Terrorism, Islamism, and Western Liberal Democracies: Prospects for Nonviolent, Proactive Countermeasures to Terror

This article outlines some prospects for nonviolent, proactive countermeasures to terrorism, essentially interreligious dialogue, with the aim and intention of incorporating multidisciplinary approaches to understanding associated phenomena and innovating appropriate dialogue projects. These projects would be intended to facilitate better understanding and improved relations between communities. This improved understanding and better relations would be the end goal of attempting to address some of the root causes of terrorism and to attempt to ameliorate some of the damaging effects of terrorism

Prospects for utilizing religious studies and studies of world religions for Turkish representation

MakaleThis article suggests some additional possible scope for utilization of Turkish academic religious studies and specifically the area of world religions within a larger academic area. This could be done by representing the academic world religions product and content in interesting terms to Western audiences. This could be expanded by reviewing theory and method and content to facilitate more nuanced and deeper understanding of the field and academic production. This can be preparation for culturally representing Turkey and Islam more broadly and more effectively. Training in comparative religious methods and content in Islam and world religions can be understood to be potentially useful to overcome some existing problems and shortcomings in representation. The remarkable infrastructure for religious studies and Islamic studies in Turkey’s many universities for fostering modern academic religious studies and the traditional learning of Islam could be accessed by more people for this purpose.Bu makale dini çalışmalar konusunda Türkiye’de yapılan akademik çalışmalar ve daha geniş bir çerçevede ele alındığında özellikle dünya dinleri konusunda gerçekleştirilen akademik faaliyetlerde değerlendirilmek üzere olası bir yaklaşım sunmaktadır. Bu yaklaşım, dünya dinleri konusunda yapılan akademik çalışmalar ve oluşturulan içeriklerin Batılı muhatapların ilgisini çekecek terimlerle ifade edilmesi, alanda daha detaylı ve derin bir anlayışın tesis edilmesi ve akademik çalışmaların gerçekleştirilmesi için odak gruplar ve organizasyonel öğrenme metodolojisi kullanılarak teori, metot ve içeriğin yeniden gözden geçirilmesi ile uygulamaya konulabilir. Bu çalışmalar Türkiye ve İslam’ın daha geniş bir alanda ve daha etkin bir şekilde kültürel olarak temsili konusunda da hazırlık olarak değerlendirilebilir. Karşılaştırmalı dini metotlar, İslam ve dünya dinleri konusunda verilen eğitimler, temsil ile ilgili mevcut sorunların üstesinden gelinmesi ve eksikliklerin giderilmesi konusunda oldukça faydalı olacaktır. Akademik alanda yapılan modern din çalışmaları ile İslam kültüründe yer alan geleneksel öğrenme faaliyetlerini teşvik amacı ile Türkiye’nin bir çok üniversitesinde bulunan dini çalışmalar ve İslam konusundaki dikkate değer altyapı, daha fazla kişi tarafından kullanılarak bahsedilen amaca ulaşmak için değerlendirilebilir

Comparative Characterization of Dengue Virus Serotype 2 Isolates from a South Pacific Epidemic Sweep.

Ph.D. Thesis. University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa 2017

Investigasi kesiapan implementasi concurrent engineering pada devisi general engineering PT. PAL Indonesia (Persero)

