Community and neighborhood relations in Ankara: An urban–suburban contrast

This paper focuses on community and neighbourhood relations of two high-income districts in Ankara. A suburban and a more traditional urban community are contrasted via a field survey that focuses on attitudes toward certain community values and toward other citizens. The findings indicate that residents in both settings express similar values towards community and neighbourhood relations. Their attitude toward other districts of the city is also similar, indicating an increasing and widespread exclusion of the poor. The varied implications of this investigation, including the nature of the gated community, are explored.     

Cooperative coding for wireless networks

User cooperation represents an effective way of introducing diversity in wireless networks. Spatial diversity gains are obtained through the cooperative use of antennas belonging to several nodes. We design and analyze the performance of channel codes that are capable of achieving the full diversity provided by user cooperation, with the constraint that they also provide the best possible performance in the interuser link. We show that even though the interuser channel is noisy, the codes provide substantial diversity and coding gains over the noncooperative case.     

Mineral contents of 34 species of edible mushrooms growing wild in Turkey

Mineral contents of 34 species of wild mushrooms, growing particularly in the central Anatolia region in Turkey, were determined by inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectrometry (ICP‐AES). All mushrooms contained high amounts of Al, Ca, Fe, K, Mg and P. The highest potassium level was 45189.4 mg kg^?1 for the species Coprinus micaceus, whereas the lowest K content was 9973.8 mg kg^?1 in Polyporus squamosus. Among the wild mushrooms, the highest lead level was 5.4 mg kg^?1 in the species Helvella leucomelano. Iron contents of mushrooms were found in similarly small percentages in all the species analysed, ranging from 338.3 mg kg^?1 in Russula delica to 8994.71 mg kg^?1 in Helvella spadicea. Phosphorus content ranged from 2095.6 mg kg^?1 in Polyporus squamosus to 22799.0 mg kg^?1 in Helvella spadicea. Magnesium was found to be high, ranging from 458.1 mg kg^?1 in Rhizopogon luteolus to 4254.9 mg kg^?1 in Morchella esculenta. This study attempts to contribute to knowledge of the human nutritional properties of these mushroom species, and may be useful for the evaluation of dietary information. Copyright © 2006 Society of Chemical Industry     

Briquetting soda weed (Salsola tragus) to be used as a rural fuel source

Amount of traditional fuel sources in the world has been decreasing and there is a definite need to produce and utilize alternative fuels such as biomass materials. In this study, briquetting conditions of Russian tumbleweed, Salsola tragus, (commonly named soda weed in Turkey) which grows in salty soils were investigated.Soda weeds were first chopped coarsely in a local tresher, then chopped finely in a hammer mill. Weed materials at three moisture levels (7%, 10%, and 13%) were prepared in the lab. Chopped weed materials were filled in cylindrical and square dies and compressed using a hydraulic press at three pressure levels of 15.7, 19.6 and 31.4 MPa. Optimum temperature, moisture rate, and pressure values were determined to produce stable briquettes. Further experiments were conducted to produce briquettes using sawdust and walnut shells as additives in conical dies of two different sizes.Results of a statistical analysis of parameters to produce briquettes in different dies indicated that moisture rates of 7–10%, pressure of 31.4 MPa, and temperatures of 85–105 °C were suitable for briquetting soda weed. Furthermore, sawdust and walnut shells additives increased briquette density without any negative effects on production process and product stability.     

Cooperative network implementation using open-source platforms

Cooperative networking, by leveraging the broadcast nature of the wireless channel, significantly improves system performance and constitutes a promising technology for next-generation wireless networks. Although there is a large body of literature on cooperative communications, most of the work is limited to theoretical or simulation studies. To impact the next generation of wireless technologies and standards, it is essential to demonstrate that cooperative techniques indeed work in practice. This article describes two programmable cooperative communication testbeds built at Polytechnic Institute of NYU to achieve this goal. The testbeds are based on opensource platforms and enable implementation of cooperative networking protocols in both the physical and the medium access control layer. Extensive experiments carried out using the testbeds suggest not only that cooperative communication techniques can be integrated into current wireless technologies, but also that significant benefits of cooperation can be observed in terms of network throughput, delay, and video quality in real applications.     

Cooperative space-time coding for wireless networks

We consider a cooperative transmission scheme in which the collaborating nodes may have multiple antennas. We present the performance analysis and design of space-time codes that are capable of achieving the full diversity provided by user cooperation. Our codes use the principle of overlays in time and space, and ensure that cooperation takes place as often as possible. We show how cooperation among nodes with different numbers of antennas can be accomplished, and how the quality of the interuser link affects the cooperative performance. We illustrate that space-time cooperation can greatly reduce the error rates of all the nodes involved, even for poor interuser channel quality.     

The distribution of urban public services: the case of parks and recreational services in Ankara

The provision of urban services is a central issue in urban planning and development. The distribution of these services to guarantee their effective utilization is another focus of concern. As citizens are heterogeneous in character, their access to urban public services is affected by the distribution of those services. Access to some services with fixed facilities is limited by the location of the service within a city. In this study, which focuses on the city of Ankara, Turkey, the parks and recreational facilities are evaluated in terms of both service and user characteristics. Since the service has a merited reputation due to the public and its free provision, a local government aiming for a just distribution claims to distribute the service ‘equally’ on a geographical basis. This study evaluates the current policy and proposes distributional justice to achieve a truly equitable distribution, which is sensitive to the characteristics of different citizen groups, instead of the territorial justice (i.e. park distribution based on geography) that cannot satisfy the conditions of effective utilization.