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The SARS-CoV-2 infection was previously associated with the expression of the dopamine biosynthetic enzyme L-Dopa decarboxylase (DDC). Specifically, a negative correlation was detected between DDC mRNA and SARS-CoV-2 RNA levels in in vitro infected epithelial cells and the nasopharyngeal tissue of COVID-19 patients with mild/no symptoms. However, DDC, among other genes related to both DDC expression and SARS-CoV-2-infection (ACE2, dACE2, EPO), was upregulated in these patients, possibly attributed to an orchestrated host antiviral response. Herein, by comparing DDC expression in the nasopharyngeal swab samples of severe/critical to mild COVID-19 cases, we showed a 20 mean-fold reduction, highlighting the importance of the expression of this gene as a potential marker of COVID-19 severity. Moreover, we identified an association of SARS-CoV-2 infection with the expression of key catecholamine biosynthesis/metabolism-related genes, in whole blood samples from hospitalized patients and in cultured cells. Specifically, viral infection downregulated the biosynthetic part of the dopamine pathway (reduction in DDC expression up to 7.5 mean-fold), while enhanced the catabolizing part (increase in monoamine oxidases A and B expression up to 15 and 10 mean-fold, respectively) in vivo, irrespectively of the presence of comorbidities. In accordance, dopamine levels in the sera of severe cases were reduced (up to 3.8 mean-fold). Additionally, a moderate positive correlation between DDC and MAOA mRNA levels (r = 0.527, p < 00001) in the blood was identified upon SARS-CoV-2-infection. These observations were consistent to the gene expression data from SARS-CoV-2-infected Vero E6 and A549 epithelial cells. Furthermore, L-Dopa or dopamine treatment of infected cells attenuated the virus-derived cytopathic effect by 55% and 59%, respectively. The SARS-CoV-2 mediated suppression of dopamine biosynthesis in cell culture was, at least in part, attributed to hypoxia-like conditions triggered by viral infection. These findings suggest that L-Dopa/dopamine intake may have a preventive or therapeutic value for COVID-19 patients.

International audience; Identification of native soil-derived Trichoderma spp. isolates and analysis of their antagonist traits against Lasiodiplodiatheobromae causing stem-end rot in papaya, Archives of Phytopathology and Plant Protection

Anti-SARS-CoV-2 spike RBD (receptor-binding domain) IgG antibody levels were monitored in 1643 volunteer healthcare workers of Eginition, Evangelismos, and Konstantopoulio General Hospitals (Athens, Greece), who underwent vaccination with two doses of COVID-19 BNT162b2 mRNA vaccine (Pfizer) and had no history of SARS-CoV-2 infection. Venous blood was collected 20–30 days after the second vaccine dose and anti-RBD IgG levels were determined using CMIA SARS-CoV-2 IgG II Quant (Abbott) on ARCHITECT i System or ADVIA Centaur SARS-CoV-2 IgG (Siemens) on Centaur XP platform. From the total population of 1643 vaccinees (533 M/1110 F; median age = 49; interquartile range-IQR = 40–56), 1636 (99.6%) had anti-SARS-CoV-2 IgG titers above the positivity threshold of the assay used. One-Way ANOVA Kruskal-Wallis H test showed a statistically significant difference in the median of antibody titers between the different age groups (p < 0.0001). Consistently, Spearman’s correlation coefficient (r) for IgGs and age as continuous variables was −0.2380 (p = 1.98 × 10−17). Moreover, antibody titers were slightly higher by 1.2-mean fold (p = 3 × 10−6) in the total female population of the three hospitals (median = 1594; IQR = 875–2584) as compared to males (median = 1292; IQR = 671.9–2188). The present study supports that BNT162b2 vaccine is particularly effective in producing high anti-SARS-CoV-2 IgG levels in healthy individuals, and this humoral response is age- and gender-dependent.

International audience; Real-time event detection and targeted decision making for emerging mission-critical applications require systems that extract and process relevant data from IoT sources in smart spaces. Oftentimes, this data is heterogeneous in size, relevance, and urgency, which creates a challenge when considering that different groups of stakeholders (e.g., first responders, medical staff, government officials, etc) require such data to be delivered in a reliable and timely manner. Furthermore, in mission-critical settings, networks can become constrained due to lossy channels and failed components, which ultimately add to the complexity of the problem. In this paper, we propose PrioDeX, a cross-layer middleware system that enables timely and reliable delivery of mission-critical data from IoT sources to relevant consumers through the prioritization of messages. It integrates parameters at the application, network, and middleware layers into a data exchange service that accurately estimates end-to-end performance metrics through a queueing analytical model. PrioDeX proposes novel algorithms that utilize the results of this analysis to tune data exchange configurations (event priorities and dropping policies), which is necessary for satisfying situational awareness requirements and resource constraints. PrioDeX leverages Software-Defined Networking (SDN) methodologies to enforce these configurations in the IoT network infrastructure. We evaluate our approach using both simulated and prototype-based experiments in a smart building fire response scenario. Our application-aware prioritization algorithm improves the value of exchanged information by 36% when compared with no prioritization; the addition of our network-aware drop rate policies improves this performance by 42% over priorities only and by 94% over no prioritization.

