Exact Solutions of the Duffin Kemmer Petiau Equation for the Deformed Hulthen Potential

Using the Nikiforov Uvarov method, an application of the relativistic Duffin Kemmer Petiau equation in the presence of a deformed Hulthen potential is presented for spin zero particles. We derived the first order coupled differential radial equations which enable the energy eigenvalues as well as the full wavefunctions to be evaluated by using of the Nikiforov Uvarov method that can be written in terms of the hypergeometric polynomials.Comment: 8 pages. submitted to Physica Script

Age-related changes of nasal cavity and conchae volumes and volume fractions in children: a stereological study

Background: The anatomy of the human nasal cavity (NC) is complex and its structures are closely related to the functions of the NC. Studies which assessing the mean volumes of NC and conchae are very infrequent. The purpose of current study is to investigate development of NC and conchae according to age and sex by using stereological method. Materials and methods: This retrospective volumetric study was carried out on 342 individuals (166 females and 176 males) between 0 and 18 years old with no pathological conditions or medical procedures that affected the skeletal morphology of the NC. Volumetric estimations were determined on computed tomography (CT) images using point-counting approach of stereological methods. Results: NC, inferior nasal conchae (INC) and middle nasal conchae (MNC) volume measurements that obtained using point-counting method were increased with age in both sexes until 15 years old. Regardless of gender; no significant difference was determined between the left and right values for NC, conchae volumes and choanae measurements. Generally, significant differences were determined in NC and INC volumes according to gender after they reached maximum growth period. According to age the volume ratios of INC to NC and MNC to NC were ranged from 18% to 32% and 9% to15%, respectively. Conclusions: The current study demonstrated that the point-counting method is effective in determining volume estimation of NC and is well suited for CT studies. Our results could provide volumetric indexes for the NC and conchae, which could help the physician for both patient selections for surgery, and for the assessment of any surgical technique used to treatment of nasal obstruction. (

Estimation of spleen volume and surface area of the newborns’ cadaveric spleen using stereological methods

Background: The purpose of this study was to compare different techniques for the estimation of spleen volume and surface area using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) images, ultrasonography (USG) images and cadaveric specimen, and to evaluate errors associated with volume estimation techniques based onfluid displacement.Materials and methods: Five new born cadavers, aged 39.7 ± 1.5 weeks, weighted 2.220 ± 1.056 g, were included in the present study. Three different methods were used to assess the spleen volume. The vertical section technique was applied using cycloid test probes for estimation of spleen surface area in MRI.Results: The mean ± standard deviation of spleen volumes by fluid displacement was 4.82 ± 3.85 cm3. Volumes determined by the Cavalieri’s principle using physical section and point-counting techniques were 4.45 ± 3.47 cm3 and 4.65 ± 3.75 cm3, respectively; volumes measured by USG and cadaver using ellipsoid formula were 4.70 ± 3.02 cm3 and 5.98 ± 4.58 cm3, respectively. No significant differences were found among all methods (p > 0.05). The spleen surface area was calculated as a 32.3 ± 20.6 cm2 by physical sections using cadaver and also it was determined on axial, sagittal and coronal MR planes as 24.9 ± 15.2 cm2, 18.5 ± 5.92 cm2 and 24.3 ± 12.7 cm2, respectively.Conclusions: As a result, MR images allow an easy, reliable and reproducible volume and surface area estimation of normal and abnormal spleen using Cavalieri’sprinciple. We consider that our study may serve as a reference for similar studies to be conducted in future

Spraying opened sugar beet pulp silage with oregano essential oil helps to sustain quality and stability

