The perceptual reality of the music theoretical relation between the Neapolitan chord and the dominant / and the secondary dominant chord and its diatonic associate was investigated within the chord priming paradigm. In Experiment 1, expectation towards the dominant chord after the Neapolitan chord was observed in Turkish musicians and non-musicians with piano timbre. In Experiment 2, expectation towards the dominant chord after the Neapolitan chord was observed in European musicians but not in European non-musicians. In Experiment 3, Turkish non-musicians were tested with Shepard tones / but it was not possible to observe any priming effects. To understand effects of cultural background on the difference between the results of Experiments 1 and 2 further studies are necessary. In Experiments 4-5, the perceptual reality of the relation between the secondary dominant chord and its diatonic associate was investigated in Turkish non-musicians. In Experiment 4, chord sequences that included secondary dominant chords were played with Shepard tones / and they were scrambled with 2by2 scrambling algorithm. Experiment 5 was identical with Experiment 4, except chord sequences were played with the piano timbre. Experiment 6 was identical with Experiment 5, except chord sequences were scrambled with 4by4. However, in Experiments 4-6 detrimental effects of scrambling sequences that include secondary dominant chords on the priming of chords were not observed. Turkish non-musicians did perceive the relation between the secondary dominant chord and its diatonic associate. In neural network simulations of this thesis it was shown that statistical learning from the musical environment with self-organization could be achieved without committing the questionable assumptions of previous studies.

Quality of Service (QoS) support for real-time traffic is a critical issue in high speed networks. The previously proposed Delay-Limiter Switch working with the Framed-Deadline Scheduler (FDS) is a combined input-output queuing (CIOQ) packet switch that can provide end-to-end bandwidth and delay guarantees for connection-oriented traffic. The Delay-Limiter Switch works with fixed-size packets. It has a scalable architecture and can provide QoS support for connection-oriented real-time traffic in a low-complexity fashion. The Delay-Limiter Switch serves connectionless traffic by using the remaining resources from the connection-oriented traffic. In this case, efficient management of the residual resources plays an important role on the performance of the connectionless traffic. This thesis work integrates new methods to the Delay-Limiter Switch that can improve the performance of the connectionless traffic while still serving the connection-oriented traffic with the promised QoS guarantees. A new method that makes it possible for the Delay-Limiter Switch to support variable-sized packets is also proposed.

The aim of this study was to find if manipulating fluency, that is, the ease of processing, could affect confidence ratings about whether an event occurred in the respondents&rsquo / past. To test the familiarity misattribution hypothesis, which states that familiarity caused by fluent processing can be misattributed to past experience if the source of fluency cannot be identified, two methods were used: a revelation task, which was anagram solving and repetition priming. In the revelation task the familiarity misattribution hypothesis and the activation based hypothesis were tested by presenting one of the words in each one of the Life Event Inventory (LEI) items as an anagram or an unrelated anagram before the LEI, respectively. Higher confidence ratings for LEIs with an anagram compared to LEIs without anagrams would indicate that a revelation effect. A revelation effect was not observed for either condition. Therefore, the previous findings of revelation effect for autobiographical memories (Bernstein et al., 2002) could not be replicated when Turkish counterparts of LEI and anagrams were used. In the repetition priming experiments, the participants&rsquo / awareness of the source of fluency was manipulated by presenting either a subliminal or a supraliminal prime before they responded to a LEI item. The prime was either the same as the verb of the LEI sentence, or a different verb. Participants gave higher confidence ratings if subliminal primes were identical to, rather than different from, the verb of the sentence. If the participants were aware of seeing the primes, this difference disappeared. These results were consistent with the familiarity misattribution hypothesis.

The archaeological questions of historical glass have lead to remarkable research activities such as identification and sourcing the raw materials used in the glass production, investigations of the ways in which the colors of glass can be modified due to dissolved and/or colloidal coloring agents, the furnace conditions, and the time of fritting and melting. Considering publications, it can be suggested that compositional studies of well-dated glass samples have supplied useful information concerning raw materials&rsquo / characteristics and technology of glassmaking. Within this context, the aim of this study was to determine elemental compositions and production techniques of some 13th century Seljukian Period window glasses from Alanya excavation region. During the excavations at Alanya archaeological site involving Inner Castle and out of Inner Castle many glass pieces of varying colors have been found. In this study 25 samples from the area have been examined. Elemental analyses have been carried out using X-Ray Fluorescence Spectroscopy (XRF) to determine major, minor, and trace elements. The data v obtained by XRF has revealed that all samples have typical soda-lime-silica composition with the average values of, 68.22 % (SiO2) / 11.3 % (Na2O) / and 6.7 % (CaO). Hierarchical Cluster analysis has been employed and the samples have been grouped depending on their potassium oxide (K2O) and magnesium oxide (MgO) contents which indicate the probable alkali flux source. The colors of the samples are honey-yellow, brown-yellow, navy blue, blue, turquoise, purple, and green. The coloring agents have been determined as Fe, Cu, Co, and Mn. The data from Optical Microscopy has shown that most of the window glasses might have been produced by cylinder technique. Some other samples have revealed the signs of crown technique, and some might have been produced by casting.

