New records of Agromyzidae (Diptera) from western Turkey

Specimens were collected once a week from Mugla province, western Turkey, in 2000 and 2001 from cultured and non-cultured plants. During this study Ophiomyia pulicaria (Meigen, 1830); Aulagromyza buhri (de Meijere, 1938); Chromatomyia scolopendri (Robineau-Desvoidy, 1851); Liriomyza flaveola (Fallen 1823); Liriomyza sativae Blanchard, 1938; Phytomyza angelicae Kaltenbach, 1872; Phytomyza conyzae Hering, 1920; Phytomyza rufipes Meigen, 1830; Phytomyza thysselinivora Hering, 1924 are newly recorded for the Turkish leafminer fauna. Morphological descriptions, hosts and their general distributions are given

Stress intensity factors in a cracked infinite elastic wedge loaded by a rigid punch

A plane elastic wedge-shaped solid was split through the application of a rigid punch. It was assumed that the coefficient of friction on the the contact area was constant, and the problem had a plane of symmetry with respect to loading and geometry, with the crack in the plane of symmetry. The problem was formulated in terms of a system of integral equations with the contact stress and the derivative of the crack surface displacement as the unknown functions. The solution was obtained for an internal crack and for an edge crack. The results include primarily the stress intensity factors at the crack tips, and the measure of the stress singularity at the wedge apex, and at the end points of the contact area

Here Today, Gone Tomorrow? Essay on the Economics of Hurricanes

This dissertation examines the health and economic consequences of recurring natural disasters by estimating the effect of hurricane exposure on various health outcomes, as well as associated changes in labor supply and housing cost. Considering that a substantial portion of the US population lives in hurricane-prone areas, and hurricanes are likely to grow in magnitude in future as a result of global warming, understanding the full short and long-term impacts of hurricanes are essential to craft optimal policy responses. The first chapter on this topic, “Behavioral Health Burden of Hurricane Katrina”, evaluates the long-lasting effects of Hurricane Katrina on the mental health and risky health behaviors of individuals residing in affected counties in the seven years after the disaster. The majority of earlier studies on Katrina focus only on immediate and short-term mental health effects, and sometimes lack pre-disaster data and / or an appropriate control group, as well as using data that only include a small subsample of survivors. I address these shortcomings in the literature by using the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, a large individual-level dataset that provides information on my outcomes of interest before and after Katrina for randomly selected individuals residing in Katrina affected counties. I use both difference-in-differences and synthetic control methods to estimate the causal impact of Katrina. I find that Katrina impaired individual mental health and increased the likelihood of smoking, and these effects persisted over the years. In the second chapter, I consider a more comprehensive set of health outcomes for a large set of hurricanes over a long-time period. While a growing body of research shows the long-term adverse effects of extreme weather events on growth, employment, and income, we know little about the short and long-term impacts of these events on the health of adults, which can adversely affect labor productivity and reduce economic activity. By using spatial data on hurricane strikes linked to individual-level panel data from the restricted version of the Panel Survey of Income Dynamics between 1990 and 2017, I estimate both the short and long-term effects of hurricanes on the health of adults. I compare hurricane survivors (i.e. those residing in counties struck by a hurricane) to those who were not exposed to a hurricane but resided in the same state in a difference-in-differences framework. The results show that exposure to a hurricane has a negative and substantial impact on the mental health of survivors in the decade after the disaster, while I find no statistical impact on the probability of reporting poor physical health, smoking, or heavy drinking. To see why psychological distress may be increasing, I consider two potential channels: economic losses and traumatic experiences following hurricane exposure. The results show no change in the household income, the earnings, and other labor market outcomes after hurricane exposure. Thus, my findings suggest that the long-lasting worse mental health impact is likely driven by traumatic experiences rather than the economic reasons. In addition, I find that low-educated individuals differentially suffer from worse physical health that may be resulting from the increase in the likelihood of reporting disability in the ten years after hurricane exposure. These findings provide one of the first comprehensive estimates of the impact of hurricanes on the health of adults in the United States. Moreover, since poor health can reduce labor productivity, my results may partially explain recent findings from the macroeconomics literature, which suggests these recurring disasters reduce economic productivity and increase non-disaster government expenditures such as unemployment and public medical insurance payments. The third chapter examines the long-lasting impacts of hurricanes based on renter status. Recent studies show that hurricanes only have small economic effects on survivors. In this essay, I show that this may not be the case for renters. I estimate the long-lasting effects of hurricane exposure on monthly rental payments, as well as the health and labor supply of renters. I merge spatial data on hurricane strikes with individual-level longitudinal data from the restricted version of the Panel Survey of Income Dynamics for the period 1990 - 2017. Using difference-in-differences and triple difference models, I compare hurricane survivors to those who were not exposed to a hurricane but lived in the same state. The results show that hurricane exposure increased monthly rental payments for renters, while I find no statistically significant impact on monthly mortgage payments and self-reported house value for homeowners. Moreover, renters experienced worse physical health and increased their labor supply at the intensive margin (i.e., worked longer hours) in the following years after hurricane exposure. Given the fact that twenty percent of the US population lives in the path of hurricane strikes, understanding the heterogeneous impact on renters allows for a more complete estimate of the costs of hurricanes. This information is an essential input to create an optimal policy response

An Archaeology of the Fragment: The Transition from the Antique Fragment to the Historical Fragment in French Architecture Between 1750 and 1850

