University of Piraeus

About: University of Piraeus is a education organization based out in Piraeus, Attiki, Greece. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Context (language use) & Computer science. The organization has 1731 authors who have published 6209 publications receiving 106699 citations.

A State-of-The-Art Review of Applied Forms and Areas, Tools and Technologies for e-Participation

Abstract: The concept of e-Participation is important for both citizens and decision makers. From the citizen's perspective, e-Participation provides the opportunity to achieve and satisfy the need to be heard by politicians and participate in the decision-making and policy formulation processes through the use of ICT. On the other side, politicians are also able to promote and encourage public participation through communication channels with citizens and act in line with public opinion. During the past years, the e-Participation landscape has been growing and developed. Currently, there are many applied forms and areas of e-Participation. At the same time, there are a growing variety of tools and technologies that are available to enhance e-Participation. In this paper, the authors present a complete overview of the e-Participation landscape, through the state-of-the-art review of these tools, technologies and areas of e-Participation. This overview is of value to researchers and practitioners who want to have a knowledge base for further research and practical implementation in the wider field of e-Participation.

New Trends in Aggregation-Disaggregation Approaches

Abstract: The aggregation-disaggregation approaches as an important field of multicriteria decision-aid systems aim to infer global preference models from preference structures, as directly expressed by one or more decision-makers. The main objective of this chapter is to present new research developments of aggregationdisaggregation models and discuss related research topics. These recent developments cover a wide variety of topics, like post-optimality analysis, robustness analysis, group and collective decision-making. They focus mainly on the UTA family of models and highlight their most important advantages: they are flexible in the modeling process of a decision problem, they may provide analytical results that are able to analyze the behavior of the decision-maker, and they can offer alternative ways to reduce the preferential inconsistencies between the decision-maker and the results of the disaggregation model. Finally, future research topics in the context of preference disaggregation approaches are outlined in this chapter.

Increased sensitization in urban vs. rural environment – Rural protection or an urban living effect?

Abstract: In a population-based longitudinal cohort study, we tested the hypothesis that children growing up in a high-traffic polluted urban area (UA) in the Athens' basin have higher prevalence of allergies and sensitization when compared with those growing up in a Greek provincial rural area (RA). We recruited 478 and 342 children aged 8-10 living in the UA and the RA, respectively. Respiratory health was assessed by a parent-completed questionnaire in three phases: 1995-96 (phase 1), 1999-2000 (phase 2), 2003-04 (phase 3) and skin-prick testing to common indoor and outdoor aeroallergens was performed at phases 1 and 2. Reported asthma and eczema did not differ between the two areas, whereas reported hay fever was persistently more prevalent in the UA than in the RA (16.5%, 17.0%, 18.2% vs. 7.0%, 8.3%, 9.6%, respectively). Sensitization was more prevalent in the UA at both phases (19.0% vs. 12.1% in phase 1, 20.0% vs. 14.1% in phase 2). Residential area contributed independently to sensitization to >or=1 aeroallergens (OR: 0.29; 95% CI: 0.13-0.66; p = 0.003) and to polysensitization (OR: 0.28; 95% CI: 0.10-0.82; p = 0.020) in phase 1. These associations were independent of farming practices. No significant contributions were found in phase 2. Our results suggest that long-term exposure to urban environment is associated with a higher prevalence of hay fever but not of asthma or eczema. The negative association between rural living and the risk of atopy during childhood, which is independent of farming practices, implies that it is mainly driven by an urban living effect.

Guest editorial : technology supported cognition and exploratory learning

Abstract: 1 ISSN 1436-4522 (online) and 1176-3647 (print). © International Forum of Educational Technology & Society (IFETS). The authors and the forum jointly retain the copyright of the articles. Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than IFETS must be honoured. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to post on servers, or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from the editors at kinshuk@ieee.org. Guest Editorial Technology Supported Cognition and Exploratory Learning