Nikos Papadopoulos

Bio: Nikos Papadopoulos is an academic researcher from Foundation for Research & Technology – Hellas. The author has contributed to research in topics: Electrical resistivity tomography & Ground-penetrating radar. The author has an hindex of 19, co-authored 100 publications receiving 1345 citations. Previous affiliations of Nikos Papadopoulos include Aristotle University of Thessaloniki & Field Museum of Natural History.

Full immersive virtual environment CAVETM in chemistry education

Abstract: By comparing two-dimensional (2D) chemical animations designed for computer's desktop with three-dimensional (3D) chemical animations designed for the full immersive virtual reality environment CAVE^T^M we studied how virtual reality environments could raise student's interest and motivation for learning. By using the 3ds max^T^M, we can visualize the chemical phenomena easily and quickly without knowing any special computer language and export the application to files which are compatible with the CAVE^T^M (Object or OpenGL files). After the participation in 3D animations at the CAVE^T^M students comprehended the molecules' structure and their changes during a chemical reaction better than during the 2D animations on the computer's desktop, as the limitations of human vision had been overcome. Furthermore, the students were enthusiastic, as they had the feeling that they were inside the chemical reactions and they were facing the 3D molecules as if they were real objects front of them.

Two-dimensional and three-dimensional resistivity imaging in archaeological site investigation

Abstract: In this work, the application and the effectiveness of two- and three-dimensional non-linear inversion algorithms in processing and interpretation of electrical resistivity tomography (ERT) data collected from archaeological areas are investigated in the framework of a new field technique for gathering three-dimensional pole–pole tomographic data in a relatively small amount of time using standard archaeological prospection equipment. The inversion routine, for both the two-dimensional and the three-dimensional case, is based on a smoothness constrained algorithm and the forward modelling calculations are carried out using two-dimensional and three-dimensional finite element solvers respectively. Results of combined two-dimensional inversions (quasi-three-dimensional) are compared with the full three-dimensional inversions. Comparisons are carried out in relation to the optimum survey direction of gathering the tomographic data using the pole–pole array for synthetic data arising from three-dimensional structures commonly encountered in archaeological sites. The response of the algorithms in the presence of noisy data was also tested. The algorithms were also used in the processing of real data collected from the archaeological sites of Sikyon and Europos in Greece. The results from the synthetic and the real data indicate the superiority of the three-dimensional inversion algorithms in processing tomographic data. The reconstructed three-dimensional images do not suffer from the artefacts encountered in the quasi-three-dimensional approach, owing to the three-dimensional nature of the archaeological features. Most importantly, both synthetic and real data results indicate that a single survey direction is adequate to produce a valid three-dimensional subsurface image when full three-dimensional inversion is used in contrast to the quasi-three-dimensional approach, which would require that two survey directions be used to obtain satisfactory results. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Use of engineering geophysics to investigate a site for a building foundation

Abstract: The combination of geophysical data and geotechnical measurements may greatly improve the quality of buildings under construction in civil engineering. A case study is presented here at a vacant building site. Initially, boreholes indicated a complex geology. A dipole–dipole configuration was selected for electrical resistivity tomography (ERT) implementation and the data were processed and interpreted by applying 2D and 3D inversions. An electromagnetic survey was also carried out at a different time periods and successfully used to verify the results of the resistivity measurements. It is demonstrated that engineering geophysics is able to provide solutions for determining subsurface properties and that different prospection techniques are necessary for developing a reasonable model of the subsurface structure.

