Deprivation Analysis in Declining Inner City Residential Areas: A Case Study From Izmir, Turkey.

The aim of this paper is to examine the inner city decline in Turkey, by drawing on a field research, which was conducted in Izmir, Tuzcu District, in 2005. The paper places the inner city decline within the context of uneven development. Although inner city decline backgrounded by uneven and dual structure is very common for all capitalist cities in developed countries, this phenomenon incarnated as segregated and neglected areas, which become both socially and spatially declining parts of the city, is relatively new for Turkey. In order to explore this phenomenon in Turkey and to compare it to those in other countries, we had to consider the level and nature of segregation and deprivation indicators that have already been developed by the existing works elaborating on inner city decline. One of the mostly used tools for examining the declining inner-city residential areas is “deprivation index†formed by Townsend in 1990s. The general deprivation index comprises two fundamental sections: social deprivation and material deprivation. Social deprivation includes the indicators such as employment, family activity, integration, participation to social institutions, recreation, and education. Material deprivation consists of the indicators such as dietary, clothing, housing, home facilities, environment, location, and working conditions. The analysis of the data coming from 2005 field survey in the Tuzcu district of Izmir showed that some indicators such as poverty, unemployment, decline of physical environment, disinvestments and economic decline arise as having similar features with developed countries, and that segregation is visible when our research area, Tuzcu district, is compared to other parts of Izmir. However, regarding segregation within the district itself, it is not so acceptable feature. Moreover, findings of the survey indicated that segregation in Tuzcu District, as being different from the developed countries, is fundamentally defined by class or income structure, rather than ethnic or regional origins.

Transformation of place identity; a case of heritage and conflict in Iraq

Throughout history, war and conflict have caused fundamental political, economic, and social transformations around the world, spatially impacting urban form. Nowhere is this more evident than in cities with distinctive identity and a rich historical landscape. Erbil, the capital of the Kurdish region and the forth-largest urban area in Iraq is such a city. Increased political and economic stability after the 2003 invasion of the country has led to a period of reconstruction as a part of the recovery process from decades of war. This has attracted an array of urban actors including international investors and NGOs that have influenced the transformation of Erbil’s place identity. The city’s citadel, a UNESCO’s World Heritage Site, dates back to nearly 5000 B.C. and is thought to be one of the world’s oldest continuously inhabited settlements, which has gone through layers of different civilisations. It now stands as a symbol of Kurdish history and identity. The study focuses on the transformation of Erbil’s historic identity through urban form during the reconstruction process of a post-war city through a morphological analysis of the city’s historic core and contemporary urban areas. As government and policy-making system are trying to globally promote the city as the heart of the emerging Kurdish Nation, key informant interviews with local residents, policy makers, and stakeholders were used to explore the intensive urban development and recovery process. The resulting analysis of Erbil’s urban form has shown that post-war urban transformation has strong negative impact on place-identity. Therefore the study highlights the need for a resilient approach for cities to respond and recover from war and conflict. An approach that guides the development process in a way that allows for the evolution of place-identity to be rooted in history but open to future possibilities and modernisation

Numerical and experimental investigation of deformation and strength properties of lithophysae -rich tuff and analog materials

Portions of the high-level nuclear waste repository in Yucca Mountain will be located in lithophysae-rich tuff formations. Understanding the mechanical properties of the lithophysae-rich tuff, including deformation modulus, deformation ratio and compressive strength, is an important issue for design and the performance of the repository tunnels. These properties are expected to be significantly affected by lithophysal porosity; Two different research directions are implemented in this dissertation. First, uniaxial compression testing is simulated using finite difference technique on models containing circular holes in order to investigate the effect of porosity on deformation parameters. Numerical results are compared with biaxial test results of urethane specimens containing circular tubes to verify the numerical analysis results; Second, an experimental program that consists of uniaxial compression tests on analog models and tuff is conducted. Two different configurations are implemented to model porosity using gypsum plaster as an analog material. In the first configuration analog models containing uniformly and randomly distributed open ended cylindrical tubes are produced. In the second configuration spherical cavities are introduced into the analog models. Both models are tested under uniaxial compression and their deformation moduli and compressive strength are compared with lithophysae-rich tuff specimens that are obtained from outcrops of lithophysal tuff units; Numerical modeling and testing are combined to assess that the deformation modulus of tuff where the porosity has a vital effect on mechanical behavior of the rock. Both numerical analysis and uniaxial testing on analog materials show that in deformation modulus exponentially decrease with increasing porosity. The deformation moduli and compressive strength of gypsum plaster specimens containing open ended cylindrical tubes are slightly lower than those containing spherical cavities due to confinement effects; The deformation moduli and compressive strengths of the tuff specimens fall between the values determined for the plaster specimens with two different porosity configuration. Distribution of data for both analog and tuff specimens is very similar at low porosities. At higher porosities, a greater decrease in deformation modulus is observed in tuff due to larger and nonspherical cavities indicating that shape of the cavities is a factor affecting the modulus

