A critical approach toward Cevdet Pasha's understanding of reform: grandviziers, sultans, and society in the context of tezakir and maruzat

This thesis aims to reassess the reliability of Ahmed Cevdet Pasha’s Tezakir and Maruzat as the substantial primary sources of the Tanzimat period and go beyond the understanding of the ‘incontestability’ of Cevdet Pasha’s writings. Being originally from the ilmiye class, Cevdet Pasha was one of the most prominent statesmen of the Tanzimat era and actively involved in the implementation of numerous reforms. Therefore, while his accounts are dealt with, it is important to figure out the expectations, purposes, and perspectives that formed the basis of Cevdet's narration in order to evaluate to what extent Cevdet’s accounts are objective and reliable. In this study, first, Cevdet’s subjective attitude toward the five grand viziers —Reşid, Fuad, Âli, Mahmud Nedim, and Midhat Pashas— of the era is examined. Second, Cevdet’s notion of the sultanate is considered and his attitude toward the two sultans of the Tanzimat era—Abdülmecid and Abdülaziz— and their reigns is analyzed. Third, Cevdet’s state-centered view while describing and interpreting the oppositional movements of the people of different strata and diverse regions of the empire is illustrated. Fourth, Cevdet's manner toward İstanbul society, in which he spent most of his life, and societies of Bosnia and the Çukurova region, to where he was sent as a state official are considered. Lastly, the Ottoman political thought is briefly mentioned in order to understand the roots of Cevdet’s traditional and conservative outlook on rulershi

Partisan politics of skills in middle-income countries: Insiders, outsiders and the vocational education system of Turkey

The literature on the political economy of development argues that many middle-income countries could not develop strong vocational education and training systems because of the lack of political coalitions that would support such systems. However, these researchers have overlooked the role of partisan politics, domain of political competition and the links of insiders and outsiders with political parties. This article addresses this gap by studying the case of Turkey in the 2000s, when the country was governed by the Justice and Development Party and experienced important changes in its vocational education and training system. It investigates the political shifts in these years and the impact of these shifts on vocational education and training policies. The article argues that the governing Justice and Development Party played a key role in the changes in the Turkish vocational education and training system. Small and medium enterprises and labour market outsiders, which were the outsiders of the political and economic system, formed Justice and Development Party’s main constituents. Different from the previous parties, Justice and Development Party focused on the economic interests of outsiders and vocational education and training became an important tool to address such interests of both groups. The Justice and Development Party governments integrated the interests of both small and medium enterprises and workers into the vocational education and training policies in the 2000s, which has led to a vocational education and training system with high state commitment, higher firm involvement and higher permeability between vocational and general education. This research is based on process-tracing of the political dynamics and vocational education and training system developments in Turkey in 2002–2011. The data comprise primary and secondary documents, as well as interviews with several stakeholders

Tuberous Sclerosis Complex: mutations, functions and phenotypes

Tuberous sclerosis complex (TSC) is an autosomal dominant disorder characterised by the development of hamartomas in multiple organs and tissues. TSC is caused by mutations in either the TSC1 or TSC2 gene. We searched for mutations in both genes in a cohort of 490 patients diagnosed with or suspected of having TSC using a combination of denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis, single-strand conformational polymorphism, direct sequencing, fluorescent in situ hybridisation and Southern blotting. We identified pathogenic mutations in 362 patients, a mutation detection rate of 74%. Of these 362 patients, 276 had a definite clinical diagnosis of TSC and in these patients 235 mutations were identified, a mutation detection rate of 85%. The ratio of TSC2:TSC1 mutations was 3.4:1. In our cohort, both TSC1 mutations and mutations in familial TSC2 cases were associated with phenotypes less severe than de novo TSC2 mutations. Interestingly, consistent with other studies, the phenotypes of the patients in which no mutation was identified were, overall, less severe than those of patients with either a known TSC1 or TSC2 mutation

Number Specification in L2 processing of Norwegian adult L2 English speakers: Time-frequency representation (TFR) analysis

This thesis investigates the processing of non-local agreement violations and whether they are affected by double marking from a determiner-number specification in Norwegian L2 speakers of English. We tested non-local subject-verb agreement, a mismatch between Norwegian and English, and the double marking on the number of the noun that is a common feature of the two languages by using online Grammaticality Judgement test (GJT) during EEG (electroencephalogram) recording. There were four conditions to test the participants’ sensitivity towards determiner number specification: (1) Grammatical unspecified, (2) ungrammatical unspecified, (3) grammatical specified, (4) ungrammatical specified. The EEG data were analyzed with TFRs (time-frequency references) to observe the changes in different frequency bands of neural oscillations. Behavioural and neural responses to the sentences were compared to understand the neural mechanisms regarding the interaction between non-local agreement violations and determiner-number specification. The results showed no evidence for an interaction between specificity and grammaticality. The specificity did not seem to affect participants’ judgment of the grammaticality. That is, we did not see any change in the theta band (4-8 Hz); however, a relative decrease in the activation for the ungrammatical items vs grammatical items in the alpha band (8-12 Hz) and a relative decrease in the activation for the number-specified items vs number-unspecified items in alpha bands (8-12 Hz) was observed. The alpha band reactivity observed during language comprehension does not necessarily reflect the linguistic analyses but the attention. Alpha band decrease is explained as the engagement of the additional attentional resources to explain a faulty representation. The results of the behavioural data showed that the participants were better when judging the grammatical sentences than the ungrammatical sentences, and the unspecified grammatical sentences were judged more accurately than the other three conditions. The findings of the current study suggest that the agreement violation in GJT led the participants to have increased attentional process demands as they needed to judge the mismatching property between their L1 Norwegian and L2 English