Background There are few studies about the presence of murine typhus in Greece. Our objective was to conduct a large scale retrospective investigation to determine the clinical and epidemiological features of patients diagnosed with murine typhus in Greece. Methodology/Principal findings From 2012 to 2019 serum samples from hospitalized patients and outpatients throughout Greece suspected for murine typhus infection were tested by immunofluorescence assay for Rickettsia typhi. Immunofluorescence positive samples obtained since 2016 were also tested by qPCR targeting R. typhi. Clinical and epidemiological data were retrospectively collected for the patients with confirmed murine typhus. Overall, we tested 5,365 different patients and, in total, 174 patients from all geographic regions of Greece were diagnosed with murine typhus. The most frequently reported sign or symptom was fever (89%), followed by headache (84%) and rash (81%). The classical triad of fever, headache, and rash was present in 72% of patients during their illness. Severe infections with complications including acute renal failure or septic shock were not recorded. The majority of cases (81%) occurred during May–October and peaked in June and September. Most of patients (81%) infected in Athens, recalled that their only activity the last weeks before symptoms onset was swimming on the beach and 59% of them also reported an insect bite while sunbathing. Conclusions/Significance Our results may reflect the reemergence of murine typhus in Greece and we highlight the importance of awareness of this difficult-to-recognize undifferentiated febrile illness.

International audience; Numerous middleware application programming interfaces (APIs) and protocols were introduced in the literature in order to facilitate the application development of the Internet of Things (IoT). Such applications are built on reliable or even unreliable protocols that may implement different quality-of-service (QoS) delivery modes. The exploitation of these protocols, APIs and QoS modes, can satisfy QoS requirements in critical IoT applications (e.g., emergency response operations). To study QoS in IoT applications, it is essential to leverage a performance analysis methodology. Queueing-network models offer a modeling and analysis framework that can be adopted for the IoT interactions of QoS representation through either analytical or simulation models. In this paper, various types of queueing models are presented that can be used for the representation of various QoS settings of IoT interactions. In particular, we propose queueing models to represent message-drop probabilities, intermittent mobile connectivity, message availability or validity, the prioritization of important information, and the processing or transmission of messages. Our simulation models demonstrate the significant effect on delivery success rates and response times when QoS settings are varied.

International audience; Table olives, the number one consumed fermented food in Europe, are widely consumed as they contain many valuable ingredients for health. It is also a food which may be the subject of adulteration, as many different olive varieties with different geographical origin, exist all over the word. In the present study, the image analysis of stones of six main Greek protected designation of origin (PDO) table olive varieties was performed for the control of their authentication and discrimination, with cv. Prasines Chalkidikis, cv. Kalamata Olive, cv. Konservolia Stylidas, cv. Konservolia Amfissis, cv. Throuba Thassos and cv. Throuba Chios being the studied olive varieties. Orthogonal partial least square discriminant analysis (OPLS-DA) was used for discrimination and classification of the six Greek table olive varieties. With a 98.33% of varietal discrimination, the OPLS-DA model proved to be an efficient tool to authentify table olive varieties from their morphological characteristics.

Part 2: Poster Papers; International audience; Advanced interconnect technologies play a prominent role in scaling up the performance of data center networks. Spatial Division Multiplexing (SDM) photonic interconnects have been suggested as means to overcome capacity upgrade requirements and enable disaggregation in future data centers. Here, Holographic Optical Elements (HOE) are proposed for SDM photonic interconnects. The proposed coupling scheme entails the use of holograms as fan out components for coupling light from a source to multicore fibers (MCF). The scheme is versatile and can be adopted to any SDM fiber core arrangement. Appropriate Computer-Generated Holograms (CGHs) are designed for two kind of MCF and the HOE interconnect is evaluated in terms of performance variations against system and fabrication related parameters. Furthermore, the interconnect design is optimized for loss-sensitive applications.

International audience; Internet of Things (IoT) aim to leverage data from multiple sensors, actuators and devices for improving peoples' daily life and safety. Multiple data sources must be integrated, analyzed from the corresponding application and notify interested stakeholders. To support the data exchange between data sources and stakeholders, the publish/subscribe (pub/sub) middleware is often employed. Pub/sub provides additional mechanisms such as reliable messaging, event dropping, prioritization, etc. The event dropping mechanism is often used to satisfy Quality of Service (QoS) requirements and ensure system stability. To enable event dropping, basic approaches apply finite buffers or data validity periods and more sophisticated ones are information-aware. In this paper, we introduce a pub/sub mechanism for probabilistic event dropping by considering the stakeholders' intermittent connectivity and QoS requirements. We model the pub/sub middleware as a network of queues which includes a novel ON/OFF queueing model that enables the definition of join probabilities. We validate our analytical model via simulation and compare our mechanism with existing ones. Experimental results can be used as insights for developing hybrid dropping mechanisms.