Although architects before the time of the French Enlightenment often made use of historical forms in their designs, this practice radically changed between the years 1750 and 1850. The fragment itself changed, as did the ways it was used. The transformation of the fragment followed three stages: it changed from the antique, to the elemental, to the historical fragment. Through the course of this transformation, design also changed, it came to be understood as composition. This dissertation describes the history of this transformation in consideration of writings by French author-architects, as well as their designs. It also shows how the new conception of the fragment gave birth to the next stage of architectural history: eclecticism. Mid eighteenth-century changes in European architecture were prompted by growing familiarity with recent archaeological work especially in Italy, the country of ancient ruins. In France, antique fragments were adopted initially as formal and spatial motifs that enriched architectural design by means of picturesque effects, inspired by paintings and Piranesian etchings. Later, these fragments gradually became regular elements of architectural composition. Charles Percier and Jean-Nicolas-Louis Durand, two disciples of Boullée, took over his imagery and technique of composing with antique fragments, but relied less than he did on the building\u27s picturesque and sensationalist aspects. Composition in elementary antique fragments underlay the neo-classical architectural education at both the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and the Ecole Polytechnique in the beginning of the nineteenth-century. In the 1830s, a group of pensionnaires argued for freer assembly of architectural elements that would allow diachronic reading of historical fragments as opposed to synchronic antique-looking motifs. Architects like Henri Labrouste, Léon Vaudoyer, and Félix Duban preferred imitating the historical progress of architecture over Greco-Roman elements and compositions. Eclecticism taught them that mixture of antithetical things gave birth to something new after a transitory phase. While neo-classical architecture imitated the mature architectural representation of a distant past, eclectic architecture of the romantic-rationalists imitated the immature expressions of the architecture in transition. The buildings of the second group revealed a new problem of representation in architecture, a problem that had begun to emerge already in the architecture of the eighteenth-century: the problem of style, expressed most famously if pathetically in the early nineteenth-century as a question: “in what style shall we build?”

A Commodity Production Model with Operational Flexibility of Investing Optional Capacity on Offshore Platforms

We study the problem of operational flexibility on capacity investment of an oil producer. Our decision-maker operates only on land fields and has option to extend operations to offshore oil platforms. The operational flexibility arises from the ability to invest on offshore fields. Our main goal is to integrate offshore platforms from the chemical and petroleum engineering literature, and capacity investment from operations management literature. We use a mixed integer programming solution approach and set a basic model to analyse the value of operational flexibility. Our main contribution is to provide an operational flexibility option to the problem of oil drilling

Essentials of Structural Equation Modeling

Structural Equation Modeling is a statistical method increasingly used in scientific studies in the fields of Social Sciences. It is currently a preferred analysis method, especially in doctoral dissertations and academic researches. However, since many universities do not include this method in the curriculum of undergraduate and graduate courses, students and scholars try to solve the problems they encounter by using various books and internet resources. This book aims to guide the researcher who wants to use this method in a way that is free from math expressions. It teaches the steps of a research program using structured equality modeling practically. For students writing theses and scholars preparing academic articles, this book aims to analyze systematically the methodology of scientific studies conducted using structural equation modeling methods in the social sciences. This book is prepared in as simple language as possible so as to convey basic information. It consists of two parts: the first gives basic concepts of structural equation modeling, and the second gives examples of applications.https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/zeabook/1064/thumbnail.jp

Cu, Cd, As and Hg resistance levels in Escherichia coli isolated from Mediterranean mussel and sea snail in the Southeastern Black Sea

Marine environment is exposed to various pollutants such as heavy metals, pesticides, and antibiotics. Bacterial resistance to these pollutants is a global problem all over the world. In this study, Mediterranean mussel (Mytilus galloprovincialis) and sea snail (Rapana venosa) were collected from 12 sampling points from Artvin, Rize, Trabzon, and Giresun Coasts of Black Sea, Turkey. A total of 54 Escherichia coli isolated from Mediterranean mussel and sea snail were tested for their ability to tolerate Cu, Cd, As, and Hg. For this purpose, minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) tests for all isolates to the Cu, Cd, As, and Hg were done to determine tolerance or resistance using the broth dilution technique. MIC concentration for Cu, Cd, As, and Hg ranged between 100-400 μg/ml, 100-200 μg/ml, 25-400 μg/ml, and 3.125-25 μg/ml, respectively. All of the strains were determined as resistant to Cu, but sensitive to As. Resistance to Hg was determined as 7.4 %. The most common resistance gene in the bacteria was nccA and followed by chrB and merA. Tolerance or resistance of the bacteria to toxic pollutants including heavy metal(oid)s is of significant ecological importance. These bacteria could be used for monitoring environmental heavy metal(oid) pollution

HOW LIKELY IS IT TO TEACH CULTURE IN EFL COURSES? - THE CASE OF PRIVATE AND STATE SCHOOL TEACHERS IN TURKEY

With the recognition of English as a Lingua Franca, intercultural communication has gained great importance. As a result, culture teaching has become an indispensable component of EFL classrooms. Even though there has been extensive research on the attitudes of EFL teachers towards culture teaching, few studies were found bringing attention to the differences between private and state school teachers to this end. The purpose of this research is therefore to shed light on private and state school EFL teachers’ attitudes towards culture teaching, their classroom practices, and the obstacles they come across upon this. The participants are 72 EFL teachers (32 state, 32 private) working at different institutions in Turkey. The data were collected employing a questionnaire and semi-structured interviews. The results revealed that both private and state school teachers have positive attitudes towards culture incorporation in their lessons. However, private school EFL teachers were proven to have more positive opinions about culture teaching. The findings also indicated that both private and state school EFL teachers integrate culture into their lessons to some extent. However, both groups reported some obstacles that they come across while teaching culture. The details are further discussed and the implications are made in the article. Article visualizations