A qualitative and quantitative analysis of Turkish forest policy documents in the rural development scope

The interaction between forest resources and forest villagers has made rural development a privileged component of Turkish forest policy. In this context the main aim of the study was to investigate the framing of rural development issues in national forest policy by using content analysis method. The economic aspect is the most prominent dimension regarding rural development in the context of national forest policy, environmental and socio-cultural factors follow it respectively. Also, the main approach depends on supporting the forest villagers and its development is seen as an essential tool to protect the forest resources

Imagining the Middle East:The state, nationalism and regional international society

The Middle East is commonly perceived as a zone of cultural and political differences within the global international society. Imagining the Middle East as a ‘unique’ region is not a new idea, but relocating this conception within the English School (ES) of International Relations (IR) is. This article challenges the perceived ‘exceptionalism’ of the Middle East, which claims that the European concepts of state, sovereignty and nationalism are alien to Islam, therefore preventing the emergence of a regional international society. The first part highlights the correlation between Eurocentrism in IR and the lack of interest in regional – area – studies through the critique of Orientalism and the ES. The second part moves to demonstrate why the ES is more explanatory than other IR theories in the context of the Ottoman–European relations. The third part explores the ‘institutional distinctiveness’ of the Middle East, disproving the notion of regional ‘exceptionalism’ and IR’s foundational Eurocentric assumptions. This article concludes by arguing that there is a strong case for calling the Middle East a ‘regional interstate society’, which remains to be a litmus test of whether or not a truly global international society is possible

Probabilistic State Estimation in Distribution Networks

State estimation is a procedure that can be used to obtain an estimate of the networkstate by processing the available set of measurements. The state of a network iscommonly defined as the voltage magnitude and angle at every bus. Other parametersin the network such as power flows and currents can be calculated fromthe network state. The information provided by the state estimation is used toassess the network security, to analyze contingencies, and to make decisions onrequired control actions. The concept of applying state estimation to power systemswas developed around 1970 [1]. Since then state estimation has become a routinetask in transmission systems. Over time a large number of redundant measurementdevices were installed throughout transmission networks, and accurate networkmodels have been developed. As a result, it is usually possible to estimate the stateof a transmission network with a high degree of accuracy