An Occidentalist Fantasy: Turkish Radio and National Identity

This thesis analyses broadcasting as an area that conveys the complex dynamics of boundary management in the constitution of Turkish national identity. The research dwells on the conceptions, sites of transmission, strategies and programmes of Turkish Radio from its inauguration in 1927 until the end of the 1940s, and the field of force lines it was positioned in, particularly in relation to the BBC Turkish Section during the same period. The main hypothesis in the thesis is that the historical divide between “the West” and “the East” over-determined the way tensions in Turkish radio broadcasting – between “the elite” and “the people”, and between men and women – were conceived and handled. Every attempt to define, build and demarcate Turkish national identity was shaped with reference to an imagined Western-ness and for the Western gaze, which is called Occidentalis in this thesis. Turkish Radio was regarded as the “voice of the nation” and was imagined to be heard simultaneously by Others, the West and the people. However, the thesis also attends to the reality of the Occidentalist fantasy. Through a comparative analysis of the BBC Turkish Section Radio and Turkish Radio, the thesis shows how fantasies of the Other in both cases were shaped in relation to each other, in a dialogic relationship. Radio technology with its processes of embodiment and disembodiment, and “mass address” provide the means to produce and sustain and Occidentalist fantasy that both denied and re-defined divisions in the national realm in a dialogic link with the West. Thus, the thesis raises a range of theoretical and practical questions concerning the discursive, technical and psychoanalytical aspects of national identity and “communication” through radio broadcasting

The accumulation of heavy metals (Cd, Pb, Hg, Cr) and their state in phytoplanktonic algae and zooplanktonic organisms in Beysehir Lake and Mogan Lake, Turkey

Beysehir and Mogan Lakes are two shallow Lakes that are under environmental protection status. Phytoplanktonic dominant algae determined in Beysehir Lake were Oscillatoria sp., Cladophora sp.,Achnanthes sp., Gomphonema sp., Navicula sp., Cosmarium sp., Cymbella sp., Fragilaria sp., Oocystis sp., Spirogyra sp., Diatomae sp., Microcystis sp. and Staurastrum sp. While in Mogan Lake, Spirogyra sp., Zygnema sp., Euglena sp., Achnanthes sp., Cymbella sp., Fragilaria sp. Navicula sp., Scenedesmus sp., Oocystis sp., Synedra sp., Oscillatoria sp., Chlorella sp., Cosmarium sp. and Nitzshia sp. were determined. Zooplanktonic dominant organisms determined in Beysehir Lake were Eudiaptomus drieshi, Daphnia longispina and Brachionus calyciforus while Arctodiaptomus sp., Keratella quadrata, Filinia longiseta and Diaphanosoma lacustris were determined in Mogan Lake. Accumulation of heavy metals (Cd, Pb, Hg and Cr) in the water and plankton of Beysehir and Mogan Lakes was studiedseasonally, from April 2000 to December 2004. Higher concentration with all heavy metals was recorded in plankton. Mercury (Hg) was found in lowest and lead (Pb) in the highest correlation; however, the concentration of each metal varied seasonally. In addition, the seasonal changes inphytoplankton and zooplankton populations and species abundance were also determined. Some physical-chemical parameters of water and their correlation with heavy metals were also examined

Pulsed Beam Tests at the SANAEM RFQ Beamline

A proton beamline consisting of an inductively coupled plasma (ICP) source, two solenoid magnets, two steerer magnets and a radio frequency quadrupole (RFQ) is developed at the Turkish Atomic Energy Authority's (TAEA) Saraykoy Nuclear Research and Training Center (SNRTC-SANAEM) in Ankara. In Q4 of 2016, the RFQ was installed in the beamline. The high power tests of the RF power supply and the RF transmission line were done successfully. The high power RF conditioning of the RFQ was performed recently. The 13.56 MHz ICP source was tested in two different conditions, CW and pulsed. The characterization of the proton beam was done with ACCTs, Faraday cups and a pepper-pot emittance meter. Beam transverse emittance was measured in between the two solenoids of the LEBT. The measured beam is then reconstructed at the entrance of the RFQ by using computer simulations to determine the optimum solenoid currents for acceptance matching of the beam. This paper will introduce the pulsed beam test results at the SANAEM RFQ beamline. In addition, the high power RF conditioning of the RFQ will be discussed.Comment: 6 pages, 6 figures. Proceedings of the International Particle Accelerator Conference 2017 (IPAC'17), May 14-19, 2017, TUPAB015, p. 134

OAST: Obstacle Avoidance System for Teleoperation of UAVs

This article presents a novel flight assistance system, obstacle avoidance system for teleoperation (OAST), whose main role is to make teleoperation of small multirotor unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) safer and more efficient in closed spaces. The OAST allows the operator to avoid obstacles while keeping a liberty of movement. The UAV is controlled through a 3-D haptic controller and the OAST amends the user input to increase safety and efficiency of the teleoperation. The design of the OAST is verified in computerized experiments. Moreover, a simulation involving 20 participants is carried out to validate the proposed scheme. This experiment shows that the OAST improves the completion time of the scenarios by 41% on average while reducing the workload of the operator from 57 to 27 points on the NASA Task Load Index test. The number of collisions with the environment is all but eliminated in these scenarios

