Drought Analysis for 2007-2008 Agricultural Year of Turkey

Drought is among the most significant natural disasters and has severe economical, social and environmental impacts. It is somehow different from the other natural disasters since it is hard to determine exact start and end dates of drought. Drought gradually increases its severity and may keep its effects for years after the end of drought. Effects of drought is initially observed in agriculture and diffused gradually into waterrelated sectors. The recent global drought and utilization of agricultural crops for bio-fuel production has created significant problems in food supply. For instance, as a result of the drought experienced in the year of 2007, wheat production was not sufficient. Beside this, consumption increased for bio-fuel production and wheat prices in international markets increased by 3 folds. These problems observed in basic agricultural crops like maize and rice has brought forward the significance of continuous drought monitoring and analysis. In this study, the drought experienced in 2007-2008 Agricultural Year of Turkey was analyzed and contributions were tried to be made for future production activities. The drought was evaluated by using Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI), Percent of Normal Index (PNI) and the analyses of precipitation and temperature analysis

Creating Multi-Level Skill Hierarchies in Reinforcement Learning

What is a useful skill hierarchy for an autonomous agent? We propose an answer based on the graphical structure of an agent's interaction with its environment. Our approach uses hierarchical graph partitioning to expose the structure of the graph at varying timescales, producing a skill hierarchy with multiple levels of abstraction. At each level of the hierarchy, skills move the agent between regions of the state space that are well connected within themselves but weakly connected to each other. We illustrate the utility of the proposed skill hierarchy in a wide variety of domains in the context of reinforcement learning

CO2 laser polishing of conical shaped optical fiber deflectors

A novel method for polishing conical shaped optical fiber deflectors by modulated CO2 laser exposure is reported. The conical shaped fiber deflector geometry was first formed with rough mechanical polishing, then it was exposed to modulated CO2 laser operating with wavelength at 10.6 µm to achieve fine polish surfaces. The motivation of this work is to demonstrate that the modulated CO2 laser exposure approach allows a fiber surface roughness at a nanometer scale without modifying the conical shape of the fiber deflector. The average surface roughness of mechanically polished fiber deflectors with 30 and 9 µm lapping films was smoothed down to 20.4 and 4.07 nm, respectively, after CO2 laser polishing process. By combining mechanical and laser polishing techniques, fabrication of conical shaped optical fiber deflectors takes less time and it becomes laborer independent and easy to apply. © 2017, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

A twisted shaped cladding light stripper by CO2 laser processing for high power fiber lasers and amplifiers

Applications of high power lasers and amplifiers have been increasing because of its superior properties such as high wall-plug efficiency, excellent beam quality, and reliability [1]. Despite advances in high power fiber components, there is still component reliability based challenges on extraction process of unwanted cladding light [2]. There are several techniques to extract the cladding light from the fiber laser system such as high index polymer coating that of working principle is violating the total internal reflection [2], roughened cladding surface which uses the scattering to eliminate the cladding light [3], soft metal coating to absorb the cladding light [4] and CO2 laser processing of cladding to disturb the light path with the structural manipulations and strip the unwanted light from these structures. There are some limitations for each case. The high index polymer CLS are limited by the thermal degradation of recoated polymer [4]. For the roughened or etching CLS, even though very high attenuations levels were achieved, the roughing or etching process decrease the fiber strength. This could create undesired problems such as heat localization and microcrack formation on cladding wall. Here, we present novel method for practical, robust, compact, and all glass cladding light stripper fabrication on Ytterbium (Yb) doped octagonally shaped double clad fiber (DCF)