This study was conducted to determine the effects of spraying oregano essential oil (OEO) onto sugar beet pulp silage (SBPS) on silage quality and aerobic stability after opening. A factorial experiment with three replicates of three treatments and four time periods was conducted using laboratory-type plastic silos. The treatments were an untreated control, silage sprayed with 10 ml/75 cm2 OEO, and silage sprayed with 20 ml/75 cm2 OEO. The silages were sampled at 0, 72, 120, and 168 hours after spraying. Temperature, L*, a*, and b* colour values, pH, water-soluble carbohydrates, crude nutrient contents, Fleig score, metabolizable energy (ME) value, lactic acid bacteria (LAB), total live bacteria (TLB), yeast, and mould formation were assessed. Spraying OEO onto SBPS did not affect L*, a*, and b* values, pH, water-soluble carbohydrates, and Fleig score values, but decreased temperature. Spraying OEO onto the silage increased organic matter, ether extract, acid detergent fibre, neutral detergent fibre and acid detergent lignin contents without affecting crude protein, crude fibre, nitrogen free extract, and ME contents. Irrespective of treatment, crude protein, ether extract, acid detergent fibre, acid detergent lignin, nitrogen free extract, Fleig score, and ME contents of silages increased with time after spraying. The OEO spraying reduced LAB, TLB, and yeast contents in silages. In conclusion, OEO spraying onto opened SBPS reduced LAB, TLB, and yeast formation and stopped mould growth up to 72 hours without affecting their nutritional properties, suggesting that OEO could be used to ensure the stability of SBPS. Keywords: aerobic stability, mould growth, silage microbiology, nutrients, feeding managemen

Simple left atrial reduction in giant left atrium accompanying mitral stenosis

A patient with giant left atrium due to rheumatic mitral valve disease with spontaneous echocardiographic contrast in the giant left atrium is presented in this case report. The left atrial diameter reduction from dimensions of 118 × 104 mm to 80 × 77 mm was attained by excision of two-centimeter wide strips of left atrium on both sides by widely plicating the left atrial appendage from the inside with running polypropylene sutures. Spontaneous echocardiographic contrast disappeared in the postoperative echocardiographic control. The patient had uneventful recovery in the postoperative period and was discharged on the fifth day after the operation

