Cross Cultural Pragmatics: A Study of Apology Speech Acts by Turkish speakers, American English Speakers and Advance Nonnative Speakers of English in Turkey

The study aims to identify and compare apology strategies used in Turkish, American English, and advanced non-native speakers of English in Turkey. In order to identify and compare the norms of apologizing in Turkish, English, and non-native English speakers in Turkey, apologies given to the same situations from these three different groups of participants were analyzed. The results from the Native Speakers of Turkish (NST) and Native Speakers of English (NSE) groups were used to identify the norms of apologies in these languages. Then, NNSE participants\u27 responses were compared to the norms to be able to identify transfers from L1 to L2. Data were collected via a discourse completion test (DCT) from 29 native speakers of English, 30 native speakers of Turkish, and 15 nonnative speakers of English in Turkey. The DCT was administered in Turkish for the NST participants and in English for the NNSE and NSE participants. Results of the study revealed that advanced nonnative speakers showed similarities in their apologies in terms of general strategies, although in their modification of strategies they showed usage of L1 forms

QoE-based mobility-aware collaborative video streaming on the edge of 5G

Today's Internet traffic is dominated by video streaming applications transmitted through wireless/cellular interfaces of mobile devices. Although ultrahigh-definition videos are now easily transmitted through mobile devices, video quality level that users perceive is generally lower than expected due to distance-based high latency between sources and end-users. Mobile edge computing (MEC) paradigm is expected to address this issue and provide users with higher perceived quality of experience (QoE) for latency-critical applications, deploying MEC servers at edges. However, due to capacity concerns on MEC servers, a more comprehensive approach is needed to meet users' expectations applying all possible operations over the resources such as caching, prefetching, and task offloading policies depending on the data repetition or memory/CPU utilization. To address these issues, this article proposes a novel collaborative QoE-based mobility-aware video streaming scheme deployed at MEC servers. Throughout the article, we demonstrate how the proposed scheme can be implemented so as to preserve the desired QoE level per user during entire video sessions. Performance of the proposed scheme has been investigated by extensive simulations. In comparison to existing schemes, the results illustrate that high efficiency is achieved through collaboration among MEC servers, utilizing explicit window size adaptation, collaborative prefetching, and handover among the edges

Energy-Optimal Scheduling in Low Duty Cycle Sensor Networks

Energy consumption of a wireless sensor node mainly depends on the amount of time the node spends in each of the high power active (e.g., transmit, receive) and low power sleep modes. It has been well established that in order to prolong node's lifetime the duty-cycle of the node should be low. However, low power sleep modes usually have low current draw but high energy cost while switching to the active mode with a higher current draw. In this work, we investigate a MaxWeightlike opportunistic sleep-active scheduling algorithm that takes into account time- varying channel and traffic conditions. We show that our algorithm is energy optimal in the sense that the proposed ESS algorithm can achieve an energy consumption which is arbitrarily close to the global minimum solution. Simulation studies are provided to confirm the theoretical results

Characterization and conceptualization of a relict Karst aquifer (Bilecik, Turkey)

The carbonate rocks in Turkey have different hydrogeological properties as a result of controlling karstification factors, such as lithostratigraphy, source of energy gradient, tectonic activity, type of erosion base, fluctuation in sea level, and climate change in their extended areas. This study was undertaken for the characterization and conceptualization of the hydrogeological behavior of a unique example of the dissected relict karst aquifer, which is known as the Harmanköy-Beyyayla Karst System (HBKS) in Central Turkey. In order to obtain the conceptualization of the HBKS, properties of recharge, flow, storage, and discharge was analyzed. The contribution of allogenic-point recharge to the Beyyayla and Döşkaya aquifers occurs from the Beyyayla and Tozman sinkhole with approximately 85% of total recharge. The rest of the recharge takes place as autogenic-diffuse/point type from the limestone rock-mass. The recharge on the Nardın aquifer originates from direct precipitation onto the limestone area mainly as autogenic-diffuse and, to lesser extent, as autogenic-point. Groundwater flow occurs as conduit flow at the Beyyayla and Döşkaya aquifers and as dispersed flow at the Nardın aquifer. The evaluation of all parameters shows that the HBKS can be divided into three distinct sub-catchments, namely, the Beyyayla, Döşkaya, and Nardın, while it has two different hydrogeological system so Beyyayla and Döşkaya have similar characteristics

