A study on dynamic modeling to examine the impact of reducing water pollution on market condition in the Turkish Black Sea Basin

The Black Sea has severe water pollution problems during the last three decades due to tremendous loads of different types of pollutants discharged from the entire basin Therefore, finding solutions to improve the environmental status of the Black Sea is one of the critical issues. Previous paper, we analyzed Turkish black Sea Basin using a conceptual mathematical model describes the interaction between the socioeconomic activities and behavior of the pollutants starting from the contamination sources ending to the sea. As a results, set of mix policies was introduced to reduce the water pollution generate from Turkish Black Sea Basin. In this paper, we discuss the implementation of such approach on formulating a comprehensive policy to reduce the water pollution from the whole Black Sea basin in order to improve the water quality of The Black Sea.

The Effect of Problem-Based Learning on the Creative Thinking and Critical Thinking Disposition of Students in Visual Arts Education

The problem-based learning (PBL) approach was implemented as a treatment for higher education visual arts students over one semester to examine its effect on the creative thinking and critical thinking disposition of these students. PBL had a significant effect on creative thinking, but critical thinking disposition was affected to a lesser degree. One possible reason for this result is that in this study, open structures were used for learning activities as a nonroutine problem-solving process to develop creative thinking. Accordingly, the results of this study indicate that PBL can help students with nonroutine problem-solving processes by maintaining uncertainty and enhancing creative thinking. However, a similar conclusion could not be reached for critical thinking disposition. Therefore, future studies regarding critical thinking disposition and the PBL approach should be conducted

Strengthening Shear Deficient Thin-Walled Steel Beams by Bonding Pultruded GFRP Sections

Rehabilitation and retrofitting methods offer economical and feasible alternatives for upgrading aged and deficient structures. Structural strengthening using Fiber Reinforced Polymer (FRP) composites have been widely investigated by researchers and used in field applications. The main advantage of FRP composites is the superior mechanical properties they offer over traditional structural materials. One novel alternative of these retrofitting methods was developed at Louisiana State University and called “Strengthening-by-Stiffening” (SBS). In SBS, the external strengthening of shear deficient thin-walled steel structures is achieved by bonding pultruded FRP sections to buckling prone web panels. Contrary to the commonly used uniaxial tension resistance of fibers, here, the geometric properties of pultruded FRP sections play the most important role in stiffening vulnerable thin plates. The research started by testing a series of full size steel beams before and after introducing SBS. The first web panel between the bearing and transverse steel stiffeners was selected as a control panel, and a point load was chosen in an asymmetric three-point loading setup. The experimental investigation was conducted considering different web panel aspect ratios (1.0:1.0; 1.5:1.0), web thicknesses (1/8; 5/32 inch), epoxy types (brittle; ductile), Glass FRP (GFRP) configuration (geometry and orientation). For comparison purposes, one conventionally strengthened beam (by welding additional steel stiffeners) and one beam strengthened by bonding Carbon FRP (CFRP) sheets to the critical web panel were also tested. The experimental tests showed that the global failure mechanism was mainly controlled by the debonding of adhesive layer. Therefore, failure modes and phase angles were investigated for the GFRP/steel interface. Local traction-separation laws for Mode I and Mode II failure modes were determined by conducting single leg bending (SLB) tests, in which digital image capturing and processing techniques were used to determine crack tip displacement fields. Delamination failure within the pultruded GFRP stiffeners was also simulated following Hashin’s failure criteria. Finally, effective SBS design parameters were investigated using an FE model that takes the adhesive’s mixed mode fracture into account using a cohesive zone model (CZM), which was validated using experimental results. Possible extension of SBS to new construction was studied to explore creating beams free from transverse steel stiffeners by fully bonding the GFRP stiffeners as a substitute for welding of transverse and bearing steel stiffeners as a means for improving the fatigue

Green synthesis of highly functionalized octahydropyrrolo[3,4-c]pyrrole derivatives using subcritical water, and their anti(myco)bacterial and antifungal activity

A series of novel 2-(thiazol-2-yl)-octahydropyrrolo[3,4-c]pyrroles was synthesized by reaction of octahydropyrrolo[3,4-c]pyrrole N-benzoylthiourea derivatives and α-haloketones in subcritical water at 130 °C in 75-91% yield. Both the thiourea intermediates and the end productswere synthesized in subcritical water, which proved a suitable green alternative to acetone by delivering the desired compounds in much shorter reaction times and practically the same yields. The antimicrobial activity of the compounds was determined against five bacterial strains and three fungal strains, and MIC values of 15.62-250 µg/mL were observed. Moreover, the compounds exhibited antimycobacterial activity against M. tuberculosis H37Rv with MIC values of 7.81-62.5 μg/mL

Approximate identities in Banach function algebras

In this paper, we shall study contractive and pointwise contractive Banach function algebras, in which each maximal modular ideal has a contractive or pointwise contractive approximate identity, respectively, and we shall seek to characterize these algebras. We shall give many examples, including uniform algebras, that distinguish between contractive and pointwise contractive Banach function algebras. We shall describe a contractiveBanach function algebras which is not equivalent to a uniform algebra. We shall also obtain results about Banach sequence algebras and Banach function algebras that are ideals in their second duals

A review of the criteria of the prediction of students’ creative skills in the visual arts education