NDT RC: Normal Distribution Transform Occupancy 3D Mapping with Recentering

The Normal Distribution Transform Occupancy Map (NDT OM) is a mapping algorithm able to represent a dynamic 3D environment. The resulting map has fixed boundaries, thus a robot with unbounded displacement might fall outside of the map due to memory limitation. In this paper, a recentering algorithm called NDT RC is proposed to avoid this issue. NDT RC extends the use of NDT OM for vehicles with unbounded displacements. NDT RC provides a seamless translation of the map as the robot gets far from the center of the previous map. The influence of NDT RC on the precision of the estimated trajectory of the robot, or odometry, is examined on two publicly available datasets, the KITTI and Ford datasets. An analysis of the sensitivity of the NDT RC to its tuning parameters is carried out using the Ford dataset, while the KITTI dataset is used to measure the influence of the density of the input point cloud. The results show that the proposed recentering strategy improves the accuracy of the odometry calculated by registering the latest lidar scan on the generated map compared to other NDT based approaches (NDT OM, NDT OM Fusion, SE-NDT). In particular, the proposed method, which does not perform loop closure, reduces the mean absolute translation error by 16% and the runtime by 88% compared to the NDT OM Fusion on the Ford dataset.Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC): EP/K504324/

Substitution in a hybrid remanufacturing system

AbstractIncreasing legislative and societal pressures are requiring manufacturers to operate more sustainably and to take responsibility for the fate of their goods after they have been used by consumers. A hybrid remanufacturing system, in which newly produced and remanufactured used goods are sold on separate markets but also act substitutes for each other, is described and modelled using a semi-Markov decision process. The model provides an optimal policy, which specifies production, remanufacturing and substitution decisions. The model is used to explore the properties of this hybrid remanufacturing system, and in particular, the managerial implications associated with upward and downward substitution

Microcirculatory alterations in critically ill COVID-19 patients analyzed using artificial intelligence

Background: The sublingual microcirculation presumably exhibits disease-specific changes in function and morphology. Algorithm-based quantification of functional microcirculatory hemodynamic variables in handheld vital microscopy (HVM) has recently allowed identification of hemodynamic alterations in the microcirculation associated with COVID-19. In the present study we hypothesized that supervised deep machine learning could be used to identify previously unknown microcirculatory alterations, and combination with algorithmically quantified functional variables increases the model's performance to differentiate critically ill COVID-19 patients from healthy volunteers. Methods: Four international, multi-central cohorts of critically ill COVID-19 patients and healthy volunteers (n = 59/n = 40) were used for neuronal network training and internal validation, alongside quantification of functional microcirculatory hemodynamic variables. Independent verification of the models was performed in a second cohort (n = 25/n = 33). Results: Six thousand ninety-two image sequences in 157 individuals were included. Bootstrapped internal validation yielded AUROC(CI) for detection of COVID-19 status of 0.75 (0.69-0.79), 0.74 (0.69-0.79) and 0.84 (0.80-0.89) for the algorithm-based, deep learning-based and combined models. Individual model performance in external validation was 0.73 (0.71-0.76) and 0.61 (0.58-0.63). Combined neuronal network and algorithm-based identification yielded the highest externally validated AUROC of 0.75 (0.73-0.78) (P < 0.0001 versus internal validation and individual models). Conclusions: We successfully trained a deep learning-based model to differentiate critically ill COVID-19 patients from heathy volunteers in sublingual HVM image sequences. Internally validated, deep learning was superior to the algorithmic approach. However, combining the deep learning method with an algorithm-based approach to quantify the functional state of the microcirculation markedly increased the sensitivity and specificity as compared to either approach alone, and enabled successful external validation of the identification of the presence of microcirculatory alterations associated with COVID-19 status. Keywords: Artificial intelligence; COVID-19; Deep learning; Microcirculation; Neuronal network

Common or multiple futures for end of life care around the world? Ideas from the ‘waiting room of history’

Around the world there is growing interest in the manner in which care is delivered to people at the end of life. However, there is little unanimity on what constitutes a ‘good death’ and the appropriate societal responses to the issue of delivering culturally relevant and sustainable forms of end of life care in different settings are not subjects of broad agreement. In this critical conceptual paper we focus on the emerging narratives of global palliative care and offer an assessment of their implications. We relate this to calls to improve end of life care across jurisdictions and settings, attempts to map and grade the development of palliative care provision, and to the emergence of a widely recognised global ‘quality of death index’. We consider an alternative approach to framing this debate, drawn from a subaltern and post-colonial studies perspective and suggest that adopting a truly global perspective will require acceptance of the plurality of past and present local problems and issues relating to end of life care, as well as the plural possibilities of how they might be overcome. In that context, we would not aim to universalise or privilege one particular global future for end of life care. Instead of homogenising end of life interventions, we seek to be open to multiple futures for the care of the dying

Analysis of a New Method for Measurement of Parameters of Real Thermoelectric Module Employed in Medical Cooler for Renal Hypothermia

In the present study, a new method for searching all exit parameters of the thermoelectric module has been realized. The new method is based on measurement of thermo-emf of a working module and comparing the results obtained with those of classical methods. The new method is used for investigation of the values of parameters of a standard thermoelectric module of Melcor with production code of CP1.0-127-05L, used in medical coolers for renal hypothermia. The theoretical results calculated by the means of new and classical methods for the parameters of an actual thermoelectric module have been compared with the experimental results and the advantage of the new method in terms of approximation accuracy has been proven