Quarrying and Sustainability during Urbanazion: Gebze District Case

The requirement of construction materials increases along with the developing urbanization. Despite the most of quarries are established in rural or semi rural areas, their locations remain in or close to the urban areas in parallel with the expansion of residential areas in proportion to the rate of urbanization. Continuing population growth, social, industrial and economic developments require more construction materials. Gebze region uses approximately 8,000,000 tons of aggregate per year for construction sector. The present quarries are planned to be abandoned in the following years. Regardless of potential problems, it is important for planning to estimate future recources. Nowadays there are public housing, organized industrial zones and highway projects at planning and construction stages. Nevertheless, Ballıkayalar National Park is close to likely potential material quarries. By avoiding the national park area, the availability and the quality of materials should be established at an early stage, as material production and transportation costs can be an important consideration when selecting a design solution.

A Comparison of Grading Models for Neighborhood Level of Family Housing Units

More recently Turkey has witnessed fast housing development and real estate sector growth because of the mortgage preparations. With this development, property location quality has been considered important for selecting and paying them. This study uses a data set of new single family housing units in Kocaeli University Campus Area. By using 4 location quality criteria, 27 single family housing units are graded at the neighborhood level. It is aimed to examine the applications of grading property at the neighborhood level based on property location quality by testing with three methods. Traditional method and fuzzy logic method were discussed in our antecedent studies. In this study, an easy used numerical calculation method; Neural Networks (NN), is introduced. Its grading performance is compared with the previous methods. NN method is found to be more accurate and realistic than traditional grading approach where its designing stage is more practical and faster than fuzzy logic approach.

Primary gastrointestinal aspergillosis: A case report and literature review

Invasive aspergillosis is a severe infection that generally involves the lungs. Primary gastrointestinal aspergillosis is the least common form of invasive aspergillosis. A patient aged 65 years developed a febrile neutropenic episode following an autologous stem cell transplant for plasmacytoid variant diffuse large B-cell gastric non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. He had abdominal pain on the second day of the febrile neutropenic episode and ileus occurred on the sixth day. His general condition deteriorated despite broad spectrum antibiotics and caspofungin treatment, and intestinal perforation occurred on the nineteenth day of the febrile neutropenic episode. Pathological examination of the resected jejunum and ileum revealed mould hyphae compatible with aspergillus. The patient died due to massive gastrointestinal bleeding on the fifth post-operative day. Although a rare condition, primary gastrointestinal aspergillosis should be kept in mind while treating neutropenic patients with gastrointestinal symptoms

Liver abscess due to Yersinia bacteremia in a well-controlled type I diabetic patient

Yersiniae enterocolitica, a gram negative rod-like organism, causes terminal ileitis and mesenteric adenitis in adolescents and adults. Some forms present with liver and spleen abscesses and have worse prognosis. We report a type 1 diabetic patient with a liver abscess mimicking metastatic liver disease who was successfully treated with percutaneous drainage and antibiotic administration; culture from blood was positive for Yersinia enterocolitica, but drainage material from the liver abscess did not yield a positive result for Yersinia enterocolitica. Although the prognosis is not good in such cases, with high mortality rates, our patient recovered from the disease with appropriate treatment. (Pol J Endocrinol 2011; 62 (4): 357–360)Gram-ujemna pałeczka Yersiniae enterocolitica powoduje zapalenie końcowego odcinka jelita cienkiego i zapalenie węzłów chłonnych krezki u młodzieży i dorosłych. Czasami obserwuje się przypadki ropni wątroby lub śledziony, które wiążą się z gorszym rokowaniem. Autorzy opisują przypadek chorego na cukrzycę typu 1 z ropniem wątroby imitującym guz przerzutowy wątroby, u którego zastosowano skuteczne leczenie obejmujące drenaż przezskórny i antybiotykoterapię. W posiewie krwi wyhodowano Yersinia Enterocolitica, jednak z treści uzyskanej w wyniku drenażu ropnia nie uzyskano potwierdzenia obecności tych bakterii. Mimo że w takich przypadkach rokowanie jest niepomyślne i notuje się wysoki odsetek zgonów, dzięki odpowiedniemu leczeniu pacjent powrócił do zdrowia. (Endokrynol Pol 2011; 62 (4): 357–360

