Browse
Recent Submissions
Item Open Access Franco-Ottoman diplomatic relations and the secret du Roi, 1756–1774(Akademiai Kiado Rt., 2022-06-03) Flynn, Sébastien; Flynn, SébastienThe Secret du Roi was Louis XV’s secret foreign policy from approximately 1745 until his death in 1774. This article analyzes Franco-Ottoman diplomatic relations from 1756 to 1774 by using the Secret du Roi as a source. By examining the Secret du Roi, this article shows France’s hostility towards Russia and elaborates on France’s preference for having close diplomatic relations with the Ottoman Empire instead of Russia. The second half of this article elaborates on France’s confidence in the Ottoman Empire’s political and military capabilities, and why they thought the Ottomans would do well against Russia in 1768.Item Open Access Women and the History of Ideas in the Global Eighteenth Century(University of Toronto Press, 2022) Del Balzo, Angelina; Del Balzo, AngelinaItem Open Access Slopes and signatures of links(Instytut Matematyczny,Polish Academy of Sciences, Institute of Mathematics, 2022-03-14) Degtyarev, Alex; Florens, V.; Lecuona, A.G.; Degtyarev, AlexWe define the slope of a colored link in an integral homology sphere, associated to admissible characters on the link group. Away from a certain singular locus, the slope is a rational function which can be regarded as a multivariate generalization of the Kojima–Yamasaki η-function. It is the ratio of two Conway potentials, provided that the latter makes sense; otherwise, it is a new invariant. The slope is responsible for an extra correction term in the signature formula for the splice of two links, in the previously open exceptional case where both characters are admissible. Using a similar construction for a special class of tangles, we formulate generalized skein relations for the signature.Item Open Access YOLODrone+: improved YOLO architecture for object detection in UAV images(IEEE, 2022-08-29) Şahin, Öykü; Özer, Sedat; Şahin, ÖyküThe performance of object detection algorithms running on images taken from Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) remains limited when compared to the object detection algorithms running on ground taken images. Due to its various features, YOLO based models, as a part of one-stage object detectors, are preferred in many UAV based applications. In this paper, we are proposing novel architectural improvements to the YO-LOv5 architecture. Our improvements include: (i) increasing the number of detection layers and (ii) use of transformers in the model. In order to train and test the performance of our proposed model, we used VisDrone and SkyData datasets in our paper. Our test results suggest that our proposed solutions can improve the detection accuracy.Item Open Access Turkey’s legislative reforms to address violence against women, and the EU: uphill struggles, hard-won achievements and a promising ally.(Palgrave Macmillan, 2020-09-30) Özdemir Sarıgil, Burcu; Özdemir Sarıgil, BurcuThis chapter investigates Turkey’s legislative reforms addressing the issue of violence against women (VAW) with a particular focus on the role of the EU. Considering the persistent domestic advocacy and the multiplicity of external factors/actors (e.g., the UN, Council of Europe and EU) that would potentially contribute to the reform process since the 1990s, the study asks if, when and how the EU actually has become a causal factor for domestic change. The chapter finds that in the adoption of the first-ever law addressing VAW (Law No. 4320) in 1998, the EU has no clear presence in the domestic context of reform. Gender equality reforms in the early 2000s and the adoption of the most comprehensive law addressing VAW (Law No. 6284) coincided with the EU accession process in Turkey. During this period, the EU gradually improved its engagement, facilitated the reform process by utilising two pathways of influence, namely conditionality (interest-driven pathway) and capacity building (norm-driven pathway). As with this new approach, the EU intermingled well with the domestic advocacy and proved that it could be an ever-promising ally of women and the women’s movement in Turkey.Item Open Access Identification of hydrodynamic coefficients of AUV in the presence of measurement biases(Sage Publications, 2021-11-23) Dinç, Mustafa; Hajiyev, C.; Dinç, MustafaThis paper mainly presents the parameter identification method developed from a Least Square Estimation (LSE) algorithm to estimate hydrodynamic coefficients of Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) in the presence of measurement biases. LSE based parameter determination method is developed to obtain