The exhibition opens with an impressionistic space in which video projections and sound combine to capture the way in which Dickens worked. He was an insomniac, in the habit of roaming the streets of London through the night, absorbing material for his stories. With a near-photographic memory, Dickens would plot the tales minutely in his head. His ear for the nuances of speech was also acute, and the voices he heard on his nocturnal rambles are accurately reflected in his writing.

Greek presence in this exhibition is very strong, since three people from Greece are working for its organization and promotion. Elpiniki Psalti is the Display and Exhibitions Project Manager at the Museum of London, Nikos Gogolos is the Registrar of the Museum, and Helen Ganiaris is the Conservation Manager of Objects at the Museum of London in the Department of Conservation and Collection Care.

The exhibition closes with another contemporary commission, inspired by the long journeys through the London night that fired Dickens’s imagination. William Raban’s 19-minute documentary film, ‘The Houseless Shadow’, has as its soundtrack a reading of Dickens’s essay ‘Night Walks’, about the people, places and thoughts the writer encountered as he walked from dusk to dawn through a London night. Dickens’s writing emerges as remarkably contemporary, and the troubles of the city, as documented by Raban, distressingly unchanged.

Therefore, scientists can be optimistic that better understanding of the genetic background of strokes can lead to more effective and improved treatments, in addition to methods for early diagnosis and prevention. Yet, time-wise, it is not possible to determine when this will happen.

Researchers from Britain, the United States, Australia and Europe, among them Greek geneticist, Panos Deloukas, published their study in “Nature Genetics”, having performed thousands of case-studies of stroke patients. The scientists were able to identify an association between the large vessel ischemic stroke and a genetic variation of the HDAC9 gene.

The HDAC9 gene produces a protein involved in the formation of muscle tissue and the development of the heart, and the research associates it with susceptibility to ischemic stroke. Therefore people who inherit two copies of the variant gene, one from their mother and one from their father, are exposed to twice the risk of ischemic stroke, compared to those with no copies of the gene variant.

The team of scientists from the University of Oxford used a new genetic analysis technique, allowing them to compare the genomes of 10.000 stroke patients and 40.000 people who never had a stroke. Greek geneticist Dr. Panos Deloukas, from the British “Wellcome Trust Sanger” institute, who specializes in genetics and the genetic study of coronary and artery disease, participated in the studies.

Dr. Panos Deloukas graduated with a a degree in Chemistry from the Aristotelian University of Thessaloniki, Greece in 1986 and moved on to obtain a Masters in Microbiology from University Paris 7. He received his PhD from the Biozentrum University of Basel, Switzerland in 1991 for work on the construction and use of Yeast Artificial Chromosome clone banks of the human genome. He then spent two years at Hoffmann-La Roche, a Swiss global health-care company, as postdoctoral fellow working on vitamin D receptor, and joined the “Wellcome Trust Sanger” institute in 1994.

(Source: http://www.iatropedia.com)

Born to a Greek father and Irish mother in Athens, Salpa moved to Ireland at age four and was raised in Killiney, near Dublin.

In Ireland, Salpa has undertaken modelling assignments for various publications. She has made TV appearances on such programmes as The Podge and Rodge Show, Republic of Telly, Celebrity Salon and Catwalk to Kilimanjaro. She played a role as herself on Republic of Telly.

She reached a new peak in the presence of the public consciousness in August 2009, after posing in a bikini for a controversial photoshoot for Food & Wine magazine alongside chef Neven Maguire.

Co-hosted by the Department of Film Studies and the Centre of Hellenic Studies at King’s College, the event was very well received by a sizeable audience. Presentations by the two editors were followed by brief talks from three of the contributors, and a very lively Q&A session.

Covering the silent era to the present, this wide-ranging collection of essays examines Greek cinema as an aesthetic, cultural, and political phenomenon with the potential to appeal to a diverse range of audiences. Using a range of methodological tools, the authors investigate the ever-shifting forms and meanings at work within Greece’s national cinema and locate it within the booming interdisciplinary study of European cinema at large.

Designed for undergraduate courses in film studies, this well-researched volume fills a substantial gap in the market for critical works on Greek cinema in English.

(Source:ljmu.ac.uk)

An hour-long lighting ceremony amid the historic ruins of the home of the ancient Games at the Temple of Hera in Olympia will signal the start of an eight-day relay around Greece before the flame hits British shores, starting in Cornwall.

The flame is due to arrive at the Panathenaic Stadium in Athens on May 17th, where a London 2012 representative will be ready for the official handover.

Lord Coe, the London 2012 chairman, said: “It gives me great pleasure to confirm May 10th as the flame lighting date and Royal Naval Air Station Culdrose as the Olympic Flame’s arrival point into the UK.

“My team is looking forward to working with the Hellenic Olympic Committee, the Ministry of Defence and our commercial partners to create exciting events to mark the flame’s Greek provenance and its arrival to our shores.”

