Creditor concentration: an empirical investigation

Most of the literature addressing multiple banking assumes equal financing shares. However, unequal, concentrated or asymmetric bank borrowing is widespread. This paper investigates the determinants of creditor concentration for German firms using a comprehensive bank-firm level dataset for the time period between 1993 and 2003. We document that lending is very often concentrated and, consequently, that relationship lending is important, not only for the small firms but also for the larger firms in our sample. However, we also find that risky, illiquid, large and leveraged firms spread their borrowing more evenly between multiple lenders. On the other hand, the degree of concentration increases with the profitability of the relationship lender. Relationship lending may spur financing provided by other banks, especially if the relationship lender is a public sector bank and if the other banks are large or do not have to tie up additional funds in capital. --bank relationships,asymmetric financing,banking competition

Ney nasıl bir sazdır ve ne zaman ortaya çıktı?

Taha Toros Arşivi, Dosya No: 184-Hayri Tüme

Stock price reactions of acquiring firms to mergers and acquisitions in Turkey

71 pagesIn this study, impact of merger and acquisition announcement on share prices of acquiring firms was examined. First theoretical framework was clarified by giving definitions, explaining the types of integrations with advantages and disadvantages. Second the most outstanding motives for entering a merger and acquisition deal such as economies of scale, hubris, synergy, tax advantages, transfer of know-how etc. laid out in detail. Then merger waves were described through the events causing and terminating them, fundamental outcomes. Event study methodology conducted throughout the research. Sample is made up of 80 observations for the period of 1994-2014. Apart from full sample analysis, three comparison groups which are “form of transaction”, “industry relatedness”, “target public status” were formed and their impact on the share prices were measured separately. Consequently, it is proved that M&A disclosures have a very insignificant impact on acquiring companies’ share prices.Bu çalışmada şirket satın alma ve birleşme haberlerinin alıcı fırmanın hisse senetleri üzerindeki etkileri incelenmiştir. İlk olarak tanımlamalar yapılarak, birleşme şekilleri avantaj ve dez avantajlarıyla açıklanarak çalışmanın teorik çerçevesi sunulmuştur. İkinci olarak fırmaları birleşme ve satın alma kararlarına yönlendiren sinerji, ölçek ekonomilerinden yararlanma, yöneticilerin kibirleri (hubris), vergi avantajları, know-how transferi gibi öne çıkan sebeler detayları ile açıklanmıştır. Sonrasında birleşme dalgaları başlangıç ve bitiş sebepleri, sonuçları ile birlikte anlatılmışır. Analiz kısmında olay etüdü yöntemi benmsenmiştir. Örneklem 1994-2014 yılları arasında gerçekleşen 80 birleşme ve devralmayı içermektedir. Bütün olarak örneklem incelemesine ek olarak örneklemden “birleşme türü”, “endüstriyel ilişki (aynı ya da farklı endüstriye ait olma)” ve “satın alınan firmanın halka açık ya da özel” olmasına göre alt gruplar oluşturup bunların alıcı firmanın hisse senetleri üzerindeki etkileri ayrı ayrı incelenmiştir. Sonuç olarak satın alma ve birleşme haberlerinin alıcı firmanın hisse senetleri üzerinde istatistiki olarak anlamsız bir etkiye sahip olduğu tespit edilmiştir

ANALYSIS OF RECYCLING PERCEPTIONS OF 5-6-YEAR-OLD CHILDREN THROUGH PICTURES

The aim of this study is to examine the drawings of 5-6-year-old children attending preschool educational institutions regarding their perceptions of recycling. For this purpose, the pictures drawn by children who were administered recycling-themed drama activity and those who were not were examined. The study was designed in an experimental design with a control group. The content analysis method, one of the qualitative data collection methods, was used in the study. The data were collected by using the draw-narrate technique through the pictures drawn by the children. A total of 24 children aged 5-6 years, who were attending kindergartens in the 2022-2023 academic year, determined by convenience sampling method, participated in the study. After the drama activity on recycling was administered to 10 children in the first group, they were asked to draw pictures about recycling in the evaluation phase. The 13 children in the second group were asked what they thought of when they thought of recycling and were asked to draw pictures. The expressions of children describing the pictures they drew were noted. By using the content analysis method in the analysis of the data, children’s perceptions of recycling were tried to be revealed. As a result of the research, the rate of recycling figures in the pictures of children who drew pictures related to recycling after the drama activity on recycling was found to be significantly high (90%) compared to the pictures containing figures related to recycling in the pictures drawn by children who did not have a drama activity on recycling (46,1%).  Article visualizations