Quarantine region scheme to mitigate spam attacks in wireless sensor networks

The Quarantine Region Scheme (QRS) is introduced to defend against spam attacks in wireless sensor networks where malicious antinodes frequently generate dummy spam messages to be relayed toward the sink. The aim of the attacker is the exhaustion of the sensor node batteries and the extra delay caused by processing the spam messages. Network-wide message authentication may solve this problem with a cost of cryptographic operations to be performed over all messages. QRS is designed to reduce this cost by applying authentication only whenever and wherever necessary. In QRS, the nodes that detect a nearby spam attack assume themselves to be in a quarantine region. This detection is performed by intermittent authentication checks. Once quarantined, a node continuously applies authentication measures until the spam attack ceases. In the QRS scheme, there is a tradeoff between the resilience against spam attacks and the number of authentications. Our experiments show that, in the worst-case scenario that we considered, a not quarantined node catches 80 percent of the spam messages by authenticating only 50 percent of all messages that it processe

Rag proteins regulate amino-acid-induced mTORC1 signalling

The serum- and nutrient-sensitive protein kinase mTOR (mammalian target of rapamycin) is a master regulator of cell growth and survival. The mechanisms through which nutrients regulate mTOR have been one of the major unanswered questions in the mTOR field. Identification of the Rag (Ras-related GTPase) family of GTPases as mediators of amino acid signalling to mTOR is an important step towards our understanding of this mechanism.National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (R01 CA103866)National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (AI47389)United States. Dept. of Defense (grant number W81XWH-07-0448)W. M. Keck Foundatio

An Investigation on Production of Blended Cement with Natural Building Stone Waste Resistant to Sulphate Effects

In this study, the cements produced by the additive materials from Isparta city, Turkeyand its region which gives puzzolanic activity are compared with normal Portland cement. Inthis comparison sulphate resistance and other cement properties are examined.The natural additives which undergone various procedures are blended with clinker andgypsum under different proportions, which are main cement compounds. Prepared mortarspecimens cured in the water for 28 days and then they were exposed to three differentproportions of sodium sulphate solution for 125 days. Afterwards performances of cementsare determined with compressive strength. Also the prepared specimens for during 3 monthsperiod and there are cured under moist atmosphere volume expansion are measured andcontinuously monitored.The results show that, diatomite blended cement having more porous structure thanandesite powder were more affected by sulphate attack. As in the normal standard tests, byadding 10 % of these materials gave similar strength values with 42.5 Portland cement, atlater periods of time

Kasaplar tarafından geleneksel yöntemlerle üretilen fermente sucukların bazı kalite özelliklerinin standartlara uygunluk yönünden değerlendirilmesi

This research was carried out to determine some microbiological and physicochemical characteristics of fermented sucuks produced by butchers in Siirt with traditional methods and reveal whether fraudulent practices were applied during production. It was determined that the mean total aerobic mesophilic microorganism count of sucuks was 7.06±0.47, coliform group microorganism count 4.66±1.50, Escherichia coli count 3.79±1.59, Staphylococcus aureus count 4.08±2.13, yeast and mold count 5.88±1.02 log10 cfu/g; moisture content 30.92%±8.20, pH value 5.41±0.45, water activity value 0.888±0.05. In addition, starch was encountered in twenty of the samples, putrefaction in twenty-eight, and blood presence in all of them. According to TS 1070, 6.67% of the examined sucuks were moisture content, 20% E. coli, 60% S. aureus, 93.33% coliforms, pH value and putrefaction, and according to Turkish Food Codex, 26.67% of them were not suitable in terms of pH value and 66.67% of starch presence. In conclusion, it was concluded that some samples with insufficient hygienic quality might pose a potential risk for public health. In order to obtain hygienic and standards-compliant products; producers should be made aware, hygienic measures should be taken at all stages from production to consumption, and inspections by competent authorities should be increased.Bu araştırma, Siirt’teki kasaplar tarafından geleneksel yöntemlerle üretilen fermente sucukların bazı mikrobiyolojik ve fizikokimyasal özelliklerinin belirlenmesi, ayrıca üretim sırasında hile amaçlı uygulamaların yapılıp yapılmadığının ortaya konması amacıyla yapılmıştır. Sucukların ortalama toplam aerob mezofilik mikroorganizma sayısı 7.06±0.47, koliform grubu mikroorganizma sayısı 4.66±1.50, Escherichia coli sayısı 3.79±1.59, Staphylococcus aureus sayısı 4.08±2.13, maya-küf sayısı 5.88±1.02 log10 kob/g; rutubet miktarı %30.92±8.20, pH değeri 5.41±0.45, su aktivitesi değeri 0.888±0.05 olarak belirlenmiştir. Ayrıca, örneklerin yirmisinde nişastaya, yirmisekizinde kokuşmaya ve tamamında kan varlığına rastlanmıştır. İncelenen sucukların TS 1070’e göre %6.67’si rutubet miktarı, %20’si E. coli, %60’ı S. aureus, %93.33’ü de koliformlar, pH değeri ve kokuşma yönünden; Türk Gıda Kodeksi’ne göre ise %26.67’si pH değeri ve %66.67’si nişasta varlığı yönünden uygun bulunmamıştır. Sonuç olarak; yetersiz hijyenik kaliteye sahip bazı örneklerin halk sağlığı açısından potansiyel bir risk oluşturabileceği kanaatine varılmıştır. Hijyenik ve standartlara uygun ürünlerin elde edilebilmesi için; üreticiler bilinçlendirilmeli, üretimden tüketime kadar geçen tüm safhalarda hijyenik tedbirler alınmalı ve yetkili otoriteler tarafından yapılacak denetimler artırılmalıdır