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The aim of this research is to study the behavior of different forest species in accordance with their ability to retain heavy metals on their leaves in order to select the most suitable species for urban and peri-urban use, which will contribute to the reduction of the continuously growing atmospheric pollution in the cities. Five species were studied: Cupressus arizonica, Albizia julibrissin, Platanus orientalis, Celtis australis and Ligustrum japonicum. 360 leaf samples were collected and two treatments (non-washed and washed sheets) were applied on them. The determinative estimation of the concentration of metals in the clear filtrate was carried out with the use of ICP-OES inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry. In order to correlate the concentration of heavy metals in leaves with the silvicultural characteristics of species, the following characteristics were measured in 20 individuals per species: diameter at breast height, total height of tree, crown beginning height and crown’s diameters. Statistically significant differences between the studied species were found for all metals. In addition, not a single species was found to retain the highest concentration of all. Metal concentration on leaves’ surface in declining order was: (Mn) > (Cu) > (Zn) > (Pb) > (Cr) > (Ni) > (Cd). The factor of height is significant both in the upper and lower layer of the crown. Broadleaves’ species as Albizia julibrissin with compound leaves capture significant heavy metals as conifer species. 

The aim of the study is to investigate the spatial and seasonal variation of precipitation in Greece using multi-temporal data analysis techniques. Mean monthly precipitation grids of 1 km² resolution of the period 1950-2000 were used in the analysis. Cross correlation quantified spatio-temporal patterns which are summarized as follows a) the absolute correlations of precipitation versus elevation and longitude are minimized during the winter period, b) the latitude dependency of precipitation presents a seasonal shift where winter precipitation tends to be higher in northern Greece, while summer precipitation tends to be higher in southern Greece. Principal components analysis indicated that the first two components account for the 92.8% of variance in the spatio-temporal variability of precipitation in Greece. Cluster analysis segmented the terrain to 27 regions with distinct seasonal variability of precipitation. The majority of irrigated agricultural land (plains of Macedonia, Thessaly and Thrace) belong to clusters which present the lowest values of annual precipitation (<600 mm year^-1). The derivation of precipitation signatures for each region of Greece using the proposed terrain segmentation approach can support environmental decision and agricultural planning at a regional (country) scale in relation to water resources management. 

human health and the environment. The study aimed to explore the effects of exposure to pesticides on the liver functions and acetycholinesterase levels in serum (AChES) and red blood cells (AChER) of 100 male participating in agricultural work ranging in age between 20 and 60 year with mean age 37.11±9.3. One hundred males matched for age and socio economic status were recruited as a control group to compare levels of alanine aminotransferase (ALT), aspartate aminotransferase (AST), bilriubin, alkaline phosphatase (ALP), total protein, AChES and AChER. The results indicate that AST, ALT and ALP were significantly (P<0.05) increased in pesticide-exposed workers compared with control. There was also a highly significantly (P<0.01) decrease in AChER among male agriculture workers compared with controls. At 10 - 50 times of pesticides applications there was a significantly (P<0.05) decrease in AChER and increase in AST, ALT and ALP activity among exposed group. However, there was a negative correlation between AST, ALT, direct bilirubin, and AChES and age among control group and a positive correlation between ALT and AST and age among exposed group. According to the number of pesticide application, there was a positive correlation between AST, ALP, total and direct bilirubin and number of pesticide application. Agricultural villages in Egypt require more attention to decrease the percentage of literacy among the farmers and raise their health awareness. 

The structure of the wind turbines nowadays is a critical element due to their importance from the reliability, availability, safety, and cost points of view. This is more relevant when the offshore wind turbine is considered. This paper introduces a novel design of a Fault Detection and Diagnosis (FDD) model based on ultrasound technique. The FDD model will be able to detect fault/failures via the pulse-echo technique. The pulse-echo is got via piezoelectric transducers that are also employed as sensors. The signal processing is based on two steps. Firstly, a wavelet transform is applied to the measured signals with filtering purposes, in order to enhance the signal to noise ratio. Secondly, a time series modeling approach, as an autoregressive with exogenous input model, is employed for pattern recognition by minimizing the Akaike information criterion. An experimental platform is proposed to test the procedure, where pulse-echo experiments were employed before and after a fault occurred. The results from this paper lead to the identification of an early indication of structural problems induced by internal (material, shape, age, etc.) and external (temperature, humidity, pressure, etc.) factors. The model can anticipate catastrophic faults, reducing the preventive/corrective tasks and costs, etc, and increasing the availability of the wind turbine, and therefore the energy production.