L-Dopa decarboxylase (DDC) is the most significantly co-expressed gene with ACE2, which encodes for the SARS-CoV-2 receptor angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 and the interferon-inducible truncated isoform dACE2. Our group previously showed the importance of DDC in viral infections. We hereby aimed to investigate DDC expression in COVID-19 patients and cultured SARS-CoV-2-infected cells, also in association with ACE2 and dACE2. We concurrently evaluated the expression of the viral infection- and interferon-stimulated gene ISG56 and the immune-modulatory, hypoxia-regulated gene EPO. Viral load and mRNA levels of DDC, ACE2, dACE2, ISG56 and EPO were quantified by RT-qPCR in nasopharyngeal swab samples from COVID-19 patients, showing no or mild symptoms, and from non-infected individuals. Samples from influenza-infected patients were analyzed in comparison. SARS-CoV-2-mediated effects in host gene expression were validated in cultured virus-permissive epithelial cells. We found substantially higher gene expression of DDC in COVID-19 patients (7.6-fold; p = 1.2e-13) but not in influenza-infected ones, compared to non-infected subjects. dACE2 was more elevated (2.9-fold; p = 1.02e-16) than ACE2 (1.7-fold; p = 0.0005) in SARS-CoV-2-infected individuals. ISG56 (2.5-fold; p = 3.01e-6) and EPO (2.6-fold; p = 2.1e-13) were also increased. Detected differences were not attributed to enrichment of specific cell populations in nasopharyngeal tissue. While SARS-CoV-2 virus load was positively associated with ACE2 expression (r≥0.8, pDDC, dACE2 (r≤−0.7, pEPO (r≤−0.5, pDDC and dACE2 expression was observed in nasopharyngeal swab and whole blood samples of both COVID-19 and non-infected individuals (r≥0.7). In VeroE6 cells, SARS-CoV-2 negatively affected DDC, ACE2, dACE2 and EPO mRNA levels, and induced cell death, while ISG56 was enhanced at early hours post-infection. Thus, the regulation of DDC, dACE2 and EPO expression in the SARS-CoV-2-infected nasopharyngeal tissue is possibly related with an orchestrated antiviral response of the infected host as the virus suppresses these genes to favor its propagation.

International audience; Real-time event detection and targeted decision making for emerging mission-critical applications, e.g. smart fire fighting, requires systems that extract and process relevant data from connected IoT devices in the environment. In this paper, we propose FireDeX, a cross-layer middleware that facilitates timely and effective exchange of data for coordinating emergency response activities. FireDeX adopts a publish-subscribe data exchange paradigm with brokers at the network edge to manage prioritized delivery of mission-critical data from IoT sources to relevant subscribers. It incorporates parameters at the application, network, and middleware layers into a data exchange service that accurately estimates end-to-end performance metrics (e.g. delays, success rates). We design an extensible queueing theoretic model that abstracts these cross-layer interactions as a network of queues, thereby making it amenable for rapid analysis. We propose novel algorithms that utilize results of this analysis to tune data exchange configurations (event priorities and dropping policies) while meeting situational awareness requirements and resource constraints. FireDeX leverages Software-Defined Networking (SDN) methodologies to enforce these configurations in the IoT network infrastructure. We evaluate its performance through simulated experiments in a smart building fire response scenario. Our results demonstrate significant improvement to mission-critical data delivery under a variety of conditions. Our application-aware prioritization algorithm improves the value of exchanged information by 36% when compared with no prioritization; the addition of our network-aware drop rate policies improves this performance by 42% over priorities only and by 94% over no prioritization.

International audience; Nowaday, the academic system is made up of paradoxes, and inconsistencies ; between the promoted discourses and pedagogical practices, and more and more in contradiction with the cooperative model, this article exposes and analyzes the praxis of academic professors / collective researchers at university. The setting up of a cooperative / institutional device constitutes the frame of these praxis mainly carried out at a Master level. The concept of emancipatory work relationship is one of the main theme for discussion. Projects management, setting up institutions within the group, reflexive and cooperative analysis of practices, cooperative / institutional pedagogy, cooperative techniques and development / transformation of the space-course, constitute the framework of these evidences.; Dans un système universitaire pétri de paradoxes, et d'incohérences entre les discours promus et les pratiques pédagogiques, et de plus en contradiction avec le modèle coopératif, cet article expose et analyse la praxis de quatre enseignants/chercheurs collectifs à l'université. La mise en place d'un dispositif coopératif/institutionnel constitue la trame de ces praxis menées pour la plupart au niveau Master. La notion de rapport de travail émancipateur est l'un des thèmes centraux de cet article. Conduite de projets, mise en place d'institutions au sein du groupe, analyse réflexive et coopérative de pratiques, pédagogie coopérative /institutionnelle, techniques coopératives et aménagement/transformation de l'espace-cours, constituent la trame de ces témoignages.

