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The ways our cultural heritage reserve is preserved and disseminated to the public have changed significantly, with the use of immersive technologies, such as virtual reality environments, and serious games. Nowadays, these technologies are also exploited for developing interactive informative applications, to support historical education and enhance museum visits, physical or virtual, especially to younger generations. The field of edutainment, educational entertainment, has been rapidly developing during the last 10 or 15 years. The main goal of this research is to develop an educational 3D puzzle-like serious game which can operate within a virtual reality environment while aiming towards the dissemination of cultural heritage content to the younger public, i.e., students, children etc., through a pleasant gamification process. The cultural heritage objects used are an ancient Greek temple and a statue of the Roman era, whose high-resolution fully textured 3D models were available from previous projects. The game application was developed in Unity game engine with suitable coding to enable the smooth execution of the 3D puzzle solution. The application verified that it is more interesting to learn about cultural assets through a game than in the conventional ways, and even more when it is implemented within a Virtual Reality environment, where the contact with the assets appears to be more direct and realistic. The same application can also be utilized in different educational areas and can be expanded by the inclusion of other digital assets.

Since the dawn of humanity, dancing has been central to life occasions, for celebration, mourning, entertaining or even communicating. Still, it remains a vital practice around the world. With the development of technology, many efforts have been made to adapt specific choreographies and dancing rituals to the modern era, via digital platforms. However, these sequences cannot be construed as realistic when they are viewed through computers, because the actual expressions are lost in the translation. A lot of attempts have been made to provide a solution to this issue, but the most successful are the motion capturing devices and equipment. In this research, we focus on the recording of choreographies, which represent important social concepts, using a Microsoft Kinect sensor as a motion capturing device. Microsoft Kinect is chosen because it is a low-cost device that can deliver adequate results. The outcome of the research is a “handbook” in virtual reality environment, which can be used as an educational tool by anyone. The project aims at being a response to the global need of today’s world for creation of inclusive environments, where socially aware people can peacefully co – exist. The digital handbook can enhance the skills and competences of adult trainers in arts and culture and every participant gets in touch with sensitive concepts and develops social awareness. Inspiration for the project is drawn via social and humanistic values stemming from philosophical, sociological and psychological texts and it is innovative not only for its content but also for the way this is developed.

For first time, we report a high-performance dye-sensitized solar cell (DSSC)-based hybrid copper tungstate (CuWO 4 )/activated bio-carbon composite by a facile hydrothermal method followed by an annealing process. The structural order of the obtained catalysts was performed through X-ray diffraction and Raman analysis, which exposed the monoclinic phase (JCPDS card No. 83-0951). The clear sheets with a wrinkled shape and spherical nanoparticles (30–35 nm) were found to be composed of bio-carbon and CuWO 4 , which were obtained by SEM and TEM analyses. The bio-carbon-modified CuWO 4 sample showed a huge surface area (108 m 2 /g) and highly porous nature (32.53 nm), which was identified by the BET method. A significant reduction in the band gap (2.91–2.33 eV) and suppression of the recombination rate of electron–hole pairs were also identified by UV-vis absorption and photoluminescence spectra results. The fabricated DSSCs (sandwich-type) consist of a counter-electrode (CuWO 4 )/BC), a reference electrode (pt) and an electrolyte solution ( I 3 − / I − ). The bio-carbon-modified CuWO 4 electrode achieved the high photo-conversion efficiency of 9.8% compared with an un-modified CuWO 4 electrode (4.2%). The improved mechanism of the hybrid electrode has also been discussed in detail.

The appearance of more than one physical urticaria (PU) in the same patient has been documented; cold urticaria or dermatographism in association with some other type of PU are encountered more frequently. Three female patients exhibiting multiple PUs simultaneously are presented. In one female patient four different forms of PU could be shown with the appropriate challenge tests; the other two female patients exhibited five different types. The longest postdiagnosis follow-up, with objective evaluation and persistence of all PUs, was 6 years in one subject. The co-occurrence of two, three, or four PU types has been published in the relative literature; no cases of five PUs have been reported previously.

One of the major areas of expansion for Crown Agents in the 1990s has been the newly independent states which were formerly part of the Soviet Union. Its work in these countries began with a number of major humanitarian support programs.