unbiased estimated values of hydrodynamic coefficients of AUV from biased Inertial Navigation System (INS) measurements. The proposed parameter identification method consists of two phases: in the first phase, high precision INS and its auxiliary instrument including compass, pressure depth sensor, and Doppler Velocity Log (DVL) are designed as Integrated Navigational System coupled with Complementary Kalman Filter (CKF) to determine hydrodynamic coefficients of AUV by removing the INS measurement biases; in the second phase, LSE based parameter identification method is applied to the model in the first phase for obtaining unbiased estimated values of hydrodynamic coefficients of AUV. In this paper, a method for identifying the yaw and sway motion dynamic parameters of an AUV is given. Various maneuvering scenarios are verified to assess the parameter identification method employed. The simulation results indicate that using the CKF based Integrated Navigation System together with unbiased measurement conversion could produce better results for estimating the hydrodynamic coefficients of AUV.Item Open Access General Conclusions(Palgrave Pivot, 2021-10-07) Zavagno, Luca; Zavagno, LucaThis chapter will sum up the nature and characteristics of the changes in urbanism in Byzantium show variations (in regional and sub-regional terms) which allow us to sketch different trajectories of development for the cities of the Byzantine empire. They should be pitted against each other to understand how different local needs produced different multifunctional real “urban” answers to the problems and challenges which presented themselves along with the ebbs and flows of the history of an Empire that would not die and indeed managed to navigate through streams of gold and rivers of blood until it fell (but not for the last time) with the Fourth Crusade and the sack of Constantinople.Item Open Access Urbanism in the Byzantine heartland and the coastal/ insular koine(Palgrave Pivot, 2021-10-07) Zavagno, Luca; Zavagno, LucaThis chapter will navigate through the many incarnations of Byzantine urbanism in three different geographical areas of the empire: Anatolia and Aegean (the two constitutive pillars of the Byzantine heartland) and the so-called insular/coastal koine. Each of these played a changing and diverse role in the political, administrative, fiscal, and military strategies of the empire, as well as betraying peculiar economies of scale. It will examine by proposing a brief historical and archaeological overview of a selection of urban centers in different geographical contexts. This should help the reader see through the various functional trajectories of the Byzantine city (sometimes contemporary, sometimes diachronic) from a comparative perspective. It allows to extrapolate the reality of Byzantine urbanism from the historiographical and terminological debate as presented by the literary sources.Item Open Access The historiography of Byzantine city: interpretations, methodology, and sources(Palgrave Pivot, 2021-10-07) Zavagno, lu; Zavagno, LucaThis chapter will be divided into two parts. The first one will try to propose a more nuanced and complex approach, as paired with its archaeological penchant to the traditional historiographical juxtaposition continuity vs. discontinuity which has been the unavailable starting point in any discourse on the Byzantine city. It will propose a more Mediterranean-based approach to the trajectories of Byzantine urbanism encompassing the fragmentation of the Great Sea post-Late Antiquity and reaching out to the eleventh and twelfth-century when Byzantine cities were deeply embedded in a flourishing Mediterranean economy. The second part will move from another supposed juxtaposition (polis vs. kastron) to examine the historiographical debate concerning the fate of urbanism in the period spanning between the Late Antiquity and the Fourth Crusade. It will also present the reader with the main methodological issues concerning material and literary sources essential to analyze regional trajectories of urban city-life and cityscape.Item Open Access The Byzantine city: a symphony in three movements(Palgrave Pivot, 2021-10-07) Zavagno, Luca; Zavagno, LucaThis chapter presents the reader with three preliminary and different themes that will recur across the book as taking their cue from the changes of some exemplary Byzantine cities like Ephesos and Euchaita. The first has to do with the importance of tracking the transformation of the urban functions across space and time. The second concern the methodological approach adopted in the book. Indeed, the changes in urban functions, landscape, structure, and