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This article aims to critically examine AI as both an active and innovative tool in artistic creation, investigating its evolving role in shaping artistic practices, expanding creative possibilities, and redefining the boundaries of human–machine collaboration. It traces the historical, conceptual, and technological integration of generative AI in art, particularly in relation to Modernism’s challenge to traditional norms. It also examines the ethical, social, and philosophical implications of AI art, focusing on issues such as authorship, legitimacy, and AI’s role in the cultural landscape. Through the analysis of two representative works—Refik Anadol’s Unsupervised and Anna Ridler’s Mosaic Virus—one mainstream and the other critically engaging with AI art’s social impact, the study examines the balance between technical innovation and conceptual depth, emphasizing transparency, originality, and human-centered approaches. Employing an extended literature review across chapters, the discussion synthesizes diverse sources to critically engage with ongoing debates. Ultimately, the article advocates for human–AI collaboration, emphasizing responsible integration to enhance creativity without losing the human essence of art. It offers highly valuable insights into the current debates surrounding AI in art and effectively guides the integration of AI into future creative practices.

This article examines music’s potential to contribute to the co-creative development of sustainable place branding efforts. It highlights how music can brand a place with a specific music identity and provide places with foundations of their resilient futures. The authors explore the case study of Labyrinth Musical Workshop, which gathers musicians from all parts of the world to a small village in Crete called Houdetsi. The study builds on ethnography data (fieldnotes, photos/videos), interviews with musicians, local inhabitants and hotel owners and digital ethnography tools including thematic analysis of hashtags and comments on the official social media accounts of Labyrinth Musical Workshop and the Cultural Association of Houdetsi. Findings reveal the challenges of sustainable tourism development and how music and place branding through co-creation can lead destinations towards resilience. The co-created experiences on offer highlight notions of community and co-belonging that inspire repeat visits, whereas the support of cultural and economic networks prioritize social–cultural and environmental rather than merely economic sustainability pillars.

This paper charts AI’s transformative path toward advancing sustainability within art museums, introducing a Human–AI compass as a conceptual framework for navigating its integration. It advocates for human-centric AI that optimizes operations, modernizes collection management, and deepens visitor engagement—anchored in meaningful human–technology synergy and thoughtful human oversight. Drawing on extensive literature review and real-world museum case studies, the paper explores AI’s multifaceted impact across three domains. Firstly, it examines how AI improves operations, from audience forecasting and resource optimization to refining marketing, supporting conservation, and reshaping curatorial practices. Secondly, it investigates AI’s influence on digital collection management, highlighting its ability to improve organization, searchability, analysis, and interpretation through automated metadata and advanced pattern recognition. Thirdly, the study analyzes how AI elevates the visitor experience via chatbots, audio guides, and interactive applications, leveraging personalization, recommendation systems, and co-creation opportunities. Crucially, this exploration acknowledges AI’s complex challenges—technical-operational, ethical-governance, socioeconomic-cultural, and environmental—underscoring the indispensable role of human judgment in steering its implementation. The Human-AI compass offers a balanced, strategic approach for aligning innovation with human values, ethical principles, museum mission, and sustainability. The study provides valuable insights for researchers, practitioners and policymakers, enriching the broader discourse on AI’s growing role in the art and cultural sector.

This study was undertaken to investigate the effects of hydrothermal treatments under mild acid and alkaline conditions on polyphenol release and recovery from wheat bran (WB). After an initial screening of various food-grade substances, strong evidence was raised regarding the potency of citric acid and sodium carbonate to provide WB extracts exceptionally enriched in polyphenols. Thus, these two catalysts were tested under various time and temperature combinations, and the processes were described by linear models based on severity factor. The most effective treatments were those performed with 10% of either citric acid or sodium carbonate, at a constant temperature of 90 °C for 24 h, providing yields in total polyphenols of 23.76 and 23.60 mg g−1 dry mass of ferulic acid equivalents, respectively. Liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry analyses revealed that, while the sodium carbonate treatment afforded extracts enriched in ferulic acid, treatments with citric acid gave extracts enriched in a ferulate pentose ester. The extracts produced from those treatments also exhibited diversified antioxidant characteristics, a fact ascribed to the different polyphenolic composition. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first report demonstrating the effective release of ferulic acid and a ferulate pentose ester from WB, using benign acid and alkali catalysts, such as citric acid and sodium carbonate.

Despite extensive research on technology-mediated visitor experiences, a holistic approach to the smart museum remains underexplored. This paper addresses the gap by examining the intersection of museums and digital technologies through a cultural lens, with a focus on their role in redefining the museum experience. The concept and profile of the 21st-century smart museum were shaped through a synthesis of findings from 143 scholarly and institutional publications, combining 118 research outputs (2012–2025) across seven technological categories —Extended Reality (XR), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), Robotics, Fusion, Blockchain, and general Digital Technologies— with a complementary body of theoretical works (1989–2025) that strengthen its conceptual and cultural foundations. From this synthesis, 15 key attributes emerged, outlining the ideal smart museum model. Anchored in theoretical and institutional frameworks, these attributes conceptualize the smart museum as a culturally embedded, technologically enhanced, and human-centered institution. The paper provides a conceptual framework and strategic guide for cultural managers, museum professionals, and designers developing smart museum practices in the digital era.

