Innovation performance and competitive strategies in the Turkish manufacturing industry

In this paper, we report on empirical investigation within the context of the Innovations in Manufacturing Industries in Turkey Study 2004/2005. The data was gathered in nine different cities in Turkey during the period August 2004 – January 2005. The survey was conducted through face-to-face interviews due to the complex nature of the survey and was implemented in 135 manufacturing firms operating in four sectors: Textiles, chemicals, food, and metal. The study has been an extension of the European Manufacturing Survey 2004 (EMS 2004) coordinated by the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research and covering nine countries: Germany, Turkey, Austria, Switzerland, France, Slovenia, Croatia, Italy, and United Kingdom. An extended version of the questionnaire form used in EMS 2004 has been employed. Some of the basic results concerning competitive priorities, new product development, and operations management are presented

An Empirical study on the competitiveness and innovation in four sectors of the Turkish manufacturing industry

In this paper, we report on some of the results of the Innovations in Manufacturing Industries in Turkey Study (IMITS). This study is an empirical investigation into the innovation performance and competitive strategies of manufacturing firms in Turkey. The data was gathered in nine different cities in Turkey during the period August 2004 – January 2005. The survey was conducted through face-to-face interviews due to the complex nature of the survey and was implemented in 135 manufacturing firms operating in four sectors: Textiles, chemicals, food processing, and metal. The study has been an extension of the European Manufacturing Survey 2004 (EMS 2004) coordinated by the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research and covering nine countries: Germany, Turkey, Austria, Switzerland, France, Slovenia, Croatia, Italy, and United Kingdom. Some of the basic results concerning competitive priorities, modernization of manufacturing, new product development, and quality management are presented

The vulnerability of the low-skilled

The low-skilled are a critical category for analyses of labour market marginalization. Class analysis has tended to depict low-skilled employees as sharing a broadly similar position with respect to both employment and labour market conditions. Their employment relationship is defined by a specific type of contract – the labour contract – characterized by precarious pay, low asset specificity and high job insecurity. This contrasts with employees who benefit from a service relationship which is designed to bind employees to the organization on a longer term basis. Recent neo-institutional theories however have emphasized the diversity of employment conditions between advanced capitalist societies, depending in particular on the nature of their production, employment and welfare regimes. An important issue is whether such divergences apply only to more skilled categories of the workforce (and hence lead to accentuated polarization) or also affect the employment conditions of the low-skilled. Are the low-skilled significantly more integrated into the labour market in some countries than in others and hence less vulnerable in times of economic restructuring? The paper will examine this by comparing a number of EU-15 countries that have been regarded as reflecting contrasting institutional regimes. It will focus in particular on the position of the low-skilled with respect to pay, training and job security

A Deep Incremental Boltzmann Machine for Modeling Context in Robots

Context is an essential capability for robots that are to be as adaptive as possible in challenging environments. Although there are many context modeling efforts, they assume a fixed structure and number of contexts. In this paper, we propose an incremental deep model that extends Restricted Boltzmann Machines. Our model gets one scene at a time, and gradually extends the contextual model when necessary, either by adding a new context or a new context layer to form a hierarchy. We show on a scene classification benchmark that our method converges to a good estimate of the contexts of the scenes, and performs better or on-par on several tasks compared to other incremental models or non-incremental models.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures, International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA 2018

Issue 14: Welcoming Diversity: The Role of Local and Civil Society Initiatives in Integrating Newcomers

In a global context marked by growing international forced displacement and migration, societies are becoming increasingly more diverse. The question of how to live together with newcomers has become a policy issue of utmost concern. While populist governments in Europe and in the US are failing to offer citizens andnewcomers alternative models for living together that encourage greater ethnic, cultural and religious plurality, in this report we highlight the contributions and lessons drawn from local and civil-society initiatives that have been successful in bringing hosts and newcomers together. We explore three such cases: Riace, a small Italian village where the leadership of a mayor and his policies allowed the presence of refugees to revitalize the community; a cultural center in Gaziantep, Turkey, where Syrian refugees are able to experience normalcy as artists, writers and community organizers; and a kitchen project in Berlin, Germany, which started in 2013 by bringing refugees and Berliners together to cook, share a meal, and to socialize. We highlight the importance of a three-pronged approached to integration that combines governmental leadership, solid integration policies, and civil-society and locally-based initiatives that allow for personal interchanges between newcomers and hosts. These interchanges contribute to changing notions of who does and does not belong and are invaluable in showing where the key to co-existence lies