fabric will be explored by bringing together the most recent results stemming from urban archaeological excavations, the results of analyses of material culture (ceramic, coins, seals), and a reassessment of the documentary and hagiographical sources. The third aims to explain how Byzantine urban sites located in different parts of the empire (Byzantine heartland vis a vis the coastal-insula koine) reverberated the changes experienced by the political, social, and economic imperial super-structure a regional and sub-regional levelItem Open Access Preface(Springer Nature, 2021) Zavagno, Luca; Zavagno, LucaItem Open Access In Press, Corrected Proof: Defining local extreme heat thresholds and Indoor Cooling Degree Necessity for vulnerable residential dwellings during the 2020 summer in Ankara – Part I: Air temperature(Elsevier, 2021-10-29) Nouri, Andre Santos; Çalışkan, O.; Charalampopoulos, I.; Cheval, S.; Matzarakis, A.; Nouri, Andre SantosThis study discusses the preliminary assessment of Indoor Cooling Degree Necessity (ICDN) based upon the standard air temperature (Ta) value of 22 °C which is defined to be the standard upper mean temperature limit (Tl) for interior comfort as defined by the WHO. By considering indoor air temperature (TaI), levelled oscillations above Tl are utilised to determine indoor temperature extremes/frequencies at a 10 min temporal resolution during the months of July and August 2020 in Ankara. These recordings were undertaken through the use of an interior in-situ Meteorological Station (MS), simultaneously, an outdoor in-situ MS was also mounted outside the naturally ventilated dwelling with the identical measurement interval period. Moreover, to supplement the encompassing outdoor data collection, two WMO MSs were utilised in the study to account for both encompassing local peri-urban Esenboga (EMS) and Ankara’s urban (AMS) outdoor air temperatures (TaO) at a 1 h temporal resolution. In addition to the ICDN’s identified variation of Tl levels, which frequently remained between +7 °C and +10 °C during periods of accentuated urban outdoor heat stress; their direct/latent cause-and-effect relationship with newly defined local extreme heat thresholds were established. Relative to July and August 2020, a total of 19 Very Hot Days (VHD33), 10 Monthly Tropical Night (MRT20), and 4 Heatwave Events (HWE31) were determined. These thresholds further underlined the growing need to associate indoor and outdoor heat stress during local extreme heat events, particularly in more vulnerable residential contexts; and moreover, in an era of increasing heat stress as result of rapid urbanisation and climate change.Item Open Access In Press, Corrected Proof: Ensuring multidimensional equality in public service(Elsevier, 2021-10-23) Akoluk, Damla; Karsu, Özlem; Akoluk, Damla; Karsu, ÖzlemService planning problems typically involve decisions that lead to the distribution of multiple benefits to multiple users, and hence include equality and efficiency concerns in a multidimensional way. We develop two mathematical modeling-based approaches that incorporate these concerns in such problems. The first formulation aggregates the multidimensional efficiency and equality (equitability) concerns in a biobjective model. The second formulation defines an objective function for each benefit, which maximizes the total social welfare obtained from that specific benefit distribution; this results in an n-objective model, where n is the number of benefits. We illustrate and compare these approaches on an example public service provision problem.Item Open Access In Press, Corrected Proof: Formation of cluster mode particles (1–3 nm) in preschools(Elsevier, 2021-11-23) Torkmahalleh, M. A.; Turganova, K.; Zhigulina, Z.; Madiyarova, T.; Adotey, E. K.; Malekipirbazari, Milad; Milad, G.; Stabile, L.; Malekipirbazari, MiladThis study is the first study that reports the cluster particle (1–3 nm) formation (CPF) in two modern preschools located in Nur-Sultan city of Kazakhstan from October 28 to November 27, 2019. The average particle number concentration and mode diameter values during major CPF events in Preschool I and Preschool II were found to be 1.90 × 106 (SD 6.43 × 106) particles/cm3 and 1.60 (SD 0.85) nm, and 1.11 × 109 (SD 5.46 × 109) particles/cm3 and 2.16 (SD 1.47) nm, respectively. The ultraviolet PM concentration reached as high as 7 μg/m3 in one of the measurement days. The estimated emission rate in Preschool I for CPF events was 9.57 × 109 (SD 1.92 × 109) particles/min. For Preschool II, the emission rate was 7.25 × 109 (SD 12.4 × 109) particles/min. We identified primary cluster particles (CPs) emitted directly