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Cultural and Creative Industries (CCIs) are widely acknowledged in academic and policy discourse as fundamental resources for local development. Nevertheless, a deeper understanding of the analysis of CCI function patterns and full potential exploitation in peripheral areas is needed in the literature on regional and local economic development. Peripheral destinations are often characterized by specific obstacles such as geographical remoteness from dominant economic centers, poor infrastructure and amenities, limited capacity for decision-making, etc. However, they can also have characteristics that can support the sustainability and development of a place, such as rich cultural heritage, traditional cultural industries, uniqueness and authenticity, and cultural identity and social cohesion. This paper provides an overview of the main characteristics of the CCIs in peripheral areas and explores synergy patterns, a significant procedure for sustainability, exchange of knowledge and practices, development of actions, promotion of innovation and local development. More specifically, the study incorporates formal networking through entrepreneurial practices and informal networking through social capital into the network theory of the cultural sector in peripheral areas of Greece. In order to identify the key traits and factors that contribute to synergies in the cultural sector, a two-stage research design has been employed. A qualitative approach based on structured interviews and relative importance index analysis to provide an assessment framework has been used. Results indicate that CCI synergy in peripheral areas depends primarily on social capital, which is extremely important in local policies rather than just entrepreneurial practices.

Theoretical subjects, such as history, usually do not attract the interest of students and as a result educational games and serious games that use augmented reality (AR) are increasingly used as a means of supporting education. It is believed that these games can make the lesson more engaging and contribute to improving student performance. However, relevant research is limited. The present research presents the AR-enhanced serious game “Exploring Ancient Greece” that aims at supporting 10- to 14-year-old students in learning the history of Ancient Greece. It consists of three levels that include: a presentation of archaeological sites with AR that gives students the chance to explore places of historical interest; a trivia game that includes an AR presentation of a monument or piece of art somewhere in the physical surroundings of the students; and an escape room where the player is trapped in an archaeological site and tries to solve riddles to find the exit. To evaluate the game, an empirical study was conducted involving students between the ages of 10 and 14 who answered knowledge questions before and after playing the game, completed a questionnaire including questions based on the System Usability Scale (SUS), as well as questions for evaluating their experience, and answered oral questions. Based on the results of this study, students improved their knowledge of history, evaluated the game positively and stated that they prefer the use of serious games and AR in education.

Located at the eastern corner of Mediterranean Europe, Greece occupies a critical position for mammal dispersals to/from Europe, Asia, and Africa and constitutes a potential passageway towards Western Europe. During recent decades, numerous fieldwork campaigns in several Pliocene–Pleistocene sites have greatly enriched the fossil record and provided valuable taxonomic and biostratigraphic data. However, a fully developed reference biochronological unit scheme for the Greek record that could contribute to correlations at a continental scale is still pending. In this article, we provide the updated Late Pliocene to Middle Pleistocene large mammal succession, and we introduce the Faunal Units (FUs) of Greece. We define eight FUs, the Milia, Dafnero, Gerakarou, Tsiotra Vryssi, Krimni, Apollonia, Marathousa, and Apidima FUs (from the oldest to the youngest), which are determined by a set of first and last local occurrences. The results form the basis for discussion of already set turnovers, dispersals, and extinction/immigration events and showcase the importance of the local record for the investigation of the European terrestrial ecosystems. By developing the first detailed biochronological scheme for the Pliocene–Pleistocene of Southeastern Europe, this study comprises the basis for an expanded Balkan faunal unit scale and a reference framework for future investigations.

The combined application of Cathodoluminescence (CL) with Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) on paintings and painted surfaces has the potential to identify both organic and inorganic pigments on a micrometre or even nanometre scale. Additionally, the combination with Energy-Dispersive Spectrometry (EDS) allows for a more holistic, elemental, and mineralogical characterization of pigments. In addressing the need for the creation of a robust, open access database of characteristic CL spectra of pigments, a large project has been undertaken, focusing primarily on common organic and inorganic pigments. The present paper focuses on the CL characterization of 10 significant blue pigments in pure powder form: cerulean blue, Egyptian blue, Han blue, indigo, lapis lazuli, Maya blue, phthalo blue, vivianite, ultramarine blue, and zirconium blue. The CL spectra present characteristic bands for most of the pigments, allowing their secure identification, especially when combining the results with the EDS analyses. The effect of binding media and of the mixture of different pigments was also studied, via the analysis of mixtures of pigments with oil painted over canvas. Overall, both the binding medium and the mixture of pigments do not appear to create significant differences in the occurring spectra, thus allowing the identification of individual pigments. EDS and RAMAN spectra are included in order to facilitate comparison with other databases.