A tree-based approach for English-to-Turkish translation

In this paper, we present our English-to-Turkish translation methodology, which adopts a tree-based approach. Our approach relies on tree analysis and the application of structural modification rules to get the target side (Turkish) trees from source side (English) ones. We also use morphological analysis to get candidate root words and apply tree-based rules to obtain the agglutinated target words. Compared to earlier work on English-to-Turkish translation using phrase-based models, we have been able to obtain higher BLEU scores in our current study. Our syntactic subtree permutation strategy, combined with a word replacement algorithm, provides a 67% relative improvement from a baseline 12.8 to 21.4 BLEU, all averaged over 10-fold cross-validation. As future work, improvements in choosing the correct senses and structural rules are needed.This work was supported by TUBITAK project 116E104Publisher's Versio

An open, extendible, and fast Turkish morphological analyzer

In this paper, we present a two-level morphological analyzer for Turkish which consists of five main components: finite state transducer, rule engine for suffixation, lexicon, trie data structure, and LRU cache. We use Java language to implement finite state machine logic and rule engine, Xml language to describe the finite state transducer rules of the Turkish language, which makes the morphological analyzer both easily extendible and easily applicable to other languages. Empowered with a comprehensive lexicon of 54,000 bare-forms including 19,000 proper nouns, our morphological analyzer is amongst the most reliable analyzers produced so far. The analyzer is compared with Turkish morphological analyzers in the literature. By using LRU cache and a trie data structure, the system can analyze 100,000 words per second, which enables users to analyze huge corpora in a few hours.Publisher's Versio

Memantine Improves Attentional Processes in Fragile X-Associated Tremor/Ataxia Syndrome: Electrophysiological Evidence from a Randomized Controlled Trial.

Progressive cognitive deficits are common in patients with fragile X-associated tremor/ataxia syndrome (FXTAS), with no targeted treatment yet established. In this substudy of the first randomized controlled trial for FXTAS, we examined the effects of NMDA antagonist memantine on attention and working memory. Data were analyzed for patients (24 in each arm) who completed both the primary memantine trial and two EEG recordings (at baseline and follow-up) using an auditory "oddball" task. Results demonstrated significantly improved attention/working memory performance after one year only for the memantine group. The event-related potential P2 amplitude elicited by non-targets was significantly enhanced in the treated group, indicating memantine-associated improvement in attentional processes at the stimulus identification/discrimination level. P2 amplitude increase was positively correlated with improvement on the behavioral measure of attention/working memory during target detection. Analysis also revealed that memantine treatment normalized the P2 habituation effect at the follow-up visit. These findings indicate that memantine may benefit attentional processes that represent fundamental components of executive function/dysfunction, thought to comprise the core cognitive deficit in FXTAS. The results provide evidence of target engagement of memantine, as well as therapeutically relevant information that could further the development of specific cognitive or disease-modifying therapies for FXTAS

Evaluation of the Corrosion Resistance of Different Types of Orthodontic Fixed Retention Appliances: A Preliminary Laboratory Study

(i) Objective: The present study aimed to compare the electrochemical corrosion resistance of six different types of fixed lingual retainer wires used as fixed retention appliances in an in vitro study. (ii) Methods: In the study, two different Ringer solutions, with pH 7 and pH 3.5, were used. Six groups were formed with five retainer wires in each group. In addition, 3-braided stainless steel, 6-braided stainless steel, Titanium Grade 1, Titanium Grade 5, Gold, and Dead Soft retainer wires were used. The corrosion current density (i(corr)), corrosion rate (CR), and polarization resistance (R-p) were determined from the Tafel polarization curves. (iii) Results: The corrosion current density of the Gold retainer group was statistically higher than the other retainer groups in both solutions (p < 0.05). The corrosion rate of the Dead Soft retainer group was statistically higher than the other retainer groups in both solutions (p < 0.05). The polarization resistance of the Titanium Grade 5 retainer group was statistically higher than the other retainer groups in both solutions (p < 0.05). As a result of Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) images, pitting corrosion was not observed in the Titanium Grade 1, Titanium Grade 5 and Gold retainer groups, while pitting corrosion was observed in the other groups. (iv) Conclusion: From a corrosion perspective, although the study needs to be evaluated in vivo, the Titanium Grade 5 retainer group included is in this in vitro study may be more suitable for clinical use due to its high electrochemical corrosion resistance and the lack of pitting corrosion observed in the SEM images

Athetis hospes (Freyer, 1831) Nyugat-Magyarországon (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae)

One specimen of the Western Palaearctic, mediterranean distributed species Athetis hospes (Freyer, 1831) was captured by a light trap in Oszkó, Western Hungary, on 6th of October, 2018. It is a new record for the Hungarian fauna. The species is spreading most likely from the Croatian and Slovenian seashore. Because of climate change and temperature rise, its presence is possible in other parts of Hungary, but stable population is highly questionable