FORTH Institute of Mediterranean Studies

Population ageing is increasing dementia care demand. We present an audio-driven monitoring pipeline that operates either on mobile phones, microcontroller nodes, and smart television sets. The system combines audio signal processing with AI tools for structured interpretation. Preprocessing includes voice activity detection, speaker diarization, automatic speech recognition for dialogues, and speech-emotion recognition. An audio classifier detects home-care–relevant events (cough, cane taps, thuds, alarms, speech). A large language model integrates transcripts, acoustic features, and a consented household knowledge base to produce a daily caregiver report covering orientation/disorientation (person, place, time), delusion themes, agitation events, health proxies, and safety flags (e.g., exit seeking, possible fall). The pipeline targets continuous monitoring in homes and facilities and it is an adjunct to caregiving, not a diagnostic device. Evaluation focuses on human-in-the-loop review, inter-rater agreement, and prospective monitoring studies. Intended users are low-income households in remote settings where in-person caregiving cannot be secured, enabling remote monitoring support for older adults with dementia.

‘The Generation of the Thirties’ is a term that has been widely applied to Greek artists active in the interwar years and their artistic production. This article argues that the term is misleading due to its conceptual ambiguity. By focusing on Greek artists in Paris during the 1920s, it contends that the concept of the network, describing a dynamic cluster of historical actors sharing common ideologies, aesthetic ideas and interests, elucidates the formation and evolution of artists’ styles, aesthetic ideas, professional interests and cultural identities in a more meaningful way.

The integration of Finite Element Method (FEM) simulations with laser-based techniques has significantly advanced acoustic research by enhancing wave measurement, analysis, and prediction in complex solid media. This review examines the role of the FEM in laser-based acoustics for wave propagation, defect detection, biomedical diagnostics, and engineering applications. FEM models simulate ultrasonic wave generation and propagation in single-layer and multilayered structures, while laser-based experimental techniques provide high-resolution validation, improving modeling accuracy. The synergy between laser-generated ultrasonic waves and FEM simulations enhances defect detection and material integrity assessment, making them invaluable for non-destructive evaluation. In biomedical applications, the FEM aids in tissue characterization and disease detection, while in engineering, its integration with laser-based methods contributes to noise reduction and vibration control. Furthermore, this review provides a comprehensive synthesis of FEM simulations and experimental validation while also highlighting the emerging role of artificial intelligence and machine learning in optimizing FEM models and improving computational efficiency, which has not been addressed in previous studies. Key advancements, challenges, and future research directions in laser-based acoustic applications are discussed.

Acoustic metamaterials and phononic crystals are progressively consolidating as an important technology that is expected to significantly impact the science and industry of acoustics in the coming years. In this work, the impact of unit cell multiplicity on the spectral features of the acoustic response of phononic crystals is systematically studied using the recently demonstrated laser-plasma sound source characterization method. Specifically, by exploiting the advantages of this method, the impact of the number of repeated unit cells on the depth of the phononic band gaps and the passband spectral features across the entire audible range is demonstrated. These experimental findings are supported by specially developed computational simulations accounting for the precise structural characteristics of the studied phononic crystals and are analysed to provide a phenomenological understanding of the underlying physical mechanism. It is shown that by increasing the unit cell multiplicity, the bandgaps deepen and the number of resonant peaks in the crystal transmission zones increases. The resonant mode shapes are computationally investigated and interpreted in terms of spherical harmonics. This study highlights the tunability and design flexibility of acoustic components using phononic crystals, opening new paths towards applications in the fields of sound control and noise insulation.

Reconstruct the urban complex and the extension of the archaeological site in Petres. Provide valuable insights into ancient land use and settlement patterns

Effort, commonly understood as the power of an action toward an intended goal, is acknowledged as an important aspect of music expressivity. Previous studies in Hindustani Dhrupad vocal improvisation, particularly those focusing on manual interactions with imaginary objects, have revealed the intricate connection between effort and various movement and melodic variables. The study employed manual annotations by participants who visually inspected and assessed the amount of effort that such interactions were perceived to require. However, since effort is inherently perceptual and subjective and the way that an observer makes assessments on effort levels remains a non-transparent process, the paper seeks to examine the applicability of the Laban Movement Analysis (LMA) system in this task. For this, it relies on a multi-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) to infer manually annotated (numerical) effort levels from Laban’s (categorical) Effort Factors, namely Weight, Flow, Time, and Space, for two Dhrupad performances. The results suggest that apart from the Space factor, which was excluded for reasons delineated, a good part of effort’s variance can be explained through the remaining three statistically significant Effort Factors, leading to the rejection of the null hypothesis that they are unrelated. By ascertaining this relationship, effort-related melodic aspects in Dhrupad improvisation can be predicted using the three Laban Effort Factors.

New perspectives in correlating physical and perceptual characteristics of musical instruments have emerged through recent advancements in machine learning and high-performance computing. Driving such correlating processes, for instance through training deep learning models, requires the assembly of large audio datasets and the development of tools for Exploratory Data Analysis (EDA). This article presents AudioInsight, a web application for the audio-visual exploration of sound datasets for musical acoustics. This application is a by-product of our research on drumhead acoustics, which aims at the computational inference of damping strategies resulting in a desired sound texture. Developed in Python and Dash-Plotly, AudioInsight features an interactive and responsive user interface providing tools for dataset exploration, statistical analysis and visualization of parameter distributions and relevant correlations. Moreover, AudioInsight permits generating dataset clusters and exploring sounds by interactively navigating within their 2D or 3D graphic representations. Future enhancements of this application, allowing musicians and researchers to contribute to musical instrument datasets through crowdsourcing, may serve as an example application within the Internet of Sounds (IoS) ecosystem.

The purpose of the article is to explore the role of the Greeks of the Azov region in shaping the national identity of Ukraine, as well as to analyze the impact of their ethnocultural heritage on the development of modern Ukrainian society. The methodology of the research is based on a combination of historical-ethnographic and cultural-anthropological approaches, as well as the use of interdisciplinary methods of analysis, including comparative analysis, data systematization, and synthesis. The scientific novelty of the work lies in the fact that, for the first time, a comprehensive analysis of the transformation of the national identity of the Greeks of the Azov region has been carried out, from their resettlement from Crimea to the modern period, particularly in the context of socio-political changes in Ukraine and the influence of external factors, such as the war in Donbas. Conclusions. The article concludes that the Greeks of the Azov region have played a significant role in forming the multinational identity of Ukraine. Their cultural heritage, preservation of language, and traditions in the face of historical challenges serve as an example of the resilience and adaptability of an ethnic minority within the context of modern Ukrainian society. Further research in this direction may contribute to a deeper understanding of the processes of ethnic and national identification in Ukraine.