Kurdish Cinema as a Transnational Discourse Genre: Cinematic Visibility, Cultural Resilience, and Political Agency

Within the last few years, "Kurdish cinema" has emerged as a unique discursive subject in Turkey. Subsequent to and in line with efforts to unify Kurdish cultural production in diaspora, Kurdish intellectuals have endeavored to define and frame the substance of Kurdish cinema as an orienting framework for the production and reception of films by and about Kurds. In this article, my argument is threefold. First, Kurdish cinema has emerged as a national cinema in transnational space. Second, like all media texts, Kurdish films are nationalized in discourse. Third, the communicative strategies used to nationalize Kurdish cinema must be viewed both in the context of the historical forces of Turkish nationalism and against a backdrop of contemporary politics in Turkey, specifically the Turkish government's discourses and policies related to the Kurds. The empirical data for this article derive from ethnographic research in Turkey and Europe conducted between 2009 and 2012

First-Principles Studies of Complex Oxide Materials

This thesis uses first-principles methods to study complex oxide materials. The first part of the thesis deals with complex oxide materials that have applications as lithium-ion battery electrodes. In the second part, a new method for the calculation of vibrational properties of correlated materials, specifically transition metal oxides, is developed. After introducing the relevant background and computational methods in Chapters~1 and~2, three chapters are devoted to the study of Wadsley--Roth crystallographic shear phases. This family of niobium-based oxides has attracted significant attention due to their promise as high-rate lithium-ion battery electrodes. Chapter 3 is devoted to the study of the electronic structure and magnetism of niobium suboxides. An electronic structure analysis establishes the coexistence of flat and dispersive energy bands, corresponding to localised and delocalised electron states. These states are shown to be inherent features of the crystal structures. A localisation-delocalisation transition occurs as the structural capacity for localised electrons is exceeded. The results shed light on the experimentally observed electrical and magnetic properties of the niobium suboxides. Chapter 4 examines cation disorder and lithium insertion mechanism of crystallographic shear phases, making use of an enumeration approach to generate sets of cation configurations and lithium-vacancy configurations. A three-step lithium insertion mechanism is revealed, discernible in the evolution of lattice parameters and the voltage profile. A predicted theoretical voltage curve is in good agreement with available experimental data. A distinctive change in the local structure is also discovered: transition metal oxygen octahedra become more symmetric on lithium insertion. The electronic structure behaves as expected for crystallographic shear phases, given the results of the previous chapter: small amounts of localised electrons are present during initial lithium insertion, but on further lithiation, metallicity results. Chapter 5 investigates the lithium diffusion mechanism of niobium tungsten oxide shear structures. Building on the results of the previous two chapters, transition state searches and molecular dynamics simulations were used to obtain hopping barriers and diffusion coefficients. Overall, a quasi-1D diffusion mechanism is observed with low activation barriers (80 - 300 meV) and high diffusion coefficients (10⁻¹² - 10⁻¹¹ m²s⁻¹). Structure-property relationships for crystallographic shear phases are discussed in detail in relation to battery performance. Chapter 6 develops a robust and efficient method to calculate phonons in correlated materials with DFT+DMFT. The method combines a DFT+DMFT force implementation with the direct method for lattice dynamics, using non-diagonal rather than diagonal supercells. In addition, a fixed self-energy approximation is proposed. The method is tested for a set of typical correlated materials, and shown to drastically reduce computational costs compared to previous work.Winton Programme for the Physics of Sustainability EPSR

News Sharing Repertoires on Social Media in the Context of Networked Authoritarianism:The Case of Turkey

Social media has become a primary gateway for users to access news, especially in authoritarian states with strictly controlled media environments. In such contexts, it is crucial to understand the motivations that prompt users to share news on social media. Our qualitative multimethod study presents three patterns of news-sharing repertoires on social media: (1) refraining from sharing and/or self-censorship, (2) sharing overtly political news, and (3) sharing news with political implications in carefully crafted safe zones. In Turkey, these patterns are strongly influenced by the polarized and increasingly authoritarian setting. Our findings first contribute to the literature on news sharing and news repertoires through an in-depth study of news-sharing repertories that emphasize the role of social and political contexts. Second, we contribute to the literature on social media and authoritarianism by shedding light on a rather understudied group of users who do not completely self-censor and are not political activists but still share news with political implications online in a cautious and strategic way

