Cultural integration and its discontents

social integrationculture

Reliability and validity of the Turkish version of the Performance-Oriented Mobility Assessment I

The Performance-Oriented Mobility Assessment (POMA)-I is widely used assessment tool for evaluation of balance and gait properties. The aim of this study was to translate POMA-I to Turkish and to assess its reliability and validity. People with amputated lower extremities using prosthetics, those who underwent orthopedic surgery within the last 6 months, those dependent on wheel chairs and also bed-ridden patients, subjects with dementia and Alzheimer's disease, and illiterate people were excluded. After translation into Turkish, the Turkish version of the scale was applied on the participants at 2-week intervals. Volunteers ≥65 years of age were enrolled in the study. Internal consistencies of POMA subscale scores of postural balance and gait, and total score were calculated using Cronbach's α coefficient. The Turkish version was evaluated with respect to inter- and intrarater reliability and test-retest reliability intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC). For validation, Pearson's correlation coefficient between POMA and Berg Balance Scale (BBS) and Timed Up and Go Test (TUGT) was estimated. Eighty participants enrolled in the study with a mean age of 76. 5 ± 6. 75 years. In the reliability evaluation of the scale, considering postural balance, gait, and total score, Cronbach's α coefficients were found to be 0. 72, 0. 83, and 0. 88, respectively. ICCs were detected above 0. 70 for test-retest reliability and also for interrater and intrarater reliability. In validation study POMA total score had a strong positive correlation with BBS total score (r = 0. 86, p<0. 0001), and also a negative correlation with TUGT (r = -0. 75, p < 0. 0001). According to the results of this study, the Turkish version of the POMA-I scale has been found to be a reliable and a valid scale for elderly Turkish people. © 2012 European Group for Research into Elderly and Physical Activity (EGREPA)

Discovery of Minoan tsunami deposits

The Hellenic are is a terrane of extensive Quaternary volcanism. One of the main centers of explosive eruptions is located on Thera (Santorini), and the eruption of the Thera volcano in late Minoan time (1600-1300 B.C.) is considered to have been the most significant Aegean explosive volcanism during the late Holocene. The last eruptive phase of Thera resulted in an enormous submarine caldera, which is believed to have produced tsunamis on a large scale. Evidence suggesting seawater inundation was found previously at some archaeological sites on the coast of Crete; however, the cause of the tsunami and its effects on the area have not been well understood. On the Aegean Sea coast of western Turkey (Didim and Fethye) and Crete (Gouves), we have found traces of tsunami deposits related to the Thera eruption. The sedimentological consequences and the hydraulics of a Thera-caused tsunami indicate that the eruption of Thera volcano was earlier than the previous estimates and the tsunami did not have disruptive influence on Minoan civilization

The quality of political information

The article conceptualizes the quality of political information and shows how the concept can be used for empirical research. I distinguish three aspects of quality (intelligibility, relevance, validity) and use them to judge the constituent foundations of political information, that is component claims (statements of alleged facts) and connection claims (argumentative statements created by causally linking two component claims). The resulting conceptual map thus entails six manifestations of information quality (component claimintelligibility, connection claim intelligibility, component claimrelevance, connection claim relevance, component claim validity, and connection claim validity). I explain how the conceptual map can be used to make sense of the eclectic variety of existing research, and how it can advance new empirical research, as a guide for determining variation in information quality, as a conceptual template for the analysis of different types of political messages and their common quality deficiencies, and as a generator of new research questions and theoretical expectations

Oiling global capital accumulation : analyzing the principles, practices and geographical distribution of Islamic financial services

This article focuses on the Islamic financial services (IFS) sector, which originated in the Middle East, but is now rapidly becoming a global sector. First, Islamic economic ideology is discussed, which resulted in the foundation of IFS firms after the 1973 oil crisis, and then an overview of the most common IFS is provided. The third part discusses the global distribution of IFS firms and Shari'a compliant assets. The Middle East is at the apex of the IFS sector, with the Islamized economies of Iran and Pakistan and prime hubs such as Manama and Dubai. Outside the Middle East, Malaysia is identified as an important growing market for IFS, while outside the Muslim world, London is increasingly profiling itself as a global IFS hub

Actually existing Silk Roads

This article explores the relevance of the concept of Silk Road for understandings patterns of trade and exchange between China, Eurasia and the Middle East. It is based on ethnographic fieldwork in the city of Yiwu, in China’s Zhejiang Province. Yiwu is a node in the global distribution of Chinese ‘small commodities’ and home to merchants and traders from across Asia and beyond. The article explores the role played by traders from Afghanistan in connecting the city of Yiwu to markets and trading posts in the world beyond. It seeks to bring attention to the diverse types of networks involved in such forms of trade, as well as their emergence and development over the past thirty years

Trollthrottle -- Raising the Cost of Astroturfing

Astroturfing, i.e., the fabrication of public discourse by private or state-controlled sponsors via the creation of fake online accounts, has become incredibly widespread in recent years. It gives a disproportionally strong voice to wealthy and technology-savvy actors, permits targeted attacks on public forums and could in the long run harm the trust users have in the internet as a communication platform. Countering these efforts without deanonymising the participants has not yet proven effective; however, we can raise the cost of astroturfing. Following the principle `one person, one voice', we introduce Trollthrottle, a protocol that limits the number of comments a single person can post on participating websites. Using direct anonymous attestation and a public ledger, the user is free to choose any nickname, but the number of comments is aggregated over all posts on all websites, no matter which nickname was used. We demonstrate the deployability of Trollthrottle by retrofitting it to the popular news aggregator website Reddit and by evaluating the cost of deployment for the scenario of a national newspaper (168k comments per day), an international newspaper (268k c/d) and Reddit itself (4.9M c/d)

The Diffusion of Inclusion: An Open Polity Model of Ethnic Power Sharing

While there is a growing consensus that ethnic inclusion produces peace, less is known about what causes transitions to power sharing between ethnic groups in central governments in multiethnic states. The few studies that have addressed this question have proposed explanations stressing exclusively domestic factors. Yet, power sharing is spatially clustered, which suggests that diffusion may be at play. Inspired by studies of democratic diffusion, we study the spread of inclusive policies with an “open polity model” that explicitly traces diffusion from inclusion in other states. Our findings indicate that the relevant diffusion processes operate primarily at the level of world regions rather than globally or between territorial neighbors. Thus, the more inclusive the region, the more likely a shift to power sharing becomes. Shifts away from inclusion to dominance are less common since World War II, but they are more likely in regional settings characterized by ethnic exclusion