Complexity of Electricity Markets and their Regulation: Insights from the Turkish Experience.

Electricity pricing models were designed at a time when technology was relatively stable. The natural monopoly model was based on a uni-directional pricing mechanism. Electricity was generated at one end and transferred to the other end. Pollution was not a big issue. There were no solar panels over the houses of consumers. Many contemporary issues of the ecosystem of electricity were not relevant. The tariff model was meant to be a simple one, even though it included many variables. It was not a complex system. This paper argues that a model that was designed within a simple system cannot efficiently adapt to a multidimensional and interdependent system. The use of the old regulatory model within a complex system creates rents and inefficiencies. This paper evaluates the electricity tariff model in Turkey under the light of recent technological advances and changes in the structure of electricity markets. The changes in the institutional environment of the market bring electricity markets closer to a complex system. We argue that the tariff mechanism should also be revised accordingly. We use the Turkish electricity industry as an example, as it reflects the issues in a developing country

Complexity of Electricity Markets and their Regulation: Insights from the Turkish Experience.

Electricity pricing models were designed at a time when technology was relatively stable. The natural monopoly model was based on a uni-directional pricing mechanism. Electricity was generated at one end and transferred to the other end. Pollution was not a big issue. There were no solar panels over the houses of consumers. Many contemporary issues of the ecosystem of electricity were not relevant. The tariff model was meant to be a simple one, even though it included many variables. It was not a complex system. This paper argues that a model that was designed within a simple system cannot efficiently adapt to a multidimensional and interdependent system. The use of the old regulatory model within a complex system creates rents and inefficiencies. This paper evaluates the electricity tariff model in Turkey under the light of recent technological advances and changes in the structure of electricity markets. The changes in the institutional environment of the market bring electricity markets closer to a complex system. We argue that the tariff mechanism should also be revised accordingly. We use the Turkish electricity industry as an example, as it reflects the issues in a developing country

O papel do conhecimento tácito na adesão às normas sociais

This paper aims to contribute to the ongoing discussion on adherence to social norms. It considers insights from multiple research traditions in an effort to explain how individual learning and action are connected to social norms. One strand of philosophical tradition holds that non-representational learning and skillful coping carried out unconsciously are underestimated by both scientific and philosophical traditions. The present research combines this tradition with the literature on the evolution of social norms and suggests that experienced individuals in a society adhere to social norms better than novice agents do. We explain this phenomenon by unconscious and non-representational cognitive processes. This framework is then used to investigate population-level outcomes of individual learning.Keywords: adherence to norms, expertise, skillful coping.Este artigo tem como objetivo contribuir para a discussão em curso sobre a adesão às normas sociais. Ele cosnidera insights de múltiplas tradições de pesquisa em um esforço para explicar como a aprendizagem e a ação individuais estão conectadas às normas sociais. Uma vertente da tradição filosófica sustenta que a aprendizagem não representacional e o enfrentamento hábil inconscientemente são subestimados pelas tradições científicas e filosóficas. A presente pesquisa combina esta tradição com a literatura sobre a evolução das normas sociais e sugere que os indivíduos experientes em uma sociedade adiram às normas sociais melhor do que os agentes novatos. Explicamos este fenômeno por processos cognitivos inconscientes e não representativos. Este quadro é então utilizado para investigar resultados de nível individual da aprendizagem individual.Palavras-chave: aderência às normas, perícia, habilidades de enfrentamento

Effects of cord blood vitamin D levels on the risk of neonatal sepsis in premature infants

PurposeVitamin D plays a key role in immune function. Vitamin D deficiency may play a role in the pathogenesis of infections, and low levels of circulating vitamin D are strongly associated with infectious diseases. In this study, we aimed to evaluate the effects of low vitamin D levels in cord blood on neonatal sepsis in preterm infants.MethodsOne hundred seventeen premature infants with gestational age of <37 weeks were enrolled. In the present study, severe vitamin D deficiency (group 1) was defined as a 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25(OH)D) concentration <5 ng/mL; vitamin D insufficiency (group 2), 25(OH)D concentration ≥5 ng/mL and <15 ng/mL; and vitamin D sufficiency (group 3), 25(OH)D concentration ≥15 ng/mL.ResultsSixty-three percent of the infants had deficient levels of cord blood vitamin D (group 1), 24% had insufficient levels (group 2), and 13% were found to have sufficient levels (group 3). The rate of neonatal sepsis was higher in group 2 than in groups 1 and 3.ConclusionThere was no significant relationship between the cord blood vitamin D levels and the risk of neonatal sepsis in premature infants

From Gezi Resistance To Soma Massacre: Capital Accumulation and Class Struggle in Turkey

On 31 May 2013, a local demonstration against the destruction of Gezi Park in Taksim, Istanbul as part of an urban renewal project turned into a spontaneous countrywide uprising. In the course of a few weeks, 2.5 million people filled the streets of 79 Turkish cities, with the slogans ‘everywhere is Taksim, everywhere is resistance’, and demanding the government resign. The Gezi resistance can be considered as part of the global wave of uprisings that started in 2009, centred in countries around the Mediterranean, as reactions against various facets of the deepening of capitalist social relations and the corresponding rise in the authoritarianism of the state. Analyses of the class character of the Gezi resistance often miss the mark, arguing for example that the resistance had no class content or at most a strictly middle class character. There are two main problems, as we see it, with the middle-class thesis. First, it focuses on the individual class positions of the protestors, defined narrowly as a place in production relations or in the consumption sphere. A Marxian analysis instead defines classes in terms of their objective and subjective relations to the totality of the capital accumulation process, encompassing production, realization and revalorization. In this case, the Gezi resistance represented a struggle against the commodification of nature in the context of the revalorization of capital and the reproduction of the state. The other major problem with the middle-class thesis is that it turns attention only to the beginning of the events and the nature of the protests at Gezi Park; the uprising is reduced to a moment rather than a process. But if we take into account the class composition and political demands of 2.5 million people who protested in all but two cities of Turkey over the month of June 2012, as well as the ongoing struggles before and after the Gezi resistance, a quite different image emerges, as we will show in this essay. The Gezi resistance reflects a general shift in protests from the anti-globalization protests of the late 1990s against supranational institutions to anti-government protests targeted at national states. The shift in discourse of these ongoing protests in Turkey, now directed against class power concentrated in the Turkish state, mark a huge leap forward in class struggle from the national-developmentalist discourse of the late 1990s against external forces such as the IMF and the World Bank