International audience; To facilitate the development of Internet of Things (IoT) applications, numerous middleware protocols and APIs have been introduced. Such applications built atop reliable or unreliable protocols and they expose different characteristics. Additionally, with regard to the application context (e.g., emergency response operations), several Quality of Service (QoS) requirements must be satisfied. To study QoS in IoT applications, the provision of a generic performance analysis methodology is required. Queueing network models offer a simple modeling environment, which can be used to represent IoT interactions by combining multiple queueing model types for building queueing networks. The resulting networks can be used for performance analysis through analytical or simulation models. In this paper, we present several types of queueing models that represent different QoS settings of IoT interactions, such as intermittent mobile connectivity, message drop probabilities, message availability/validity and resource constrained devices. Using MobileJINQS, we simulate our models demonstrating the significant effect on response times and message success rates when varying QoS settings.

International audience; Internet of Things (IoT) applications consist of diverse Things (sensors and devices) in terms of hardware resources. Furthermore, such applications are characterized by the Things' mobility and multiple interaction types, such as synchronous, asynchronous, and streaming. Middleware IoT protocols consider the above limitations and support the development of effective applications by providing several Quality of Service features. These features aim to enable application developers to tune an application by switching different levels of response times and delivery success rates. However, the profusion of the developed IoT protocols and the intermittent connectivity of mobile Things, result to a non-trivial application tuning. In this paper, we model the performance of the middleware overlay infrastructure using Queueing Network Models. To represent the mobile Thing's connections/disconnections, we model and solve analytically an ON/OFF queueing center. We apply our approach to Streaming interactions with mobile peers. Finally, we validate our model using simulations. The deviations between the performance results foreseen by the analytical model and the ones provided by the simulator are shown to be less than 5%.

International audience; Default conditionals are statements that express a condition of normality, in the form ‘if φ then normally ψ’ and are of primary importance in Knowledge Representation. There exist modal approaches to the construction of conditional logics of normality. Most of them are built on notions of preference among possible worlds, corresponding to the semantic intuition that φ ⇒ ψ is true in a situation if in the most preferred (most ‘normal’) situations in which φ is true, ψ is also true. It has been noticed that there exist natural epistemic readings of a default conditional, but this direction has not been thoroughly explored. A statement of the form ‘something known to be a bird, that can be consistently believed to fly, does fly’ involves well-known epistemic attitudes and allows the possibility of defining defaults within the rich framework of Epistemic Logic. We pursue this direction here and proceed to define conditionals within KBE, a recently introduced S4.2-based modal logic of knowledge, belief and estimation. In this logic, knowledge is a normal S4 operator, belief is a normal KD45 operator and estimation is a non-normal operator interpreted as a ‘majority’ quantifier over the set of epistemically alternative situations. We define and explore various conditionals using the epistemic operators of KBE, capturing φ ⇒ ψ in various ways, including ‘according to the agent’s knowledge, an estimation that φ is true implies the estimation that (φ∧ψ) is true’ or ‘if φ is known and there is no reason to believe ¬ψ then ψ can be plausibly inferred’. Overall, we define here three nonmonotonic default conditionals, one conditional satisfying monotonicity (strengthening the antecedent) and two nonmonotonic conditionals that do not satisfy the ubiquitous axiom ID (reflexivity). Our project provides concrete evidence that the machinery of epistemic logic can be exploited for the study of default conditionals.

International audience

International audience; The mapping process of high performance embedded applications to today's multiprocessor system-on-chip devices suffers from a complex toolchain and programming process. The problem is the expression of parallelism with a pure imperative programming language, which is commonly C. This traditional approach limits the mapping, partitioning and the generation of optimized parallel code, and consequently the achievable performance and power consumption of applications from different domains. The Architecture oriented paraLlelization for high performance embedded Multicore systems using scilAb (ALMA) European project aims to bridge these hurdles through the introduction and exploitation of a Scilab-based toolchain which enables the efficient mapping of applications on multiprocessor platforms from a high level of abstraction. The holistic solution of the ALMA toolchain allows the complexity of both the application and the architecture to be hidden, which leads to better acceptance, reduced development cost, and shorter time-to-market. Driven by the technology restrictions in chip design, the end of exponential growth of clock speeds and an unavoidable increasing request of computing performance, ALMA is a fundamental step forward in the necessary introduction of novel computing paradigms and methodologies.

