Regulating access to the fiber in Turkey: Would regulatory holiday be a tool to increase the investment of operators?

In this paper, regulatory policies and their effects on NGA investment are analysed through a categorisation of four-part: (i) conventional (e.g., copper-based) type regulation, (ii) no imposition of mandatory access, (iii) regulatory holiday, (iv) deregulation. While EU's regulatory policy towards NGA networks originally was denoting somewhere between the first two options, the recent developments refashion an approach near the first. While US experience clearly exhibits deregulation under the fourth category, Turkey's NGA policy repsesents an approach near the third yet marking a difference with the regulatory steps taken recently. This study first elaborates Turkish experience, then deepens EU regulatory approach from the beginning to the its current NGA strategy under the recommended principles and Commission's decisional practice. Throughout the discussion, the interplay beween copper based regulations, e.g., LLU prices and the NGA investments are delved into with factual analysis along with the market behaviours. At last, it is found that conventional regulatory approach has hazardopus effects over NGA investment, and needs to be overhauled in view of some tools that could be gained from Turkish experience, e.g., protecting first-mover advantages from regulation along with ascertained rules of level playing field. Last but not the least, rather than US based deregulation, a controlled regulatory holiday would rather be an appropriate option given the need for regulatory predictability and the hazards of conventional regulatory approach in an emerging NGA environment

Effect of varying recovery duration on postactivation potentiation of explosive jump and short sprint in elite young soccer players

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of postactivation potentiation (PAP) on vertical jump and sprint performances with different recovery durations. Twelve elite young soccer players (average age: 17.0 ± 0.6 years; body mass: 67.0 ± 5.4 kg; height: 175.0 ± 3.5 cm) voluntarily performed countermovement jump (CMJ) and 30-m sprints (with 10-m split times) under unloaded and 4 different recovery duration conditions (R1: 1 minute, R2: 2 minutes, R3: 3 minutes, and R4: 4 minutes) after a set of 3 repetitions of half-squat exercises at 90% of 1-repetition maximum. Electromyographic assessments of both limbs' vastus lateralis (VL) and semitendinosus (ST) muscle activity were also made during the tests. Vertical jump height, sprint time, and VL and ST muscle activity root mean square (RMS) values were analyzed. The results show that players demonstrated significantly better CMJ, 10-, and 30-m sprint performances in the R4 condition compared with the unloaded condition (p < 0.05). The players also showed significantly higher RMS values for VL and ST muscle activity in the CMJ and 30-m test performances for both legs in the R4 condition compared with the unloaded, R1, R2, and R3 conditions (p < 0.05). According to these results, if sports scientists and coaches desire to increase the PAP effect after heavy resistance training, 4 minutes of recovery time instead of 1, 2, or 3 minutes for CMJ, 10-, and 30-m sprint performances is recommended

The effect of Bosentan on healing of colonic anastomosis

BACKGROUND: Ischemia is the most important factor compromises wound healing in colonic anastomosis. Mesenteric vessels are ligated at first while performing colonic resection and following anastomosis. Therefore blood supply of the related segments of colon temporarily interrupted and ischemia can easily occur. This study was carried out to explore whether Bosentan, an endothelin-receptor antagonist, can eliminate vasoconstruction, increase blood flow in the splanchnic area and anastomotic region and therefore possibly facilitate wound healing and prevent intra-abdominal adhesion formation. METODS: Study is conducted on 30 female Wistar-Albino rats weighing 180–240 gr. Rats were allocated into three groups. Group 1 (n = 10) recevied full-thickness resection of the left colon and end-to-end anastomosis. In Groups 2 (n = 10) and 3 (n = 10), vessels of 2–3 cm segment of the left colon were ligated, indications of necrosis of that segment were expected, followed by resection and end-to-end anastomosis. Two milliliter of saline and 5 mg/kg Bosentan was given intraperitoneally in Group 2 and 3, respectively. On postoperativ day 6, intra-abdominal adhesions were scored. Healing of anastomosis, anastomotic bursting pressures, tissue hydroxyproline levels and histopatologically healing scores were assessed. RESULTS: Macroscopic adhesion score in Group 3 was lower than the remained groups (p < 0.05). Tissue hydroxyproline levels were significantly higher in Group 3 compared to the Groups 1 and 2 (p < 0.001). Mean anastomotic bursting pressures were 200 mmHg, 164 mmHg and 240 mmHg in Groups 1, 2 an 3, respectively (p < 0.05 between Groups 1 and 3; p < 0.001 between Groups 2 and 3). Histopathologically, healing scores of Group 1 were significantly higher than the other groups (p < 0.05 group 1–3, group 2–3). CONCLUSION: Bosentan increases anastomotic healing of ischemic colonic anastomosis and decreases intra-abdominal adhesion formation

Current Application Fields of ELECTRE and PROMETHEE: A Literature Review

Multi-criteria decision making techniques are widely used today. In this study, it was examined the current usage areas of ELECTRE and PROMETHEE, which are in the class of outranking-based multiple criteria decision techniques, in Turkey and the world. In this regard, the studies carried out in 2016 and the first four months of 2017 were scanned with the help of Google Scholar. Thus, it is aimed to put forward the latest state of development of ELECTRE and PROMETHEE, and to give an idea about their future application forms and fields. As a result, it was seen that application problems of ELECTRE and PROMETHEE in various fields was tried to remove, and designed appropriate methods for special cases in studies. Furthermore, evaluation according to scenario variations, solving complex decision problems with metaheuristics, common usage of hesitant fuzzy implementations, proliferation of group decision preference, increasing the number of applications of hybrid techniques, used softwares, sensitivity analyses, two linguistic approaches taking an important place in fuzzification have been identified as remarkable results