Despite the consensus that early identification leads to better outcomes for individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), recent research reveals that the average age of diagnosis in the Greek population is approximately six years. However, this age of diagnosis is delayed by an additional two years for families from lower-income or minority backgrounds. These disparities result in adverse impacts on intervention outcomes, which are further burdened by the often time-consuming and labor-intensive language assessments for children with ASD. There is a crucial need for tools that increase access to early assessment and diagnosis that will be rigorous and objective. The current study leverages the capabilities of artificial intelligence to develop a reliable and practical model for distinguishing children with ASD from typically-developing peers based on their narrative and vocabulary skills. We applied natural language processing-based extraction techniques to automatically acquire language features (narrative and vocabulary skills) from storytelling in 68 children with ASD and 52 typically-developing children, and then trained machine learning models on the children’s combined narrative and expressive vocabulary data to generate behavioral targets that effectively differentiate ASD from typically-developing children. According to the findings, the model could distinguish ASD from typically-developing children, achieving an accuracy of 96%. Specifically, out of the models used, hist gradient boosting and XGBoost showed slightly superior performance compared to the decision trees and gradient boosting models, particularly regarding accuracy and F1 score. These results bode well for the deployment of machine learning technology for children with ASD, especially those with limited access to early identification services.

Abstract The paper presents the results of the ParlaMint II project, which comprise comparable corpora of parliamentary debates of 29 European countries and autonomous regions, covering at least the period from 2015 to 2022, and containing over 1 billion words. The corpora are uniformly encoded, contain rich metadata about their 24 thousand speakers, and are linguistically annotated up to the level of Universal Dependencies syntax and named entities. The paper focuses on the enhancement made since the ParlaMint I project and presents the compilation of the corpora, including the encoding infrastructure, use of GitHub, the production of individual corpora, the common pipeline for producing their distribution, and use of CLARIN services for dissemination. It then gives a quantitative overview of the produced corpora, followed by the qualitative additions made within the ParlaMint II project, namely metadata localisation, the addition of new metadata, such as the political orientation of political parties, the machine translation of the corpora to English and its tagging with semantic classes, and the production of pilot speech corpora. Finally, outreach activities and further work are discussed.

Mycenaean vitreous artifacts, such as beads and relief plaques, are highly susceptible to degradation, which can significantly alter their visual characteristics and pose challenges to their taxonomy. The visual manifestation of corrosion on vitreous artifacts, especially glass and faience, has often led to their misclassification, which, in turn, has a significant impact on their interpretation by researchers, often resulting in misleading notions. The present paper constitutes part of an overall study, implemented within the framework of the project, Myc-MVP: Mycenaean Vitreous Production, A Novel Interdisciplinary Approach Towards Resolving Critical Taxonomy Issues, which has employed a combination of established, state-of-the-art scientific methods to analyze and identify the specific compositional changes occurring at different spatial dimensions within surface layers, with the overarching aim of contributing to our understanding of the degradation mechanisms of vitreous artifacts and the relevant implications for the archaeological record. Importantly, these findings will yield useful data in devising strategies for the proper classification, management, and preservation of vitreous artifacts in the future. The present study focuses on investigating the relationship between the compositional changes in a subset of 12 (of the overall 126 objects entailed in the project) corroded vitreous artifacts from Mycenaean contexts in the Aegean and the way these are manifested visually, with the application of X-ray fluorescence and LED microscopy. We aim to decipher the nature of corroded objects with the aid of focused analysis. This study delves into degradation processes in glass artifacts, highlighting preservation variations and environmental influences like burial. Coloration, attributed to copper and cobalt oxide, shows some correlation with preservation quality. These chromophore agents potentially induce thermal stresses and corrosion. The complex interplay between chemical composition, environmental conditions, and preservation status underscores the need for comprehensive research. Analyzing the full artifact set using complementary techniques promises deeper insights for secure material classification and cultural heritage preservation.

There has been a recent focus in studies of English morphology on the concept of extravagance as applied to word formation, and on the interplay between extravagance and creativity. This article examines this issue, taking as a test case the phenomenon of double suffixation of phrasal verbs. While double-ER suffixation (fixer-upper, helper-outer) has attracted substantial interest in the literature, less has been said about other suffixes. This article provides data that demonstrate that double suffixation occurs with -ERY, -AGE, -EE and -ABLE suffixes. As such, double suffixation can be seen as a genuine word formation template, rather than a phenomenon restricted to a single suffix. Furthermore, examination of the data enables a reflection on the interactions between the concepts of productivity, creativity and extravagance. We propose to see these concepts not just as three overlapping notions, but rather as points on a creativity scale. To underscore the parallels between them, we propose to see them successively as F-creativity, E-creativity and X-creativity.