The Hellenic Radio (ERA): News in English, 09-07-28

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From: The Hellenic Radio (ERA) <www.ert.gr/>

CONTENTS

[01] Petralia-GSVEE Meeting

Last Updated on Tuesday, 28 July 2009 18:12

Employment Minister Fani Palli Petralia during a meeting with GSEVEE and trade unions announced an employment assistance program to businesses, mounting to â¬100.000, which involves 60.000 workers . Representatives of traders unions called the Employment Minister to effect regulations for the payment of contributions to OAEE.

Businesses employing up to 9 people will receive financial aid of EUR 3000 for each employee, from 10 to 49 persons, 2000 Euro per person and if extended to larger businesses the amount will rise to 1000 euros per person. The funds come from EU funds while details will be discussed during a meeting on Thursday with community resources special secretary Kostas Tsoutsoplidis

The first stage of the program will allocate 50.000.000 euros to 24.000 employees. This action is included in a community program to strengthen businesses and maintain employment positions. Businesses entering this program should not proceed to lay offs for an agreed period of time.

They also discussed conversion of unemployment allowance to employment allowance, in other words subsidizing businesses to hire unemployed.

The president of GSVEE Dimitris Asimakopoulos agreed to cooperate with the Employment Ministry services to achieve the best results so fund are not lost through bureaucratic procedures and ensure that they go to small and very small businesses.

Earlier, the Employment Minister had received SYRIZA delegation who protested against the review of the list of heavy-unhealthy occupations.

News item: 25260

[02] Fires in Aspropyrgos & Liosia Abating

Fires in Aspropyrgos and Liosia, which broke almost simultaneously at 14:40, are abating. Fires broke out on the islands of Samos and Zante. Fire in Daskalio, Attika has been brought under control .

Strong fire fighting forces and helicopters arrived at the site of the fires in Liosia and Aspropyrgos and have managed to bring the fires under control. Traffic en route to Elefsina and airport was banned as well as along Aegaleo ring road.

Fire on a forest region on the island of Samos has been brought under partial control while firefighters and a water bomber aircraft are on stand by in the event the fire rekindles. Fire is still burning low grass region on the island of Zante.

In the meantime, a fire broke out in an inaccessible forest region in Daskalio, Attika around 16:30. Strong firefighting forces and a water bomber aircraft rushed to the region. They are battling against flames under difficult conditions and strong winds.

News item: 25255

[03] Bocodes to Displace Barcodes

The barcodes which are now on every package in the form of black and white lines soon will be past, as researchers prepare their replacements-the so-called bokodes. The new labels will be able to store thousands of times more information and to read even from a common digital camera of any mobile phone. Much smaller in size, bokode resembles a miniature point of 3 mm diameter (the size of symbol @ in a keyboard) and, among other things, contains information about various food ingredients.

The new technology will be publicly presented next week in the international annual Siggraph exhibition in New Orleans According to Dr. Ankit Mochan, the Media Lab of MIT, who supervised the research with Dr. Rames Raskar, «technology will create a new means of identification of products through labels».

The bokode consists of a light emitting diode (LED), which is covered by a microscopic mask and lens. Information is coded in the solar radiation through the mask, which has a brightness rating depending on the angle.

Manufacturers believe that the new system has many advantages over the current barcode, as new labels though smaller can be read from many angles-even from a distance of four meters, or from a mobile camera.

The new labels, according to researchers, can be used in factories and retail stores. In a supermarket, for example, consumers can, without even approaching close to the shelf, to receive information via mobile on the substances contained in the product, which will be incorporated in the label. This could even make easier to compare products on a shelf, according to the price and other characteristics.

In parallel, the new technology may have application in marketing, as it contains a number of promotional messages to the buyer. Furthermore, owners of shops, restaurants, etc. could put such labels outside the door to inform customers what to expect.

The new labels, which can coexist with traditional barcodes-are currently relatively expensive. However, manufacturers believe that technology can be developed and the cost be drastically reduced in the future.

To date, many other technologies have emerged as successors of traditional bar codes, especially the radio tags (RFID), which although used in many applications have failed to displace the barcodes. It may not, however, be coincidental that MIT university research for Bocode technology is funded by the companies Nokia and Samsung.

Source: ÁNA-ÌPA

News item: 25254

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