In this thesis, we conduct functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) data analysis with the aim of grouping the brain voxels depending on their responsiveness to a neural task. We mathematically treat the fMRI signals as the convolution of the neural stimulus with the hemodynamic response function (HRF). We first estimate a time series including HRFs for each of the observed fMRI signals from a given set and we cluster them in order to identify the groups of brain voxels. The HRF estimation problem is studied within the Bayesian framework through a blind deconvolution algorithm using MAP approach under completely unsupervised and model-free settings, i.e, stimulus is assumed to be unknown and also no particular shape is assumed for the HRF. Only using a given fMRI signal together with a weak Gaussian prior distribution imposed on HRF favoring &lsquo / smoothness&rsquo / , our method successfully estimates all the components of our framework: the HRF, the stimulus and the noise process. Then, we propose to use a modified version of Hausdorff distance to detect similarities within the space of HRFs, spectrally transform the data using Laplacian Eigenmaps and finally cluster them through EM clustering. According to our simulations, our method proves to be robust to lag, sampling jitter, quadratic drift and AWGN (Additive White Gaussian Noise). In particular, we obtained 100% sensitivity and specificity in terms of detecting active and passive voxels in our real data experiments. To conclude with, we propose a new framework for a mathematical treatment for voxel-based fMRI data analysis and our findings show that even when the HRF is unpredictable due to variability in cognitive processes, one can still obtain very high quality activation detection through the method proposed in this thesis.

Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) is one of the most popular neuroimaging methods for investigating the activity of the human brain during cognitive tasks. The main objective of the thesis is to identify this underlying brain activation over time, using fMRI signal by detecting active and passive voxels. We performed two sub goals sequentially in order to realize the main objective. First, by using simple, data-driven Fourier Wavelet Regularized Deconvolution (ForWaRD) method, we extracted hemodynamic response function (HRF) which is the information that shows either a voxel is active or passive from fMRI signal. Second, the extracted HRFs of voxels are classified as active and passive using Laplacian Eigenmaps. By this, the active and passive voxels in the brain are identified, and so are the activation areas. The ForWaRD method is directly applied to fMRI signals for the first time. The extraction method is tested on simulated and real block design fMRI signals, contaminated with noise from a time series of real MR images. The output of ForWaRD contains the HRF for each voxel. After HRF extraction, using Laplacian Eigenmaps algorithm, active and passive voxels are classified according to their HRFs. Also with this study, Laplacian Eigenmaps are used for HRF clustering for the first time. With the parameters used in this thesis, the extraction and clustering methods presented here are found to be robust to changes in signal properties. Performance analyses of the underlying methods are explained in terms of sensitivity and specificity metrics. These measurements prove the strength of our presented methods against different kinds of noises and changing signal properties.

Information presented in site investigation reports has a strong influence in design, project costs and safety. For this reason, both the quality and the reliability of site investigation reports are important. However in our country, geotechnical engineering is relegated to second place and site investigation studies, especially parcel-basis ground investigation works / do not receive the attention they deserve. In this study, site investigation reports, that are required for the license of design projects, are examined and the missing/incorrect site investigations, laboratory tests, geotechnical evaluations and geotechnical suggestions that occur in the reports are catalogued. Also, frequency of each mistake is statistically examined / for geotechnical engineers, recommendations and solutions are presented to help them avoid frequent problems.

Zur Erledigung einer Aufgabe kann der Benutzer mit verschiedenen Endgeräten interagieren, welche unterschiedliche Interaktionsarten (Modalitäten) anbieten. Dabei gibt es jedoch kein Endgerät, welches alle erdenkbaren Modalitäten unterstützt. Aus diesem Grund wird eine komponentenbasierte Integrationsschicht auf Basis einer Komponentenplattform entwickelt, die dem Nutzer die gewünschte Freiheit bei der Wahl der Endgeräte und somit der Modalitäten ermöglicht. Als Ausgangsbasis dafür dient das W3C Multimodal Interaction Framework. Mit Hilfe der Integrationsschicht kann der Nutzer beispielsweise Endgeräteföderationen erzeugen, die einzeln oder gemeinsam zur Interaktion verwendet werden können. Die Integrationsschicht besitzt verschiedene Konzepte, um z.B. Geschäftslogik zur Laufzeit zu verteilen, Komponentenausfälle zu behandeln und die auf verschiedene Endgeräte verteilte Nutzerschnittstelle zu synchronisieren. Die entwickelten Konzepte wurden prototypisch implementiert, validiert und auf Performanz untersucht.

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Aldose reductase, E.C.1.1.1.21, catalyzes the reduction of different types of aldehydes to their corresponding alcohols, and especially reduces various aldo-sugars using NADPH as the coenzyme. Under hyperglycemic conditions aldose reductase is involved in the development of diabetic complications. As a result, interest has been placed over the years on the development of potent aldose reductase inhibitors for possible use in the therapy of these severe diabetic complications. In this study, aldose reductase was isolated from bovine lens by differential centrifugation and ammonium sulfate precipitation. The conditions for the enzyme assay / such as substrate (DL-Glyceraldehyde) and coenzyme (NADPH) concentration, protein amount, effect of sulfate ions, temperature and pH on the enzyme activity were optimized. The inhibitory effects of Punica granatum, Spinacia olaeracea, Allium cepa Allium porrum, Malus flouribunda, Malus domestica extracts were tested on crude bovine lens aldose reductase. Four different types of organic fractions from each crude plant extract were obtained by solvent fractionation. The inhibitory activity of these organic fractions was calculated considering the aldose reductase activity without extracts as 100 %. All six plants were found to inhibit aldose reductase activity to different extent. Among these fractions obtained as / petroleum ether, diethyl ether, ethyl acetate, and n-butanol. Highest inhibitory activity was found for the ethyl acetate fraction. The IC50 values of ethyl acetate fractions of all these plants was calculated as, 25.46 &micro / g/ml, 20.5 &micro / g/ml, 18.5 &micro / g/ml, 12.32 &micro / g/ml, 6.45 &micro / g/ml, 5.4 &micro / g/ml, for Allium porrum, Malus domestica, Spinacia olaeracea, Malus floribunda Allium cepa, Punica granatum respectively.