Divisi General Engineering PT PAL Indonesia (Persero) adalah sebuah divisi yang bergerak di bidang industri konstruksi. Permasalahan yang dialami divisi ini adalah keterlambatan jadwal yang disebabkan oleh keterlambatan pengiriman material, kurangnya koordinasi antar pihak-pihak terkait, kurangnya tenaga ahli, dan tingginya frekuensi perubahan desain. Faktor utama yang menyebabkan permasalahan tersebut adalah tingginya frekuensi perubahan desain. Dampak dari permasalahan tersebut adalah berkurangnya keuntungan sebesar 10- 20% dari total biaya produksi. Concurrent Engineering (CE) adalah sebuah metode yang dapat menyelesaikan permasalahan tersebut karena CE mengintegrasikan seluruh proses dalam sebuah proyek. CE dapat mengurangi 60- 95% engineering changes dan 60% kegagalan di lapangan. Sebelum dapat mengimplementasikan CE, ada beberapa langkah yang harus dilakukan. Langkah pertama adalah mengukur tingkat kesiapan perusahaan sebelum mengimplementasikan CE. Penelitian ini menggunakan BEACON Model yang dikembangkan oleh Khalfan (2000) untuk mengukur tingkat kesiapan implementasi CE di industri konstruksi. Model ini mengukur kesiapan perusahaan pada 4 element, proses, manusia, proyek dan teknologi. Hasil pengukuran dari Divisi General Engineering PT PAL Indonesia (Persero) menunjukkan bahwa divisi ini belum sepenuhnya siap untuk mengimplementasikan CE karena terdapat beberapa bagian yang memiliki nilai di bawah 60% (Characterized level). Walaupun nilai rata-rata totalnya adalah 74,65%. Divisi ini perlu memperbaiki bagian yang memiliki nilai terendah yaitu team in organization (58%) dan integration support (53%). Saran perbaikan untuk meningkatkan bagian team in organization adalah mengimplementasikan sistem penghargaan individu dengan cara “personal recognition”. Alternatif dari penghargaan tersebut adalah team member of the month, thank you card dan ucapan selamat langsung dari manajemen. Untuk bagian integration support, alternatif perbaikannya adalah mengimplementasikan SAP R/3 dan Lightweight Access Directory Protocol (LDAP). ========== General Engineering Division of PT. PAL Indonesia (Persero) is a division that has business process in construction sector. This division experienced problems, which were schedule lateness due to late material delivery, low coordination between project stakeholders, inadequate expert and high frequency of design change. The main factor that caused the problem is high frequency of design change. The impact of the problem is 10-20% loss profit of total production cost. Concurrent Engineering (CE) is one of method that can solve that problem because it provides integration in the whole process of a project. It can reduce 60-95% engineering changes and 60% field failure rate. However before implementing CE, there are several steps that should be followed. The initial step is to ensure readiness of a company before implementing CE or readiness assessment. This research used BEACON Model that has developed by Khalfan (2000) to assess the readiness level of CE implementation in construction companies. This model assesses a company readiness in four elements, which are process, people, project and technology. The assessment result for General Engineering Division of PT PAL Indonesia (Persero) readiness show that this division is not fully ready to implement CE because there are some parts of element that have average score below 60% (Characterized level). Even though total average score is 74.65%. This division needs to improve the parts with lowest value which are team in organization (58%) and integration support (53%). The improvement suggestion to improve team in organization part is implement individual reward system through personal recognition. The alternatives of the reward are team member of the month, thank you card and top management directly congratulate to their employee for doing the job well. For integration support the improvement suggestion is implement advanced IT system which the alternatives are SAP R/3 and Lightweight Access Directory Protocol (LDAP)