Energy-Efficient and Fast Data Gathering Protocols for Indoor Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless Sensor Networks have become an important technology with numerous potential applications for the interaction of computers and the physical environment in civilian and military areas. In the routing protocols that are specifically designed for the applications used by sensor networks, the limited available power of the sensor nodes has been taken into consideration in order to extend the lifetime of the networks. In this paper, two protocols based on LEACH and called R-EERP and S-EERP with base and threshold values are presented. R-EERP and S-EERP are two efficient energy aware routing protocols that can be used for some critical applications such as detecting dangerous gases (methane, ammonium, carbon monoxide, etc.) in an indoor environment. In R-EERP, sensor nodes are deployed randomly in a field similar to LEACH. In S-EERP, nodes are deployed sequentially in the rooms of the flats of a multi-story building. In both protocols, nodes forming clusters do not change during a cluster change time, only the cluster heads change. Furthermore, an XOR operation is performed on the collected data in order to prevent the sending of the same data sensed by the nodes close to each other. Simulation results show that our proposed protocols are more energy-efficient than the conventional LEACH protocol

THE EFFECTS OF ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION GIVEN BY CREATIVE DRAMA METHOD ON ENVIRONMENTAL AWARENESS OF PRESCHOOL CHILDREN

The aim of this study is to examine the effects of environmental education given by creative drama method on 5-6 year old children on environmental awareness of children. The study, which has a mixed model in which qualitative and quantitative methods are used, has a quasi-experimental design with a pre-test and post-test control group. The study was carried out with a total of 26 children. The data were collected by using “Environmental Scale for Children” and by drawing pictures. As a result of the analyses of t-test, a significant difference in favour of the experimental group was found between the two groups (t= -7,676, p<.05). It has been determined that environmental education given by drama method has a positive effect on children's environmental awareness. The content analysis method was used for the analysis of pictures drawn by children at the end of the sessions. It was found that children reflected the importance of trees/forests, living things relation, importance of air and water in their pictures.  Article visualizations

Early detection of knee osteoarthritis using deep learning on knee magnetic resonance images

The aim of this study was to investigate the influence of MRI and patient data on the prediction of knee osteoarthritis (OA) incidence using different deep learning architectures. Knee OA incidence within 24 months was predicted using the intermediate-weighted turbo spin-echo (IW-TSE) sequence of 593 patients from the Osteoarthritis Initiative. To extract a region of interest containing the knee joint from the IW-TSE sequence, a U-Net model was trained and used to segment bone on a dual echo steady state (DESS) sequence. Subsequently, IW-TSE and DESS sequences were registered and the DESS segmentations were transformed to the corresponding IW-TSE scans. The performance of MRI-based features in the prediction of knee OA incidence was tested using three different deep learning architectures: a residual network (ResNet), a densely connected convolutional network (DenseNet), and a convolutional variational autoencoder (CVAE). To evaluate the predictive performance of MRI-based features alone, the outputs of ResNet, DenseNet, and CVAE were coupled with patient data (i.e., age, gender, BMI) and used as input to a Logistic Regression (LR) Classifier. Knee OA was defined based on visual MRI and X-ray-based OA features. The ResNet and DenseNet showed similar results, with both methods having the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) values up to 0.6269. The best performing OA detection model was CVAE with an AUC of 0.6699 when combined with patient data and an AUC of 0.6689 when used alone as input to the LR classifier. The results showed that three deep learning algorithms have similar metrics when using IW-TSE MRIs and their performance increased with the inclusion of patient data, which shows the strong influence of variables such as age, gender, and BMI on the detection of knee OA

ESTIMATION OF UNBALANCE COST DUE TO DEMAND PREDICTION ERRORS USING ARTIFICIAL NEURAL NETWORK

Estimation of energy demand is used as an important tool for decision makers determining company strategies and policies. Apart from this, the fact that the actual consumption differs from the forecast is harmful for the economy of the company and even for the economy of the big scale. In this study, it is aimed to estimate the imbalance aberration caused by demand forecast deviation with Artificial Neural Networks and to evaluate its results

Toplu beslenme servislerinde porsiyon kontrolü ve Türkiye'ye özgü ölçü kabı geliştirme