This study aimed to predict the creativity in the painting area of students in visual arts education. This study reviews conducted on the publications. In this review, eight categories were classified related to the creativity by a hierarchical method as follows: definition, components, assessment, measurement, criteria, tests, scoring, and the art. According to the content analysis, the categories were originality, fluency, flexibility, boundary-breaking independent, unconventionality, and perspective which were determined as universal criteria for general content regarding creativity measurement. However, the aesthetic, technical skill, imagination, elaboration, closure, and idea generation were identified as specific criteria for the creativity measurement regarding the painting in the visual arts education. This review study indicated that the creative skills of students in the visual arts education can be predicted by the criteria in which a combination of the universal and specific criteria inclusively. Santrauka Šiame tyrime siekiama numatyti vizualiųjų menų studijų studentų kūrybiškumą tapybos srityje. Šio tyrimo apžvalgos skelbiamos publikacijose. Šioje apžvalgoje hierarchiniu metodu išskiriamos tokios aštuonios kūrybiškumo kategorijos: apibrėžtis, komponentai, vertinimas, matavimas, kriterijai, testai, rezultatų sumavimas ir menas. Remiantis turinio analize, išskiriamos kategorijos – originalumas, sklandumas, lankstumas, ribų peržengimas neatsižvelgiant į aplinkybes, netradiciškumas ir perspektyva; vertinant kūrybiškumą jos buvo apibrėžtos kaip universalūs bendrieji kriterijai. Vis dėlto estetiniai, techniniai įgūdžiai, vaizduotė, tobulinimas, uždarumas ir idėjų kūrimas laikomi specifiniais kriterijais, matuojant tapybinį kūrybiškumą vizualinio meninio ugdymo srityje. Šis apžvalginis tyrimas atskleidė, kad studentų vizualinio meninio ugdymo kūrybinius gebėjimus galima numatyti remiantis abiejų – universalių ir specifinių – kriterijų deriniu. Reikšminiai žodžiai: kūrybiškumas, kūrybiškumo matavimas, kūrybiškumo testai, kriterijai, vizualinis meninis ugdymas

First Diagnosed Bronchiectasis: Analysis of 518 Chronic Cough Patients. Do We Really Underdiagnose Bronchiectasis?

Objectives: Cough is one of the most common symptoms that patients seek for medical attention. Chronic cough is often the main symptom of chronic respiratory diseases. Bronchiectasis (BE) is a final common result of inflammation and infection and high resolution computerized tomography (HRCT) is the diagnostic procedure of choice. The aim of this study was to find the incidence of first diagnosed BE and underline the importance of coincidental diagnosis of BE in chronic cough patients. Methods: A retrospective review of data from 518 patients with chronic cough was carried out. The demographic data, underlying etiological factors (past infections such as tuberculosis, pneumonia, recurrent bronchitis), comorbidities, smoking habits, follow-up diagnosis, surgical history, clinical and physiologic findings, initial symptoms at admission, past follow-up diagnosis, pulmonary function tests and HRCT chest scanning reports, for both groups, were retrieved from the medical records. Results: At the end of our evaluation 300 of 518 patients (57.5%) were found to have firstly diagnosed BE. It was calculated that, BE group had tuberculosis and pneumonia 10% and 30%, respectively in their medical history. Asthma and COPD were significantly the most common coexistent diagnoses in BE patients and 73.7% were smokers. Ectatic lesions were predominantly bilateral (95%) and mostly of tubular type (88.7%). Conclusion: Bronchiectasis, considered as an orphan disease, could be much more prevelant than we have expected to be in our daily practice. Studies have shown that approximately 42% of patients who were thought to have a normal chest X-ray, had abnormalities on HRCT scans. Though our study shows the results from southeastern part of Turkey, with relatively low socioeconomical status, that doesn’t chage the fact that BE needs more attention. The lack of interest about BE has already resulted in a lack of research in the treatment of this frustrating disease, and such research needs to be encouraged

Determination of critical period for weed control in the second crop corn under Mediterranean conditions

No Abstrac

Fine-grained Classification of Solder Joints with {\alpha}-skew Jensen-Shannon Divergence

Solder joint inspection (SJI) is a critical process in the production of printed circuit boards (PCB). Detection of solder errors during SJI is quite challenging as the solder joints have very small sizes and can take various shapes. In this study, we first show that solders have low feature diversity, and that the SJI can be carried out as a fine-grained image classification task which focuses on hard-to-distinguish object classes. To improve the fine-grained classification accuracy, penalizing confident model predictions by maximizing entropy was found useful in the literature. Inline with this information, we propose using the {\alpha}-skew Jensen-Shannon divergence ({\alpha}-JS) for penalizing the confidence in model predictions. We compare the {\alpha}-JS regularization with both existing entropyregularization based methods and the methods based on attention mechanism, segmentation techniques, transformer models, and specific loss functions for fine-grained image classification tasks. We show that the proposed approach achieves the highest F1-score and competitive accuracy for different models in the finegrained solder joint classification task. Finally, we visualize the activation maps and show that with entropy-regularization, more precise class-discriminative regions are localized, which are also more resilient to noise. Code will be made available here upon acceptance.Comment: Submitted to IEEE Transactions on Components, Packaging and Manufacturing Technolog