Once in Britain, the flame will be taken on a nationwide 70-day relay, from May 19th to July 27th, ending with the lighting of the Olympic cauldron at the opening ceremony.

The Greek leg of the torch relay is set to showcase the beauty and history of the Greek mainland and islands to the world, according to London 2012.

The second torchbearer on the first day and the penultimate torchbearer on the last day of the Greek leg have been handpicked by London 2012, which is remaining tight-lipped on their names.

London 2012 will only say they are inspirational people from the UK and that more would be revealed closer to the time of the Olympics.

The Olympic Flame will then be the guest of honour on board a gold-liveried Airbus 319, flight number BA2012, which will take it from Athens to Britain.
(source: news uk msn)

When he founded his traditional Greek Music School ten years ago, Yiannis Polykandriotis had decided to follow the footsteps of his father, Theodoros Polykandriotis, in teaching the art of the bouzouki, baglama and tzoura to the younger generations.

Starting off with a small group of students, the Music School was soon ready to present a lively music programme to audiences and began growing in numbers. To date, the number of students is over 50 and there are five different schools around London.

The Music School operates under the auspices of the Ministry of Education and Culture of the Republic of Cyprus, and has become a new communication channel between Diaspora Greeks and Greece.

The latest distinction bestowed upon the Music School with its participation in the Olympic Games 2012 has been thrilling news to the 40 male and 10 female bouzouki-players of the School.

What still needs to be clarified is how much time the Music School will have at its disposal to play Greek traditional music at the Opening Event.

Mr. Polykandriotis, born in 1946, is an acclaimed teacher of “Rebetika” and has accompanied some of the most popular Greek artists on television and on-stage with his bouzouki . Having toured in several countries for concerts, he now lives in the UK and passes on his knowledge concerning Greek traditional instruments to his students. Mr. Polykandriotis also has a radio programme called ‘Rebetiki Anthologia’ on London Greek Radio (LGR 103.3FM) every Saturday between the hours of 9:00pm and 10:00pm (UK time).

According to information, the Greek academic had looked up the meaning of GBH on the Internet and more particularly in Luton, where she found information on the defendant, who had been accused of the same crime in the past. Upon sharing this information with other members of the jury, Dallas was charged with contempt of court.

According to the High Court, by doing the online research and letting others know of her findings, Mrs. Dallas was interfering with the law and was not following the exact directions of the court that the jury must base their decision solely on the evidence presented at court.

Dallas told the High Court that her understanding of English is not always perfect and that she did not realize her actions were disrupting the course of justice in any way.

Despite her lawyer’s appeal to the Lord Judge for a suspended sentence, Dallas will have to follow through the custodial sentence.

The fifty-member orchestra is made up of male and female bouzouki players, aged between10 and 32, has a strong presence in the British capital, and was chosen after a relevant competition amidst several Greek bands.

The orchestra will perform at 15 cultural and athletic events, including the celebrations of the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II.

Yiannis Polykandriotis has been employed by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Cyprus in order to teach the bouzouki and traditional Greek music to the students of the Greek and Greek-Cypriot communities in the UK.

This time it is a young rhythmic gymnastics female athlete, Varvara Filiou, that has become the centre of attention despite the fact that she did not make it to the finals.

Her picture (see left) taken during a test event at the gymnastics premises of North Greenwich Arena that will host the Olympic Gymnastics of 2012  has covered the front page of UK daily newspaper “The Telegraph”.

The Telegraph article includes other impressive photo shoots of Austrian athlete Nicole Ruprecht, Mexican Cynthia Valdez, German Jana-Berezko-Marggrander and Swiss Daria Kondakova.

The training will be delivered at SELEX Galileo’s purpose-built EW Operational Support centre in Lincoln, UK.

This training agreement follows the recent contract award by the UK MoD that will see UK Air Warfare Centre personnel trained at the same facility for up to four years. The contract follows the 2003 Greek acquisition of SELEX Galileo’s Helicopter Integrated Defensive Aid Suite (HIDAS) for the Army’s Apache helicopters. The training will allow Greek crews to get the most out of HIDAS, giving them the skills they need to programme the system and effectively defend against modern threats and new challenges as they emerge in the future.

Training will be carried out for 6 months, beginning in late January 2012, and SELEX Galileo field service personnel will support the Hellenic Army at Megara for 6 months following the training.

SELEX Galileo is Europe’s number one provider of EW technology. The Company’s site in Lincoln, UK is a fully functional EWOS facility built to provide support and training for users of state-of-the-art EW equipment.

In addition to custom-designed training rooms, the centre hosts computer networks set up to facilitate real mission data analysis and the programming of pre-flight messages. EW hardware and software can be developed on site, with simulators allowing ‘hardware in the loop’ testing, the next best thing to actual flight trials.

(source:Selex Galileo, Press Release)