Turkey and the Balkan States: Justice and Development Party’s role in filling the void with Balkans

A century after the collapse of Ottoman empire, Turkey is trying to bridge the gaps again with the Balkans, some calling it a way of reviving the Ottoman empire, while as few see it as a way of making allies in the region to join European Union. There are many such narratives.  This paper will try to analyze how Turkey is trying to make its presence strong in Balkans, whether it is investing in their education, building religious monuments, or bringing stability and peace in the region. This paper will also focus on the growing relations between Turkey and Balkans during the ongoing governance of the Justice and Development Party (AKP)

Kautilya, the Indian Machiavelli; On War and diplomacy in Ancient India

In the contemporary times because of a little fluctuation in the global situation different variations have likewise occurred in act of diplomacy. Previously the emphasis was actually on hard power as a method of diplomatic preparation. However with establishment of the notion of soft power diplomatic practice became modernized in light of the fact that the idea of soft power gives a contrasting option to the discretionary emissaries to lead conciliatory practice without relating to candy and twig method. Despite India’s long history of reflection on interstate relations, Western assessments and theorizations continue to dominate the modern scholarship on India’s IR, with Indians mostly reacting to foreign assessments. This paper will elucidate various diplomatic views of Kautiya in the ancient India period that are still valuable for the Indian and world diplomacy. This paper will also try to shed light on Kautilya’s view on spies, agents and interstate relations

Driver Fatigue Detection using Mean Intensity, SVM, and SIFT

Driver fatigue is one of the major causes of accidents. This has increased the need for driver fatigue detection mechanism in the vehicles to reduce human and vehicle loss during accidents. In the proposed scheme, we capture videos from a camera mounted inside the vehicle. From the captured video, we localize the eyes using Viola-Jones algorithm. Once the eyes have been localized, they are classified as open or closed using three different techniques namely mean intensity, SVM, and SIFT. If eyes are found closed for a considerable amount of time, it indicates fatigue and consequently an alarm is generated to alert the driver. Our experiments show that SIFT outperforms both mean intensity and SVM, achieving an average accuracy of 97.45% on a dataset of five videos, each having a length of two minutes

Thomas Hobbes’ views on Philosophy, State of Nature and International Relations

The state of nature of Hobbes is like a reflection of the depression of 1640s that prevailed in the United Kingdom. The basic concept that determines the state of nature is individuality. This phenomenon is the expression of individuality, the beginning of Renaissance but not of full competence, of expressing individuality, liberating oneself from doctrinal teachings and medieval conceptions. According to Hobbes, human beings are individuals who have the desire and choice to choose. The person's ability to use his will and preference determines his happiness or unhappiness. The emotions of feeling, fear, desire etc. which are the basic characteristics of human life, are not merely physical and factual phenomenon, but a moral phenomenon that becomes evident by loving, enjoying or disliking, desiring or avoiding oneself. For Hobbes, human life is competition and struggle. As a creature that thinks of the future, human beings are constantly struggling to secure their future ambitions. It is the basic survival condition of a person that wants to be sovereign. It is inevitable that people who are equal in terms of physical and mental force will fight everyone in natural condition. This paper tries to elucidate Thomas Hobbes’ understandings of the concepts of philosophy, state and state of nature. This article will further try to shed light on the Thomas Hobbes’s views on International Relations

Diabetic Neuropathy And Its Correlation With Vitamin D3

oai:ojs2.biosight.org:article/1The purpose of this study was to determine neurotransmitter and vitamin D3 levels in both men and women. Fifty healthy middle-aged men and women of 41.17 ± 9.6 and 42 ± 9.59 years respectively were selected. They have no known disease. While 50 male and female diabetic patients with an average age of 55.5 ± 14.92 and 47.87 ± 10.81 years were selected respectively. Anthropological data, including age, weight and length, were recorded in both controls and patients. To test the hypothesis of study relationship between vitamin D and neurotransmitters was analyzed in both groups. The statistical significance was taken at the p-level <0.05. The diabetic patients had neuropathy for 3 to 5 years with high HbA1c. Age and gender do not significantly affect neuropathy in diabetes. The average standard deviation of vitamin D3 is significantly lower in those having diabetic neuropathies, 12,448 ± 3,519 ng / ml (SD), which is not 24,958 ± 5,419 ng / ml, and was compared with vitamin D3 neuropathy in patients who did not have diabetes. (p <0.01). This analysis has shown that the neuropathy of diabetes is strongly linked to vitamin D3 after including confusion such as "Duration of diabetes and HbA1c". In patients with diabetes, the effects of vitamin D3 on neuropathy and the need for further studies ensure that there is a delay in preventing the dose of vitamin D3 or in the onset of neuropathy due to diabete

Greetings, Modes of Address and Politeness Expressions in Kashmiri Language: A Cross-Gender Study

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Spectrum, management and outcomes of structural and functional uropathies in children attending a tertiary care center in Karachi; Pakistan

