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This study examines the geographical dimension of access to higher education in Greece by mapping spatial disparities in the distribution of "vathmos prosvasis", the decisive score for being accepted in one of the country's tertiary education departments. Influenced by the 'spatial turn' in the humanities and the social sciences, this paper takes a geographical approach. Spatial autocorrelation indices (Moran's I) show that examinees from mountainous settlements, insular areas, and inner city neighbourhoods are much less likely to achieve a score that would allow them to enter one of the country's higher educational institutions. The authors use the 'oval' metaphor in order to describe these differences. A number of explanatory variables at school catchment area level reduce the variation in "vathmos prosvasis", but no conclusions can be made with regards to casual relationships between school neighbourhood characteristics and individual scores. The alarmingly low scores in a specific geographical region, the so-called 'Pomakohoria', are discussed as an example of how access to higher education in Greece is being affected by location.

Despite the widely acknowledged benefits posed by spatially referenced data, there are several legal and ethical challenges during their use, especially when they provide the potential to identify an individual, or when the relevant data refer to small areas with small population. The aim of the present work is to propose a simple approach for imputing missing spatially referenced data at an aggregate level in case that decision makers do not have access to them due to the risk of individuals' identification. Under all missing data scenarios, and under the assumptions of Missing At Random and Missing Completely At Random, as well as under the 'pragmatic scenario', the proposed methodology (AFFINITY method) succeeded lower absolute and relative error in the estimation of the mean values, when compared to the rest imputation methodologies. In conclusion, a robust, in terms of accuracy, methodological framework was proposed here, which is expected to help the decision- makers to impute accurately the missing values at aggregate level spatial datasets, improving in this way both the power, as well as the precision in further statistical analyses, while at the same time the risk of identification especially in small areas can be overcome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Viticulture has historically been an important part of the social and economic life in the Mediterranean, while wine is reckoned among the oldest documented trades. The aim of the study is to record, evaluate and analyze spatial data from historical sources in order to gain insights into the dynamics of the viticultural landscape from the beginning of the Ottoman period to the present day. The study was based on (a) three historical maps published in 1885, 1942 and 1969, (b) records from historical surveys—two from the Ottoman period (1572 fiscal survey, 1832/33 property survey) and the British agricultural census of 1931, (c) present-day records from the vineyard survey of 2009 carried out by the Republic of Cyprus. In the beginning of the study period the center of viticulture was well established within the area of the southern and eastern slopes of Troodos massif. The vineyards expanded mainly around the same growing area until WW2 when they gradually began to be relocated in southwest direction to lower altitudes. This long-term trajectory of spatial patterns was driven by external demand for the product but also by the interplay of environmental, topographic and cultural factors, as well as by the state's policy framework which largely reflected long-term Mediterranean-wide patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]