Application of integrated methods in mapping waste disposal areas

Abstract: An integrated suite of environmental methods was used to characterize the hydrogeological, geological and tectonic regime of the largest waste disposal landfill of Crete Island, the Fodele municipal solid waste site (MSW), to determine the geometry of the landfill (depth and spatial extent of electrically conductive anomalies), to define the anisotropy caused by bedrock fabric fractures and to locate potential zones of electrically conductive contamination. A combination of geophysical methods and chemical analysis was implemented for the characterization and management of the landfill. Five different types of geophysical surveys were performed: (1) 2D electrical resistance tomography (ERT), (2) electromagnetic measurements using very low frequencies (VLF), (3) electromagnetic conductivity (EM31), (4) seismic refraction measurements (SR), and (5) ambient noise measurements (HVSR). The above geophysical methods were used with the aim of studying the subsurface properties of the landfill and to define the exact geometrical characteristics of the site under investigation.

I and i

Abstract: There is, I think, something ethereal about i —the square root of minus one. I remember first hearing about it at school. It seemed an odd beast at that time—an intruder hovering on the edge of reality. Usually familiarity dulls this sense of the bizarre, but in the case of i it was the reverse: over the years the sense of its surreal nature intensified. It seemed that it was impossible to write mathematics that described the real world in …

Remote Sensing And Image Interpretation

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Ground Motion Characteristics Estimated from Spectral Ratio between Horizontal and Verticcl Components of Mietremors.

Abstract: The spectral ratio between horizontal and vertical components (H/V ratio) of microtremors measured at the ground surface has been used to estimate fundamental periods and amplification factors of a site, although this technique lacks theoretical background. The aim of this article is to formulate the H/V technique in terms of the characteristics of Rayleigh and Love waves, and to contribute to improve the technique. The improvement includes use of not only peaks but also troughs in the H/V ratio for reliable estimation of the period and use of a newly proposed smoothing function for better estimation of the amplification factor. The formulation leads to a simple formula for the amplification factor expressed with the H/V ratio. With microtremor data measured at 546 junior high schools in 23 wards of Tokyo, the improved technique is applied to mapping site periods and amplification factors in the area.

The past is a foreign country.