A hybrid expert system approach for evaluation systems

Sistemlerin, sentetik ortamların, insanların performansının değerlendirilmesi genellikle karmaşık olup çok zaman gerektirmektedir. Mevcut değerlendirme sistemleri belli bir alana yönelik olarak geliştirilmişlerdir ve sistemin değerlendirme sonuçlarına nasıl ulaştığını açıklamazlar. Elde edilen yeni değerlendirme bilgilerinin, değerlendirme sisteminde güncellenmesi kolay değildir. Değerlendirme süreci, uzmanlık gerektirmektedir. Fakat uzmanlar az sayıda olup, bilgilerinin bilgisayar ortamına aktarılarak daha fazla istifade edilmeleri gerekir. Bu çalışmada, değerlendirme sürecini kolaylaştıran, hızlandıran ve farklı alanlarda kullanılabilen  “Genel Değerlendirme Modeli” ve “Zeki Değerlendirme Sistemi” (ZeDeS) geliştirildi. Bu kapsamda, farklı alanlardaki uzmanlardan elde edilen sezgisel bilgilerin ve farklı kaynaklardan elde edilen bilgilerin bilgisayarla değerlendirme amaçlı kullanılabilmeleri için bir yöntem geliştirildi. Bu yöntemde, değerlendirme bilgileri, değerlendirme amaçlarının, değerlendirme kurallarının, ölçümlerinin, metotlarının ve parametrelerinin referans modeli olarak ifade edildi. Melez uzman sistem ve bulanık mantıktan meydana gelen “Zeki Değerlendirme Sistemi”, öğrencileri, eğitmenleri, işe başvuranları, bilgisayar tarafından meydana getirilmiş kuvvetler gibi sentetik kuvvetleri değerlendirdiği gibi gerçek sistemleri de değerlendirebilmekte olup “Genel Değerlendirme Modeli”ne ve değerlendirme ihtiyaçlarına göre geliştirildi. Değerlendirme bazı açılardan belirsizlik içerdiğinden, değerlendirmede genel çıkarım için bulanık mantıkla uzman sistemler beraber kullanıldı. ZeDeS, Hava Savunma Sistemi, öğretici performansı, pilot performansı değerlendirmesi ve eleman seçimi gibi çeşitli alanlarda ilk defa olarak kullanıldı. Makalede bir Hava Savunma Sistemi değerlendirmesinin ZeDeS kullanılarak nasıl yapıldığı ayrıntılı şekilde verilmiştir.  Anahtar Kelimeler: Zeki Değerlendirme Sistemi, yapay zekâ, melez uzman sistem, bulanık mantık.Evaluation of systems, synthetic environments and human performance are generally complicated and time-consuming tasks. Evaluation is needed nearly for all engineering tasks and the obstacles related with evaluation are increased proportional with complexity. Existing evaluation systems are domain dependent and do not provide explanation on how the system reaches the evaluation results. Expertise is needed for the evaluation process. Elicited new evaluation information cannot be updated to the system easily. Forming an evaluation definition is a complicated and time-consuming task. Finding out and formulating the required knowledge from the domain for which the evaluation is to be performed, is generally difficult due to lack of structured approach. It is not only important to formulate the knowledge, but finding out the right source of knowledge is also essential. Structured knowledge architecture is especially important in order to utilize evaluation knowledge automatically, especially in distributed environments. In this study, Common Evaluation Model (CEM) and INtelligent Evaluation System (INES), which simplify, speed up the evaluation process and decrease the evaluation cost, were developed. The study indicates that it is possible to put knowledge related to evaluation into a structured format. In this scope, a methodology was developed to handle the heuristic knowledge of experts from different domains and information from different sources for evaluation purposes. In this