The mapping process of high performance embedded applications to today's multiprocessor system on chip devices suffers from a complex tool chain and programming process. The problem here is the expression of parallelism with a pure imperative programming language which is commonly C. This traditional approach limits the mapping, partitioning and the generation of optimized parallel code, and consequently the achievable performance and power consumption of applications from different domains. The Architecture oriented paraLlelization for high performance embedded Multicore systems using scilAb (ALMA) European project aims to bridge these hurdles through the introduction and exploitation of a Scilab-based toolchain which enables the efficient mapping of applications on multiprocessor platforms from high level of abstraction. This holistic solution of the toolchain allows the complexity of both the application and the architecture to be hidden, which leads to a better acceptance, reduced development cost, and shorter time-to-market. Driven by the technology restrictions in chip design, the end of exponential growth of clock speeds, and an unavoidable increasing request of computing performance, ALMA is a fundamental step forward in the necessary introduction of novel computing paradigms and methodologies.

The mapping process of high performance embedded applications to today's reconfigurable multiprocessor System-on-Chip devices suffers from a complex toolchain and programming process. Thus, the efficient programming of such architectures in terms of achievable performance and power consumption is limited to experts only. Enabling them to nonexperts requires a simplified programming process that hides the complexity of the underlying hardware - introduced by software parallelism of multiple cores and the flexibility of reconfigurable architectures - to the end user. The Architecture oriented paraLlelization for high performance embedded Multi-core systems using scilAb (ALMA) European project aims to bridge these hurdles through the introduction and exploitation of a Scilab- and architecture-description-language-based toolchain which enables the efficient mapping of applications on multiprocessor platforms from high level of abstraction. This holistic solution of the toolchain allows the complexity of both the application and the architecture to be hidden, which leads to a better acceptance, reduced development costs, and shorter time-to-market.

While advances in processor architecture continues to increase hardware parallelism, parallel software creation is hard. There is an increasing need for tools and methodologies to narrow the entry gap for non-experts in parallel software development as well as to streamline the work for experts. This paper presents the methodology and algorithms for the creation of parallel software written in Scilab source code for multicore embedded processors in the context of the “Architecture oriented paraLlelization for high performance embedded Multicore systems using scilAb” (ALMA) EU FP7 project. The ALMA parallelization approach in a nutshell attempts to manage the complexity of the task by alternating focus between very localized and holistic view program optimization strategies.

To determine the most effective book recommendation method for libraries, we conducted a recommendation experiment using (1) collaborative filtering based on the library loan records, (2) association rule mining based on the same data, and (3) Amazon. The library loan records of a certain university library for the period 2006 to 2011 were used. We recommended books to 33 students and asked them to describe the books' level of interest. The results show that books recommended by collaborative filtering were least favorably evaluated, followed by those recommended by association rule and Amazon. Collaborative filtering carries the risk of breaching users' privacy and its computational costs are higher compared to those of association rule mining. Therefore, if we recommend books based on library loan records, association rule mining should be adopted instead of collaborative filtering. In addition, given the fact that the recommendations by Amazon were most favorably evaluated, utilization of Amazon should also be considered.

Περιέχει το πλήρες κείμενο The paper considers museological claims to autonomous knowledge by looking at the conceptual mode of display. Museological representations are still dominated by objects and hierarchies of classical sciences we conclude while the informational content of display in museology and museographic practice is often ignored and not properly assessed.

Περιέχει το πλήρες κείμενο In this paper, we propose solution for the storing and conjugating of the ever-growing traditional knowledge archives system. Dublin Core is used in order to manage data and the Web 2.0 platform was used to utilize data more easily. The various utilization methods for the archives data are shown.

Περιέχει το πλήρες κείμενο The concept of knowledge-based entrepreneurship (KBE from now on) has recently appeared in the literature and, therefore, its investigation is still at a very early stage. This article presents a conceptual framework for analyzing the phenomenon of KBE and its impact on innovative behavior and growth of greek firms active in high-tech sectors. Linking knowledge-based entrepreneurship, innovativeness and growth of newly established greek firms can draw useful conclusions for both the firms themselves, and for formulating public policies to promote innovation and foster entrepreneurship in general.

Περιέχει το πλήρες κείμενο In this paper, we focus on the leaf level nodes of tree-like k-dimensional indexes that store the data entries, since those nodes represent the majority of the nodes in the index. We propose a generic node splitting approach that defers splitting when possible and instead favors merging of a full node with an appropriate sibling and then re-splitting of the resulting node. Our experiments with the hB-tree, show that the proposed splitting approach achieves high average node storage utilization regardless of data distribution, data insertion patterns and dimensionality.

Περιέχει το πλήρες κείμενο In this paper we focus on the development of politicians’ fame and image connecting politics, public relations and socially directed practices with financial characteristics such as budget. We examine how socially directed practices with minimal or no budget can become a useful tool for the “advertisement” of political persons as a modern tool of political communication. In this paper we use a dynamic model of simulation through no budget event management in order to combine all these practices. Through concrete action we annihilate the economic cost and break away the advertizing campaign from companies sponsoring that so much in the past as today can influence political decisions. Our basic purpose is the effective organization of events with social orientation and social sensitivity. We aim, through the social sensitization and help, at increasing a political person’s fame and popularity so that he will be supported by more voters and finally elected without and away from companies’ sponsoring and interests.

