures Karalis addresses the difference of sublime perceptions that we see around the world. Ultimately, Karalis returns to Pseudo-Longinus\u27s Peri Hypsous in order to explore sublimity as an expression of cultural and existential othering as an attempt to foreground the innovative differentiation in experience

PLANNING AND EVALUATION DURING EDUCATIONAL DISRUPTION: LESSONS LEARNED FROM COVID-19 PANDEMIC FOR TREATMENT OF EMERGENCIES IN EDUCATION

The aim of this paper is to formulate a proposal for responding to emergencies in education, either at the level of the education system at a national or regional dimension (macro level) or at the level of an organization (meso level). The impetus of this proposal stemmed from the crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic in education systems and educational/training organizations worldwide, which has resulted in the disruption of educational function. It should be clarified in advance that this proposal does not concern crises of the education system itself, but situations where a major crisis at another level of public life creates a secondary crisis in education, an emergency in which education cannot fulfill its function.  Article visualizations