Nosocomial hepatitis C virus infection in a renal transplantation center

AbstractNosocomial hepatitis C virus (HCV) infections were recorded in the renal transplantation unit of the university hospital. There were cases of acute HCV infection with aggressive clinical courses diagnosed from a positive HCV RNA test in the early post-transplantation period and which remained anti-HCV negative. Their anti-HCV seronegativity was attributed to them having acquired HCV under intense immunosuppressive therapy and suggested that the aggressive clinical course could be due to the deficient immune response resulting in an inability to limit viral replication. There were also donors diagnosed as having acute HCV infection in the early post-operative period. Genotyping and sequence analysis for HCV were performed on the isolates of eight of these patients who were consecutively transplanted and of three donors whose recipients were infected with HCV prior to transplantation, and who acquired acute HCV infection after transplantation. Of the eight recipients in the first group three were genotype 1a, three were genotype 1b, one wasgenotype 3a, and the last one was genotype 4 according to Simmond's classification. Of the three donor-recipient couples both the HCV isolates from one couple were genotyped as 1b and the phylogenetic analysis indicated that the patients were infected with a common variant of HCV, but the genotypesof HCV isolates from the other couples were different. Recipients were genotype 1b and the donors were genotype 1a in these couples. Genotype results of the first group and donor-recipient couples, and sequence analysis of genotype 1b and 1a isolates, showed that the source of infection was not a unique strain and there were multiple breaks in universal precautions while managing these patients

Authoritarian Neoliberalism and Democratic Backsliding in Turkey: Beyond the Narratives of Progress

Unpacking the core themes that are discussed in this collection, this article both offers a research agenda to re-analyse Turkey’s ‘authoritarian turn’ and mounts a methodological challenge to the conceptual frameworks that reinforce a strict analytical separation between the ‘economic’ and the ‘political’ factors. The paper problematises the temporal break in scholarly analyses of the AKP period and rejects the argument that the party’s methods of governance have shifted from an earlier ‘democratic’ model – defined by ‘hegemony’ – to an emergent ‘authoritarian’ one. In contrast, by retracing the mechanisms of the state-led reproduction of neoliberalism since 2003, the paper demonstrates that the party’s earlier ‘hegemonic’ activities were also shaped by authoritarian tendencies which manifested at various levels of governance

Towards Comprehensive Foundations of Computational Intelligence

Abstract. Although computational intelligence (CI) covers a vast variety of different methods it still lacks an integrative theory. Several proposals for CI foundations are discussed: computing and cognition as compression, meta-learning as search in the space of data models, (dis)similarity based methods providing a framework for such meta-learning, and a more general approach based on chains of transformations. Many useful transformations that extract information from features are discussed. Heterogeneous adaptive systems are presented as particular example of transformation-based systems, and the goal of learning is redefined to facilitate creation of simpler data models. The need to understand data structures leads to techniques for logical and prototype-based rule extraction, and to generation of multiple alternative models, while the need to increase predictive power of adaptive models leads to committees of competent models. Learning from partial observations is a natural extension towards reasoning based on perceptions, and an approach to intuitive solving of such problems is presented. Throughout the paper neurocognitive inspirations are frequently used and are especially important in modeling of the higher cognitive functions. Promising directions such as liquid and laminar computing are identified and many open problems presented.

‘Raising a moral generation’: the Republican People's Party and religious instruction in Turkey, 1946–1949

When Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, as the Prime Minister of the Turkish Republic, declared his government's intention to raise a ‘religious generation’, his proposition drew harsh criticisms from Turkey's secularists, who argued that doing so would clearly challenge the secular nature of the Turkish state. Yet it may come as a surprise to many that it was not a conservative party with Islamist leanings that first experimented with the idea of relying on religious education as an antidote to the perceived moral decadence of the society. Rather, it was the secularist party, the Republican People's Party, which attempted to use religious instruction for the same purpose during the heyday of Kemalism in the 1940s. Against this backdrop, providing an analysis of how the Republican People's Party had come to the point of offering religious education to school children and how it justified this policy can shed light on today's debate on secularism and the secular character of the Turkish state

Arkeolojik DNA izolasyonu ve sekans analizi, modern örneklerle karşılaştırılması

Neolitik döneme ait kazı alanlarından elde edilen karbonlasın iş buğday örneklerinden DNA elde edilmiş ve çalışılmıştır. Çalışılan DNA, insanlığın yabanıl bir otu ıslah edip, ekmek yapmayı başardığı günümüzden 8500 yıl öncesine aittir ve dünyadaki en eski buğday DNA'^ıdır. Dolayısıyla, en eski ekmeklik buğday DNA sekansı, bu proje sayesinde bulunmuş, bu da Çatalhöyük halkının ekmeklik buğdayı üretip, tükettiklerinin moleküler düzeydeki ilk kanıtı olmuştur

Esmer İneklerde Sığır Somatotropinini Uygulamasının Süt Verimi Üzerine Etkileri

Bu araşt ı rmada Rekombinant DNA tekni ğ i ile üretilen s ığı r somatotropinini uygulamas ı n ı n rsst, ticari ad ı somatech Alt ı nova Tar ı m iş letmesinde yetiştirilen 40 baş Esmer ı rk ı inekte süt verimi üzerine etkileri incelenmi ştir. Hayvanlar, kontrol n=21 ve uygulama n=19 olmak üzere rastgele 2 gruba ayr ı lm ış lard ı r. Uygulama grubuna 500 rng Somatech /14 günde bir enjekte edilmi ştir.10 hafta süren uygulama dönemi boyunca uygulama grubunda kontrol grubuna göre günlük ortalama süt veriminde 2.19 It'lik bir art ış sağ lanm ışt ı r. Bununla birlikte Somatech ile sa ğ lan ı lan artış istatistiksel olarak önemli bulunmam ışt ı r