News Sharing Repertoires on Social Media in the Context of Networked Authoritarianism:The Case of Turkey

Social media has become a primary gateway for users to access news, especially in authoritarian states with strictly controlled media environments. In such contexts, it is crucial to understand the motivations that prompt users to share news on social media. Our qualitative multimethod study presents three patterns of news-sharing repertoires on social media: (1) refraining from sharing and/or self-censorship, (2) sharing overtly political news, and (3) sharing news with political implications in carefully crafted safe zones. In Turkey, these patterns are strongly influenced by the polarized and increasingly authoritarian setting. Our findings first contribute to the literature on news sharing and news repertoires through an in-depth study of news-sharing repertories that emphasize the role of social and political contexts. Second, we contribute to the literature on social media and authoritarianism by shedding light on a rather understudied group of users who do not completely self-censor and are not political activists but still share news with political implications online in a cautious and strategic way

Environmental Effects of Endocrine-Disrupting Chemicals: A Special Focus on Phthalates and Bisphenol A

Several environmental chemicals are classified as endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs). Many of them have an impact on reproductive functions and sex hormones because of their estrogenic and/or antiandrogenic properties. Phthalates and bisphenol A (BPA) are two well-known EDCs. They are abundant in the environment. Phthalates are usually classified as antiandrogens, whereas BPA is considered as estrogen-like EDC and xenoestrogen. Other than their endocrine-disrupting effects, these two chemicals are also known to have genotoxic and epigenetic effects. Besides, they are hepatotoxic and have substantial effects on other organs/systems (thyroid, kidney, neuroendocrine system, immune system, etc.). In this chapter, we will mainly focus on the toxic effects of different phthalate esters and BPA by discussing their availability in the environment, mechanism and mode of actions, their biotransformation and reproductive effects, and their effects on other systems (hepatic, renal, etc.). Besides, we discuss epidemiological studies that are conducted to reveal their effects on the reproductive and endocrine systems. This chapter provides the readers a compact piece of knowledge on these abundant substances and helps them to understand the action of these substances at the molecular and cellular levels

Measuring the Effect of Multi-touch Panel Based Education for Pre-school Students

AbstractIn this study, educational materials has been developed by using WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) platform on the computer system with multi-point touch surface for children in the pre-school education with 5-6 age group in order to learn “time” term. These educational materials have been applied to experiment group (20 pre-school students) during 5 weeks. In order to measure the performance of this process, pre-test and last-test has been applied to the control group (other 20 pre-school students) whom educated traditional method. Kolmogorov-Smirnov test is implemented for availability of the distribution of variables. Then, T-test and Chi-square test are performed for getting the meaningfulness between two group's successes

Hydrophobic gating of mechanosensitive channel of large conductance evidenced by single-subunit resolution

Mechanosensitive (MS) ion channels are membrane proteins that detect and respond to membrane tension in all branches of life. In bacteria, MS channels prevent cells from lysing upon sudden hypoosmotic shock by opening and releasing solutes and water. Despite the importance of MS channels and ongoing efforts to explain their functioning, the molecular mechanism of MS channel gating remains elusive and controversial. Here we report a method that allows single-subunit resolution for manipulating and monitoring “mechanosensitive channel of large conductance” from Escherichia coli. We gradually changed the hydrophobicity of the pore constriction in this homopentameric protein by modifying a critical pore residue one subunit at a time. Our experimental results suggest that both channel opening and closing are initiated by the transmembrane 1 helix of a single subunit and that the participation of each of the five identical subunits in the structural transitions between the closed and open states is asymmetrical. Such a minimal change in the pore environment seems ideal for a fast and energy-efficient response to changes in the membrane tension.