method, evaluation knowledge was represented as a reference model of evaluation objectives, production rules, measures, methods and parameters. Evaluation Objectives indicate what is going to be evaluated. Evaluation rules are criteria used to assess the collected parameters or calculated evaluation measures. Evaluation parameters are variables needed for applying rules or calculating the result of methods. The results of methods are defined as measures in order to simplify the evaluation rules and provide reusability. Evaluation methods are the algorithms for analyzing the collected parameters or / and calculating measures used in the rules. CEM shows the relation between evaluation objectives, rules, measures, methods and parameters. Using Reference Model of Evaluation Knowledge and CEM decreases the number of evaluation rules that are necessary to perform an evaluation to the related application. CEM also simplifies the representation of evaluation knowledge. INES is a hybrid expert-fuzzy system and was developed based on CEM and evaluation needs. Before development of INES, AI techniques including expert systems, fuzzy logic, neural networks, genetic algorithms, intelligent agents and conventional programming were investigated and compared with respect to achieving high level requirements of Evaluation Systems. INES?s Knowledge Base (KB) and KB Editor were developed for forming, editing and updating evaluation knowledge. INES?s Inference Engine was developed for executing the evaluation definition, which includes evaluation objectives, production rules, measures, methods and parameters. Backward chaining technique was used for INES?s inferencing.  Some benefits of INES, which are mostly AI related, are speeding up the evaluation process, decreasing the evaluation cost, explaining the reason of evaluation results, modelling the uncertainty on an overall evaluation, providing reasoning on linguistic variables, providing a flexible structure, allow updating evaluation knowledge base without changing the source code, reducing the complexity associated with the evaluation and providing an objective and a reliable evaluation. INES was successful and was tested in the following conditions: Knowledge of experts from the related domain and knowledge (or information) from the related sources for evaluation purposes are existed. Identifying evaluation criteria from the expert knowledge and information from different sources is possible. INES was implemented for the first time in various areas from different domains such as evaluation of Air Defence System, instructor performance, personnel selection, and pilot performance. Evaluation of an Air Defence System using INES is given in the paper. As the evaluation includes uncertainty in some aspects, Fuzzy Logic was used for reasoning. But it was realized that Fuzzy Logic could be used to perform overall performance or assessment instead of the evaluation itself for complex tasks. In other words, fuzzy logic can be more beneficial and more easily used for overall evaluation of main objective instead of all aspects of evaluation. A lot of parameters for evaluation are required and writing a lot of rules for these parameters in fuzzy logic is not an efficient way. As more rules are needed for complex systems, it becomes increasingly difficult to relate these rules to the system. Therefore, fuzzy system was used at an abstract level of evaluation.   Keywords: Intelligent Evaluation System, artificial intelligence, hybrid expert-fuzzy system

