258 research outputs found

    State stigmatization in urban Turkey : Managing the 'insurgent' squatter dwellers in Dikmen Valley

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    This paper contributes to the accounts of territorial stigmatisation by examining the state role in it in the case of Turkey, a country that suffers from growing state power. The existing debates are mainly restricted to its function as an economic strategy paving the way for capital accumulation through devaluing working‐class people and places. Drawing on textual analysis of political speeches, local newsletters and mainstream national newspapers and fieldwork material that include interviews and observations in Dikmen Valley where some squatter communities mobilised against the state‐imposed urban transformation project, I demonstrate that state conceptualisation of “problem people” targets the “insurgent” rather than the “unprofitable” groups. Stigma in urban settings functions in inciting the desire to meet the patterns deemed appropriate by the state, rather than the market. Moving from that, I argue that stigma is used as a state‐led political strategy, which is integral to the growing authoritarianism in Turkey

    Palaeozoic-Recent geological development and uplift of the Amanos Mountains (S Turkey) in the critically located northwesternmost corner of the Arabian continent

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    <p>We have carried out a several-year-long study of the Amanos Mountains, on the basis of which we present new sedimentary and structural evidence, which we combine with existing data, to produce the first comprehensive synthesis in the regional geological setting. The ca. N-S-trending Amanos Mountains are located at the northwesternmost edge of the Arabian plate, near the intersection of the African and Eurasian plates. Mixed siliciclastic-carbonate sediments accumulated on the north-Gondwana margin during the Palaeozoic. Triassic rift-related sedimentation was followed by platform carbonate deposition during Jurassic-Cretaceous. Late Cretaceous was characterised by platform collapse and southward emplacement of melanges and a supra-subduction zone ophiolite. Latest Cretaceous transgressive shallow-water carbonates gave way to deeper-water deposits during Palaeocene-Eocene. Eocene southward compression, reflecting initial collision, resulted in open folding, reverse faulting and duplexing. Fluvial, lagoonal and shallow-marine carbonates accumulated during Late Oligocene(?)-Early Miocene, associated with basaltic magmatism. Intensifying collision during Mid-Miocene initiated a foreland basin that then infilled with deep-water siliciclastic gravity flows. Late Miocene-Early Pliocene compression created mountain-sized folds and thrusts, verging E in the north but SE in the south. The resulting surface uplift triggered deposition of huge alluvial outwash fans in the west. Smaller alluvial fans formed along both mountain flanks during the Pleistocene after major surface uplift ended. Pliocene-Pleistocene alluvium was tilted towards the mountain front in the west. Strike-slip/transtension along the East Anatolian Transform Fault and localised sub-horizontal Quaternary basaltic volcanism in the region reflect regional transtension during Late Pliocene-Pleistocene (<4 Ma).</p

    Evaluations on underdetermined blind source separation in adverse environments using time-frequency masking

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    The successful implementation of speech processing systems in the real world depends on its ability to handle adverse acoustic conditions with undesirable factors such as room reverberation and background noise. In this study, an extension to the established multiple sensors degenerate unmixing estimation technique (MENUET) algorithm for blind source separation is proposed based on the fuzzy c-means clustering to yield improvements in separation ability for underdetermined situations using a nonlinear microphone array. However, rather than test the blind source separation ability solely on reverberant conditions, this paper extends this to include a variety of simulated and real-world noisy environments. Results reported encouraging separation ability and improved perceptual quality of the separated sources for such adverse conditions. Not only does this establish this proposed methodology as a credible improvement to the system, but also implies further applicability in areas such as noise suppression in adverse acoustic environments

    Quantitative trait loci analysis of zinc efficiency and grain zinc concentration in wheat using whole genome average interval mapping

