Disconnected Skeleton: Shape at its Absolute Scale

We present a new skeletal representation along with a matching framework to address the deformable shape recognition problem. The disconnectedness arises as a result of excessive regularization that we use to describe a shape at an attainably coarse scale. Our motivation is to rely on the stable properties of the shape instead of inaccurately measured secondary details. The new representation does not suffer from the common instability problems of traditional connected skeletons, and the matching process gives quite successful results on a diverse database of 2D shapes. An important difference of our approach from the conventional use of the skeleton is that we replace the local coordinate frame with a global Euclidean frame supported by additional mechanisms to handle articulations and local boundary deformations. As a result, we can produce descriptions that are sensitive to any combination of changes in scale, position, orientation and articulation, as well as invariant ones.Comment: The work excluding {\S}V and {\S}VI has first appeared in 2005 ICCV: Aslan, C., Tari, S.: An Axis-Based Representation for Recognition. In ICCV(2005) 1339- 1346.; Aslan, C., : Disconnected Skeletons for Shape Recognition. Masters thesis, Department of Computer Engineering, Middle East Technical University, May 200

Application of AA-PSP to hypersonic flows: the double ramp model

Anodized Aluminium Pressure Sensitive Paint (AA-PSP) is known for its rapid response characteristics, making it a highly desirable technique when studying high-speed phenomenon on a global scale. The current study examines the efficacy of the AA-PSP technique, which is prepared with a more practical approach than that reported in literature, in analysing the flow characteristics of a double ramp model placed in hypersonic flow of M = 5. Three different flow angles of 0°, −2°, and −4° are studied. Two-dimensional colour schlieren visualisation, using a colour wheel, is employed alongside high sensitivity Kulite pressure tap data to corroborate the AA-PSP findings. The AA-PSP results show good correlation between the qualitative schlieren and ±8.9% discrepency with the quantitative pressure tap data. The more practical AA-PSP preparation proposed in the current study, which uses aluminium alloy 6-series rather than pure aluminium, is proved to have the response time and the accuracy to be applied to unsteady high-speed flows

The anatomy of sovereign risk contagion

The channels for the cross-border propagation of sovereign risk in the international sovereign debt market are analysed. Identifying sovereign credit events as extraordinary jumps in CDS spreads, we distinguish between the immediate effects of such events and their longer term spillover effects. To analyse “fast and furious” contagion, we use daily CDS data to conduct event studies around a total of 89 identified credit events in a global country sample. To analyse “slow-burn” spillover effects, we apply a multifactor risk model, distinguishing between global and regional risk factors. We find that “fast and furious” contagion has been primarily a regional phenomenon, whilst “slow-burn” spillover effects can often be global in scope, especially those of the recent European debt crisis. The global risk factors are found to be driven by investor risk appetites and debt levels, whilst the regional factors depend on economic fundamentals of countries within a region

Hippocampus and retrosplenial cortex combine path integration signals for successful navigation

The current study used fMRI in humans to examine goal-directed navigation in an open field environment. We designed a task that required participants to encode survey-level spatial information and subsequently navigate to a goal location in either first person, third person, or survey perspectives. Critically, no distinguishing landmarks or goal location markers were present in the environment, thereby requiring participants to rely on path integration mechanisms for successful navigation. We focused our analysis on mechanisms related to navigation and mechanisms tracking linear distance to the goal location. Successful navigation required translation of encoded survey-level map information for orientation and implementation of a planned route to the goal. Our results demonstrate that successful first and third person navigation trials recruited the anterior hippocampus more than trials when the goal location was not successfully reached. When examining only successful trials, the retrosplenial and posterior parietal cortices were recruited for goal-directed navigation in both first person and third person perspectives. Unique to first person perspective navigation, the hippocampus was recruited to path integrate self-motion cues with location computations toward the goal location. Last, our results demonstrate that the hippocampus supports goal-directed navigation by actively tracking proximity to the goal throughout navigation. When using path integration mechanisms in first person and third person perspective navigation, the posterior hippocampus was more strongly recruited as participants approach the goal. These findings provide critical insight into the neural mechanisms by which we are able to use map-level representations of our environment to reach our navigational goals

