A class of multipartner matching markets with a strong lattice structure

For a two-sided multipartner matching model where agents are given by path-independent choice functions and no quota restrictions, Blair [7] had shown that stable matchings always exist and form a lattice. However, the lattice operations were not simple and not distributive. Recently Alkan [3] showed that if one introduces quotas together with a monotonicity condition then the set of stable matchings is a distributive lattice under a natural definition of supremum and infimum for matchings. In this study we show that the quota restriction can be removed and replaced by a more general condition named cardinal monotonicity and all the structural properties derived in [3] still hold. In particular, although there are no exogenous quotas in the model there is endogenously a sort of quota; more precisely, each agent has the same number of partners in every stable matching. Stable matchings also have the polarity property (supremum with respect to one side is identical to infimum with respect to the other side) and a property we call complementarity

On preferences over subsets and the lattice structure of stable matchings

This paper studies the structure of stable multipartner matchings in two-sided markets where choice functions are quotafilling in the sense that they satisfy the substitutability axiom and, in addition, fill a quota whenever possible. It is shown that (i) the set of stable matchings is a lattice under the common revealed preference orderings of all agents on the same side, (ii) the supremum (infimum) operation of the lattice for each side consists componentwise of the join (meet) operation in the revealed preference ordering of the agents on that side, and (iii) the lattice has the polarity, distributivity, complementariness and full-quota properties

Pairing games and markets

Pairing Games or Markets studied here are the non-two-sided NTU generalization of assignment games. We show that the Equilibrium Set is nonempty, that it is the set of stable allocations or the set of semistable allocations, and that it has has several notable structural properties. We also introduce the solution concept of pseudostable allocations and show that they are in the Demand Bargaining Set. We give a dynamic Market Procedure that reaches the Equilibrium Set in a bounded number of steps. We use elementary tools of graph theory and a representation theorem obtained here

Economic Barriers to Democratization in MENA

The literature on regime change in the MENA region had claimed the occurrence of political liberalization and democratization during the 1990s, foreseeing a transition from the dominant authoritarianism in the region to politically more liberal regimes. These analyses neglect the state of permanent authoritarian political regimes with the centralized economic power and their role as periphery states in the world system. In this paper, we have reassessed the existing literature on regime change in the MENA region taking into account the economic and political impacts of rentier economies, with a close look at the countries in the region where popular uprisings took place to overthrow authoritarian leaders during the first half of 2011. We have followed Schlumberger's (2002) method of classification and comparative approach in order to pinpoint a correlation between the authoritarian regime's economic power based on resource allocation, its political dominance and the leaders' role in neo-liberal global political economy

Potential application of natural phenolic antimicrobials and edible film technology against bacterial plant pathogens

The aim of the present study is to use antimicrobial edible film technology and natural phenolic antimicrobials for inhibition of major bacterial plant pathogens such as Erwinia amylovora, Erwinia carotovora, Xanthomonas vesicatoria and Pseudomonas syringae. For this purpose phenolic acids (PAs) (gallic (GA), vanillic (VA), cinnamic acids (CA)), essential oils (EOs) (carvacrol (CAR), thymol (THY), eugenol (EUG) citral (CIT)), phenolic extracts (PEs) from clove (CE), oregano (OE), artichoke stem (ASE) and walnut shells (WSE) were evaluated as antimicrobial zein film components. Films containing PAs between 1 and 4 mg/cm2 inhibited all pathogens while EOs between 1 and 4 mg/cm2 and CE between 4 and 8 mg/cm2 inhibited pathogens except P. syringae. The most potent films were obtained by using GA against E. amylovora and P. syringae, VA against E. carotovora, and CA, THY or CAR against X. vesicatoria. The addition of phenolic compounds into films increased the porosity of films. The phenolic containing films also become more flexible and lost their brittleness. This study is important in that it prepared the basis of using edible antimicrobial coatings in outdoor applications on infected tree stems, soil surfaces and agronomy tools or in classical fruit and seedling coating applications to control bacterial contamination or spoilage

Prediction of Rebound Amount in Dry Mix Shotcrete by a Fast Adaboosting Neural Network

In this study, a new machine learning approach has been proposed to predict the rebound causing loss of material in shotcrete using the ensemble learning method. In shotcrete application, the amount of rebound material was obtained for use in a dataset. In this study, the shotcrete mixes that contain an additive of fly-ash, silica fume, and polypropylene fiber were produced besides simple shotcrete. Each mix was sprayed onto 2 wooden panels measuring 45 × 45 × 15 cm in size. The rebound material resulting from the spraying process was collected, weighed and recorded as data. The highest rebound was observed for the plain sample and the lowest for samples with substituted silica fume. Dependent and independent parameters were identified in the dataset produced as a result of experimental studies. Hyperparameters producing optimum results in the training of the model were identified for the model and boosting method. The dataset was split into training and testing sets by 80% and 20%, respectively. As a result, the model achieved a prediction performance of 84.25%. To test the performance of the proposed model, traditional machine learning algorithms were compared on the same dataset. Consequently, the proposed model was observed to have the highest accuracy

Activities of Teşkilat-ı Mahsusa in Caucasia and Turkestan (1913-1918)