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    Zinc (Zn) deficiency is a widespread problem which reduces yield and grain nutritive value in many cereal growing regions of the world. While there is considerable genetic variation in tolerance to Zn deficiency (also known as Zn efficiency), phenotypic selection is difficult and would benefit from the development of molecular markers. A doubled haploid population derived from a cross between the Zn inefficient genotype RAC875-2 and the moderately efficient genotype Cascades was screened in three experiments to identify QTL linked to growth under low Zn and with the concentrations of Zn and iron (Fe) in leaf tissue and in the grain. Two experiments were conducted under controlled conditions while the third examined the response to Zn in the field. QTL were identified using an improved method of analysis, whole genome average interval mapping. Shoot biomass and shoot Zn and Fe concentrations showed significant negative correlations, while there were significant genetic correlations between grain Zn and Fe concentrations. Shoot biomass, tissue and grain Zn concentrations were controlled by a number of genes, many with a minor effect. Depending on the traits and the site, the QTL accounted for 12–81% of the genetic variation. Most of the QTL linked to seedling growth under Zn deficiency and to Zn and Fe concentrations were associated with height genes with greater seedling biomass associated with lower Zn and Fe concentrations. Four QTL for grain Zn concentration and a single QTL for grain Fe concentration were also identified. A cluster of adjacent QTL related to the severity of symptoms of Zn deficiency, shoot Zn concentration and kernel weight was found on chromosome 4A and a cluster of QTL associated with shoot and grain Fe concentrations and kernel weight was found on chromosome 3D. These two regions appear promising areas for further work to develop markers for enhanced growth under low Zn and for Zn and Fe uptake. Although there was no significant difference between the parents, the grain Zn concentration ranged from 29 to 43 mg kg−1 within the population and four QTL associated with grain Zn concentration were identified. These were located on chromosomes 3D, 4B, 6B and 7A and they described 92% of the genetic variation. Each QTL had a relatively small effect on grain Zn concentration but combining the four high Zn alleles increased the grain Zn by 23%. While this illustrates the potential for pyramiding genes to improve grain Zn, breeding for increased grain Zn concentration requires identification of individual QTL with large effects, which in turn requires construction and testing of new mapping populations in the future

    The NEWMEDS rodent touchscreen test battery for cognition relevant to schizophrenia.

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    RATIONALE: The NEWMEDS initiative (Novel Methods leading to New Medications in Depression and Schizophrenia, http://www.newmeds-europe.com ) is a large industrial-academic collaborative project aimed at developing new methods for drug discovery for schizophrenia. As part of this project, Work package 2 (WP02) has developed and validated a comprehensive battery of novel touchscreen tasks for rats and mice for assessing cognitive domains relevant to schizophrenia. OBJECTIVES: This article provides a review of the touchscreen battery of tasks for rats and mice for assessing cognitive domains relevant to schizophrenia and highlights validation data presented in several primary articles in this issue and elsewhere. METHODS: The battery consists of the five-choice serial reaction time task and a novel rodent continuous performance task for measuring attention, a three-stimulus visual reversal and the serial visual reversal task for measuring cognitive flexibility, novel non-matching to sample-based tasks for measuring spatial working memory and paired-associates learning for measuring long-term memory. RESULTS: The rodent (i.e. both rats and mice) touchscreen operant chamber and battery has high translational value across species due to its emphasis on construct as well as face validity. In addition, it offers cognitive profiling of models of diseases with cognitive symptoms (not limited to schizophrenia) through a battery approach, whereby multiple cognitive constructs can be measured using the same apparatus, enabling comparisons of performance across tasks. CONCLUSION: This battery of tests constitutes an extensive tool package for both model characterisation and pre-clinical drug discovery.This work was supported by the Innovative Medicine Initiative Joint Undertaking under grant agreement no. 115008 of which resources are composed of EFPIA in-kind contribution and financial contribution from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013). The authors thank Charlotte Oomen for valuable comments on the manuscript.This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00213-015-4007-

    Collider aspects of flavour physics at high Q

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    This review presents flavour related issues in the production and decays of heavy states at LHC, both from the experimental side and from the theoretical side. We review top quark physics and discuss flavour aspects of several extensions of the Standard Model, such as supersymmetry, little Higgs model or models with extra dimensions. This includes discovery aspects as well as measurement of several properties of these heavy states. We also present public available computational tools related to this topic.Comment: Report of Working Group 1 of the CERN Workshop ``Flavour in the era of the LHC'', Geneva, Switzerland, November 2005 -- March 200
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