Graphic design in the urban transportation environment

This thesis focuses on various design problems facing graphic designers who design visual messages for urban transportation environments, specifically bus and subway systems. The urban transit environment poses a unique challenge for designers because it is multidimensional, and the audience is in constant motion. As David Bernstein describes the transit environment: It\u27s up, down, all around, in the sky, underground... (Bernstein, 1997, p. 9). Added to this unique challenge of capturing the audience\u27s fleeting attention span, designers also face problems of space limitations, poor lighting, chaotic placement of posters, and lack of a cohesive visual plan for a transit venue. Urban transit environments offer myriad kinds of information to its audience of pedestrians and mass transit riders. These include: informational (e.g., transit maps), instructional (e.g., signs telling passengers where and where not to stand), wayfinding (e.g., directions to the street, trains, taxis), regulatory (e.g., no smoking signs), and promotional advertising (e.g., commercial posters and billboards). This study focuses on promotional advertising issues in both indoor and outdoor transportation venues, the author does so for several reasons: these kinds of messages dominate the transportation environment, and are of particular interest to the author as a designer. Advertisements from colorful posters on subway walls and bus stops, to back-lit commercials, to large billboards and murals covering buses dominate the urban transit landscape and seem to be placed in no particular order and have no master plan. However, despite the chaos of promotional advertising, and possibly due in part to the chaos, it creates a sense of vibrancy and color in the urban landscape

Graphene-Semiconductor Composites as Visible Light-Induced Photocatalyst

Graphene-based composites produced by the incorporation of graphene into suitable semiconductors doped with various metals enable to induce the unique properties of the graphene, such as extended light absorption range, charge separation, and so high dye adsorption capacity. Therefore, graphene-based composites can provide to enhance the overall photocatalytic performance of the base semiconductor under the visible-light, and to open up new pathways to high-performance photocatalyst for the future applications. This chapter of the book focuses on the structural and optical properties of the graphene-semiconductor-based composite structure. Furthermore, final photocatalytic properties of the graphene-based composites can be controlled by applying different synthesis routes. Common synthesis methods of the graphene-semiconductor composites such as sol-gel, solution mixing, in situ growth, hydrothermal growth, and solvothermal method are discussed on the resultant visible-light photocatalytic property of the these composites. At the same time, doping of the graphene-semiconductor material with metal ions also allows an improvement of the visible light-induced photocatalytic activity. Therefore, studies related with the effect of the dopant agent on the visible light photocatalytic activity are also reviewed in this chapter

THE EFFECT OF COVID-19 PANDEMIC ON DEATH ANXIETY OF NURSING STUDENTS

Background: It is required to determine death anxiety of nursing students so that they who will become healthcare professionals can cope with the fast-spreading and high-mortality diseases such as COVID-19 infection upon graduation, can communicate with infected and dying patients, and can provide patients with the necessary support and care. The purpose of this study is to determine the death anxiety experienced by nursing students due to COVID-19, the related factors. Subjects and methods: This descriptive and correlational study was completed between June and September 2020. The data were collected by using the Socio-demographic and COVID-19 Pandemic Information Form and Death Anxiety Scale (DAS). The student nurses who agreed to participate in the study were asked to fill out an online questionnaire that was sent by the researchers. The study was conducted with 115 nursing students. Results: The DAS mean scores of the nursing students were found to be 8.01+-1,96. When the correlation between DAS scores of the nursing students and their knowledge and attitudes regarding COVID-19 pandemic was examined, it was determined that as their anxiety levels about transmission of coronavirus increased, DAS scores also increased (p=0.037). The scores of death anxiety scale decreased as the level of students\u27 attention to events other than coronavirus, their level of comforting themselves and their belief mentioning that they would heal if they catch coronavirus increased (p<0.05). No statistically significant correlation was found between DAS scores and other knowledge and attitudes of nursing students regarding COVID-19 pandemic (p<0.05). Conclusion: It would be an effective method to provide the training to nursing students, in order to change their negative attitudes and awareness towards COVID-19 related death anxiety and to improve their coping skills for death anxiety and help to reduce the burden of anxiety

THE EFFECT OF COVID-19 PANDEMIC ON DEATH ANXIETY OF NURSING STUDENTS

Background: It is required to determine death anxiety of nursing students so that they who will become healthcare professionals can cope with the fast-spreading and high-mortality diseases such as COVID-19 infection upon graduation, can communicate with infected and dying patients, and can provide patients with the necessary support and care. The purpose of this study is to determine the death anxiety experienced by nursing students due to COVID-19, the related factors. Subjects and methods: This descriptive and correlational study was completed between June and September 2020. The data were collected by using the Socio-demographic and COVID-19 Pandemic Information Form and Death Anxiety Scale (DAS). The student nurses who agreed to participate in the study were asked to fill out an online questionnaire that was sent by the researchers. The study was conducted with 115 nursing students. Results: The DAS mean scores of the nursing students were found to be 8.01+-1,96. When the correlation between DAS scores of the nursing students and their knowledge and attitudes regarding COVID-19 pandemic was examined, it was determined that as their anxiety levels about transmission of coronavirus increased, DAS scores also increased (p=0.037). The scores of death anxiety scale decreased as the level of students\u27 attention to events other than coronavirus, their level of comforting themselves and their belief mentioning that they would heal if they catch coronavirus increased (p<0.05). No statistically significant correlation was found between DAS scores and other knowledge and attitudes of nursing students regarding COVID-19 pandemic (p<0.05). Conclusion: It would be an effective method to provide the training to nursing students, in order to change their negative attitudes and awareness towards COVID-19 related death anxiety and to improve their coping skills for death anxiety and help to reduce the burden of anxiety

