Global Economic Sustainability Indicator: Analysis and Policy Options for the Copenhagen Process

Summary: The traditional discussion about CO2 emissions and greenhouse gases as a source of global warming has been rather static, namely in the sense that innovation dynamics have not been considered much. Given the global nature of the climate problem, it is natural to develop a more dynamic Schumpeterian perspective and to emphasize a broader international analysis, which takes innovation dynamics and green international competitiveness into account: We discuss key issues of developing a consistent global sustainability indicator, which should cover the crucial dimensions of sustainability in a simple and straightforward way. The basic elements presented here concern genuine savings rates – covering not only depreciations on capital, but on the natural capital as well -, the international competitiveness of the respective country in the field of environmental ("green") goods and the share of renewable energy generation. International benchmarking can thus be encouraged and opportunities emphasized - an approach developed here. This new EIIW-vita Global Sustainability Indicator is consistent with the recent OECD requirements on composite indicators and thus, we suggest new options for policymakers. The US and Indonesia have suffered from a decline in their performance in the period 2000-07; Germany has improved its performance as judged by the new composite indicator whose weights are determined from factor analysis. The countries covered stand for roughly 91% of world GDP, 94% of global exports, 82% of global CO2 emissions and 68% of the population.CO2 Emission, Global worming, Sustainability, International country competitiveness

Perceptions of the Consumer on Product Based Innovation in the Context of Hedonic and Utilitarian Consumption: An Empirical Research

In the current market where severe competition, rapid technological changes and developments take place in a global platform, companies must adapt to the developments and changes to be able to continue their being, not to fall behind time and to increase their profits. Companies which know their customers well, satisfy their expectations, needs and present the best products and services which best fit their wants, will gain competitive advantage. As well as having a need for products and services, also detecting what this need really means to the consumers are among important factors which generate consumers buying behaviour. The concept of “innovation” which is an important factor in consumers buying behaviour, is gradually increasing it’s importance. Companies aim at being innovative in their long term strategies, and being perceived like this by the consumers. Especially, perceived product based innovation by consumers is related with concepts as personal identity, social status, hedonic and utilitarian shopping. In this study, it is aimed to detect the interactions between; product based innovation, consumers personal innovation tendency, the meaning of purchase and consumption in means of identity, hedonic and utilitarian consumption behaviour. For this, a survey was applied to university students. The relations between the variables were defined by the analysis. In this concept, relations were detected between; product based innovation, hedonic and utilitarian consumption, social identity function of consumption and personal innovation tendencies

One Step Closer To European Union: Smart Card Technology In Turkey

Europe and Asia are competing to deploy smart cards for functions from banking to retailing to telecommunications. This study analyzes factors that contribute to the implementation of smart card technology, focusing on smart card and magnetic card technologies in the financial industry  in Turkey. The paper examines the effects of technological and business factors on Turkish banks, such as Akbank, Deniz Bank, Garanti Bankasi, and Tekstil Bank. The business factors are budgeting, culture, customization, and loyalty, and the technical factors are infrastructure, multi-functionality, payment speed, and transaction security.  This exploratory study will assist international and local entrepreneurial entrants to the financial industry in Turkey, in taking advantage of smart card technology

Political reforms in Turkey and EU membership: honor killings and Kurdish language rights

Turkey became an official candidate for European Union (EU) membership in 1999. Between 1999-2004, Turkey passed seven harmonization packages to comply with the EU acquis and to abide by the Copenhagen criteria. This thesis explores the extent to which the harmonization laws are implemented in Turkey. The gap is analyzed by examining the closure of Kurdish private language courses and penalty reductions given to honor killings by using content analysis of the newspapers and pertinent Internet sites as methodology. The findings of the study reveal that there is a gap between law and implementation Turkey. The gap on sentence reductions upon provocation stems from a juridical convention between the judges. The juridical convention between the judges is similar to the general attitude towards honor in the society as the researches of various NGOs and academicians about how honor is perceived in Turkey indicate. The gap between law and implementation regarding the private Kurdish language courses stem from the state bureaucracy and the Kurdish nationalist stance towards education. During the study, it was observed that the state bureaucracy lingered the opening of the courses, which brought the course owners in an economically disadvantaged position. The Kurdish nationalists obstructed the process and caused the courses to close by politicizing the issue and refusing to provide economic funding to the courses