Περιέχει το πλήρες κείμενο The paper describes the progress of the main Institutional Repository (IR) of the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) and its current development. The new challenges presented are the enhancement of the repository with new services and collections. One of the major collections which is under development is the University’s research output. We have already started populating the collection with papers and presentations published by the members of NTUA’s academic community. Our first step was to establish new self-archiving routines for the academic staff and faculty members. This included new forms and directions, to support the deposit of their publications. The essential goal of the IR integration is to gather all of NTUA’s scientific and technical content and simultaneously to provide new, personalized and advanced services.

Περιέχει το πλήρες κείμενο This paper discusses collaborative knowledge creation by means of a digital cultural heritage project. Using the concepts of production and consumption, the paper proposes their usefulness to extend convergence and divergence in cultural memory institutions.

Περιέχει το πλήρες κείμενο The paper seeks to explore the role of Editors-in-chief (EiC) within the Library and Information Science, from a cultural view point. Specifically, the paper aims at identifying how the culture of EiC influences the course of a journal belonging to a publishing house. The research was conducted in the event industry. With 5 library events as a point of reference, the paper investigates the negotiation process between EiC of scientific journals and Library Event Organizers (LEO) so as to record the course and nature of negotiations among people with the same as well as different culture. Participant behavior is further tested through the websites of the libraries. Unexpectedly, low-context cultures have different reactions as an outcome of their working experience and their lasting interaction with researchers. Cultural differences can influence the outcome of the negotiation; however, they are dependent variables strongly associated with the work and professional experience of the counterparts involved.

Περιέχει το πλήρες κείμενο The aim is to explore how health library and information professionals can expand their current work roles by supporting open access initiatives particularly the development of institutional repositories. A role competency framework is presented to help analyse a case study in a cancer hospital in the UK, as well as some other examples from the literature. The findings show that librarians benefit from greater expertise gained in metadata standards, and the library service gains from closer relationships with the researchers.

Περιέχει το πλήρες κείμενο A vast number of books and archive materials worldwide are threatened by acid decay or ink corrosion. Till now, many investigations demonstrated the effectiveness of mass deacidification to stop the deterioration process. Different quality standards guarantee the safety for the original items and allow after the long experience of ten years in operation more conclusive evaluations than measurements based on artificial ageing. Diverse mechanical properties were examined, and with sophisticated methods it could be shown that the neutralization compound was totally penetrating the treated papers in a solvent based mass process. Besides deacidification, a magnesium-titanium based process is also suitable for a gentle treatment of papers threatened or even damaged by ink corrosion.

Περιέχει το πλήρες κείμενο The effects of book and paper conservation treatments on the intrinsic data of the artifacts are examined. The tangible data present in an object are grouped in three layers, with the third layer being associated with the object’s material properties. The wealth of information that can be drawn from the data of the third layer and their significance is discussed. The obfuscation of critical data or their complete loss after specific treatments is a possible outcome, and conservators, stakeholders and the public should be aware of what may be lost after a conservation intervention.

Περιέχει το πλήρες κείμενο The paper presents the Hellenic fulltext database on Librarianship and Information Science E-VIVA (Ellinike Vivliothikonomike Vase), developed by the Library of the University of Cyprus. The objectives of E-VIVA is to identify, gather, organize, digitize and promote the research, conducted in Greece and Cyprus in the scientific fields of Archival, Library and Infor-mation Sciences. Data are provided concerning the cov-erage, the content, the format and the environment of the database as well as the steps that have been fol-lowed for the development. The legal framework related with the copyright issues that are raised is also dis-cussed. Furthermore a comparison is attempted be-tween E-VIVA, eLIS, LISA and LISTA. Finally the next plans of the Library of the University of Cyprus for the project are presented.

Περιέχει το πλήρες κείμενο This paper describes a research project being undertaken for a Masters of Philosophy degree which investigates how knowledge can be transferred from large organizations to small ones. The area being investigated involves the digitization of photographic collections held by cultural memory institutions in Wales. The researcher has spent time learning about digitization and digitizing two collections at the National Library of Wales. From this a toolkit has been developed and is being tested by digitizing a small archive of photographs at the Centre for Performance Research at Aberystwyth University. The research is being funded by the Knowledge Economy Skills Scholarship (KESS) programme, which aims to build knowledge and skills in the ‘convergence’ area of Wales. Supervision is being carried out by academic staff at Aberystwyth University.

Περιέχει το πλήρες κείμενο Cultural heritage information management and provision can be improved by the usage of Internet and related technologies. The research effort presented in this paper focuses on the creation of a digital collec- tion representing an archeological site. Such a collec- tion is composed of digital entities representing monu- ments and describing them using proper metadata. Such a metadata model should provide information for the monuments, ease the visitation of the site by Internet users and promote it. It can be based on CIDOC CRM, which is a formal ontology for the uniform description of cultural resources. CIDOC CRM’s specification focuses on museum documentation, thus it is necessary to extend the ontological model to effectively describe archeological sites, emphasizing spatial characteristics and facilitating the integration of the archeological site monuments with exhibits hosted in other sites, for example museums. Thus, metadata fields describing the structure of physical objects, e.g. monuments, and spatial and conceptual correlations between exhibits are explored.