from the sources such as candle burning, and secondary CPs formed as a result of the oxidation of indoor VOCs or smoking VOCs. The secondary CPs are likely to be SOA. Indoor VOCs were mainly emitted during cleaning activities as well as during painting and gluing. Indoor VOCs are the controlling factors in the CPF events. Changes in the training and cleaning programs may result in significant reductions in the exposure of the children to CPs.Item Embargo In Press, Corrected Proof: Multi-target regression via non-linear output structure learning(Elsevier, 2021-12-18) Arashloo, Shervin Rahimzadeh; Kittler, J.; Arashloo, Shervin RahimzadehThe problem of simultaneously predicting multiple real-valued outputs using a shared set of input variables is known as multi-target regression and has attracted considerable interest in the past couple of years. The dominant approach in the literature for multi-target regression is to capture the dependencies between the outputs through a linear model and express it as an output mixing matrix. This modelling formalism, however, is too simplistic in real-world problems where the output variables are related to one another in a more complex and non-linear fashion. To address this problem, in this study, we propose a structural modelling approach where the correlations between output variables are modelled using a non-linear approach. In particular, we pose the multi-target regression problem as one of vector-valued composition function learning in the reproducing kernel Hilbert space and propose a non-linear structure learning approach to capture the relationship between the outputs via an output kernel. By virtue of using a non-linear output kernel function, the proposed approach can better discover non-linear dependencies among targets for improved prediction performance. An extensive evaluation conducted on different databases reveals the benefits of the proposed multi-target regression technique against the baseline and the state-of-the-art methods.Item Open Access In Press, Corrected Proof: Exploiting lamina terminalis appearance and motion in prediction of hydrocephalus using convolutional LSTM network(Elsevier, 2021-02-12) Saygılı, G.; Yigin, B. Ö.; Güney, G.; Algın, Oktay; Algın, OktayBackground Evaluation of the lamina terminalis (LT) is crucial for non-invasive evaluation of the CSF diversion for the treatment of hydrocephalus. Together with deep learning algorithms, morphological and physiological analyses of the LT may play an important role in the management of hydrocephalus. Aim We aim to show that exploiting the motion of LT can contribute to the evaluation of hydrocephalus using deep learning algorithms. Methods The dataset contains 61 True-fisp data with routine sequences 37 of which are labeled as ‘hydrocephalus’ and the others as ‘normal condition’. A fifteen-year experienced neuroradiologist divided data into two groups. The first group, ‘hydrocephalus’, consists of patients with typical MRI findings (ventriculomegaly, enlargement of the third ventricular recesses and lateral ventricular horns, decreased mamillo-pontine distance, reduced frontal horn angle, thinning/elevation of the corpus callosum, and non-dilated convexity sulci), and the second group contains samples that did not show any symptoms or neurologic abnormality and labeled as ‘normal condition’. The region of interest was determined by the radiologist supervisor to cover the LT. To achieve our purpose, we used both spatial and spatio-temporal analysis with two different deep learning architectures. We utilized Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) for spatial and Convolutional Long Short-Term Memory (ConvLSTM) models for spatio-temporal analysis using an ROI around LT on sagittal True-fisp images. Results Our results show that 80.7% classification accuracy was achieved with the ConvLSTM model exploiting LT motion, whereas 76.5% and 71.6% accuracies were obtained by the 2D CNN model using all frames, and only the first frame from only spatial information, respectively. Conclusion We suggest that the motion of the LT can be used as an additional attribute to the spatial information to evaluate the hydrocephalus.Item Open Access Optimal model-free approach based on MDL and CHL for active brain identification in fMRI data analysis(Bentham Science Publishers Ltd., 2020-07-30) Jaber, H. A.; Çankaya, I.; Aljobouri, H. K.; Koçak, O. M.; Algın, Oktay; Algın, OktayBackground: Cluster analysis is a robust tool for exploring the underlining structures in data and grouping them with similar objects. In the researches of Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), clustering approaches