Ergenlerde dikkat eksikliği hiperaktivite bozukluğunun açıklayıcı fenomenolojik analizi

Current research on attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is generally based on quantitative methodology. This indicates a lack of information on how ADHD individuals explain this phenomenon, and what they experience. The aim of this research is to reveal how attention deficit hyperactivity disorder is experienced in adolescents and how adolescents explain this phenomenon. The participants in this study were ten adolescents aged 11-18 who were diagnosed with ADHD and did not have a comorbid diagnosis. Participants were interviewed through a semi-structured interview form. The interviews were conducted and recorded on an online platform, and a transcript of the voice recording of each participant was then created. The texts obtained from the transcripts were analyzed with an interpretative phenomenological analysis. As a result of the analysis, the following themes were found: Academic difficulty, normalizing and affirming the diagnosis, living with undesirable emotions and behaviors, and negative social experiences. The findings reveal that the ADHD-related experiences of adolescents and their explanations for the ADHD diagnosis are not of a single nature. Instead, they were also perceived in a positive light as well as negative. The results reveal that the awareness of professionals and families who have contact with ADHD-diagnosed adolescents should be raised, and interventional and motivational programs directed at ADHD treatment-related negative experiences of adolescents can be organized.Dikkat eksikliği hiperaktivite bozukluğu (DEHB) ile ilgili araştırmaların genellikle nicel metodolojiyle kurgulanmış araştırmalar olduğu görülmektedir. Bu durum DEHB tanılı bireylerin neler deneyimlediklerine ve ilgili fenomeni nasıl açıkladıklarına yönelik bilgi eksikliğine işaret etmektedir. Bu araştırmanın amacı ergenlerde dikkat eksikliği hiperaktivite bozukluğunun nasıl deneyimlendiğini, ergenlerin bu fenomenle ilgili açıklamalarının neler olduğunu ortaya çıkarmaktır. Araştırmaya 11-18 yaşlarında eş bir tanısı olmayan, DEHB tanısı almış 10 ergen katılmıştır. Katılımcılarla yarı yapılandırılmış mülakat formu aracılığıyla görüşülmüştür. Mülakatlar, görüşmelerin yürütüldüğü online platform üzerinden kayıt altına alınmış ve her bir katılımcıya ait ses kaydının yazı dökümü oluşturulmuştur. Yazı dökümlerinden elde edilen metinler Açıklayıcı Fenomenolojik Analiz yöntemiyle analiz edilmiştir. Yapılan analiz sonucunda akademik zorluk, tanıyı normalleştirme ve olumlama, arzu edilmeyen duygular ve davranışlarla yaşama ve olumsuz sosyal yaşantılar temaları bulgulanmıştır. Bulgular DEHB tanılı ergenlerin DEHB ile ilişkili deneyimlerinin ve DEHB tanısına yönelik açıklamalarının sadece bir nitelikte olmayıp karmaşıklaştığını hem olumlu hem olumsuz nitelikte olduğunu göstermektedir. Sonuçlar DEHB tanılı ergenlerle teması olan meslek profesyonellerinin ve ailelerin farkındalıklarının artırılması gerektiğini, tedavi sürecinde ergenlerin DEHB ile ilgili olumsuz deneyimlerine yönelik müdahaleler oluşturulabileceğini ayrıca bu müdahale programlarına ek olarak deneyimlenen duruma özgü, bireylerin ihtiyaçlarına uygun biçimde motivasyonel programlar düzenlenebileceğini ortaya koymaktadır.Publisher's Versio