Causes and outcomes of children diagnosed with hydronephrosis in resource-limited countries with a low utilization of antenatal ultrasonography remain unexplored. We performed a retrospective, crosssectional study of all paediatric patients diagnosed with hydronephrosis and managed at a tertiary care center in Karachi, Pakistan between 2005 and 2010. Data relating to demographics, clinical features, etiologies and treatment modalities were systematically collected. Of a total of 234 cases (74.4% male), 83 (35.5%) and 42 (17.9%) were neonates and infants respectively. Congenital urinary tract pathologies were noted in 192(72.2%) patients, of which only 96(50%) had undergone foetal ultrasonography and 77(40.1%) first presented after the age of 1 year. At a median follow-up of 4 years, 24(12.5%) of these patients had evidence of renal dysfunction. Worse urologic outcomes in this study were most likely attributable to delayed diagnosis of congenital urinary tract abnormalities

The tip-link antigen, a protein associated with the transduction complex of sensory hair cells, is protocadherin-15

Sound and acceleration are detected by hair bundles, mechanosensory structures located at the apical pole of hair cells in the inner ear. The different elements of the hair bundle, the stereocilia and a kinocilium, are interconnected by a variety of link types. One of these links, the tip link, connects the top of a shorter stereocilium with the lateral membrane of an adjacent taller stereocilium and may gate the mechanotransducer channel of the hair cell. Mass spectrometric and Western blot analyses identify the tip-link antigen, a hitherto unidentified antigen specifically associated with the tip and kinocilial links of sensory hair bundles in the inner ear and the ciliary calyx of photoreceptors in the eye, as an avian ortholog of human protocadherin-15, a product of the gene for the deaf/blindness Usher syndrome type 1F/DFNB23 locus. Multiple protocadherin-15 transcripts are shown to be expressed in the mouse inner ear, and these define four major isoform classes, two with entirely novel, previously unidentified cytoplasmic domains. Antibodies to the three cytoplasmic domain-containing isoform classes reveal that each has a different spatiotemporal expression pattern in the developing and mature inner ear. Two isoforms are distributed in a manner compatible for association with the tip-link complex. An isoform located at the tips of stereocilia is sensitive to calcium chelation and proteolysis with subtilisin and reappears at the tips of stereocilia as transduction recovers after the removal of calcium chelators. Protocadherin-15 is therefore associated with the tip-link complex and may be an integral component of this structure and/or required for its formatio

Whole genome sequencing data of multiple individuals of Pakistani descent

Here we report whole genome sequencing of four individuals (H3, H4, H5, and H6) from a family of Pakistani descent. Whole genome sequencing yielded 1084.92, 894.73, 1068.62, and 1005.77 million mapped reads corresponding to 162.73, 134.21, 160.29, and 150.86 Gb sequence data and 52.49x, 43.29x, 51.70x, and 48.66x average coverage for H3, H4, H5, and H6, respectively. We identified 3,529,659, 3,478,495, 3,407,895, and 3,426,862 variants in the genomes of H3, H4, H5, and H6, respectively, including 1,668,024 variants common in the four genomes. Further, we identified 42,422, 39,824, 28,599, and 35,206 novel variants in the genomes of H3, H4, H5, and H6, respectively. A major fraction of the variants identified in the four genomes reside within the intergenic regions of the genome. Single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) genotype based comparative analysis with ethnic populations of 1000 Genomes database linked the ancestry of all four genomes with the South Asian populations, which was further supported by mitochondria based haplogroup analysis. In conclusion, we report whole genome sequencing of four individuals of Pakistani descent

Cytoskeleton-associated risk modifiers involved in early and rapid progression of sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease

A high priority in the prion field is to identify pre-symptomatic events and associated profile of molecular changes. Inthisstudy,wedemonstratethepre-symptomatic dysregulation of cytoskeleton assembly and its associated cofilin-1 pathway in strain and brain region-specific manners in MM1 and VV2 subtype-specific Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease at clinical and pre-clinical stage. At physiological level, PrPC interaction with cofilin-1 and phosphorylated form of cofilin (p-cofilin(Ser3)) was investigated in primary cultures of mouse cortex neurons (PCNs) of PrPC wildtype and knockout mice (PrP−/−). Short-interfering RNA downregulation of active form of cofilin-1 resulted in the redistribution/downregulation of PrPC, increase of activated form of microglia, accumulation of dense form of Factin, and upregulation of p-cofilin(Ser3). This upregulated p-cofilin(Ser3) showed redistribution of expression predominantly in the activated form of microglia in PCNs. At pathological level, cofilin-1 expression was significantly altered in cortex and cerebellum in both humans and mice at pre-clinical stage and at early symptomatic clinical stage of the disease. Further, to better understand the possible mechanism of dysregulation of cofilin-1, we also demonstrated alterations in upstream regulators; LIM kinase isoform 1 (LIMK1), slingshot phosphatase isoform 1 (SSH1), RhoA-associated kinase (Rock2), and amyloid precursor protein (APP) in sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease MM1 mice and in human MM1 and VV2 frontal cortex and cerebellum samples. In conclusion, our findings demonstrated for the first time a key pre-clinical response of cofilin-1 and the associated pathway in prion disease