Görev alanı itibariyle büyük devletlerin gizli servisleriyle mücadele etmiş ve birçok operasyonu, Türk milletinin menfaati gereği başarıyla gerçekleştirmiş Teşkilat-ı Mahsusa’nın resmi kuruluşu, Enver Paşa'nın çabaları sonucu I. Dünya Savaşı öncesidir. Teşkilatta görev alanların çoğu istihbarat sahasında uzman kadrolardı. Bu çalışmada, Teşkilat-ı Mahsusa tarafından Kafkasya ve Türkistan’da yürütülen istihbarat, istihbarata karşı koyma, propaganda, gayr-i nizami harp, düzenli harbe katılım (bu durum sadece Kafkasya Cephesi için geçerlidir) sağlama, eğitim ve kültürel çalışmalar değerlendirilmektedir. Teşkilat, koordineli olarak bu faaliyetlerini Kafkasya ve Türkistan coğrafyalarında Türkler ve diğer Müslüman halklar için sürdürerek en azından onların haklarını savunmaya çalışan teşkilatlanmalara gitti. Teşkilat-ı Mahsusa, Kafkasya Cephesi’nde düşman mevzi ve hatlarına yönelik stratejik-askeri bilgilerin istihbarati faaliyet olarak ele geçirilmesi, Sarıkamış ve Bakü askeri harekâtlarına katılım, Azerbaycan’ın bağımsızlığı, İran’daki aşiretlerle kurulan temas, 1916 Batı Türkistan ayaklanmasına katılım ve koordinasyonu sağlama çalışmaları, Doğu Türkistan’daki mektep ve cemiyetlerin teşkilinden Türk savaş esirlerine yardım ve kurtarma çalışmalarına kadar birçok faaliyette üzerine düşen görevi harp yıllarının zor şartlarında layığı ile yerine getirdi. Bu açıdan Türkçülük siyasetiyle Turan şuurunun nasıl parladığını görmemiz, Enver Paşa ve yakınındakiler dışında özellikle Türkistan coğrafyasında ve Kafkasya’da görev alan teşkilat mensuplarınca bizzat sahada gerçekleşti.The official establishing of Teşkilat-ı Mahsusa which operated successfully regarding the benefits of Turkish nation and fought against the secret services of great nations regarding its mission was before the First World War because of the efforts of Enver Pasha. Most of the people who worked for the agency were experts in intelligence. In this study, intelligence gathered by Teşkilat-ı Mahsusa in Caucasia and Turkestan, resisting intelligence, propaganda, informal battle, maintaining attendance to formal battle (valid only for Caucasian Front), education and cultural studies are investigated. The agency coordinated its activities as different agencies trying to defend the rights of Turks and other Muslim people living in the lands of Caucasia and Turkestan. During difficult conditions in the years of war, Teşkilat-ı Mahsusa performed successfully many activities such as gathering strategic military intelligence about hostile locations and lines in Caucasian Front, participating military operations in Sarikamış and Baku, the independence of Azerbaijan, contacting tribes in Iran, participating and coordinating the revolt in Western Turkestan in 1916, establishing schools and societies in Eastern Turkestan, helping and rescuing Turkish war prisoners. Rising of Turan consciousness with Turkism policy was carried out by the members of the agency who were on duty in Turkestan and Caucasia besides Enver Pasha and his comrades

Pairwise sequence alignment with block and character edit operations

Pairwise sequence comparison is one of the most fundamental problems in string processing. The most common metric to quantify the similarity between sequences S and T is edit distance, d(S,T), which corresponds to the number of characters that need to be substituted, deleted from, or inserted into S to generate T. However, fewer edit operations may be sufficient for some string pairs to transform one string to the other if larger rearrangements are permitted. Block edit distance refers to such changes in substring level (i.e., blocks) that "penalizes" entire block removals, insertions, copies, and reversals with the same cost as single-character edits (Lopresti & Tomkins, 1997). Most studies to calculate block edit distance to date aimed only to characterize the distance itself for applications in sequence nearest neighbor search without reporting the full alignment details. Although a few tools try to solve block edit distance for genomic sequences, such as GR-Aligner, they have limited functionality and are no longer maintained. Here, we present SABER, an algorithm to solve block edit distance that supports block deletions, block moves, and block reversals in addition to the classical single-character edit operations. Our algorithm runs in O(m^2.n.l_range) time for |S|=m, |T|=n and the permitted block size range of l_range; and can report all breakpoints for the block operations. We also provide an implementation of SABER currently optimized for genomic sequences (i.e., generated by the DNA alphabet), although the algorithm can theoretically be used for any alphabet. SABER is available at http://github.com/BilkentCompGen/sabe

Ottoman Masonry Bridges in Anatolia and the Balkans

Remains of the historical masonry bridges in Anatolia and the Balkans are dated back to the Roman (first half of the I. Millenium AD), to the Seldjukide (early centuries of the II. Millenium AD; basically in Anatolia), and to the Ottoman periods (13th to 19th centuries). Besides serving to transportation, bridges crossing watercourses have to be considered as important hydraulic structures. Built for military as well as economic purposes, more than one hundred Ottoman bridges (roughly two thirds in Anatolia and one third in the Balkans) served for several centuries; some of them being still in operation. They are silent witnesses of the hydraulic knowledge and solid construction technology of their times. In this inventory study, only Ottoman's masonry bridges in Anatolia and Balkans have been presented. Some of the Ottoman's masonry bridges had sunken in the reservoir of modern dams, some of them demolished during the construction of the new highways, and some of them are still in service