Wheat bran (WB) is globally a major food industry waste, with a high prospect as a bioresource in the production of precious polyphenolic phytochemicals. In this framework, the current investigation had as objectives (i) to use ethanol organosolv treatment and study the effect of acid and alkali catalysts on releasing bound polyphenols, (ii) establish linear and quadratic models of polyphenol recovery based on severity and response surface, and (iii) examine the polyphenolic composition of the extracts generated. Using sulfuric acid and sodium hydroxide as the acid and the alkali catalyst, respectively, it was found that the correlation of combined severity factor with total polyphenol yield was significant in the acid catalysis, but a highly significant correlation in the alkali-catalyzed process was established with modified severity factor, which takes into consideration catalyst concentration, instead of pH. Optimization of the process with response surface confirmed that polyphenol release from WB was linked to treatment time, but also catalyst concentration. Under optimized conditions, the acid- and alkali-catalyzed processes afforded total polyphenol yields of 10.93 ± 0.62 and 19.76 ± 0.76 mg ferulic acid equivalents g−1 dry mass, respectively. Examination of the polyphenolic composition revealed that the alkali-catalyzed process had a striking effect on releasing ferulic acid, but the acid catalysis was insufficient in this regard. The outcome concerning the antioxidant properties was contradictory with respect to the antiradical activity and ferric-reducing power of the extracts, a fact most probably attributed to extract constituents other than ferulic acid. The process modeling proposed herein may be valuable in assessing both process effectiveness and severity, with a perspective of establishing WB treatments that would provide maximum polyphenol recovery with minimum harshness and cost.

Green tourism is part of the global effort to create a more sustainable living environment, taking into account the needs of both the industry, the tourists and the local communities. CCIs are considered trustworthy ambassadors of authenticity and life values, and can therefore effectively promote and/or strengthen the ecological value. This paper focuses on the role that cultural and creative industries (CCIs) can play in the implementation of sustainable development, especially in regard to green tourism, focusing on their role as communicators of green messages. The methodological tools used for the collection, analysis and interpretation of data for this research include semiotic analysis in a number of CCIs’ products, coding their ecological messages; content analysis of the CCIs’ digital posts for a one-year period in order to examine the form, types and content of the communication; and a digital ethnography of the users’ comments in order to study the perception and interaction of the receivers of such messages, focusing on past, present and potential tourists. Through the case study of Greece—a well-known tourist destination with rich cultural resources—the author tries to answer to the following research questions: (a) Could green tourism be promoted as a life value through CCIs’ products and messages? (b) Are there any good and innovative practices for such promotion through the synergy of the tourism industry with CCIs that could be used as models for further cases? This paper concludes that CCIs can promote sustainability as a life value through role modeling, educational programs, and subconscious or more straightforward messages, using both their products and formal communication channels. The more successful way for Greek CCIs to promote green tourism is through synergies with official tourism promotion mechanisms. The research shows that in many cases, this linkage has been successful in a number of ways.

The Messara valley is the largest and most productive region in the island of Crete, Greece. Over the last 20 years, extensive exploitation of the aquifer mainly for agricultural purposes has led to a 40-m decrease in the level of groundwater. This investigation aims at mapping ground subsidence that might be induced by such overpumping of groundwater using conventional differential interferometry. A total of 29 ERS-1 and 2 SAR and 7 ALOS PALSAR images have been used for forming interferograms. The images used cover the period from 1992 to 2000 and 2007 to 2010, respectively. Processing of ALOS L-band data (λ = 23.6 cm) has revealed a ground motion away from the Line of Sight of the satellite (LOS direction) that amounts to at least 3 cm/year for the period 2007–2010. Piezometric measurements and other geological parameters have also been analyzed.

Humic acids (HAs) and fulvic acids (FAs) are naturally occurring compounds that influence the fate and transportation of various compounds in the soil. Although HAs and FAs have multiple uses, the reports about their sorbent potential for environmental pollutants are scanty and sparse. In this study, HA and FA, isolated from lignite samples from two mines in Greece, were studied as sorbent materials for three active compounds of plant protection products, namely glyphosate (herbicide), cypermethrin (pyrethroid insecticide), and azoxystrobin (fungicide). According to the results, both HA and FA are promising sorbent materials for these active compounds, with HA achieving better sorption for cypermethrin and azoxystrobin, while FA was found to be more efficient for glyphosate. Moreover, their performance was not compromised by other components commonly found in commercially available herbicides/insecticides/fungicides. In addition, no significant leaching of the sorbed compounds was recorded. Finally, the two materials achieved similar sorption efficiency of the compounds from lake water.

Every land is connected to cultural narratives and storytelling that in many cases shape its identity, its brand as a sociocultural entity, and as a touristic destination. The digital semiosphere has created a place where these narratives are reproduced and circulated, shared and commented on in ways and quantities unimaginable some years ago. From the Grand Tour to culture tourism and recent social media posts, the connection of tourism with arts, cultural resources or sites is evident and unquestionable. This article examines the use of cultural resources as signs or “markers” of the destination “Greece” in the Facebook accounts visitgreece and discovergreece, created by the Greek National Tourist Organization and the Greek Tourist Sector, respectively. The sample of posts includes those uploaded between the dates 6/01/2020 and 5/31/2021, a period marked by the COVID-19 pandemic. Through thematic and content analysis, the cultural codes and narratives promoted through the specific year are outlined and interpreted, in an attempt to foreshadow the impact of these codes and narratives to the shaping of Greece’s brand image during the COVID-19 lockdowns.