Περιέχει το πλήρες κείμενο The existence of historic building records in “paper fiches” is a reality and constitutes a rich store of information about the past, some of it unique. In this article we present the results of a survey aimed to discover the current practices for recording historic buildings, mainly from services of the Greek public sector. At the same time this work focuses on metadata elements used for the description of “designation”69 information of legally protected monuments. In order to reduce syntactic and semantic heterogeneity for this type of information that revealed from the above survey we developed a metadata schema that enables efficient (and global) descriptions for designated monuments.

Περιέχει το πλήρες κείμενο This research performed to survey attitudes of Iranian Academic librarians and faculty members towards the draft code of library professional ethics for Iran. The researcher used the survey research methodology for this study. The researchers used two questionnaires for the analysis in this study. The researcher collected, analyzed, and reported data for a population of university librarians 445 in 33 governmental universities in seven provinces and 62 faculty members of library and information sciences from throughout governmental libraries. The questionnaire designed based on draft code for professional ethics of Iranian Library and Information Sciences Association used for data. According to the results of Mann Whitney U Test and Kruskal-Wallis test , there isn't meaningful differences between the views of faculty members with regard to sex, age, work experience, education, type of employment, since the meaningful level more than 0.05 mentioned in all items. Accordingly, hypothesis 1 was rejected. According to results of Mann Whitney U Test and Kruskal-Wallis test, and Independent One-Sample T-Test, there isn't meaningful differences between views of the academic librarians with sex, work experience, type of employment and job status. Since the meaningful level in all cases is more than p-value 0.05, accordingly hypothesis 2 was rejected.

Περιέχει το πλήρες κείμενο Free Software / Open Source Software (FS/OSS) is a tool for the entire academic community. Its role can often prove to be indispensable in the field of Education. May be the perfect example of how research leads to the final tool for use, which is one of the key purposes of Universities. For students, it doesn't just create users, but develops their programming skills. In the academic community, it promotes and contributes to research and last but not least, the free distribution of the source code[1] helps to improve the final product of the companies which active in the field of IT, and the visibility of the manufacturer. The business community can find the scientists of future generations that seeks, create research and make educated professionals, through the field of University and education of free software[2]. Furthermore, there are major economic benefits, due to the lack of need to spend financial resources for purchase of software to Universities.

Background: The background to this study showed that many communities, countries and continents are only now realising the importance of discovering innovative collaborative knowledge. Knowledge management (KM) enables organisations to retain tacit knowledge. It has many advantages, like competitiveness, retaining workers’ knowledge as corporate assets and assigning value to it. The value of knowledge can never depreciate. It can only grow and become more and more valuable because new knowledge is added continuously to existing knowledge.Objective: The objective of this study was to present a framework for KM processes and using social media tools in a Living Lab (LL) environment.Methods: In order to find a way to help organisations to retain tacit knowledge, the researchers conducted in-depth research. They used case studies and Grounded Theory (GT) to explore KM, social media tools and technologies as well as the LL environment. They emailed an online questionnaire and followed it up telephonically. The study targeted academic, support and administrative staff in higher education institutions nationwide to establish their level of KM knowledge, understanding of concepts and levels of application.Results: The researchers concluded that the participants did not know the term KM and therefore were not using KM. They only used information hubs, or general university systems, like Integrated Technology Software (ITS), to capture and store information. The researchers suggested including social media and managing them as tools to help CoPs to meet their knowledge requirements. Therefore, the researchers presented a framework that uses semantic technologies and the social media to address the problem.Conclusion: The success of the LL approach in developing new web-enabled LLs allows organisations to amalgamate various networks. The social media help organisations to gather, classify and verify knowledge.

Περιέχει το πλήρες κείμενο Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are representing increasing number of people year to year. On the other hand, Internet is also used by increasing number of people year to year. It became a powerful communication tool with its real time, online, and place independent features, which provides to the corporation a flexible environment to share their ideas, and to produce knowledge and propagate it. In this study, it is discussed whether an official web portal is an appropriate solution for NGOs, and which features a web portal model designed for an NGO.