Improved methods for the generation of human gene knockout and knockin cell lines

Recent studies have demonstrated the utility of recombinant adeno-associated viral (rAAV) vectors in the generation of human knockout cell lines. The efficiency with which such cell lines can be generated using rAAV, in comparison with more extensively described plasmid-based approaches, has not been directly tested. In this report, we demonstrate that targeting constructs delivered by rAAV vectors were nearly 25-fold more efficient than transfected plasmids that target the same exon. In addition, we describe a novel vector configuration which we term the synthetic exon promoter trap (SEPT). This targeting element further improved the efficiency of knockout generation and uniquely facilitated the generation of knockin alterations. An rAAV-based SEPT targeting construct was used to transfer a mutant CTNNB1 allele, encoding an oncogenic form of β-catenin, from one cell line to another. This versatile method was thus shown to facilitate the efficient integration of small, defined sequence alterations into the chromosomes of cultured human cells

SYNTHESIS OF Ag-DOPED ZnO NANO FIBERS USING ELECTROSPINNING METHOD AND THEIR PHOTOCATALYTIC ACTIVITIES

Silver (Ag) doped zinc oxide (ZnO) nanofibers with 1 at% and 3 at% Ag content were prepared using the electrospinning technique and their structural, morphological and photocatalytic  properties were investigated. Pure ZnO nanofibers were also prepared with the same procedure for structure and property related comparison purposes. The photocatalytic activity of the Ag doped ZnO nanofibers were determined as a function of Ag content by exploring the degradation behavior of methylene blue under UV light irradiation. It was found that photocatalytic ability of fibers was improved with Ag addition and higher Ag incorporation resulted better methylene blue degradation rate. For pure ZnO fibers, the remaining dye was 48% of its initial amount after 270 min of UV irradiation time. For the same irridation time, 60% and 67% decomposition ratios of the dye molecules were achieved with the fibers containing 1 at.% Ag and 3 at.% Ag, respectively. The origin of the improvement of photocatalytic activity in Ag doped ZnO nanofibers was attributed to the substitutional incorporation of Ag ions into Zn sites within the ZnO crystal. The substitutional incorporation has been proved with the positional shift of the XRD diffraction lines

Genetic variation among selected pure lines from Turkish barley landrace 'Tokak' in yield-related and malting quality traits

Aim of study: Improvement of barley cultivars for malting traits suffers from narrow genetic pool in barley for these traits. Landraces are resources that could be used for this purpose. The present study was conducted to determine the variation for malting quality traits within a Turkish barley landrace. Area of study: The study was undertaken in Tokat, a province in Black Sea Region of Turkey. Material and methods: Twenty-five diverse lines, out of 42 unique genotypes previously identified in ‘Tokak’ landrace (PI 470281) based on DNA markers, were evaluated for malting quality traits along with the malting barley cv. ‘Tokak 157/37’ in four field trials. Thousand-seed weight, test weight, grain yield, lodging, malt extract percentage, diastatic power, alpha amylase and malt beta glucanase activities, malt protein and starch contents were determined. Main results: Principal component analysis of malting quality traits revealed that thousand-seed weight, alpha amylase activity, beta glucanase activity and diastatic power were the most discriminatory traits for the lines. As the average of four trials, 15 of the 25 lines evaluated had higher grain yields and 10 of 25 lines had higher malt extract percentages than the standard cultivar ‘Tokak 157/37’. Malt extract was highest in Line 59 in all environments, and this line also had the highest values for beta glucanase activity and starch content. Line 215 had highest values for alpha amylase activity. Lines 59 and 215 clearly had superior malting quality. Research highlights: These lines could harbor novel alleles for these traits to be used in malting barley improvement

A system for genome-wide histone variant dynamics in ES cells reveals dynamic MacroH2A2 replacement at promoters

Dynamic exchange of a subset of nucleosomes in vivo plays important roles in epigenetic inheritance of chromatin states, chromatin insulator function, chromosome folding, and the maintenance of the pluripotent state of embryonic stem cells. Here, we extend a pulse-chase strategy for carrying out genome-wide measurements of histone dynamics to several histone variants in murine embryonic stem cells and somatic tissues, recapitulating expected characteristics of the well characterized H3.3 histone variant. We extended this system to the less-studied MacroH2A2 variant, commonly described as a repressive histone variant whose accumulation in chromatin is thought to fix the epigenetic state of differentiated cells. Unexpectedly, we found that while large intergenic blocks of MacroH2A2 were stably associated with the genome, promoter-associated peaks of MacroH2A2 exhibited relatively rapid exchange dynamics in ES cells, particularly at highly-transcribed genes. Upon differentiation to embryonic fibroblasts, MacroH2A2 was gained primarily in additional long, stably associated blocks across gene-poor regions, while overall turnover at promoters was greatly dampened. Our results reveal unanticipated dynamic behavior of the MacroH2A2 variant in pluripotent cells, and provide a resource for future studies of tissue-specific histone dynamics in vivo