A comparative analysis of handling level of lifelong learning competences in social education curricula, Turkey and Ireland sample

Developing and ever-changing information technology brings together many innovations by renewing the human profile societies need in a significant way. “Lifelong Learning Understanding” which is one of the most important of these innovations, makes it necessary to change the basic competences and skills stand in the curricula. Accordingly, the education curricula are expected to provide lifelong learning understanding.  In this study it was aimed to analyze the handling level of the lifelong learning competences in the social education curricula of Turkey and Ireland comparatively. Eight key competences, recommended EU member countries to conduct their educational policies within the context of lifelong learning by the European Union (EU), was used as references in the analysis of the curricula.  It has been tried to determine whether lifelong learning competences are included in the curricula or not and which competences have been mentioned the most and which has been mentioned the least. Data required was collected in accordance with “document analysis” method, which is one of the qualitative research methods, and utilized from “content analysis” technique for the analysis of the collected data. According to the findings of the study it was found that the most frequent competences were mathematical competence and basic competences in science and technology in TSCC.  It was also seen that the competences of communication in the mother tongue, social and civic competences, the learning to learn competence, and mathematical competence and basic competences in science are of leading importance in SPHE.  Absence of the communication in foreign languages competence in TSSC can be said as the most prominent difference between the ISSC and TSSC

Classroom teachers’ professional development activities within the scope of life long learning in Turkey

Among all the factors affecting education, teachers have more important role in ensuring the effectiveness of the teaching process. Teachers’ professional development is a subject that directly affect the teaching process. Researches on the development of teaching profession indicate that professional training is a necessity for better education and better schools. Because if the teacher learns during performing the teaching profession, the quality of the education offered by the teacher will be higher. Teachers who develop themselves in terms of profession provide both a better education and a positive learning environment for the students. In this context, the aim of this research is to investigate the activities of the classroom teachers participate in Turkey in order to ensure their professional development. The study is prepared depending on the views of the classroom teachers. The data were obtained from the classroom teachers who teach 1, 2, 3, and 4. classes in public and private elementary schools in Ankara, in the 2014-2015 academic year. Questionnaire developed by the researchers was used for collecting the data

Early age corrosion of mild steel in aggressive media

Effect of exposure time, section type and solution concentration on mild steel early age corrosion was studied. Steel specimens section types were box, tube and corner. They were subjected to 3.5%; 5.0% and 7.0% NaCl solutions. It was established that solution concentration effects the corrosion until reaching the saturation value.Вивчено вплив тривалості експозиції, типу сталевого профілю та концентрації розчину на ранню стадію корозії вуглецевої сталі. Використано сталеві зразки у вигляді куба, трубки та кутника. Досліджували в 3,5-, 5,0- та 7,0%-их розчинах NaCl. Встановлено, що після досягнення граничної концентрації розчину хлориду натрію подальше збільшення вмісту солі не впливає на корозію сталі.Изучено влияние продолжительности экспозиции, типа стального профиля и концентрации раствора на раннюю стадию коррозии углеродистой стали. Использованы стальные образцы в виде куба, трубки и угольника. Исследовали в 3,5-, 5,0- и 7,0%-ых растворах NaCl. Установлено, что после достижения предельной концентрации раствора хлорида натрия, последующее увеличение содержания соли не влияет на коррозию стали

RANSAC-based training data selection for speaker state recognition

We present a Random Sampling Consensus (RANSAC) based training approach for the problem of speaker state recognition from spontaneous speech. Our system is trained and tested with the INTERSPEECH 2011 Speaker State Challenge corpora that includes the Intoxication and the Sleepiness Subchallenges, where each sub-challenge defines a two-class classification task. We aim to perform a RANSAC-based training data selection coupled with the Support Vector Machine (SVM) based classification to prune possible outliers, which exist in the training data. Our experimental evaluations indicate that utilization of RANSAC-based training data selection provides 66.32 % and 65.38 % unweighted average (UA) recall rate on the development and test sets for the Sleepiness Sub-challenge, respectively and a slight improvement on the Intoxicationubchallenge performance.TÜBİTAK ; Türk Teleko