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Riverine ecosystems offer many valuable services to human societies. Easy-to-use, reliable, inexpensive and efficient assessment and monitoring methods that investigate ecosystem integrity need to be developed for their conservation and protection. Such tools are the bio-indicators, with many recommending the Odonata (dragonflies) as a very appropriate indicator. This study is the first attempt to evaluate the potential of utilizing diversity indices on Odonata species for riverine habitats in Greece. The studied areas were along Sperchios River, Thermopyles spring and Kakavorema stream, located in Sperchios River Basin (Central Greece). The analysis based on the number of different species and three diversity indices, found differences among the three habitats. Sperchios River had the highest biodiversity and Thermopyles spring the lowest. This was also indicated by the water quality parameters and riparian area widths measured. Overall the differences found in these three habitats indicate the potential usefulness of Odonata for evaluating riverine habitats in Greece and the Balkans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The quantity of produced sewage sludge (SS) from wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) is growing daily and the proper disposal of biosludge became a serious environmental issue worldwide. The socio-economic and legislative criteria have to be taken into consideration in order to proper manage and control the storage of these bio-wastes. One of the proposed solutions in European countries for the management of huge amounts of SS is land application in agriculture and for this purpose, the potentially toxic metal composition of SS should be assessed by employing accurate analytical techniques. In this work a strategy of environmental assessment is presented and a comparison is made for SS originated from WWTPs in Northern Greece serving two large municipalities (Kavala and Drama) as regards the occurrence of potentially toxic elements (PTE), the coefficients of variation of their concentrations during various periods of time and the appropriateness for their use as soil amendment. A comparison is made regarding the toxic metal levels from similar reports for various WWTPs in Greece and other countries in the world with the synthetic results obtained by us (expressed in mg kg-1 dry matter in the form: mean±SD, median and range, respectively): Kavala-Cd 1.46±0.60, 1.24, 0.8-2.5; Cr 40.6±27.7, 32, 14-85; Cu 119.7±37.8, 108, 69-198; Ni 17.9±8.7, 16.1, 8.8-34; Pb 61.0±16.1, 58, 37-96; Zn 978.2±91.8, 994, 810-1095 & Drama-Cd 2.28±1.90, 1.7, 1.3-7.3; Cr 108.9±89.2, 42, 24-239; Cu 126.8±39.5, 122, 53-191; Ni 33.9±18.2, 33, 14-64; Pb 48.1±15.1, 43, 33-74; Zn 1057.6±203.9, 1080, 798-1340. Although the sludge PTE concentration results demonstrate a large variability, the Kavala/Drama coefficients of variations (%) (Cd: 41.3/83.3; Cr: 68.1/81.9; Cu: 31.6/31.2; Ni: 48.3/53.6; Pb:26.3/31.4; Zn:9.4/19.3), are lower than those obtained in other wastewater works. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The analyses of 18 biochemical parameters (alanine aminotransferase, albumin, aspartate aminotransferase, calcium, cholesterol, chloride, creatinine, iron, glucose, γ- glutamyl transferase, alkaline phosphatase, phosphorus, potassium, sodium, total protein, triglycerides, uric acid, and urea nitrogen) were performed for 166 healthy individuals and 108 patients with end-stage renal failure (ESRF). The application of cluster analysis proved that there were points of similarity among all 18 biochemical parameters that formed major groups; these groups corresponded to the authors’ assumption of the existence of several overall patterns of biochemical parameters that may be termed “enzyme-specific”; “general health indicator”; “major component excretion”; “blood-specific indicator”; and “protein-specific”. These patterns also appear in the subsets of males and females that were obtained by separation of the general dataset. In addition, the performance of factor analysis similarly proved the validity of this assumption. This projection and modelling method indicated the existence of seven latent factors, which explained 70.05% of the total variance in the system for healthy individuals and more than 72% of the total variance in the system for patients with ESRF. All these results support the probability that a general health indicator could be constructed by taking into account the existing classification groups in the list of biochemical parameters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Laboratory aids are extensively used in the diagnosis of diseases, in preventive medicine, and as management tools. Reference values of clinically healthy people serve as a guide to the clinician in evaluating biochemical parameters. Determination of 21 biochemical parameters of healthy persons using standard methods of analysis. Cluster analysis and principal components analysis were applied on the above 21 biochemical parameters data. The application of a typical classification approach as cluster analysis proved that four major groups of similarity between all 21 clinical parameters are formed, which correspond to the authors assumption of the existence of several summarizing pattern of clinical parameters such as “enzyme,” “major component excretion”, “general health state,” and “blood specific” pattern. These patterns appear also in the subsets obtained by separation of the general dataset into “male”, “female”, “young”, and “adult” healthy groups. The results obtained from principal components analysis have additionally proved the validity of a similar assumption. The intelligent data analysis on the clinical parameter dataset has shown that when a complex system is considered as a multivariate one, the information about the system substantially increases. All these results support an idea that probably a general health indicator could be constructed taking into account the existing classification groups in the list of clinical parameters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]