Περιέχει το πλήρες κείμενο Users Interaction with various wellestablished tools of documentation retrieval and the influence from each tool to the other ones have contributed in the creation of some search culture which is shared between the design assumptions (existing behind) of search interfaces and the user skills. The purpose of this work is to exploit the hidden design assumptions of the user interfaces in order to define search scenarios that combine concrete features for specific retrieval. One such interesting application case is the definition of scenarios for finding the citations that a researcher has got, excluding self citations

Περιέχει το πλήρες κείμενο The contribution looks at the various methods of digitization applied to our written cultural heritage today and the varying intents laying at the foundation of their application. It shows the different ways of using the data collected through the digitization process and points both at the benefits offered by digital images and the verifiable loss of information in a digital image compared to the original. The three case studies discussed in the paper seek to prove the author's principal thesis: "We are only able to preserve what we know and understand, while the original can hold its secrets still waiting for us to comprehend them."

Περιέχει το πλήρες κείμενο Information systems preserve and provide access to primary information sources, scientific information and literature. Among these systems libraries, museums and archives are known as memory institutions, which preserve cultural heritage information and objects. These systems overlap some duties in preparing information sources. Libraries hold a number of museums objects and archives documents such as manuscripts or engraving plates and museums or archives hold a number of library objects such as typical books or DVDs that may be about museum objects or archive documents. Such an interrelationship should definitely be integrated in common information storage or at least virtually integrated through mediation devices that allow a query to be simultaneously launched on distinct information depositories which again requires common semantic tools. Mediation tools and semantic web activities require an integrated, shared ontology for the information accumulated by libraries, museums and archives for all the collections that they hold from highly standardize products such as books, DVDs, etc to raw materials such as stones, plants or draft manuscripts. In this paper, we will present the interrelationship of multidisciplinary information sources gathered in Astan Quds Razavi organization of libraries, museums and documentation center which is included among the most important art and cultural heritage center in Iran and Islamic world.

Περιέχει το πλήρες κείμενο This paper concentrates on evaluating the suitability of those who are involved in the development of digital libraries. Specifically, it aims to study the system analysts; those who are responsible for gathering system requirements, with the goal of determining how these requirements will be accommodated in the system. For this purpose, extensive communication between end-users and analysts is essential in order first to gather and then to analyze and understand end-users’ information needs. A case study conducted attempting to evaluate the developers of the Social Science Information Gateway (SOSIG). SOSIG is an online catalogue of Internet resources on subjects related to social sciences. Results showed that there was a differentiation in the answers provided by end-users and the project manager, though it would be naïve to conclude that the project manager of SOSIG was not aware of users’ information needs.

Περιέχει το πλήρες κείμενο Open Source Web Applications are all those applications that are accessible through the World Wide Web[1], and also their source code is open to anyone who wants to participate in their amendment. The benefits of the World Community from these applications are enormous. The use of open source applications begins already at school. At University it doesn't create just users, but develops students’ programming skills. At the same time, it promotes and contributes to the research conducted by the academic community. Later, in the workplace, these applications are always useful and can help in all areas of daily work as well as in the development of a company. It's very important that the open source applications promote cooperation and exchange of knowledge between people, through discussion groups(forum), since they allow the simultaneous work. Furthermore, the benefits are economic as well, since it can be saved a great amount of financial resources, that would be spent for the purchase of the necessary software licenses[2].

Περιέχει το πλήρες κείμενο This paper presents the initial results of a survey that took place among higher education students in Greece84. The aim of the survey was to identify and analyze the attitude, and probable acceptance, of electronic textbooks as well as the transition from printed to electronic textbooks used by the Greek Universities and Technological Education Institutes. Although e-books have turned out to be the mainstream delivery method for the majority of publishers, the printed vs electronic academic textbook debate has become more often nowadays. The complexity of an ebook content as well as the intensity needed for reading are two of the most important reasons why students seem reluctant towards this transition.

Περιέχει το πλήρες κείμενο In this paper we focus on the design and implementation of adaptive learning environments in Higher Education, accessible by students with disabilities and learning difficulties. Assistive technology, and especially mobile learning, is used for the establishment of the communication between learner and teacher, mainly, in the mainstream class. We discuss the establishment and operation of parallel “assistive” classes for specific topics and specific groups of students and needs. The architecture of Secure Wireless Infrastructures and Personalized Educational Learning Environments (SWI_PELE) is also presented and the collaboration of such environments is discussed. This architecture includes a scheme of servers and incorporates wireless infrastructure, and personalized, multimedia based educational course material. Mobile devices and PDA’s are integrated in educational scenarios to support various activities, such as giving lectures in the mainstream class, attending classes, working in the laboratory and participating in assessments and exams.

Περιέχει το πλήρες κείμενο The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of studies concerning the linkage between the very complex system of the great Inner Asian Silk Road and the history of information. In an era where literacy was acquiring larger and larger importance beside the verbal information transmitting methods, the “filtering” (that is, privacy management) techniques became especially important, whose purpose was to keep the information inside a defined circle by the encryption or coding of written documents. Hence this paper cover not just general problems of transmitting information along the Silk Road, but also deals with the special methods of encryption or coding of Kharosthi documents. These legal documents can shed light on everyday life of the Silk Road during the 3th–4th centuries, and they help us understand processes of administration, diplomacy and information techniques of that era.