An architectural assessment method for new exterior additions to historic buildings

The design approaches of new exterior additions to historic buildings have been among the ongoing debates in the field of architectural conservation. The aim of this study is to develop an assessment method, which can be used to determine the compatibility in architectural expression of the new addition in relation to the characteristics of a historic building. This method is based on the architectural analysis, which includes environmental relations, building-lot relations, mass relations and the facade composition of the historic building both before and after the new addition in relation to the value of a historical building. In this study, a selected group of historic buildings in ?zmir, Turkey with new exterior additions was analysed with regard to their exterior architectural characteristics in order to evaluate the compatibility of the new addition, by employing the use of contemporary conservation principles. The importance of this study is to guide architects to form the basis of a decision for developing an integrated approach in designing new additions in the course of the actual design process. On the other hand, the proposed method can be evaluated as a contribution to the emerging field of heritage impact assessments as well as scientific assistance to local governments to criticize specific projects of cultural heritage assets submitted for appraisal. Analysis results showed that the value of the historic building should first clearly be identified and a new addition should bear the identity of its own period. However, instead of altering the scale or form of the historic building, a new addition should complement and contribute to the sense of proportion, disposition and historical pattern.     

Investigating and counteracting popularity bias in group recommendations

Popularity bias is an undesirable phenomenon associated with recommendation algorithms where popular items tend to be suggested over long-tail ones, even if the latter would be of reasonable interest for individuals. Such intrinsic tendencies of the recommenders may lead to producing ranked lists, in which items are not equally covered along the popularity tail. Although some recent studies aim to detect such biases of traditional algorithms and treat their effects on recommendations, the concept of popularity bias remains elusive for group recommender systems. Therefore, in this study, we focus on investigating popularity bias from the view of group recommender systems, which aggregate individual preferences to achieve recommendations for groups of users. We analyze various state-of-the-art aggregation techniques utilized in group recommender systems regarding their bias towards popular items. To counteract possible popularity issues in group recommendations, we adapt a traditional re-ranking approach that weighs items inversely proportional to their popularity within a group. Also, we propose a novel popularity bias mitigation procedure that re-ranks items by incorporating their popularity level and estimated group ratings in two distinct strategies. The first one aims to penalize popular items during the aggregation process highly and avoids bias better, while the second one puts more emphasis on group ratings than popularity and achieves a more balanced performance regarding conflicting goals of mitigating bias and boosting accuracy. Experiments performed on four real-world benchmark datasets demonstrate that both strategies are more efficient than the adapted approach, and empowering aggregation techniques with one of these strategies significantly decreases their bias towards popular items while maintaining reasonable ranking accuracy.     

Refugee Identities: Ethnicity as a Communicative Process

Ethnicity and, by extension, ethnic identity, are problematic concepts to define. This article explores self-defined boundaries of ethnic identity by framing ethnicity as a communicative process through a narrative study focusing on a particular refugee group called Meskhetian Turks. Twelve in-depth interviews were analyzed for emerging themes. The results revealed three inter-connected themes demonstrating the significance of (1) the past, (2) cultural preservation, and (3) a sense of community. Thus, the study demonstrated self-defined borders of ethnic identity and revealed ethnicity as a communicative process, whose emergence, preservation, and continuity depends solely upon communication.     

Democratic environments offered to children at school,in the family,and in society: the case of Turkey

This research aims to investigate democratic environments offered to children in Turkey at school, in the home, and in society. A mixed method is a general type of research where qualitative and quantitative methods are used together. The researcher first collects quantitative and then the qualitative data. The study group in the research consisted of children in Kirsehir, a small city near the capital Ankara, in central Turkey. Democratic Environments scale and interview forms were used in the research. To analyze the obtained data, arithmetic averages, standard deviations, and percentages were calculated and multivariate analyses of variance conducted. The data obtained during interviews were analyzed through content analysis. Results show that even though Turkey accepts the Convention on the Rights of the Child, some problems remain associated with the democratic environment offered to children at school, at home, and in society.     

The effects of different syringe volume, needle size and sample volume on blood gas analysis in syringes washed with heparin

Introductıon:

We evaluated the effect of different syringe volume, needle size and sample volume on blood gas analysis in syringes washed with heparin.

