Supramolecular systems, which are formed by the noncovalent intermolecular interactions between molecules, are highly dynamic. The high reversibility of supramolecular systems leads to some functional features that cannot be achieved by the single chemical component. The kinetic information for the supramolecular systems can not be inferred from thermodynamic studies or structural studies. Furthermore, the information provided by the dynamic study can be employed to infer or explain the results from the thermodynamic study and the structural study. The first objective of this work was to study the dynamics and the binding mechanism of cucurbit[7]uril with a charged guest molecule (2-naphthyl-1-ethylammonium cation, NpAmH+). In general, the binding affinity of cucurbit[7]uril to the positively charged guests are very high compared with other host systems such as cyclodextrins and bile salt aggregates. In this work, the complexation of cucurbit[7]uril and NpAmH+ was studied from a kinetic point of view. Results showed that the high binding affinity of cucurbit[7]uril to NpAmH+ was due to the high association rate constant and the low dissociation rate constant for the complexation of cucurbit[7]uril and NpAmH+. Moreover, the competition between co-cations and NpAmH+ for the binding sites of cucurbituril molecules retarded the complexation process for cucurbit[7]uril binding to NpAmH+ and decreased the overall equilibrium constant for the formation of cucurbit[7]uril-NpAmH+ complex. The second objective of this work was to study the chiral recognition observed for the formation of 2:2 complexes between β-cyclodextrin and 2-naphthyl-1-ethanol (NpOH). The binding of β-cyclodextrin and NpOH leads to the formation of two 1:1 complexes and three 2:2 complexes. The binding dynamics of NpOH with β-cyclodextrin in the 1:1 complex is fast and occurs within microseconds. A much slower dynamics was observed for the formation of the 2:2 complex. Results showed that more 2:2 complex were formed for (R)-NpOH than for (S)-NpOH, which is due to the difference of the dissociation rate constant of the 2:2 complex for both NpOH enantiomers. The dissociation rate constant of the 2:2 complex for (R)-NpOH is 46.8% lower than that for (S)-NpOH while the association rate constant of the 2:2 complex are similar for both NpOH enantiomers. The third objective of this work was to study the dynamics and the binding mechanism of octa acid with pyrene. As known from the work of other researchers, the accessibility of small molecules (e.g. I- or O2) to pyrene bound to octa acid is largely limited by the octa acid capsule. In this study, a two-step successive process was observed for the complexation of octa acid and pyrene. The first step, which was related to the formation of octa acid-pyrene 1:1 complex, was sufficiently fast to be viewed as a pre-equilibrium process. The second step, which was related to the formation of octa acid-pyrene 2:1 complex, was slow on the millisecond – second time scale. The high binding affinity of octa acid to pyrene was observed, which is due to the low dissociation rate constant for the octa acid-pyrene 2:1 complex. / Graduate

Att elever ska ha reellt inflytande i svensk skola betonas starkt i styrdokumenten. Tidigare studier visar att elever har begränsat inflytande i undervisning. Elevcentrerad undervisning ses ofta som något som ger högt elevinflytande. Därför syftar denna studie till att undersöka hur elever och lärare beskriver elevers inflytande i en skola som arbetar växelvis med traditionell ämnesundervisning och ämnesintegrerade temaområden som kan ses som en form av elevcentrerad undervisning. Frågor som besvaras är vilka möjligheter elever har till inflytande i undervisningen samt vad som kan begränsa elevinflytande. Teoretisk utgångspunkt för studien är Giddens struktureringsteori. Totalt har nio lärare och sexton elever i årskurs sju och åtta intervjuats. Resultaten visar att elever och lärare inte upplever att elever har något större inflytande i undervisningen. Elever efterfrågar heller inte detta i högre grad. De möjligheter till inflytande som förekommer är att elever kan ge förslag samt göra val mellan olika alternativ, exempelvis arbetssätt eller redovisningsform. Faktorer som begränsar elevinflytande är lärares tid, planeringsproblem och lärares samarbete samt indirekt då elever inte tar ansvar eller gör sina röster hörda. Ur resultaten framkommer också att elevinflytande är lägre i ämnesintegrerad/tematisk undervisning än i mer traditionell ämnesundervisning. Detta kan bero på att lärarna känner sig styrda av samplaneringen och att de då har svårt att ge eleverna inflytande. Inflytande är ibland osynligt för elever. Lärare måste vara tydliga med varför undervisningen ser ut som den gör för att synliggöra elevinflytandet. För att öka elevinflytande i undervisningen bör lärare arbeta aktivt med att överbrygga hinder för elevinflytande.

