[Publication] Article on smart irrigation in EPI GIS

"ΕΠΙ ΓΗΣ" (roughly translated as "On Earth") is an awarded quarterly publication of Piraeus Bank (one of the largest - if not the largest - banks in Greece and the one most involved in the agricultural sector), which presents selected articles related to the agricultural production and the agrifood sector in general, focusing on innovation and funding options.

Its current issue is dedicated to topics in water management in agriculture, includes an article that we prepared about the optimization of irrigation for vineyards through the exploitation of data and scientific knowledge - something that NEUROPUBLIC already applies in the context of its smart farming project in selected areas of Greece, in collaboration with GAIA EPICHEREIN and distinct Greek researchers.

ΕΠΙ ΓΗΣ is available in its printed form through the branches of Piraeus Bank and in its digital form at http://www.piraeusbank.gr/en/Agrotes/agrotika-nea-enimerosi/epi-gis#1 (available in Greek only).

Special issue article: A use case of smart farming application in Greek vineyards

Ypaithros Chora, a Greek agricultural newspaper, celebrates its 100th issue and in this context prepared an interesting publication about vineyards, grape-growing and wine. After all, grapes (and wine) are among the top agricultural products of Greece. We were invited to author a two-page article about how smart farming is applied and actually benefits the cultivation of grapes.

In the context of NEUROPUBLIC's smart farming project in Greece, we are working with an innovative association of grape growers, called Pegasus/7 Grapes, located at Kiato, Corinth area. There, we apply our smart farming advisory services regarding fertilization, irrigation and plant protection and the first results are really positive and encouraging. So, we decided to report what we have done so far in collaboration with the association and the researchers collaborating in the project, what the results so far are and what are the next steps.

The deadline was short and there was too much stuff to try to squeeze into less than 900 words but in the end we made it; this short article was published in the special edition of the 100th issue of Ypaithros Chora. :-)

The article is now available online at http://www.ypaithros.gr/ekdoseis/efihs-georgia-kalliergeia-ampeli/

Brand-new publication on Metadata - MTSR 2012

It is now official: the paper that I co-wrote with Prof. Roman and and Dr. Maria Toader from the University of Agronomic Science and Veterinary Medicine - Bucureşti, titled: "The Use of Metadata in the Description of e-Learning Content for Organic Agriculture", was accepted in the Fifth International Workshop "Metadata and Semantics for Agriculture, Food and Environment" of the 6th Metadata and Semantics Research Conference (MTSR 2012) and now published in the Springer Proceedings of the MTSR 2012 Conference.

The paper is about a part of the outcomes of the Organic.Balkanet project, and more specifically the training curriculum of the project, and how educational metadata were used for the description of the courses included in this curriculum. The metadata part described in the paper was a long, time consuming and error-prone process, so the results were rather poor; however, we managed to have a first version that was later elaborated and improved by other stakeholders. The paper was also a dissemination activity of the Organic.Lingua project, as the translation and multilinguality issues mentioned in the paper are in the heart of the project. In addition, everything related to Organic.Edunet is now a part of the Organic.Lingua project (including the new collections added to the Organic.Edunet network).

My colleague Nikos Manolis who traveled to Cadiz, Spain and participated in the Conference made the presentation on behalf of the authors. Unfortunately, I could not participate in the Conference due to other obligations at that time but still I was glad to know that my submission was presented. I am really looking forward to receiving feedback on how it went and if there were any questions about that. The paper is also a part of the VOA3R Controlled Experiment for Reviewing Lifecycle Services, so anyone is invited to visit the blog hosting the experiment and review my paper (among others), so that a related (and fruitful) discussion can be initiated.

Applying analytics for a learning portal: the Organic.Edunet case study

I was only recently informed of another publication, to which I partially participated. It is titled "Applying analytics for a learning portal: the Organic.Edunet case study" and it was a paper initially submitted, accepted and presented by my colleague Nikos Palavitsinins at the 1st International Conference on Learning Analytics and Knowledge 2011 (LAK '11) in Banff, Alberta, Canada. Nikos had a really hard time there, due to the severe cold and the last-minute revisions that he had to make to his presentation!

So far, only the presentation made by Nikos at the Conference was available through SlideShare; however, the paper is now available in the Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Learning Analytics and Knowledge by ACM (Association for Computing Machinery). Unfortunately, this publication is not open access (in fact access to this article costs $15), but the publication of all accepted papers in the Proceedings of the Conference was a selection of the organizers (and surely not up to us). Still it was really nice to see another publication, especially in this accredited series of Proceedings by ACM.

My brand-new publication on Biotechnology

Even though I have been working for EU projects on Organic Agriculture (mainly), vocational training and management of collections/digital content during the last years, my academic background is focused on agricultural biotechnology. In fact, I was lucky enough to have a long and fruitful collaboration (since 1998) with Prof. D.L. Bouranis and Dr. S. Chorianopoulou, who guided me from my first steps in my under-graduate years, through my MSc and PhD research, experiments and theses. With their support and help, and after spending countless hours in the Lab, I have managed to have a number of scientific publications in the area of agricultural biotechnology.

Since I have presented my PhD thesis back in 2008, I have not been active in this area. So it came as a surprise to me to be informed by Dr. Bouranis that we have another publication based on the results of my PhD and the related experiments! The publication is called "Comparative spatiotemporal analysis of root aerenchyma formation processes in maize due to sulphate, nitrate or phosphate deprivation" and is available online through the Protoplasma International Journal (by Springer). It seems that the work done back then still has some things to show and that makes me proud! To this direction, we plan to work on some additional publications in the near future, hoping that they will also be well-accepted like this one.

My list of publications exhibits a high degree of diversity, since a number of them are related to my agricultural part, while the rest are related to my current context, being more related to learning/training content/curriculum, digital repositories and metadata. Even though updating my list of publications is not my main concern (in fact, it has never been!), it is always nice to see a new publication especially as a reward for the tasks completed now and in the past.