Materials and methods:

In this multi-step experimental study, percent dilution ratios (PDRs) and final heparin concentrations (FHCs) were calculated by gravimetric method for determining the effect of syringe volume (1, 2, 5 and 10 mL), needle size (20, 21, 22, 25 and 26 G) and sample volume (0.5, 1, 2, 5 and 10 mL). The effect of different PDRs and FHCs on blood gas and electrolyte parameters were determined. The erroneous results from nonstandardized sampling were evaluated according to RiliBAK’s TEa.

Results:

The increase of PDRs and FHCs was associated with the decrease of syringe volume, the increase of needle size and the decrease of sample volume: from 2.0% and 100 IU/mL in 10 mL-syringe to 7.0% and 351 IU/mL in 1 mL-syringe; from 4.9% and 245 IU/mL in 26G to 7.6% and 380 IU/mL in 20 G with combined 1 mL syringe; from 2.0% and 100 IU/mL in full-filled sample to 34% and 1675 IU/mL in 0.5 mL suctioned sample into 10 mL-syringe. There was no statistical difference in pH; but the percent decreasing in pCO₂, K⁺, iCa²⁺, iMg²⁺; the percent increasing in pO₂ and Na⁺ were statistical significance compared to samples full-filled in syringes. The all changes in pH and pO₂ were acceptable; but the changes in pCO₂, Na⁺, K⁺ and iCa²⁺ were unacceptable according to TEa limits except fullfilled-syringes.

Conclusions:

The changes in PDRs and FHCs due nonstandardized sampling in syringe washed with liquid heparin give rise to erroneous test results for pCO₂ and electrolytes.     

Transient heat conduction in an anisotropic medium in cylindrical coordinates

Three dimensional, time dependent heat conduction for an anisotropic medium of a triclinic system is solved for an infinitely long hollow or solid cylinder of finite radius with a restriction ε₂₃ = ε₁₂ε₁₃. Several special cases are obtained from the present solution.     

Learning teacher-research-mentoring: stories from Turkey

The continuing developmental process of learning mentoring, specifically regarding supporting teacher research, has received relatively little attention in fields such as English language teaching, and this qualitative case study addresses the gap. It explores how three teacher-research-mentors, who were experienced classroom practitioners but novices in research-mentoring, grew into their new role while supporting teacher research projects in different English language higher education contexts in Turkey over a one-year period. Vignettes reveal that they became conscious of needing to provide psychological support to sustain teacher-researchers’ motivation from starting their research projects to completing them successfully, presenting findings and writing them up, and that they also developed in other roles, but as subject-specialists sharing knowledge about research to a lesser extent. Outcomes, in terms of the quality of research produced by the teacher-researchers in their contexts, appeared influenced by the different characteristics of their institutions and the degree of external support in the form of mentor-mentoring the teacher-research-mentors could access. Given the increasing interest around the world in teacher research as an empowering form of professional development, there is a growing need for teacher-research-mentors, and these findings, through shedding light on research-mentors’ developmental needs, might be of interest to teacher educators.     

Raising the language awareness of pre‐service English teachers in an EFL context

This study investigates the challenges that non‐native pre‐service English teachers (Haluk, Gaye, Selin, Öznur and Serkan) experience in their target language use when they do their practicum in actual language classrooms. This study found that the common difficulties the student teachers encounter related to certain grammatical structures, explaining unknown words to students, modifying language according to students’ level, and authenticity of the classroom language. During this study, the target language awareness training session was offered by the university supervisor in order to improve the student teachers’ target language use in the classroom. The training sessions included classroom observations, feedback sessions, semi‐structured interviews, retrospective protocols and discussion meetings with the student teachers. The findings indicated that the language awareness training had a positive impact on the target language use of the pre‐service English teachers. Furthermore, this study discusses the curriculum and the requirements of the language teacher education programme in an EFL setting and makes suggestions for the professional development of non‐native pre‐service language teachers.     

Academic Mobbing in Relation to Leadership Practices: A New Perspective on an Old Issue

Abstract

Constant pressures emanating from internal and external environments of the academy have resulted in many changes, one of which is the workplace mobbing, an old issue for the broader field of organization science but a relatively new phenomenon in the academic context. This study investigated the relationship between workplace mobbing and academic leadership and the results indicated that the more positive leadership there is in an institution, the less mobbing behaviors are observed.