attempt to classify voxels depending on their time-course signals into a similar hemodynamic response over time. Objective: In this work, a novel unsupervised learning approach is proposed that relies on using Enhanced Neural Gas (ENG) algorithm in fMRI data for comparison with Neural Gas (NG) method, which has yet to be utilized for that aim. The ENG algorithm depends on the network structure of the NG and concentrates on an efficacious prototype-based clustering approach. Methods: The comparison outcomes on real auditory fMRI data show that ENG outperforms the NG and statistical parametric mapping (SPM) methods due to its insensitivity to the ordering of input data sequence, various initializations for selecting a set of neurons, and the existence of extreme values (outliers). The findings also prove its capability to discover the exact and real values of a cluster number effectively. Results: Four validation indices are applied to evaluate the performance of the proposed ENG method with fMRI and compare it with a clustering approach (NG algorithm) and model-based data analysis (SPM). These validation indices include the Jaccard Coefficient (JC), Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC), Minimum Description Length (MDL) value, and Minimum Square Error (MSE). Conclusion: The ENG technique can tackle all shortcomings of NG application with fMRI data, identify the active area of the human brain effectively, and determine the locations of the cluster center based on the MDL value during the process of network learning.Item Open Access In Press, Corrected Proof: Crowdfunding as gambling: Evidence from repeated natural experiments(Elsevier, 2021-02-26) Demir, Tolga; Mohammadi, A.; Shafi, K.; Demir, TolgaLenders in Prosper, one of the largest lending markets in the U.S., reduce their activity when playing multistate Powerball or Mega Millions lottery jackpot becomes attractive. This finding suggests that the desire for sensation seeking is an underlying motivation for participating in peer-to-peer crowdfunding markets; the thrill of winning a large lottery jackpot fulfills some lenders' desire for novelty and sensation seeking, thus decreasing their lending activity. We discuss our findings' implications for lenders, borrowers, platform organizers, and policymakers.Item Open Access Noise Control Engineering Education: Recommendations from the 2019 TQA Workshop(Institute of Noise Control Engineering, 2021-08-01) Akay, Adnan; Akay, AdnanThis paper summarizes recommendations about noise control engineering education made in a special session on noise control engineering education at NOISE-CON 2019 in San Diego and during an National Academy of Engineering (NAE)-hosted workshop under the auspices of the Technology of Quieter America (TQA) program. Speakers in both the special session and at the workshop represented industry, academe, and government emphasizing the need for more noise control engineers, the expertise required, and the areas in which they are needed. The ensuing discussions, summarized in two published reports, also point to the new technologies that affect noise control engineering education.Item Open Access Progress on consumer and industrial product noise control and technology transfer: summaries of the 2015 and 2016 TQA workshops(Institute of Noise Control Engineering, 2021-08-01) Maling, George; Akay, Adnan; Wood, Eric W.; Akay, AdnanProgress on consumer and industrial products noise reduction, was a Technology for a Quieter America (TQA) workshop and International INCE symposium hosted by the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) held in October 2015 . The workshop consisted of two major parts, consumer products at home and commercial and industrial products. The former included appliances, waste disposers, leaf blowers, Information Technology Equipment and automotive interior noise. The second half of the workshop included such industrial products as air moving devices, industrial power generation equipment generator sets, compressor noise, transformer noise and valve plus gear noise. It also included national and international noise emission standards for consumer and industrial products. The technology transfer workshop was hosted by NAE in October 2016. The workshop covered four areas; an overview of technology transfer in the United States, government programs, technology transfer from universities, and panel discussions on a variety of topics. Government agencies which participated included NASA, the National Science Foundation, the Small Business Administration, the Federal Aviation Administration, the Office of Naval Research (ONR), and the Naval Research Laboratory.