Eylem çıkarımı ve varlık tanıma için ontoloji tabanlı bilgi çıkarımı ve belge yapı analizinin tümleştirilmesi

This study covers research activity in the field of automatic processing and event extraction from documents in Turkish. Proposed approach benefits valuable hints provided by document structure analysis for extracting information. Approach checks entities and relations of entities across document and verifies them by using relational database integration rules that are defined for each domain event. It contains a morphological analyzer for Turkish, a document structure analyzer and an extraction ontology. Even though there has been an on-going effort for eliminating free-formatted text documents, certain forms of communication continue to be completely unstructured such as fax and e-mail. Proposed approach benefits extraction ontology, where currently available parsing approaches do not use ontology very effectively, mostly depending on rule-based or statistical parsers. Ontology based IE increases portability and scalability of an IE system. Proposed approach requires only extraction concepts when compared to information extraction systems that rely on large set of linguistic patterns. Proposed architecture is tested on a set of 3000 documents in 3 different domains, including data in tabular, list and itemized form. Proposed architecture has an F-Score 99% for extracting information from financial documents, frequent flyer emails and student written letters. Experimental results indicate that it obtained a high performance for detecting document domain, document model, entities and domain events. Main IE tasks can be listed as extracting entities, extracting pre-specified events, extracting relations between entities and events. Experimental results indicate that document structure analysis and ontology based IE techniques mutually benefit each other. In proposed architecture, input document is treated as a combination of document model and event concept, where entities within document are cross-related to each other. Approach determines document model by locating document blocks, and using document models it determines the document domain. Approach also verifies document model by detecting the domain event in the input document.  Using document structure analysis approach also determines some of the unknown entity types. Experimental results also indicate that approach successfully locates data in tabular, list and itemized form. For detecting data in tabular or list form it depends on a specific set of titles called "Descriptor Titles" which refer to column or row headers in tables or lists. In Turkish, morphological analysis is more complex when compared to languages like English, because it has agglutinative morphology. Due to the fact that Turkish is a free constituent language, proposed approach focuses on locating domain specific concepts in a sentence using the proposed "Concept Zoning" technique. In case approach detects an unknown triggering verb, using concept similarity calculations, it determines the closest matching event in the extraction ontology. This case is especially useful during system development phase. Benefiting this feature a known domain event with an unknown triggering verb or an unknown domain event made up of known domain concepts can be determined. Approach also detects connected actions. It treats each action as seperate events however, in practice certain events require another event to make sense and its triggering verb contains specific morphological features. Main contributions involved in this thesis are listed as the following items: Test the effect of proposed "Concept Zoning" technique and document layout analysis on entity recognition and event extraction. Develop an ontology editor for designing domain concepts and events for extracting domain specific events in different document domains. Validating extracted information by using both relational database integration and document model validation, and benefit this integration for determining unknown entity types. Keywords: Ontology based information extraction, document structure analysis, entity recognition, natural language understanding.Bu çalışmada, Türkçe belgelerin otomatik olarak işlenmesi ve bu belgelerden bilgi çıkarımı için ontoloji tabanlı bilgi çıkarımı ve belge yapı analizi teknikleri bir arada kullanılmıştır. Geleneksel bilgi çıkarımı sistemleri giriş metnini sıralı kelimeler olarak ele almakta iken, önerilen mimari belge yapı şablonlarının ve belge modellerinin sağladığı bilgilerden faydalanmaktadır. Bu özelliklere ek olarak, belgenin doğruluğunu sınamak için, belgede yer alan varlıklar arasındaki ilişkiler sınanmakta ve çıkarımı yapılmış varlıklar ile gerçek veriler karşılaştırılmaktadır. (Örnek: Müşteri veritabanı). Önerilen yaklaşım, Türkçe için biçimbirimsel analiz modülü, belge yapı analiz modülü ve çıkarım ontolojisi içermektedir. Yüksek miktarda dilbilimsel şablona dayalı çalışan bilgi çıkarım sistemlerinin aksine, çıkarım ontolojisi kullanılarak bilgi çıkarımı için sadece alan kavramı tanımları yeterli olmaktadır. Türkçe’de öğeler cümlenin anlamını bozmadan serbestçe yer değiştirebilmektedir. Bu nedenle kullanılan ontoloji tabanlı ayrıştırıcı ile çıkarımı yapılması istenilen varlıkların cümle içindeki pozisyonundan bağımsız olarak bulunması hedeflenmiştir. Test belgeleri yazılı bankacılık talimatlarını, sık uçanlar e-postlarını ve öğrenci dilekçelerini içermektedir. Bu belgeler serbest metin, tablolu, listeli ve maddesel yapıda veriler içermektedir. Deneysel sonuçlar önerilen mimarinin kısıtlı belge alanları için, belge modeli tanıma, varlıkların ve alan eylemlerinin çıkarımı konularında yüksek başarı elde ettiğini göstermiştir.  Anahtar Kelimeler: Ontoloji tabanlı bilgi çıkarımı, belge yapı analizi, varlık tanıma, doğal dil anlama

