ISO 9164 heat loss in roof-wall sections

In the simple ISO 9164 calculation procedure for transmission heat loss coefficient, HT, it is unclear, and undefined for floor or roof-wall sections, how the parameters in the equations will be calculated. In this paper, a method is proposed for the calculation of ISO 9164 parameters for roof-wall sections. The results obtained by the proposed method for typical roof sections are compared with those obtained by the EN 832/EN 13789/EN ISO 14683 methods and with the L2D values from 2D analysis. A comparison of the floor and roof behaviour is realized using the results of the present and the previous works of the authors. The HT values obtained by the proposed model using the sum of qy through the beam are harmonised with the L2D for floors, which are significantly different from the L2D for roofs with parapet. The results indicate that the L2D values cited in EN 10211-1 are sensitive to the 2D heat flows for floor sections. However, the L2D is not sufficiently sensitive to heat flow from the beam to the parapet and the interactions between the zones within the beam section, whereas the proposed method is more sensitive to the 2D heat flows. © 2011 Academic Journals

Religion and Preferences: A Decision-theoretic Explanation of Turkey's New Foreign Policy

Religious beliefs can affect preferences of decision makers who formulate and guide foreign policy. This article investigates the relationship between preferences affected by Islamic worldview of Turkey’s new leadership and foreign policy the new elite conduct through two simple models. The models are games against nature; thus, Turkey is the only decision maker facing no strategic uncertainty. It is found that the subjective estimates of achieving gains under the new foreign policy (NWP) and the old foreign policy (SQP) are critical and distinct from gains and costs of both policies. The new Turkish foreign policy (NWP) is a reversible move, even though Turkish decision makers evaluate it as generating a higher gain and a lower cost compared with the preservation of the status quo (SQP). The implementation of the NWP does not only depend on its gain but also on how attractive is the SQP

Most-favored-nation clauses in commercial contracts: legal and economic analysis and proposal for a guideline

The prevalent use of “most favored nation” (MFN) clauses in commercial agreements has garnered significant attention in the economics and legal literature and by practitioners and enforcement agencies. From an antitrust standpoint, there is a strong consensus that while MFN provisions can lead to procompetitive outcomes or at least play a competitively neutral role, they may also result in competitive harm and a loss of consumer welfare. Therefore, US and EU enforcement agencies and courts have held that MFNs should be reviewed on a case-by-case basis, considering the specific characteristics of both the contractual provision and the industry. While a case-by-case approach is valid, it is not ideal from a variety of standpoints: that of the competition authorities seeking to make best use of their limited resources and that of practitioners seeking to advise their clients. Accordingly, published guidelines on the use of MFNs, containing presumptions and safe harbors, would be both efficient and useful. The paper argues that it would increase the efficiency and accuracy of antitrust enforcement if one of the leading competition authorities issued MFN guidelines. The paper suggests a set of presumptions and safe harbors that should be included in any such guidelines. © 2015, The Author(s)

Diagnostic value of combined serum biomarkers for the evaluation of liver fibrosis in chronic hepatitis C infection: A multicenter, noninterventional, observational study

Background/Aims: The hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is important cause of chronic hepatitis. Liver biopsy is considered the gold standard for assessment of fibrosis but this procedure is an invasive procedure. We aimed to evaluate the diagnostic efficiency of non-invasive serum biomarkers, separately and in combinations, on liver fibrosis in treatment-naive chronic hepatitis C (CHC) patients. Materials and Methods: Two hundred and sixteen treatment-naive CHC patients were enrolled from 32 locations across Turkey in this open-labelled, non-interventional prospective observational study. FibroTest®, aspartate aminotransferase-to-platelet ratio index(APRI), aspartate aminotransferase and alanine aminotransferase ratio (AAR), fibrosis index based on four factors (FIB-4), Age-platelet(AP) index and Forns index were measured and compared with Metavir scores got from liver biopsies. Results: Data from 182 patients with baseline liver biopsy were suitable for analysis. One hundred and twenty patients (65.9%) had F0-F1 fibrosis and 62 patients (34.1%) had F2-F4 fibrosis. APRI 0.732 area under the curve(AUC) indicated advanced fibrosis with 69% sensitivity and 77% specificity. FIB-4 0.732 AUC and FibroTest 0.715 AUC indicated advanced fibrosis with 69% and 78.4% sensitivity, and 75% and 71.4% specificity, respectively. The combined use of tests also led to an increase in AUC and specificity. Combinations of FibroTest with APRI and/or FIB-4, and FIB-4 with APRI were optimal for the evaluation of liver fibrosis. Conclusion: Fibrotest, FIB-4, APRI, AP index and Forns index exhibit good diagnostic performance for determining liver fibrosis in CHC patients, and the use of at least two tests together will increase their diagnostic value still further. © Copyright 2018 by The Turkish Society of Gastroenterology

