Spreading remote lab usage: A system — A community — A Federation

Experiments have been at the heart of scientific development and education for centuries. From the outburst of Information and Communication Technologies, virtual and remote labs have added to hands-on labs a new conception of practical experience, especially in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics education. This paper aims at describing the features of a remote lab named Virtual Instruments System in Reality, embedded in a community of practice and forming the spearhead of a federation of remote labs. More particularly, it discusses the advantages and disadvantages of remote labs over virtual labs as regards to scalability constraints and development and maintenance costs. Finally, it describes an actual implementation in an international community of practice of engineering schools forming the embryo of a first world wide federation of Virtual Instruments System in Reality nodes, under the framework of a project funded by the Erasmus+ Program.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

The Effects of Large-Scale Public Investment on Cities and Regions in Turkey

Large-scale government investments have crucial impacts on the economy as well as social, environmental, and cultural realms in Turkey. These investments, targeting the building of a nation state once, turned into economic-oriented profit-seeking projects after the 1980s. The large-scale projects, also named as megaprojects in the literature, have been successful to a certain extent, while their negative repercussions have been evident due to prioritizing economic gains over social and environmental benefits, and accounting for limited participation. The large-scale projects discussed in this section are; The Southeastern Anatolia Project which aimed to support socio-economic development via agriculture and industry in the most disadvantaged region of the country; tourism investments after the enactment of the "Law for the Encouragement of Tourism" which favored economic growth primarily in coastal zones; critical infrastructure projects such as highway projects, the High Speed Train, and the Izmir suburban rail which focused on improved connections. These projects are discussed with regard to their initial intentions, scopes, performances, and consequences. Most of them are criticized for disrupting social and natural values while economic benefits have also been limited, except for some successful projects such as Izmir suburban rail (IZBAN) which supports networking while amalgamating technical know-how and local experience