Agent based distributed event system

Geleneksel istemci-sunucu mimarisinin kullanıldığı küçük ölçekli dağıtılmış sistemler uçtan uca ve senkron haberleşmeleri sebebi ile statik uygulamaların geliştirilmesinin ötesine geçmemiştir. Bu haberleşmenin büyük ölçekli sistemlerde kullanılması ise uygulamaların hantal ve kullanışsız olmalarını sağlamıştır. Bu kısıtlamalar, dinamik olan ve bağlantısız uygulamaların çalıştığı bir ortamda, daha esnek haberleşme modellerini kullanan yazılım sistemlerinin geliştirilmesi gerekliliğini ortaya çıkarmıştır. Yapılan çalışmada sistem bileşenleri arasında haberleşme için kullanılan olay kavramının üretim niteliği geliştirilmesi amaçlanmış olup olaylar sadece ham veri üretiminin yanı sıra, eylemlerin de üretildiği ve saklandığı ileri bir düzeye yerleştirilmiştir. Bu düzeydeki bir olay, işlenebilir veriler üretebileceği gibi, kendine özgü bir kontrol akışına sahip olan bir eylemler dizisinin tetikleyicisi de olabilir. Söz konusu eylemler belirli bir amacı gerçeklemeye yönelik işlem dizisine, karar mekanizmalarına ve çoğunlukla birlikte üretildikleri bir veri kümesine sahip olmaktadır. Sistemde olay yapısı, içerdiği eylem dizisinin ve bu eylemleri yerine getirmede kullanacağı veri bloğunun yer aldığı bir “gezgin etmen” yapısıyla temsil edilmektedir. Bu yeni yapıdaki olaylara “agvent-agent event” adı verilmiş olup sistem bir bütün olarak “Etmen Tabanlı Dağıtılmış Olay Sistemi” veya kısaca “ABDES Sistemi” olarak adlandırılmıştır. Geliştirilen sistem, kayıt/yayım haberleşme modelinin asenkron haberleşme, bir uçtan çok uca haberleşme ve zayıf bağlı haberleşme özellikleri ile gezgin-zeki etmenlerin amaca yönelik davranmalarını, sosyal yeteneklerini, tepkisel davranabilmelerini ve otonom olma özelliklerini esnek bir ortamda birleştirmiştir. Anahtar Kelimeler: Dağıtılmış olay sistemi, gezgin etmenler, kayıt/yayım modeli.In recent years, a growing attention has been paid to the publish/subscribe communication paradigm as a means for disseminating information, also called as events, through distributed systems on wide-area networks. As it allows events to be propagated in a way that is completely hidden to the component that has generated them as well as to its receivers, it is particularly interesting when easy reconfiguration and decoupling among components in a distributed system is required. The historical development of publish/subscribe systems has followed a line which has evolved from channel-based systems, to subject-based systems, next content-based systems and finally type (object) based systems. In this study, we propose a new model for agent based distributed event systems, called as ABDES system, which combines the advantages of distributed event systems (like loosely coupled, asynchronous and one to many communication) and the advantages of intelligent mobile agents (like autonomy, reactivity, social ability and goal driven execution) into a flexible and extensible distributed execution environment. The major novelty of the model is that an event is represented by a mobile agent, (called as agvent-agent event), which is treated as a first class citizen of the system and given autonomy features to travel between system components. ABDES system differs from other distributed event systems with its distinct characteristics that are described below. Event Definition: In most event systems, events are defined as low-level messages, which consist of record like structures, list of strings, tuple based structures, etc. In type-based systems, events are defined as objects and viewed as main component of the system. Nevertheless, they are not autonomous. In ABDES system, events are represented as mobile agents that have their own goals, beliefs and behaviors that they acquire at their creation. When an agvent reaches to an agvent server, it examines the routing table of the server and selects its targets autonomously. This approach reduces the load and complexity of agvent servers as well. Subscription Mechanism: In most distributed event systems, subscribers register on a channel, on a specific topic or on a specific content of an event message. In ABDES system, subscribers register on types of agvents. For example, a subscriber can register on an agvent, which is an instance of "Agv_type1" class, specifying certain constraints based on its advertised attributes and behaviors. Information hiding: In previously developed event systems, an event server can, actually has to, access the content of the published event data. If you have a valuable data and you want to keep it secret it is really a hard work. In ABDES system, a published agvent searches the knowledge base of the agvent server, selects the registered subscribers, clones itself and sends clones of agent to each subscriber on the selected list. Therefore, the agvent server has no access to the content of the published event data, which simplifies its role and consequently facilitates the server development process. Information hiding also meets requirements of certain applications where secrecy of event data is essential for them. User defined agvent types: Distributed event systems generally use predefined event types. Therefore, to add a new event type you have to make changes in the dispatch service and also at publisher and subscriber sites. In ABDES system, a publisher can create its own agvent type and declare its properties and behaviors through an advertisement message. Once an agvent type is announced to the system, subscribers can register on agvents of that type. Filtering Mechanism: Distributed event systems use client side filtering. A client defines its profile by a subscription message and system forwards incoming events to this client according to its profile. There is not any possibility for producers to put their dispatching criteria to select the clients. Because of the agvents autonomous and self routing structure we can achieve the producer side filtering also. Faults and failures are inevitable in a distributed system built over a wide area network and they should be tolerated for continuing system transactions. Therefore we also developed a fault tolerance mechanism by dynamically reconfiguring the connections among agvent servers in order to create paths that increase the performance of message routing. We think the new model will serve as an effective choice for large scale distributed computing application, automatic virus updating and several information oriented applications, such as e-commerce and information retrieval.Keywords: Distributed event system, mobile agent, publish/subscribe model

PARADOXICAL REACTIONS, ESPECIALLY PSORIASIS IN RHEUMATOLOGY PATIENTS RECEIVING BIOLOGIC THERAPY FROM THE TREASURE DATABASE: A 5-YEAR FOLLOW-UP STUDY

EULAR European Congress of Rheumatology (EULAR) -- JUN 01-04, 2022 -- Copenhagen, DENMARK[Abstract Not Available]European Alliance Assoc Rheumato