Three-factor asset pricing model and portfolio holdings of foreign investors: evidence from an emerging market – Borsa Istanbul

This article contributes to the asset pricing literature by offering an alternative missing factor: the excess holdings of foreign investors. To incorporate this factor, we mimic the portfolio of foreign investors in Borsa Istanbul (BIST) with respect to portfolio preferences (foreign ownership) using the Fama and French’s three-factor model. Our findings suggest that market factor, size, and book-to-market (B/M) variables are still statistically significant and Jensen’s alpha is still not significant, and we obtain a statistically significant negative relationship between the excess return of foreign investors’ ownership and the return variation of a given portfolio

Effects of the Experiment Conditions on the Nerve Action Potential: A Model Study

Like electrical wires, neurons were recognized to convey information from one part of the body to another in the form of electricity. Due to its electrical nature, this transmission is very much dependent on the ions around their membranes. As in the case of all electrical messages of the nervous system, the action potential is a membrane potential change caused by the flow of ions through ionic channels in the membrane. With the help of the action potential simulation we test the effect of extracellular ion concentrations on the myelinated single nerve fiber action potential. Tests were designed to mimic the hypo/hyperkalemic and hypo/hypernatremic conditions. Our simulation results have shown that sodium ion channel conductivity is much more susceptible to the changes in the extracellular ion concentrations. Due to more susceptible nature of the sodium channel conductivity –with respect to potassium-, hypo/hyperkalemic conditions are much more dangerous for patients at least for neuronal conduction

Comparison of Survival Rates, Tumor Stages, and Localization in between Obese and Nonobese Patients with Gastric Cancer

Purpose. In this study we tried to determine the association between body-mass index (BMI), survival rate, and the stage of tumor at the time of diagnosis in patients with gastric cancer. Methods. A total of 270 gastric cancer patients’ hospital records were retrospectively evaluated. Patients were grouped according to their BMI at the time of tumor diagnosis. Tumor stages at admission were compared according to their BMI values. Results. There were no differences in OS among BMI subgroups (p=0.230). The percent of patients with stage III tumor was significantly higher in nonobese while the percent of stage IV tumor was surprisingly higher in obese patients (p was 0.011 and 0.004, resp.). Percent of patients who did not have any surgical intervention was significantly lower in overweight and obese patients than normal and/or underweight patients. Conclusions. At the time of diagnosis, obese patients had significantly higher percent of stage IV tumor than nonobese patients. Despite of that, there were no differences in survival rates among BMI subgroups. Our study results are consistent with “obesity paradox” in gastric cancer patients. We also did not find any relationship between BMI and localization of gastric tumor

The genetic structure of the Turkish population reveals high levels of variation and admixture

The construction of population-based variomes has contributed substantially to our understanding of the genetic basis of human inherited disease. Here, we investigated the genetic structure of Turkey from 3,362 unrelated subjects whose whole exomes (n = 2,589) or whole genomes (n = 773) were sequenced to generate a Turkish (TR) Variome that should serve to facilitate disease gene discovery in Turkey. Consistent with the history of present-day Turkey as a crossroads between Europe and Asia, we found extensive admixture between Balkan, Caucasus, Middle Eastern, and European populations with a closer genetic relationship of the TR population to Europeans than hitherto appreciated. We determined that 50% of TR individuals had high inbreeding coefficients (≥0.0156) with runs of homozygosity longer than 4 Mb being found exclusively in the TR population when compared to 1000 Genomes Project populations. We also found that 28% of exome and 49% of genome variants in the very rare range (allele frequency < 0.005) are unique to the modern TR population. We annotated these variants based on their functional consequences to establish a TR Variome containing alleles of potential medical relevance, a repository of homozygous loss-of-function variants and a TR reference panel for genotype imputation using high-quality haplotypes, to facilitate genome-wide association studies. In addition to providing information on the genetic structure of the modern TR population, these data provide an invaluable resource for future studies to identify variants that are associated with specific phenotypes as well as establishing the phenotypic consequences of mutations in specific genes

Agronomic and Morphological Characterization of Kirsehir Local Green Long Pepper (Capsicum annuum L. var. longum) Populations

WOS: 000467877800006In this study conducted in 2014 and 2015, genotypes were collected from the center and villages of Kirsehir province. Overall, 99 green long pepper genotypes within 313 pepper genotypes were characterized from the emerging of seedling to the end of the vegetation period, in terms of 48 agronomic and morphological characteristics based on IPGRI's description list for pepper and the UPOV criteria. The minimum, maximum, mean values and frequency percentages of the studied characters were determined. In order to determine the relationship between populations, cluster and principal component analysis were applied. As a result of the principal component analysis, total 17 main component axes were obtained and these axes represented 75.82% of the total variance. Genotypes were categorized into 15 groups in dendrogram according to morphological and agronomic characteristics. As a result of cluster analysis; S1, S2, S62, S3, S9, S67 and TR69737 coded genotypes were determined to be the most distant genotypes in terms of agronomic and morphological degree of relation. Up to now, with no similar study has been done before, the genetic variation in pepper populations determined by the identification of green long pepper genotypes of Kirsehir province will provide significant advantages in future pepper breeding studies

Primary Cutaneous Angiosarcoma on the Nose in a Patient with Multiple Nonmelanoma Skin Cancers

Cutaneous angiosarcoma is an uncommon, potentially metastatic and highly aggressive vascular tumor that may arise as de novo or be associated with previous radiotherapy. A 70-year-old female with a solitary lesion on the nose was initially diagnosed as actinic keratosis. However, when the recurring lesion at the same region within 6 months was reexcised, the histological diagnosis was definitively established as well-differentiated angiosarcoma. This case was presented in order to increase awareness of this rare malignancy in an uncommon localisation, especially in the light of pathological findings. Moreover, occurrence of cutaneous angiosarcoma within a short period following a previous excision in a patient with a history of multiple nonmelanoma skin cancers was interestingly pointed out.  Keywords: angiosarcoma; face; nonmelanoma skin cancers.  

Primary Cutaneous Angiosarcoma on the Nose in a Patient with Multiple Nonmelanoma Skin Cancers

Cutaneous angiosarcoma is an uncommon, potentially metastatic and highly aggressive vascular tumor that may arise as de novo or be associated with previous radiotherapy. A 70-year-old female with a solitary lesion on the nose was initially diagnosed as actinic keratosis. However, when the recurring lesion at the same region within 6 months was reexcised, the histological diagnosis was definitively established as well-differentiated angiosarcoma. This case was presented in order to increase awareness of this rare malignancy in an uncommon localisation, especially in the light of pathological findings. Moreover, occurrence of cutaneous angiosarcoma within a short period following a previous excision in a patient with a history of multiple nonmelanoma skin cancers was interestingly pointed out. &#13; Keywords: angiosarcoma; face; nonmelanoma skin cancers. &#13; &#13

Inflation uncertainty and interest rates: is the Fisher relation universal?

This paper tests the validity of the Fisher hypothesis, which establishes a positive relation between interest rates and expected inflation, for the G7 countries and 45 developing economies. For this purpose, we estimate a version of the GARCH specification of the hypothesis for all countries included in the sample. We also test the augmented Fisher relation by including the inflation uncertainty in the equation. The simple Fisher relation holds in all G7 countries but in only 23 developing countries. There is a positive and statistically significant relationship between interest rates and inflation uncertainty for six of the G7 and 18 of the developing countries and this relationship is negative for seven developing countries.