İmalat sanayiinde yenilik araştırması 2006/07 - yönetici özeti

İmalat Sanayiinde Yenilik Araştırması; Karlsruhe, Almanya'da bulunan Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research (Fraunhofer ISI) tarafından 1993 yılında Alman imalat sanayii bünyesinde başlatılmıştır. O tarihten bu yana Almanya’da her iki senede bir tekrarlanmaktadır. 2003 yılında yapılan çalışmaya 1450 firma katılmıştır. Fraunhofer ISI, 2000’li yıllarda imalat sanayiinde yenilik araştırmalarını uluslararası bir boyuta taşıma çabası içine girmiştir. Belçika ve İsviçre 2001 yılında aynı anket formunu kullanarak çalışmayı gerçekleştirmişlerdir. 2003–04 yıllarında ise çalışma kurulan bir Konsorsiyumla Almanya, Avusturya, Fransa, Hırvatistan, İngiltere, İsviçre, İtalya, Slovenya ve Türkiye’de yapılmıştır. Çalışmada Türkiye’den TÜSİAD-Sabancı Üniversitesi Rekabet Forumu (REF) yer almıştır. Bu çalışma sonucunda Fraunhofer ISI tarafından hazırlanmış iki bülten REF web sitesinde yer almaktadır. Türkiye’de İmalat Sanayiinde Yenilik Araştırması 2004/05 başlığı altında sürdürülen çalışma ile ilgili olarak REF tarafından yapılan yayınların listesi metnin sonunda sunulmaktadır. 2006 ve 2007 yıllarında Konsorsiyuma 4 yeni ülke (Finlandiya, Hollanda, İspanya ve Yunanistan) dâhil olmuştur. Türkiye bu Konsorsiyumda da REF tarafından temsil edilmiştir

Hydrogen peroxide induced genomic instability in nucleotide excision repair-deficient lymphoblastoid cells

Copyright @ 2010 Gopalakrishnan et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.Background The Nucleotide Excision Repair (NER) pathway specialises in UV-induced DNA damage repair. Inherited defects in the NER can predispose individuals to Xeroderma Pigmentosum (XP). UV-induced DNA damage cannot account for the manifestation of XP in organ systems not directly exposed to sunlight. While the NER has recently been implicated in the repair of oxidative DNA lesions, it is not well characterised. Therefore we sought to investigate the role of NER factors Xeroderma Pigmentosum A (XPA), XPB and XPD in oxidative DNA damage-repair by subjecting lymphoblastoid cells from patients suffering from XP-A, XP-D and XP-B with Cockayne Syndrome to hydrogen peroxide (H2O2). Results Loss of functional XPB or XPD but not XPA led to enhanced sensitivity towards H2O2-induced cell death. XP-deficient lymphoblastoid cells exhibited increased susceptibility to H2O2-induced DNA damage with XPD showing the highest susceptibility and lowest repair capacity. Furthermore, XPB- and XPD-deficient lymphoblastoid cells displayed enhanced DNA damage at the telomeres. XPA- and XPB-deficient lymphoblastoid cells also showed differential regulation of XPD following H2O2 treatment. Conclusions Taken together, our data implicate a role for the NER in H2O2-induced oxidative stress management and further corroborates that oxidative stress is a significant contributing factor in XP symptoms. Resistance of XPA-deficient lymphoblastoid cells to H2O2-induced cell death while harbouring DNA damage poses a potential cancer risk factor for XPA patients. Our data implicate XPB and XPD in the protection against oxidative stress-induced DNA damage and telomere shortening, and thus premature senescence.This research is supported by the Defence Innovative Research Programme, Defence Science and Technology Agency, Singapore (POD: 0613592) and the Academic Research Fund, Ministry of Education, Singapore (T206B3108). Supported in part by a grant from British Council, PMI2 Connect (Grant Number: RC134)