Suchergebnisse

Market-like devices that enact quantification and monetization processes (QM) underpin a growing number of valuation practices, but the widespread take-up of QM has given rise to the 'cooptation charge': for all the good intentions and results produced by those who deploy QM, they are complicit in reinforcing problematic neoliberal tendencies. A political discourse-theoretical perspective, combined with a pragmatist scholarship that has made significant advances in our understanding of QM, suggests that the cooptation charge relies on an overly simplified picture of both QM and neoliberalism. However, while we acknowledge this as an important advance, we argue that the normative, political, and ideological significance of QM remains surprisingly underspecified. We still lack a convincing theoretical framework that provides a more rounded multi-dimensional critical perspective within which to navigate the evaluative dilemmas produced by these increasingly widespread techniques, including cooptation worries. Drawing on the logics approach of the Essex school of political discourse theory, we develop a framework that brings together the strategic, normative, and ideological dimensions that otherwise tend to be treated separately in the literature, allowing a fuller assessment of such technologies.

A challenge of the computer vision community is to understand the semantics of an image that will allow for higher quality image generation based on existing high-level features and better analysis of (semi-) labeled datasets. Categorical labels aggregate a huge amount of information into a binary value which conceals valuable high-level concepts from the Machine Learning models. Towards addressing this challenge, this paper introduces a method, called Occlusion-based Latent Representations (OLR), for converting image labels to meaningful representations that capture a significant amount of data semantics. Besides being informationrich, these representations compose a disentangled low-dimensional latent space where each image label is encoded into a separate vector. We evaluate the quality of these representations in a series of experiments whose results suggest that the proposed model can capture data concepts and discover data interrelations. ; This work has been partly supported by the project that has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 739578 (RISE – Call: H2020-WIDESPREAD-01-2016-2017-TeamingPhase2) and the Republic of Cyprus through the Deputy Ministry of Research, Innovation and Digital Policy.

Abstract "Flexible" employment, such as part-time, temporary, short-term or self- employment increased during last decades in the context of deregulation of labour market in Greece and in other member states of the European Union. However, despite these trends, limited statistical data and research do not allow for safe conclusions on occupational risk in these forms of employment. Estimating occupational risk in flexible employment is a product of two uncertainties: a) poor accident data (under-reporting) and b) poor labour data (informal employment). Still, it is a scientific challenge to identify these forms of employment and occupational accidents and occupational diseases in sectors where these flexible forms are increasing; these sectors also happen to be among the most dangerous for occupational health and safety (OHS). In this paper it is attempted to analyses the phenomenon of flexible employment, (focusing on the case of Greece) so as to indicate its implications for OHS, especially in the context of the deregulated labour environment. The most important features of flexible employment in Greece are presented, along with estimates for its magnitude. On the other hand, the implications of these forms of employment on occupational risk are explored, aiming to build a holistic picture of this phenomenon.

A new era of Information Warfare has arrived. Various actors, including state-sponsored ones, are weaponizing information on Online Social Networks to run false information campaigns with targeted manipulation of public opinion on specific topics. These false information campaigns can have dire consequences to the public: mutating their opinions and actions, especially with respect to critical world events like major elections. Evidently, the problem of false information on the Web is a crucial one, and needs increased public awareness, as well as immediate attention from law enforcement agencies, public institutions, and in particular, the research community. In this paper, we make a step in this direction by providing a taxonomy of the Web's false information ecosystem, comprising various types of false information, actors, and their motives. We report a comprehensive overview of existing research on the false information ecosystem by identifying several lines of work: 1) how the public perceives false information; 2) understanding the propagation of false information; 3) detecting and containing false information on the Web; and 4) false information on the political stage. Finally, for each of these lines of work, we report several future research directions that can help us better understand and mitigate the emerging problem of false information dissemination on the Web.

Located in the southernmost of the Aegean Sea, Crete is the largest of the Greek islands covering an area of 8,261 km2. The first records on the cave fauna of Crete were published in 1869 and since then a total of 175 publications have been gradually increased our knowledge on the cave-dwelling species of the island. Crete is currently the best-studied Region of Greece regarding biospeleology. Although it covers only 6.3% of the national area, the faunistically investigated caves represent 35% of the investigated caves of Greece while the recorded cave fauna includes 30% of the cavernicolous species of Greece. In total, 250 species belonging to 166 genera, 83 families, 36 orders, 13 classes, and 5 phyla, have been recorded from 158 caves. The most diverse groups are Araneae (64 species), Isopoda (29 species), Gastropoda, Copepoda, and Coleoptera (21 species each), Pseudoscorpiones (17 species) and Chiroptera (15 species). Among the invertebrate species, 102 are endemic to Greece of which 92 are Cretan endemics. The obligate cavernicolous fauna includes 42 species, most of them in Isopoda (13), Araneae (11) and Pseudoscorpiones (11). Only 3 species are distributed outside Greece, the isopods Libanonethes probosciferus Vandel, 1955 and Trichonethes kosswigi Strouhal, 1953. The cave habitats and the cave fauna of Greece are quite neglected in Greece's environmental legislation and policy. Furthermore, there is an implementation gap in the environmental law. In Crete, 62 out of the previously mentioned 158 caves happened to be situated within protected areas (wildlife refuges and/or Natura 2000 sites). With the exception of the bat species, no other cave associated species is protected by specific law. Further efforts are also needed to assess the conservation status of most of the species. Out of 250 species only 35 have been assessed for IUCN Red List and 51 for Greece's Red Data Book. Most of them are bats, gastropods and isopods.

Located in the southernmost of the Aegean Sea, Crete is the largest of the Greek islands covering an area of 8,261 km2. The first records on the cave fauna of Crete were published in 1869 and since then a total of 175 publications have been gradually increased our knowledge on the cave-dwelling species of the island. Crete is currently the best-studied Region of Greece regarding biospeleology. Although it covers only 6.3% of the national area, the faunistically investigated caves represent 35% of the investigated caves of Greece while the recorded cave fauna includes 30% of the cavernicolous species of Greece. In total, 250 species belonging to 166 genera, 83 families, 36 orders, 13 classes, and 5 phyla, have been recorded from 158 caves. The most diverse groups are Araneae (64 species), Isopoda (29 species), Gastropoda, Copepoda, and Coleoptera (21 species each), Pseudoscorpiones (17 species) and Chiroptera (15 species). Among the invertebrate species, 102 are endemic to Greece of which 92 are Cretan endemics. The obligate cavernicolous fauna includes 42 species, most of them in Isopoda (13), Araneae (11) and Pseudoscorpiones (11). Only 3 species are distributed outside Greece, the isopods Libanonethes probosciferus Vandel, 1955 and Trichonethes kosswigi Strouhal, 1953. The cave habitats and the cave fauna of Greece are quite neglected in Greece's environmental legislation and policy. Furthermore, there is an implementation gap in the environmental law. In Crete, 62 out of the previously mentioned 158 caves happened to be situated within protected areas (wildlife refuges and/or Natura 2000 sites). With the exception of the bat species, no other cave associated species is protected by specific law. Further efforts are also needed to assess the conservation status of most of the species. Out of 250 species only 35 have been assessed for IUCN Red List and 51 for Greece's Red Data Book. Most of them are bats, gastropods and isopods.