Abstract: 'When I was your age,' my father was fond of telling me, 'I used to walk 5 miles through a foot of snow just to go to school.' I was impressed for a while, until I noticed that, as he got older, the distance got longer and the snow got deeper. Eventually, he claimed to have walked 20 miles through 6 feet of snow. I became even more suspicious when I found out from my grandmother that they had lived three blocks from school. In an age of school buses and car-pooling parents, such stories, whether believable or not, conjure up visions of a world almost beyond the imaginations of today's children. I was reminded of that today by an email from my friend and Brandeis colleague Tom Pochapsky, who directed my attention to a fascinating article on the website of Beloit College (http://www.beloit.edu/mindset/2014.php). Each August since 1998, Beloit College has released the Beloit College Mindset List, which provides a look at the cultural background of the students entering college that fall. The creation of Beloit's Keefer Professor of the Humanities Tom McBride and former Public Affairs Director Ron Nief, it was originally created as a reminder to the Beloit faculty to be aware of dated references. As the website notes, 'it quickly became a catalog of the rapidly changing worldview of each new generation.' So what's the worldview of the class of 2014? According to the latest list, here are a few of the things these 18-year-olds, born in 1992, have experienced - and not experienced: • Few in the class know how to write in cursive. • They find that email is just too slow, and they seldom if ever use snail mail. They text. Oh, God, do they text. • To them, Clint Eastwood is better known as a sensitive film director than as vigilante cop Dirty Harry. • For them, Korean cars have always been a staple on American highways. • They've never recognized that pointing to their wrists was a request for the time of day. • In their world, Czechoslovakia has never existed. There was no Berlin Wall, the Iron Curtain is a meaningless phrase, and Russia has never had a Communist government. • There has never been a world without AIDS. • The Beatles and the Rolling Stones are classical music. • Toothpaste tubes have always stood up on their caps. • There have always been women priests in the Anglican Church. • Having hundreds of cable channels but nothing good to watch has always been the norm. • The US public has never approved of the job the US Congress is doing. • Most of them have never seen a long-playing record, or even a tape drive. If they have ever seen a typewriter, it was in a museum, possibly alongside a dial telephone. • They have never lived in a world without personal computers, the Internet, CD-ROMs or laser printers. There are, of course, many things they have experienced that we also experienced at the same age. Among these are automobiles, jet airplanes, color television sets, and the Chicago Cubs not having won the World Series. Another commonality has been the enduring hostility between the English and the French. But they couldn't imagine life without PopTarts, juice boxes, and movies you can have on your home TV, and they have no idea how we could have survived in a world that required carbon paper. All of which got me wondering: what would the scientific worldview be like for someone, let's say, just starting graduate school today (and therefore about 22 years of age)? Born in 1988, how would their scientific lives differ from the lives of the generations preceding them (including mine, which is the only one I really care about)? It makes for some interesting speculation: • For today's budding biologists, DNA fingerprinting would have always existed. Actual fingerprinting would have been a recent invention, used primarily to secure laptop computers. • Protein crystal structure determination would for them never be anything but a routine tool. • Molecular biology would never have been a discipline in its own right. Instead, it would always have been a set of techniques, introduced to students in better high schools. • They cannot imagine a world without kits to make experiments virtually automatic. • Since the first free-living organism had its genome sequenced when they were 7 years old, they have grown up in the age of genomics. They have had access to the complete sequence of the human genome since they were in middle school. • They have never attended a lecture given with slides from a carousel projector, and they may not have ever seen one given from overhead transparencies either. PowerPoint has been in use for virtually their entire lives. • In their lifetime, no one has ever pipetted anything by mouth. • DNA sequencing, peptide synthesis, chemical analysis, and gene synthesis have always been farmed out to specialty companies rather than done in one's own lab. • They have almost certainly never seen anyone blow glass. In fact, many of them may not know that test tubes were ever made of anything but plastic. • They have always had the option of going into the biotechnology industry. • The term 'enzyme' has always referred to both protein and RNA. • Evolution has always been under attack, and science and religion have largely been seen as incompatible. • There have always been 'big science' projects in biology. • Chemistry has always been a declining field in terms of student interest, and physics has always been the province of a small number of practitioners. • Believe it or not, they have never known a world without cDNA microarrays. • For them, 'Xerox' is a verb, Polaroid makes LCD TVs, and every piece of equipment is computer-controlled. • They have never requested a reprint. They probably don't know what one is. • They believe that no science was done before 2000. Any science not indexed on PubMed was not done either, even if it was done yesterday. • They cannot imagine that there once was only a single Cell journal, and just one Nature as well. I'm sure you could think of lots more. I know I could, but we had 10 feet of snow last night, and that 50-mile walk to school is going to take me a while.

Educational virtual environments: A ten-year review of empirical research (1999-2009)

Abstract: This study is a ten-year critical review of empirical research on the educational applications of Virtual Reality (VR). Results show that although the majority of the 53 reviewed articles refer to science and mathematics, researchers from social sciences also seem to appreciate the educational value of VR and incorporate their learning goals in Educational Virtual Environments (EVEs). Although VR supports multisensory interaction channels, visual representations predominate. Few are the studies that incorporate intuitive interactivity, indicating a research trend in this direction. Few are the settings that use immersive EVEs reporting positive results on users' attitudes and learning outcomes, indicating that there is a need for further research on the capabilities of such systems. Features of VR that contribute to learning such as first order experiences, natural semantics, size, transduction, reification, autonomy and presence are exploited according to the educational context and content. Presence seems to play an important role in learning and it is a subject needing further and intensive studies. Constructivism seems to be the theoretical model the majority of the EVEs are based on. The studies present real world, authentic tasks that enable context and content dependent knowledge construction. They also provide multiple representations of reality by representing the natural complexity of the world. Findings show that collaboration and social negotiation are not only limited to the participants of an EVE, but exist between participants and avatars, offering a new dimension to computer assisted learning. Little can yet be concluded regarding the retention of the knowledge acquired in EVEs. Longitudinal studies are necessary, and we believe that the main outcome of this study is the future research perspectives it brings to light.