Living with difference in hyper-diverse areas: how important are encounters in semi-public spaces?

Urban populations increasingly diversify in their socio-economic, cultural, religious and linguistic profiles as well as in their lifestyles, attitudes and activity patterns. This hyper-diversification can complicate feelings of belonging and community. Since diversity is negotiated at the neighbourhood level, micro spaces are central in building communities. Micro spaces tend to be semi-public and stimulate diverse groups to intermingle, which results in on–off as well as repetitive and structural interactions. Understanding the creation and impact of encounters is central to capturing contemporary notions of belonging and living with difference. This paper compares encounters experienced in two semi-public spaces in the hyper-diverse neighbourhood of Feyenoord in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Although encounters at the library were lighter and shorter than at the community-centre, all positively impact collective life in the neighbourhood. At the community-centre, encounters result in light as well as deeper relationships, making visitors feel more at ‘home’ because they recognize others elsewhere in the neighbourhood. At the library, encounters are lighter but visitors become familiar with diversity, making them feel more at ‘home’ and safe in their neighbourhood as well. The study suggests that fleeting encounters require more serious attention within the context of negotiating diversity

Recent Experiences with Capital Controls : Is There A Lesson for Turkey?

Capital flows in the 1990's and their sudden reversals and the resulting turmoil created in financial markets together with big financial losses, revived the interests in capital controls. There are inherent destabilizing factors in international financial system and Tobin had seen that as early as 1972 when he suggested levying a tax on financial transactions as a way of smoothing out destabilizing factors, even though in its original formulation it was not applied anywhere due to its impracticality. Various capital inflow and outflow control experiences and recent crisis indicated that controls, even though are only second best, can be resorted temporarily, provided that the time gained is productively used for making the necessary adjustments in the inconsistent policy mix that brought about the controls in the first place. In such a context, for countries with high domestic debt like Turkey, where, even the intervention itself can be a source of speculation, an exchange rate band, in which the limits of the band is defended through taxing the violators of the band rather than central bank intervention can be an alternative. Such a strategy would be beneficial if Turkey uses the time to address the structural issues, rather than relaxes under the protective cushion of the tax. This method is advantageous to the sterilized intervention presently used to decrease exchange rate volatility arising from speculative inflows, first because, it will keep the central bank reserves intact, second it will force the violators of the exchange rate band to share the responsibility of their violation. If temporary controls are very carefully coordinated with the appropriate supporting policies, they could replace IMF programs with financial assistance, at least till the new and improved international financial system becomes operational.Capital Controls, Short Term Speculative Inflows, Tobin Tax, Private Sector Involvement

Forecasting Enrollment Model Based on First-Order Fuzzy Time Series

This paper proposes a novel improvement of forecasting approach based on using time-invariant fuzzy time series. In contrast to traditional forecasting methods, fuzzy time series can be also applied to problems, in which historical data are linguistic values. It is shown that proposed time-invariant method improves the performance of forecasting process. Further, the effect of using different number of fuzzy sets is tested as well. As with the most of cited papers, historical enrollment of the University of Alabama is used in this study to illustrate the forecasting process. Subsequently, the performance of the proposed method is compared with existing fuzzy time series time-invariant models based on forecasting accuracy. It reveals a certain performance superiority of the proposed method over methods described in the literature

The Relationship Between Wages and Productivity: TAR Unit Root and TAR Cointegration Approach

We analyzed the relationship between wages and productivity in 1990 - 2007 period in Turkey. At the first stage we followed the traditional unit root tests and apply the analysis followed by unit root test procedure proposed by Caner and Hansen (2001). Then we discussed the long run nonlinear relationship between wages and productivity by employing the TAR cointegration analysis developed by Hansen and Seo (2002).wage, productivity, non linear, TAR unit root, TAR cointegration

SemWeB Semantic Web Browser – Improving Browsing Experience with Semantic and Personalized Information and Hyperlinks

Imagine a Web browser that can understand the context of a Web page and recommends related semantic hyperlinks in any Web domain. In addition, imagine this browser also understands your browsing needs and personalizes information for you. The aim of our research is to achieve this in open Web environment using Semantic Web technologies and adaptive hypermedia techniques. In this paper, we discuss a novel Semantic Web browser, SemWeB, which utilizes linked data for context-based hyperlink recommendation and uses a behavior-based and an ontology-driven user modeling architecture for personalization on Web documents. The aim of this research is to bring the gap between the technology and user needs using Semantic Web technologies in Web browsing

Estimation of the Distribution of Random Parameters in Discrete Time Abstract Parabolic Systems with Unbounded Input and Output: Approximation and Convergence

A finite dimensional abstract approximation and convergence theory is developed for estimation of the distribution of random parameters in infinite dimensional discrete time linear systems with dynamics described by regularly dissipative operators and involving, in general, unbounded input and output operators. By taking expectations, the system is re-cast as an equivalent abstract parabolic system in a Gelfand triple of Bochner spaces wherein the random parameters become new space-like variables. Estimating their distribution is now analogous to estimating a spatially varying coefficient in a standard deterministic parabolic system. The estimation problems are approximated by a sequence of finite dimensional problems. Convergence is established using a state space-varying version of the Trotter-Kato semigroup approximation theorem. Numerical results for a number of examples involving the estimation of exponential families of densities for random parameters in a diffusion equation with boundary input and output are presented and discussed