The relationship between malignant skin diseases and health literacy and protection from sun and skin cancer: a case-control study

Objective: In recent years, skin cancer increased with the increase in sun exposure of people all over the world. In this study, we aimed to find out how much people in Turkey know about how to protect themselves from the sun and skin cancer, how they act to protect themselves from the sun and skin cancer, how they feel about sun protection, and how well they understand health issues. Patients and Methods: This study was designed as a case-control study. This study included 105 patients who were followed up in our clinic with malignant skin diseases (malignant melanoma (MM), basal cell carcinoma (BCC), and squamous cell carcinoma (SCC)) between March 2020 and March 2021. Our control group comprised 105 healthy volunteers. This study collected data with a data collection form and the Health Literacy Scale. Results: The results showed that the mean knowledge level of the control group was higher than that of the case group. Similarly, the mean behavior of protection from sun and skin cancer and mean sun protection attitude is higher in the control group than in the malignant skin diseases group. There is a statistically significant difference between the mean health literacy levels of the malignant skin disease group and the control group. The mean health literacy levels of the malignant skin disease group are lower than the control group. There is a statistically significant effect of health literacy, age, knowledge level of protection from sun and skin cancer, and behavior of protection from sun and skin cancer on the probability of skin cancer. Conclusions: Increasing the level of knowledge may positively affect compliance with skin cancer preventive measures and decrease skin cancer-related morbidity and mortality

Exploiting Native Al2O3 for Multispectral Aluminum Plasmonics

Aluminum, despite its abundance and low cost, is usually avoided for plasmonic applications due to losses in visible/infrared regimes and its interband absorption at 800 nm. Yet, it is compatible with silicon CMOS processes, making it a promising alternative for integrated plasmonic applications. It is also well known that a thin layer of native Al2O3 is formed on aluminum when exposed to air, which must be taken into account properly while designing plasmonic structures. Here, for the first time we report exploitation of the native Al2O3 layer for fabrication of periodic metal-insulator-metal (MIM) plasmonic structures that exhibit resonances spanning a wide spectral range, from the near-ultraviolet to mid-infrared region of the spectrum. Through fabrication of silver nanoislands on aluminum surfaces and MIM plasmonic surfaces with a thin native Al2O3 layer, hierarchical plasmonic structures are formed and used in surface-enhanced infrared spectroscopy (SEIRA) and surface-enhanced Raman spectrocopy (SERS) for detection of self-assembled monolayers of dodecanethiol. (Chemical Equation Presented). © 2014 American Chemical Society

Raman enhancement on a broadband meta-surface

Plasmonic metamaterials allow confinement of light to deep subwavelength dimensions, while allowing for the tailoring of dispersion and electromagnetic mode density to enhance specific photonic properties. Optical resonances of plasmonic molecules have been extensively investigated; however, benefits of strong coupling of dimers have been overlooked. Here, we construct a plasmonic meta-surface through coupling of diatomic plasmonic molecules which contain a heavy and light meta-atom. Presence and coupling of two distinct types of localized modes in the plasmonic molecule allow formation and engineering of a rich band structure in a seemingly simple and common geometry, resulting in a broadband and quasi-omni-directional meta-surface. Surface-enhanced Raman scattering benefits from the simultaneous presence of plasmonic resonances at the excitation and scattering frequencies, and by proper design of the band structure to satisfy this condition, highly repeatable and spatially uniform Raman enhancement is demonstrated. On the basis of calculations of the field enhancement distribution within a unit cell, spatial uniformity of the enhancement at the nanoscale is discussed. Raman scattering constitutes an example of nonlinear optical processes, where the wavelength conversion during scattering may be viewed as a photonic transition between the bands of the meta-material. © 2012 American Chemical Society