Müslüman İdeolojiler, Kur’ân’ın İçeriği ve Türk Sünni-Alevi Diyaloğu

The prospect of Sunni-Alevi inter-Muslim dialogue can be a sustained long-term project and is not a novel concept in Turkey: there has been official and academic activity in this regard. What may appear to be deficient is the existence of ideologies for inter-Muslim dialogue and reconciliation and also long-term strategies and technique for this. Ideologies for inter-Muslim dialogue can be gleaned from existing activist and academic sources, including existing material for peace-building and interfaith dialogue also borrowing from other material describing interfaith dialogue methodology. In the case of Sunni-Alevi dialogue, a strategic focus on Qur'anic content found in classical Alevi sources presents a promising option for dialogue material that could be of interest both to Sunnis and Alevis. Academia presents a major potential to foster this dialogue and to benefit from hosting it. Various existing organizational methodologies can be used in this regard and they can be augmented with additional existing methodologies, roundtables and focus groups, benefiting academic production as well as understanding between Sunnis and Alevis.Müslümanlar arası Sünni-alevi diyaloğu beklentisi askıya alınmış uzun vadeli bir proje olabilir ve Türkiye’de yeni bir kavram değildir. Bu açıdan resmi ve akademik çalışmalar vardır. Aldatıcı görünen ise, Müslümanlar arası diyaloğa ve uzlaşmaya ve bunun uzun vadeli stratejileri ve tekniklerine dair ideolojilerin mevcûdiyetidir. Müslümanlar arası diyaloğa dair ideolojiler, mevcut aktivist ve akademik kaynaklarda görülebilir. Bunlara barışı ve dinlerarası diyaloğu tesis eden materyaller ve dinler arası diyalog metodolojisiyle alakalı ödünç alınabilecek diğer materyaller de dâhildir. Alevi-sünni diyaloğu olgusunda, klasik Alevî kaynaklarında bulunan Kur’ânî içeriğe stratejik bir şekilde odaklanma, hem Sünnilerin hem de alevîlerin ilgisini çekebilecek bir diyalog malzemesi için gelecek vadeden bir seçenek olabilir. Akademi, bu diyaloğu benimsemek ve ona ev sahipliği ile elde edilecek faydalardan yararlanmak konusunda ciddi bir potansiyele sahiptir. Bu açıdan mevcut muhtelif örgütsel metodolojiler kullanılabilir ve akademik ürünlerden ve alevî ve sünniler arasındaki anlayıştan faydalanan ekstra mevcut metodolojilerle, yuvarlak masa toplantılarıyla ve odak gruplarıyla bu metotlar artırılabilir

Teacher Views on Organizational Support and Psychological Contract Violation

This study aimed to determine the relationship between secondary school teachers’ view regarding Organizational Support and Psychological Contract Violation. The study conducted with relational screening model included 230 secondary school teachers employed in Bolu central district in 2014-2015 academic year. Perceived Organizational Support Scale and Psychological Contract Violation Scale were used in the study as data collection tools. Means and standard deviation were analyzed and Mann Whitney U test, Kruskal Wallis and correlation analyses were used. According to research results, teachers “strongly agreed” to the views on organizational support and they had psychological contract violation perceptions. A medium level, negative and significant relationship was found between teacher views on organizational support and psychological contract violation. Keywords: Organizational support, Psychological contract violation, Teache

The structure of the accretion disk in NGC 4258 derived from observations of its water vapor masers

A wealth of new information about the structure of the maser disk in NGC 4258 has been obtained from a series of 18 VLBA observations spanning three years, as well as from 32 additional epochs of spectral monitoring data from 1994 to the present, acquired with the VLA, Effelsberg, and GBT. The warp of the disk has been defined precisely. The thickness of the maser disk has been measured to be 12 microarcseconds (FWHM), which is slightly smaller than previously quoted upper limits. Under the assumption that the masers trace the true vertical distribution of material in the disk, from the condition of hydrostatic equilibrium the sound speed is 1.5 km/s, corresponding to a thermal temperature of 600K. The accelerations of the high velocity maser components have been accurately measured for many features on both the blue and red side of the spectrum. The azimuthal offsets of these masers from the midline (the line through the disk in the plane of the sky) and derived projected offsets from the midline based on the warp model correspond well with the measured offsets. This result suggests that the masers are well described as discrete clumps of masing gas, which accurately trace the Keplerian motion of the disk. However, we have continued to search for evidence of apparent motions caused by ``phase effects.'' This work provides the foundation for refining the estimate of the distance to NGC 4258 through measurements of feature acceleration and proper motion. The refined estimate of this distance is expected to be announced in the near future.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures, to appear in proceedings of IAU Symposium 242 "Astrophysical Masers and their Environments", held in Alice Springs, March 200