Religion as source of moral energy for Turkish enterpreneurs

This article was presented at the 33rd Annual ISBE Conference in Lindon, 2010Turkey has a distinctive status within the Muslim world. It is a Muslim country with a greater than 95% Muslim population, and yet it is the only Muslim country that has inscribed the principle of secularism (laiklik) into its constitution. From the very beginning of the Republic, Turkish society has experienced polarization between the ‘Islamists’ and the ‘secularists’. As in every major religion, the Islamic faith prescribes ethical/moral values which shape the way of life at both the level of the individual and society. Unsurprisingly, it is possible to see Islamic moral principles also filtering through to regulate business life

Application of intersatellite links to domestic satellite systems

The results of a study on intersatellite link (ISL) applications for domestic satellite communications are presented. It was determined if any technical, economic, or performance benefits could be gained by introducing intersatellite links into a domestic satellite communication network. Several key systems issues of domestic ISL's are addressed. These include the effect of a skewed traffic distribution on the selection of ISL satellite orbit locations, tolerable satellite spacing, and crosslink traffic-handling requirements. An ISL technology assessment is made by performing a parametric link analysis for several microwave and optical implementations. The impact of the crosslink on the end-to-end link performance is investigated for both regenerative and nonregenerative ISL architectures. A comparison is made between single satellite systems operating at C-, and Ku-bands and the corresponding ISL systems in terms of ground segment cost, space segment cost, and net link performance. Results indicate that ISL's can effectively expand the CONUS orbital arc, with a 60 GHz ISL implementation being the most attractive

Raised serum transaminases during treatment with pegylated interferon for chronic hepatiti C

Introduction : Serum transaminases rose significantly in 7 patients with chronic hepatitis C, genotypes 2 and 3, who were treated with pegylated interferon and ribavirin. Methods : 219 patients with chronic hepatitis C, genotypes 2 and 3, were treated between 2005 and 2011 following the same protocol. For the 7 patients presented in this paper, the initial liver screen revealed chronic hepatitis C infection only. The same liver screen was repeated following the transaminase rise during the treatment period and failed to reveal additional comorbidity. Results : 5 male and 2 female patients with chronic hepatitis C experienced a rise in serum transaminases after commencement on treatment with pegylated interferon and ribavirin. They all achieved rapid and end of treatment virological responses. 3 of the patients achieved sustained virological response and 4 relapsed. There was no evidence to suggest that steatosis, development of autoimmunity or intercurrent illness was the cause of the liver injury. In 3 out of 7 patients, the level of transaminases exhibited a downward trend after pegylated interferon was changed to non pegylated interferon. Additionally, it is evident that in those patients whose treatment was temporarily or permanently aborted, the rise in transaminases rapidly improved and returned to baseline. Conclusion : Our experience suggests the possibility of a toxic reaction to polyethylene glycol in a small number of patients being treated with pegylated interferon, resulting in an acute hepatitic response which resolved when therapy was stopped or switched to non-pegylated interferon

The CRaTER Special Issue of Space Weather: Building the observational foundation to deduce biological effects of space radiation

[1] The United States is preparing for exploration beyond low-Earth Orbit (LEO). However, the space radiation environment poses significant risks. The radiation hazard is potentially severe but not sufficiently well characterized to determine if long missions outside LEO can be accomplished with acceptable risk [Cucinotta et al., 2001; Schwadron et al., 2010; Cucinotta et al., 2010]. Radiation hazards may be over- or under-stated through incomplete characterization in terms of net quantities such as accumulated dose. Time-dependent characterization often changes acute risk estimates [NCRP, 1989; Cucinotta, 1999; Cucinotta et al., 2000; George et al., 2002]. For example, events with high accumulated doses but sufficiently low dose rates (/h) pose significantly reduced risks. Protons, heavy ions, and neutrons all contribute significantly to the radiation hazard. However, each form of radiation presents different biological effectiveness. As a result, quality factors and radiation-specific weighting factors are needed to assess biological effectiveness of different forms of radiation [e.g., NCRP 116, 1993] (Figure 1). More complete characterization must account for time-dependent radiation effects according to organ type, primary and secondary radiation composition, and acute effects (vomiting, sickness, and, at high exposures, death) versus chronic effects (such as cancer)

Inference of Population History using Coalescent HMMs: Review and Outlook

Studying how diverse human populations are related is of historical and anthropological interest, in addition to providing a realistic null model for testing for signatures of natural selection or disease associations. Furthermore, understanding the demographic histories of other species is playing an increasingly important role in conservation genetics. A number of statistical methods have been developed to infer population demographic histories using whole-genome sequence data, with recent advances focusing on allowing for more flexible modeling choices, scaling to larger data sets, and increasing statistical power. Here we review coalescent hidden Markov models, a powerful class of population genetic inference methods that can effectively utilize linkage disequilibrium information. We highlight recent advances, give advice for practitioners, point out potential pitfalls, and present possible future research directions.Comment: 12 pages, 2 figure

On the solar wind control of cusp aurora during northward IMF

[1] The location of cusp aurora during northward interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) conditions and the solar wind control of that location are explored. The cusp aurora is imaged by the Imager for Magnetopause-to-Aurora Global Exploration\u27s (IMAGE) Far Ultraviolet Instrument (FUV). Predicted locations of the cusp aurora were computed by assuming anti-parallel reconnection between the observed IMF orientation and the 1996 Tsyganenko model magnetopause magnetic field. While the majority of anti-parallel reconnection sites tailward of the cusp, when mapped to the ionosphere, coincide with the observed cusp aurora, the anti-parallel merging hypothesis cannot explain certain aspects of the observations, including its location dependence with IMF + By

Two-Locus Likelihoods under Variable Population Size and Fine-Scale Recombination Rate Estimation

Two-locus sampling probabilities have played a central role in devising an efficient composite likelihood method for estimating fine-scale recombination rates. Due to mathematical and computational challenges, these sampling probabilities are typically computed under the unrealistic assumption of a constant population size, and simulation studies have shown that resulting recombination rate estimates can be severely biased in certain cases of historical population size changes. To alleviate this problem, we develop here new methods to compute the sampling probability for variable population size functions that are piecewise constant. Our main theoretical result, implemented in a new software package called LDpop, is a novel formula for the sampling probability that can be evaluated by numerically exponentiating a large but sparse matrix. This formula can handle moderate sample sizes ($n \leq 50$) and demographic size histories with a large number of epochs ($\mathcal{D} \geq 64$). In addition, LDpop implements an approximate formula for the sampling probability that is reasonably accurate and scales to hundreds in sample size ($n \geq 256$). Finally, LDpop includes an importance sampler for the posterior distribution of two-locus genealogies, based on a new result for the optimal proposal distribution in the variable-size setting. Using our methods, we study how a sharp population bottleneck followed by rapid growth affects the correlation between partially linked sites. Then, through an extensive simulation study, we show that accounting for population size changes under such a demographic model leads to substantial improvements in fine-scale recombination rate estimation. LDpop is freely available for download at https://github.com/popgenmethods/ldpopComment: 32 pages, 13 figure