National identity predicts public health support during a global pandemic

Changing collective behaviour and supporting non-pharmaceutical interventions is an important component in mitigating virus transmission during a pandemic. In a large international collaboration (Study 1, N = 49,968 across 67 countries), we investigated self-reported factors associated with public health behaviours (e.g., spatial distancing and stricter hygiene) and endorsed public policy interventions (e.g., closing bars and restaurants) during the early stage of the COVID-19 pandemic (April-May 2020). Respondents who reported identifying more strongly with their nation consistently reported greater engagement in public health behaviours and support for public health policies. Results were similar for representative and non-representative national samples. Study 2 (N = 42 countries) conceptually replicated the central finding using aggregate indices of national identity (obtained using the World Values Survey) and a measure of actual behaviour change during the pandemic (obtained from Google mobility reports). Higher levels of national identification prior to the pandemic predicted lower mobility during the early stage of the pandemic (r = −0.40). We discuss the potential implications of links between national identity, leadership, and public health for managing COVID-19 and future pandemics.publishedVersio

Predicting attitudinal and behavioral responses to COVID-19 pandemic using machine learning

At the beginning of 2020, COVID-19 became a global problem. Despite all the efforts to emphasize the relevance of preventive measures, not everyone adhered to them. Thus, learning more about the characteristics determining attitudinal and behavioral responses to the pandemic is crucial to improving future interventions. In this study, we applied machine learning on the multinational data collected by the International Collaboration on the Social and Moral Psychology of COVID-19 (N = 51,404) to test the predictive efficacy of constructs from social, moral, cognitive, and personality psychology, as well as socio-demographic factors, in the attitudinal and behavioral responses to the pandemic. The results point to several valuable insights. Internalized moral identity provided the most consistent predictive contribution—individuals perceiving moral traits as central to their self-concept reported higher adherence to preventive measures. Similar results were found for morality as cooperation, symbolized moral identity, self-control, open-mindedness, and collective narcissism, while the inverse relationship was evident for the endorsement of conspiracy theories. However, we also found a non-neglible variability in the explained variance and predictive contributions with respect to macro-level factors such as the pandemic stage or cultural region. Overall, the results underscore the importance of morality-related and contextual factors in understanding adherence to public health recommendations during the pandemic.Peer reviewe

National identity predicts public health support during a global pandemic (vol 13, 517, 2022) : National identity predicts public health support during a global pandemic (Nature Communications, (2022), 13, 1, (517), 10.1038/s41467-021-27668-9)

Publisher Copyright: © The Author(s) 2022.In this article the author name ‘Agustin Ibanez’ was incorrectly written as ‘Augustin Ibanez’. The original article has been corrected.Peer reviewe

National identity predicts public health support during a global pandemic.

Changing collective behaviour and supporting non-pharmaceutical interventions is an important component in mitigating virus transmission during a pandemic. In a large international collaboration (Study 1, N = 49,968 across 67 countries), we investigated self-reported factors associated with public health behaviours (e.g., spatial distancing and stricter hygiene) and endorsed public policy interventions (e.g., closing bars and restaurants) during the early stage of the COVID-19 pandemic (April-May 2020). Respondents who reported identifying more strongly with their nation consistently reported greater engagement in public health behaviours and support for public health policies. Results were similar for representative and non-representative national samples. Study 2 (N = 42 countries) conceptually replicated the central finding using aggregate indices of national identity (obtained using the World Values Survey) and a measure of actual behaviour change during the pandemic (obtained from Google mobility reports). Higher levels of national identification prior to the pandemic predicted lower mobility during the early stage of the pandemic (r = -0.40). We discuss the potential implications of links between national identity, leadership, and public health for managing COVID-19 and future pandemics