The LTER-Greece Environmental Observatory Network: Design and Initial Achievements

Five years after its establishment (2016), the LTER-Greece network outlines its vision, aims, objectives and its achievements through a series of case studies. The network consists of eight observatories, focusing on innovative research topics, aiming to be both cooperative and complementary, while currently being in the process of expanding. LTER-Greece acknowledges the complexity of ecosystems and the fact that effective management of natural resources may only be achieved by addressing every sector of a nexus system in order to understand inter-dependencies, thus accounting for solutions that promote resilience. Hence, LTER-Greece focuses on the holistic study of the water-environment-ecosystem-food-energy-society nexus, in order to face environmental and socio-ecological challenges at local and global scales, particularly climate change, biodiversity loss, pollution, natural disasters and unsustainable water and land management. Framed around five research pillars, monitoring and research targets nine research hypotheses related to climate change, environmental management, socio-ecology and economics, biodiversity and environmental process dynamics. As environmental monitoring and related research and conservation in Greece face critical shortcomings, LTER-Greece envisages confronting these gaps and contributing with interdisciplinary solutions to the current and upcoming complex environmental challenges.

Human Capital of the Enterprise in the Context of System Economy

One of the key factors that determine the success of the company and ensure its ongoing development, adaptation to the requirements of the digital economy, is the human capital (HC) of the enterprise. In this regard, the purpose of the study is designated as identifying ways to support the integral and sustainable growth of a company based on the development of its human capital. Since an enterprise is an open socio-economic system, the methodological basis of the work is the systems economic theory, which made it possible to present the company's activities as the interaction of object, environmental, process and project systems. Based on this concept and taking into account the objectives traditionally pursued by the company, four basic functional complexes have been identified that ensure the stability and reproductive capabilities of the enterprise, the challenges that need to be overcome within such capabilities were identified, the requirements for the knowledge, skills and abilities of personnel were established. Comparison of the human resources of the enterprise and the features of the corporate tasks solved with their help made it possible to group the elements of the company's HC in a new way – depending on the impact on the noted basic subsystems that determine the integrity of the company. This systematization demonstrated the interconnection of individual elements of the enterprise's HC and the performance of the corresponding complexes. Thus, the probable personnel reasons for the lag in certain areas of the company's activity and the possibilities of their reorganization by targeted impact on the required elements of the HC were identified. Since the implementation of the proposed approach requires the determination of the status of the corporate HC, and the reliability of such a procedure traditionally raises criticism due to the objective difficulties of measurement, the article proposes a methodology to streamline the process of assessing the state of the parameters under study. The methodology is based on the ranking of HC indicators depending on the accuracy of displaying the parameters of the object. The proposed approach made it possible to determine the tools for monitoring the selected categories of human capital, ways to step them up and remedy the situation.

The Power of Pigs

This introductory chapter outlines the themes of the book. Pigs have long played important roles in the cultures of the Near East, especially in times of ethnoreligious conflict. The mass cull in 2009 of swine owned by the Zabaleen in Cairo is one of the most recent examples. Examining pigs provides a lens into the past, a unique means of studying Near Eastern cultures. Whereas previous scholarship has been content to study the pig in specific cultural contexts, often attempting to explain its history with reference to a single cultural or environmental process, this book covers the history of the pig from before its domestication to the present day. By adopting this long-term, wide-reaching perspective, I advance the argument that pigs, and the taboos placed upon them, can be understood only as evolving cultural elements.

A Two-Stage Mutation Stochastic Model of Carcinogenesis Driven by a Three Level Environmental Process

A two-mutation model of carcinogenesis which evolves under the influence of three level random environment on the production process is formulated and analyzed. A random environment occupies one of the levels 1, 2 and 3 at any time t according to a Markov process. When the environment is in level 1, a normal cell either divides into two normal cells or dies; and an intermediate cell divides into two intermediate cells or dies. When the environment is in level 2, a normal cell either divides into one normal cell and one intermediate cell or dies and an intermediate cell either divides into one intermediate cell and one malignant cell or dies. When the environment is in level 3, a normal cell either divides into two intermediate cells or dies and an intermediate cell either divides into two malignant cells or dies. It is assumed that, once a malignant cell is produced, it generates a malignant tumor with probability 1. We obtain the mean numbers of normal, intermediate and malignant cells at any time t.