High-concentration compact agar gels from hydrothermal synthesis

3 páginas, 2 figuras, 1 tabla.-- et al.A simple hydrothermal method has been used to prepare for the first time high-concentration, microstructurally compact agar hydrogels (3–30 g agar per 100 ml H2O). These gels reach concentrations unachievable by conventional methods and overcome problems normally associated to them. They feature superior homogeneity, modified and controllable porosity, increased densities and higher strength, thus widening possible applications of this widely used biocompatible polysaccharide.Partial funding from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (MICINN) (CTQ2008-06779-C02-01).Peer reviewe

Investigation of the external and internal training loads in soccer players

Amaç: Antrenman yükü kavramı son dönemlerde yaygın şekilde kullanılan kavramların başında gelmektedir. Bu kavram sporcuların maruz kaldığı dış yüklerin (kat edilen mesafe, şut ya da atış sayısı v.b) sporcularda yarattığı iç yükler (fizyolojik cevaplar) olarak bilinmektedir. Bu çalışma, Antrenmanda elde edilen algılanan zorluk derecesi (AAZD) değerleri ile farklı hızlarda kat edilen mesafe değerleri arasındaki ilişkilerin belirlenmesi amacı ile yapılmıştır. Yöntem: Bu çalışmaya Türkiye Birinci liginde oynayan 11 (yaş = 22,7 ± 2,3; boy= 177,6±7,1; 65± 8 ) profesyonel futbolcu gönüllü olarak katılmıştır. Sporcuların kuvvet antrenmanı dışında tüm saha antrenmanlarında GPsport (Cambera) cihazı ile yük takipleri yapılmıştır. Sezon başında gerçekleştirilen iki ayrı kamp sürecinde toplam 16 antrenmandan veri alınmıştır. Çalışmada kalecilere yer verilmezken, dört savunma, 5 orta saha ve 2 hücum oyuncusu dahil edilmiştir. Bu takipte sporcuların değişik hızarda kat ettikleri mesafeler ile onluk algılanan zorluk derecesi ve antrenman süresinin çarpımından elde edilen antrenmanın algılanan zorluk derecesi (AAZD) belirlenmiştir. Elde edilen değerler arasındaki ilişkilere Pearson korelasyon testi ile her bir sporcu için tek tek bakılmıştır. Bulgular: Sonuçlar incelendiğinde AAZD değerleri ile kat edilen mesafe değerleri arasında istatistiksel olarak anlamlı bir ilişki tespit edilmemiştir (p> .05). Sonuç: Bu sonuçlar göz önünde bulundurulduğunda futbolcuların antrenmanda algıladıkları zorluk derecesi ile kat edilen mesafeler arasında ilişki olmadığı ve algılanan zorluk derecesi farklı faktörlerin etkilemiş olabileceği söylenebilir. Bu neden ile antrenörlerin, spor bilimcilerin ve sağlık heyetlerinin bu değerlerin her birini kendi içinde değerlendirmesi gerektiği düşünülmektedir.The concept of training load is one of the most widely used concepts in recent years. This concept is known as the internal loads (physiological responses) created by the athletes during the external loads (distance covered, number of shots per shot, etc.) exposed by the athletes. This study was aimed to determine the relationships between the external and internal training loads in soccer players. Method: Eleven male soccer players (age = 22,7 ± 2,3 years; height = 177,6±7,1 cm) from an professional football club participated voluntarily in this study. In exception the strength training of the athletes, the GPsport (Cambera) device was used for 16 trainings in camp duration in all field workouts. Covered distance at various speeds and Rating of Perceived Exertion responses of soccer players (SRPE) were determined. The correlations between the values obtained were examined individually for each athlete by Pearson correlation test. Results: When the results were examined, and there is no relation between the external loads and internal loads

Understanding the limits of animal models as predictors of human biology: lessons learned from the sbv IMPROVER Species Translation Challenge

Motivation: Inferring how humans respond to external cues such as drugs, chemicals, viruses or hormones is an essential question in biomedicine. Very often, however, this question cannot be addressed because it is not possible to perform experiments in humans. A reasonable alternative consists of generating responses in animal models and ‘translating' those results to humans. The limitations of such translation, however, are far from clear, and systematic assessments of its actual potential are urgently needed. sbv IMPROVER (systems biology verification for Industrial Methodology for PROcess VErification in Research) was designed as a series of challenges to address translatability between humans and rodents. This collaborative crowd-sourcing initiative invited scientists from around the world to apply their own computational methodologies on a multilayer systems biology dataset composed of phosphoproteomics, transcriptomics and cytokine data derived from normal human and rat bronchial epithelial cells exposed in parallel to 52 different stimuli under identical conditions. Our aim was to understand the limits of species-to-species translatability at different levels of biological organization: signaling, transcriptional and release of secreted factors (such as cytokines). Participating teams submitted 49 different solutions across the sub-challenges, two-thirds of which were statistically significantly better than random. Additionally, similar computational methods were found to range widely in their performance within the same challenge, and no single method emerged as a clear winner across all sub-challenges. Finally, computational methods were able to effectively translate some specific stimuli and biological processes in the lung epithelial system, such as DNA synthesis, cytoskeleton and extracellular matrix, translation, immune/inflammation and growth factor/proliferation pathways, better than the expected response similarity between species. Contact: [email protected] or [email protected] Supplementary information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics onlin