Toplu beslenme servislerinde sağlıklı, hijyenik, besin değeri yüksek, düşük maliyetli ve kaliteli bir beslenme hizmeti sağlayabilmek için servise sunulan besinlerin kalitesinin yanı sıra besinlerin doğru miktarlarda servis edilmesi de önem taşır. Yetersiz sunulan porsiyonlar kişilerin enerji ve besin öğesi gereksinimlerini yeterince karşılayamamalarına neden olurken, porsiyon miktarının gereğinden fazla olması obeziteyi, maliyeti, çevre kirliliğini ve israfı artırmaktadır. Porsiyonlamada oluşan bu dengesizliklerin en büyük nedenlerinden biri servis araç gereçlerinde bir standardizasyon olmamasıdır. Bu araştırmanın amacı; toplu beslenme hizmeti veren kurumlarda servis porsiyon araçlarını ve bu araçlar ile servis edilen yemek miktarlarını incelemek, standart porsiyon ölçüleri ile karşılaştırmak ve yemek gruplarına göre standart porsiyon ölçülerini sağlayacak servis araçlarını tasarlamak, bu araçların etkinliğini ölçmektir. Bu araştırma; İstanbul ilinde dört personel yemekhanesinde gerçekleştirilmiştir. Kullanılan servis araçlarının standart servis miktarlarını karşılama durumları incelenmiştir. Araştırma sonucunda, diğer üç kuruma göre üniversitede yemeklerin servis edildiği miktarının önerilen porsiyon miktarından %16.5 daha az olduğu görülmüştür (p<0.05). Araştırmada kurumlarda öğle yemeği servisinde oluşan tepsi artıkları incelenmiş ve kişi başı artık miktarı saptanmıştır. Yemek gruplarında oluşan artık yüzdeleri; %13.6 yardımcı yemek, %13.0 çorba, %12.1 ana yemek %8.7 salata/ tatlı/ meyve ve %7.4 ekmek olarak saptanmıştır. Kurumlarda oluşan artık yüzdeleri %12.4 üniversite, %11.1 hastane, %9.5 kamu kurumu ve %7.8 huzurevi şeklinde sıralanmıştır. Kurumlarda, huzurevinde %17, kamu kurumunda %12, üniversitede %10, hastanede %7 enerji kaybı saptanmıştır. Sonuçlar doğrultusunda Türkiye’ye özgü standart servis porsiyonları belirlenmiş, bu kapasitelere uygun kurumsal ve bireysel düzeyde ölçü araçları geliştirilmiştir. Geliştirilen kurumsal düzeydeki bu araçlar ile araştırmada yer alan yemek çeşitlerinin tekrar ölçümleri yapılmış ve bu araçların etkinliği saptanmıştır. Kurumların kullandığı araçlar ile geliştirilen servis araçlarının önerilen porsiyonu karşılama yüzdeleri arasındaki fark istatiksel olarak anlamlı bulunmuştur.Geliştirilen bu servis araçlarının kullanımının yaygınlaşması ile uygun porsiyonlama sağlanarak yeterli ve dengeli beslenmeye katkıda bulunulması ve toplumun yetersiz beslenme ve obeziteden korunması hedeflenmektedir. In order to provide healthy, hygienic, nutritious, low cost andhigh-quality food in service systems, it is important that the food is served in correct amounts. The per capita amount of food in each meal group is found in the technical specifications lists, whereas the appropriate portion amounts are found in the standard food recipes. Thanks to these weight measures, food consumers can satisfy their daily caloric and nutritional needs. Whereas insufficient portions cause people to fall behind these needs, excessive portions lead to obesity, higher-costs, environmental pollution and waste. One of the biggest causes of this imbalance in portioning is the lack of standardization in service utensils. The aim of this work is to research the service portion tools and the actual food portion served by these tools in institutions that provide mass catering services. The results will be compared to the standard portion measures and I will accordingly design new service tools that will achieve standard portion measures according to meal groups. The field research on which this thesis is based has been conducted in four staff dining halls in the city of İstanbul. The lunchtime food waste produced in these halls has been examined in order to calculate the per capita amounts of waste. The capacity of the service utensils to deliver the optimal portion amounts has been examined. The research concluded that the food served in University halls is %16 less than the recommended portion amount (p<0.005). The percentage of waste in meal groups has been determined as %13.6 side dish, %13.0 soup, %12.1 main course %8.7 salad/desert/fruit and %7.4 bread. The amount of energy waste has been calculated as follows: nursing home %17, public institution %12, university %10, and hospital %7. In accordance with the results, standard service portions specific to Turkey have been determined and measurement utensils appropriate to these capacities have been developed for both individual and institutional use. With these developed tools at the institutional level, the remeasurements of the food types in the research were made and the effectiveness of these tools was determined. The difference between the percentage of recommended meals and the percentage of recommended meals of the tools used by institutions was found to be statistically significant. It is aimed to contribute to adequate and balanced nutrition by ensuring appropriate proportioning with the use of these developed service vehicles and to protect population with insufficient nutrition and obesity