CLIP-Guided StyleGAN Inversion for Text-Driven Real Image Editing

Researchers have recently begun exploring the use of StyleGAN-based models for real image editing. One particularly interesting application is using natural language descriptions to guide the editing process. Existing approaches for editing images using language either resort to instance-level latent code optimization or map predefined text prompts to some editing directions in the latent space. However, these approaches have inherent limitations. The former is not very efficient, while the latter often struggles to effectively handle multi-attribute changes. To address these weaknesses, we present CLIPInverter, a new text-driven image editing approach that is able to efficiently and reliably perform multi-attribute changes. The core of our method is the use of novel, lightweight text-conditioned adapter layers integrated into pretrained GAN-inversion networks. We demonstrate that by conditioning the initial inversion step on the CLIP embedding of the target description, we are able to obtain more successful edit directions. Additionally, we use a CLIP-guided refinement step to make corrections in the resulting residual latent codes, which further improves the alignment with the text prompt. Our method outperforms competing approaches in terms of manipulation accuracy and photo-realism on various domains including human faces, cats, and birds, as shown by our qualitative and quantitative results.Comment: Accepted for publication in ACM Transactions on Graphic

The impact of COVID-19 pandemic in medical waste amounts: a case study from a high-populated city of Turkey

In this study, the amount of medical waste generated in a high-populated city in Turkey between January 2018 and August 2021 was evaluated, and the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on waste amounts and waste production rate was investigated. While a total of 79,027 kg/month of medical waste was produced in the city before COVID-19, this value reached 116,714 kg/month after COVID-19. The increase in the amount of medical waste due to the COVID-19 pandemic in the province was calculated as 48% on average. It was determined that 75% of this waste amount originates from public hospitals in the city. While the production of medical waste was 0.86 kg/bed day in the pre-COVID-19 period, this value increased to 0.96 kg/bed day in 2020 and to 1.34 kg/bed day in 2021 with the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the results obtained, the amount of medical waste reached in the province due to COVID-19 is the amount of medical waste expected to be generated in the 2040s under normal conditions. It is a very important issue in terms of public health that the capacity of waste disposal in medical waste management in cities is flexible to respond to severe epidemic conditions. Based on the information obtained within the scope of the study, changes in the amount of medical waste in a city with a dense population under pandemic conditions can be obtained based on real data and projections regarding disposal capacity can be made more realistically

Application of Power Flow problem to an open quantum neural hardware

Significant progress in the construction of physical hardware for quantum computers has necessitated the development of new algorithms or protocols for the application of real-world problems on quantum computers. One of these problems is the power flow problem, which helps us understand the generation, distribution, and consumption of electricity in a system. In this study, the solution of a balanced 4-bus power system supported by the Newton-Raphson method is investigated using a newly developed dissipative quantum neural network hardware. This study presents the findings on how the proposed quantum network can be applied to the relevant problem and how the solution performance varies depending on the network parameters.Comment: 5 Figures, 6 Page

In vitro Antiprotozoal Activity of Extracts of five Turkish Lamiaceae Species

The in vitro antiprotozoal activities of crude methanolic extracts from the aerial parts of five Lamiaceae plants (Salvia tomentosa, S. sclarea, S. dichroantha, Nepeta nuda subsp. nuda and Marrubium astracanicum subsp. macrodon) were evaluated against four parasitic protozoa, i.e. Trypanosoma brucei rhodesiense, T. cruzi, Leishmania donovani and Plasmodium falciparum. The cytotoxic potentials of the extracts on L6 cells were also evaluated. Melarsoprol, benznidazole, miltefosine, chloroquine and podophyllotoxin were used as reference drugs. All crude MeOH extracts showed antiprotozoal potential against at least three parasites, so they were dispersed in water and partitioned against n-hexane and chloroform to yield three subextracts that were screened in the same test systems. The n-hexane extract of N. nuda was the most active against T. brucei rhodesiense while the CHCl3 extracts of S. tomentosa and S. dichroantha showed significant activity against L. donovani. All organic extracts displayed in vitro antimalarial and moderate trypanocidal activities against T. cruzi with the n-hexane extract of S. sclarea being the most active against the latter. The extracts displayed low or no cytotoxicity towards mammalian L6 cells