Hellenic Military Academy

This work presents examples of small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) of unconventional wing designs, in order to meet specific operational requirements, especially for military operations. Key design requirements concern packaging considerations in terms of volume, configuration, mass and in-flight deployment mechanisms. The description includes a reference to the available deployable wing options and design types, encompassing flexible versus rigid structures or transformative mechanisms facilitating either deployment or expansion of wing apertures. These configurations can be integrated into various categories of UAVs, including foldable, inflatable, nested, or extensible designs, critically assessed to facilitate engineers in choosing the right design for the intended mission.

This work presents SimpleBox4Planet , a user-friendly web application implementing SimpleBox to assess the environmental fate of PFAS and other chemicals, supporting research into safer alternatives with lower environmental impact.

Drug repurposing is a widely adopted strategy aimed at identifying new therapeutic uses for drugs, offering a faster and more cost-effective alternative to traditional drug development. While the approach has gained significant traction, most existing computational tools are either focused on narrow analytical tasks, require extensive coding expertise or are disease-specific. To address these limitations, we present Repurposing Drug Explorer (ReDEx) - a user-friendly, zero-code platform that streamlines drug repurposing analysis through multiple interactive modules. ReDEx enables the exploration of drug-disease relationships using chemical structure-similarity-based, network-based, and functional methods within an integrated interface. Applied to Bipolar Disorder (BD), after excluding 3 of the 23 FDA approved/investigational drugs for BD, ReDEx successfully recovered all 3 in the top 15 out of 28,189 candidates. ReDEx is offered through a web interface on the Enalos Cloud Platform, enabling users to investigate individual drugs, diseases, or drug-disease pairs without programming skills.

Phthalates are widely used plasticizers recognized as endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) with well-documented adverse effects on reproductive health. These compounds act either directly or through their metabolites and can influence various biochemical pathways. Key phthalates that have been associated with potential toxic outcomes include di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP), dibutyl phthalate (DBP), butyl benzyl phthalate (BBP), diisononyl phthalate (DiNP), and diisodecyl phthalate (DiDP). The presence of these compounds in everyday consumer products has been associated with various adverse effects on human reproductive health, including hormonal disruption, issues in gonadal function, and other hormone related problems. This systematic review provides an overview and critical synthesis of the most recent research regarding phthalate reproductive toxicity. The scope is to summarize and aggregate correlations between phthalate exposure and reproductive health outcomes and highlight factors, such as age, sex, and extent of exposure, that have the most significant impacts on clinical outcomes. The reported studies focus on the gender-specific outcomes of various phthalates, while the epidemiological data reveal the importance of exposure duration and age. The reported results highlight the need for strict regulations regarding phthalate usage and the importance of developing safer alternatives.

Peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma (PPARγ) antagonists play a critical role in regulating glucose and lipid metabolism, making them promising candidates for antidiabetic therapies. To support the ongoing search of such compounds, this study introduces two advanced in silico models for predicting the binding affinity and biological activity of small molecules targeting PPARγ. A neural network was developed to classify compounds as strong or weak binders based on molecular docking scores. Additionally, a consensus model combining Random Forest, Support Vector Machine, and k-Nearest Neighbours algorithms was implemented to predict the antagonistic activity of small molecules. Both models were rigorously validated according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) guidelines, to ensure generalisability and sufficient efficiency in detecting the minority class (active antagonists). Mechanistic insights into how key molecular descriptors influence PPARγ activity were discussed in a posteriori interpretation. A case study involving 34 prioritised per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) were screened with the developed workflows to demonstrate their practical application. The models, integrated into user-friendly web applications via the Enalos Cloud Platform, enable accessible and efficient virtual screening, supporting the discovery of PPARγ modulators.

Environmentally friendly materials are emerging materials that find applications in an increasing number of cases when being three-dimensional printed (3D-P), as they can provide many possibilities and offer unique properties to fulfill industrial needs and requirements. As part of that effort, recycled (from sheet trimmings waste) poly-(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) and (nature-sourced) biochar were selected to be combined and examined herein. Composites with Biochar concentration in the 0.0-10.0 wt % (step 2.0 wt %) range were assessed. Compounds were extruded into filaments, which fabricated coupons (material extrusion 3D-P) for the tests that followed. The samples were experimentally evaluated for their characteristics related to mechanical, chemical, rheological, and thermal behavior, as well as for their structure and morphology. Mechanical testing included tensile, bending, and Charpy Notched coupons' investigation. The microhardness was also measured. In addition, quality characteristics were assessed through porosity and dimensional deviation data analysis. The composite distinguished in relation to pure PMMA was PMMA/Biochar 6.0 wt % (>20% increase in the strength on the tensile and flexural experiment), as most of the investigated properties revealed their greatest values in that Biochar concentration. Furthermore, the eco-friendly biochar addition positively affected most of the recycled PMMA characterization metrics assessed, showing potential for the environmentally friendly composites developed herein for the 3D-P process.

In this paper, we introduce the Levy Flight-enhanced Whale Optimization Algorithm with Tabu Search elements (LWOATS), an innovative hybrid optimization approach that enhances the standard Whale Optimization Algorithm (WOA) with advanced local search techniques and elite solution management to improve performance on global optimization problems. Techniques from the Tabu Search algorithm are adopted to balance the exploration and exploitation phases, while an elite reintroduction strategy is implemented to retain and refine the best solutions. The efficient optimization of LWOATS is further aided by the utilization of Levy flights and local search based on the Nelder–Mead simplex method. An Orthogonal Experimental Design (OED) analysis was employed to fine-tune the algorithm’s parameters. LWOATS was tested against three different algorithm sets: fundamental algorithms, advanced Differential Evolution (DE) variants, and improved WOA variants. Wilcoxon tests demonstrate the promising performance of LWOATS, showing improvements in convergence speed, accuracy, and robustness compared to traditional WOA and other metaheuristic algorithms. After extensive testing against a challenging set of benchmark functions and engineering optimization problems, we conclude that our proposed method is well suited for tackling high-dimensional optimization tasks and constrained optimization problems, providing substantial computational efficiency gains and improved overall solution quality.