On the aesthetic regime of Kurdish cinema: the making of Kurdishness

Through my investigation, I expose the multiple layers of Kurdish cinema constructed by Kurdish films and directors, by academics working on Kurdish cinema, by Kurdish institutions, and by contemporary artists. By employing a content analysis of films in Kurdish languages, identifying Kurdish directors as agents of history making, and investigating attempts to institutionalize Kurdish cinema, I address the Kurdish presupposition of equality to act in an aesthetic regime of art. I structure my research under three chapters: ‘A Foundation of Kurdish National Cinema’, ‘A Re-interpretation of Kurdish Trauma’, and ‘An Aesthetic Regime of Kurdishness’. Based on the detailed discussion, across these three chapters, of national cinema, the art of the un-representable, and digital revolution, I aim to reveal the necessity of exploring the aesthetics regime of Kurdishness in audio-visual terms, in order to articulate the subjectification processes leading to an ethical community in the name of Rancièrian democratic politics.I posit cinema as a home for the communicative act that will empower speech and thought for the Kurdish social body. It does so by folding the future into the present through an aesthetic regime of imperfect, mobile audio-visual assemblages. Middle Eastern Studie

A search on the Nikiforov-Uvarov formalism

An alternative treatment is proposed for the calculations carried out within the frame of Nikiforov-Uvarov method, which removes a drawback in the original theory and by pass some difficulties in solving the Schrodinger equation. The present procedure is illustrated with the example of orthogonal polynomials. The relativistic extension of the formalism is discussed.Comment: 10 page

Maternal and fetal outcomes of COVID-19, SARS, and MERS: a narrative review on the current knowledge

OBJECTIVE: Coronavirus infections, including SARS. MERS and COVID-19 have significant impact on global health as well as on pregnancies. The aim of this review was to enlighten and summarize the cumulative knowledge regarding the relationship between Coronavirus outbreaks and pregnancy. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Literature search was commenced in order to analyze the maternofetal effects of Coronavirus outbreaks. RESULTS: Fever and cough are the most common presenting symptoms of COVID-19 which mostly affects pregnant women in their 3rd trimester with a maternal mortality rate of 0-77% and fetal and neonatal mortality rates of 1.2%. Fetal demise is common in critically ill pregnant. Pregnancy seems as a worsening factor for SARS and MERS epidemics and both infections affect prominently 3rd trimester pregnancies, although abortion (57%) is a significant risk for cases of early pregnancy. Clinical course of COVID-19, SARS and MERS may be rapid and worse in pregnant women than non-pregnant individuals. Cesarean section is the choice of delivery in most reported women due to mostly obstetrical reasons, although vaginal delivery seems not a worsening factor for the disease.CONCLUSIONS: COVID-19, SARS and MERS have significant detrimental effect on pregnancy. Rapid intervention, treatment, and intensive care support are essential for infected pregnant. Timely delivery is important in order to avoid intrauterine fetal death

Verification and Validation of Semantic Annotations

In this paper, we propose a framework to perform verification and validation of semantically annotated data. The annotations, extracted from websites, are verified against the schema.org vocabulary and Domain Specifications to ensure the syntactic correctness and completeness of the annotations. The Domain Specifications allow checking the compliance of annotations against corresponding domain-specific constraints. The validation mechanism will detect errors and inconsistencies between the content of the analyzed schema.org annotations and the content of the web pages where the annotations were found.Comment: Accepted for the A.P. Ershov Informatics Conference 2019(the PSI Conference Series, 12th edition) proceedin

1018 nm Yb-doped high-power fiber laser pumped by broadband pump sources around 915 nm with output power above 100 W

We demonstrate a 1018 nm ytterbium-doped all-fiber laser pumped by tunable pump sources operating in the broad absorption spectrum around 915 nm. In the experiment, two different pump diodes were tested to pump over a wide spectrum ranging from 904 to 924 nm by altering the cooling temperature of the pump diodes. Across this so-called pump wavelength regime having a 20 nm wavelength span, the amplified stimulated emission (ASE) suppression of the resulting laser was generally around 35 dB, showing good suppression ratio. Comparisons to the conventional 976 nm-pumped 1018 nm ytterbium-doped fiber laser were also addressed in this study. Finally, we have tested this system for high power experimentation and obtained 67% maximum optical-to-optical efficiency at an approximately 110 W output power level. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first 1018 nm ytterbium-doped all-fiber laser pumped by tunable pump sources around 915 nm reported in detail. © 2017 Optical Society of America