A honeybees-inspired heuristic algorithm for numerical optimisation

© 2019, The Author(s). Swarm intelligence is all about developing collective behaviours to solve complex, ill-structured and large-scale problems. Efficiency in collective behaviours depends on how to harmonise the individual contributors so that a complementary collective effort can be achieved to offer a useful solution. The main points in organising the harmony remain as managing the diversification and intensification actions appropriately, where the efficiency of collective behaviours depends on blending these two actions appropriately. In this paper, a hybrid bee algorithm is presented, which harmonises bee operators of two mainstream well-known swarm intelligence algorithms inspired of natural honeybee colonies. The parent algorithms have been overviewed with many respects, strengths and weaknesses are identified, first, and the hybrid version has been proposed, next. The efficiency of the hybrid algorithm is demonstrated in comparison with the parent algorithms in solving two types of numerical optimisation problems; (1) a set of well-known functional optimisation benchmark problems and (2) optimising the weights of a set of artificial neural network models trained for medical classification benchmark problems. The experimental results demonstrate the outperforming success of the proposed hybrid algorithm in comparison with two original/parent bee algorithms in solving both types of numerical optimisation benchmarks

The assessment of cardiac autonomic functions in adolescents with a family history of premature atherosclerosis

OBJECTIVES: Subclinical atherosclerosis has been recently detected in adolescents with a family history of premature atherosclerosis. However, no studies in the literature have assessed the cardiac autonomic functions of these adolescents. The aim of this study was to evaluate the cardiac autonomic functions of adolescents with a family history of premature atherosclerosis compared with those of age- and gender-matched adolescents without a family history of atherosclerosis. METHOD: We evaluated the cardiac autonomic functions of 36 adolescents with a family history of premature atherosclerosis (Group 1) and compared them with those of 31 age- and gender-matched adolescents whose parents did not have premature atherosclerosis (Group 2). Twenty-four-hour time domain (standard deviation of all normal sinus RR intervals [SDNN], standard deviation of the mean of normal RR intervals in each 5-minute segment [SDANN], root-mean-square differences in successive RR intervals) and frequency domain (very low frequency, low frequency, high frequency, low frequency/high frequency) parameters of heart rate variability were used for the evaluation of cardiac autonomic functions. RESULTS: There were no differences in the time and frequency domain parameters of heart rate variability between the two groups. Heart rate was negatively correlated with SDNN (r = -0.278, p = 0.035), while age was significantly correlated with root-mean-square differences in successive RR intervals, high frequency, low frequency and low frequency/high frequency (r = -0.264, -0.370, 0.265 and 0.374, respectively;

New codend designs to improve the size selectivity of fyke net for narrow-clawed crayfish (Pontastacus leptodactylus)

The narrow-clawed crayfish (Pontastacus leptodactylus) is one of the most ecologically and economically important freshwater species in Turkey. However, the harvest of this species has declined from 7937 t in 1984 to 696 t in 2019. One of primary reasons for this decrease in stock is the use of fishing gears with poor size selectivity. In this study, new codend designs were investigated to improve the size selectivity of fyke nets for P. leptodactylus. Seven codends of three different designs were tested: (1) a commercially used standard codend with 34 mm mesh size (Com34); (2) sorting grids with 20 (SG20), 25 (SG25) and 30 mm (SG30) bar spacing attached to the last circle of the net; and (3) a stiff rigged net, the last part of the fyke nets (codend) with 34 (SRN34), 42 (SRN42) and 50 mm (SRN50) mesh size. The average length at 50% retention probability (L50) and selection range (SR) (L75–L25) values of Com34 were 9.4 cm and 3.1 cm, respectively. For the SG20, SG25 and SG30 grids, the L50 values were 11.3 cm, 11.6 cm and 12.0 cm, while the SR values were 1.4 cm, 1.3 cm and 0.6 cm, respectively. For the SRN34, SRN42 and SRN50 codends, the L50 values were 10.9 cm, 11.6 cm and 11.6 cm, while the SR values were 2.1 cm, 2.1cm and 1.1 cm, respectively. Overall, the commercial codend resulted in lower L50 values when the minimum conservation reference length of 10 cm was considered. However, all tested new codend designs showed improved selectivity compared with the standard, with optimum results obtained with SG20. SG20 grid decreased discarding by 15.7% compared to the classic commercial fyke net; thus, this is a very important result for the sustainability of natural P. leptodactylus stocks.publishedVersio