Formation of different magnetic phases and high Curie temperature ferromagnetism in Fe57-implanted ZnO film

© 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. We investigated magnetic properties of ZnO thin film implanted with Fe57 ions to the fluence of 1.00×1017 ions/cm2. Both vibrating sample magnetometry and magneto-optical Kerr effect measurements revealed strong room temperature ferromagnetism with similar hysteresis loops. Temperature dependent measurements showed a very high Curie temperature around 850 K. Conversion electron Mössbauer spectroscopy experiments proved the existence of paramagnetic Fe+3 and Fe+2 ions and also the presence of substitutional Fe atoms in the hexagonal ZnO crystal resulting in intrinsic ferromagnetic order

The impact of corporate social responsibility, service quality and customer- company identification on customers

Conference: 9th International Strategic Management Conference -- Location: Riga, LATVIA -- Date: JUN 27-29, 2013Despite the importance of corporate social responsibility (hereafter CSR) as an important construct in academia and a pressing item on corporate agenda, some contradictory results suggesting that CSR is far away from being the most dominant criteria in purchase behavior call for further research on the topic. Research supporting this view suggests that traditional criteria such as price, quality and brand familiarity are still the most important choice criteria. Acknowledging the significant role that quality can play in the context of services, this study incorporates these two separate views and considers the effect that both CSR and service quality have on customer-related outcomes such as customer- company identification, customer satisfaction and customer loyalty. The study also investigates the mediating role of customer- company identification, pointing to the fact that improving customers' psychological attachment to a company can serve as a strategic tool for enhancing the effect that CSR and service quality have on customer satisfaction and customer loyalty. To test the hypothesized relationships, an online questionnaire is conducted to a sample of 242 bank customers.Int Strateg Management & Managers Assoc

Fabrication of exchange coupled hard/soft magnetic nanocomposites: Correlation between composition, magnetic, optical and microwave properties

This paper studied the exchange coupling performance beside structural and microwave properties of SrFe12O19 (SFO) and x(CoTm0.01Tb0.01Fe1.98O4) (CoTmTb) (x ≤ 3.0) hard/soft ferrites nanocomposites (NCs). The structure and morphology of NCs were investigated by XRD, SEM, TEM and HR-TEM. Diffuse reflectance spectroscopic (DRS) measurements were applied on hexagonal ferrite, on spinel ferrite nanoparticles and on hard/soft NCs to specify the optical properties. Estimated Eg data are in a range between 1.32 and 1.79 eV. The magnetic properties were also inspected via measurements of magnetization (M) against magnetic field (H) at 300 K (RT) and 10 K (LT). The measurements performed at RT along with the plots of dM/dH versus H indicated that the NCs display good magnetic properties (exchange coupling behavior). The magnetic parameters such as (Ms, Mr, and Hc) show an enhancement in their values with an increasing the soft content at RT. Similarly, the maximum energy product (BH)max rises and reaches its max value for SFO/3(CoTmTb) NCs. Microwave properties of the SFO/x(CoTmTb) NCs were measured in the frequency range 33–50 GHz. From measured S11 and S21 parameters the main electrodynamic characteristics – permittivity and permeability (real and imaginary parts) were computed. © 2021 The Author(s)This work was financially supported by the Deanship for Scientific Research (Project application No. 2020-164-IRMC) of Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University (IAU ? Saudi Arabia). Microwave characterization was partially supported by the Russian Science Foundation (Agreement No. 19-72-10071 from 06 Aug. 2019)