The increase of antidumping measures could represent a source of mounting frictions in the trading systems among Canada, United States and Mexico. Mexico is an active user of antidumping measures suggesting that both private sector groups and government policy makers have found antidumping measures to be a convenient response to the pressures of import competition. / In the last two decades, Mexico has opened its economy to international commerce. Nevertheless, its economy and legal system are not comparable to those of the United States or Canada, although it has adopted analogous antidumping laws. The Mexican antidumping practice is based today on common law practices influencing civil law formalities. In the NAFTA context, more specifically, in its Chapter 19, legal problems facing the binational panel review system have arisen from Mexico's different legal tradition, notably in the areas of transparency and procedural issues, standard of review, parallel amparo and the power of panel vis-a-vis national courts. The procedural requirements of the Antidumping Agreement prove a challenge for Mexico and will likely lead to trade disputes concerning procedure because it lacks the tradition of administrative and legal process.

There is an accelerating demand to access and work over the visual content of documents. Because of the insufficiency of text-based techniques for storing this data, content-based image retrieval (CBIR) systems have become a promising field. Due this fact, in this study a CBIR system is implemented that is Mpeg-7 compliant and ORDBMS based. The database contains images and their content summaries that are parsed from XML files. The summaries describe their dominant colors, color histograms, color spaces and labels, in order to be compliant with Mpeg-7. The query process requires only the summary not the image itself. Software implementation of the system is based on JSP and servlet technologies using Oracle database and Tomcat web server. It is shown that the usage of these tools in the proposed architecture brings security, portability, and speed.

The purpose of the study was to investigate the high school students&#039 / beliefs about mathematics and the teaching of mathematics. The study was conducted in Ankara with 425 tenth-grade students enrolled to general, Anatolian, foreign language and vocational high schools. Two measuring instruments were utilized: 1.Beliefs about Mathematics Scale (BaMS) / 2.Beliefs about the Teaching of Mathematics Scale (BTMS). The validity and reliability of these scales were tested. The design of the present research is a casual-comparative study. The hypotheses of the present study were tested by using multivariate analysis of variance at the significance level 0.05. The results of the study indicated that:1. There are statistically significant differences among the mean scores of students enrolled to different kinds of high schools with respect to beliefs about mathematics and beliefs about the teaching of mathematics / 2. There are statistically significant mean differences among students who have different mathematics achievement levels in terms of beliefs about mathematics and beliefs about the teaching of mathematics / 3. There are statistically significant mean differences among students who are in different branches in terms of beliefs about mathematics and beliefs about the teaching of mathematics / 4.There is no statistically significant mean difference between the male and female students on beliefs about mathematics. On the other hand, there is statistically significant mean difference between the male and female students on beliefs about the teaching of mathematics in the favor of female students.

The purpose of this study was to determine the learning styles of preparatory school students from Gazi University and examine the relationship between students&rsquo / learning style preferences (LSP) and faculty students will study in, gender, proficiency level of English and achievement scores on listening, reading, grammar, and writing in the English Course. The instrument, Index of Learning Styles (ILS), was administered to 367 randomly selected students. As for the data analysis, descriptive statistics portrayed the frequencies, percentages, means and standard deviations, the t test was conducted to see whether students&rsquo / achievement scores differ according to their LSPs and the Crosstabs procedure was conducted to investigate whether the LSPs of the students at Gazi University differ according to faculty they will study in, gender and level of proficiency. The results indicated that there was no significant difference between students&rsquo / LSPs and faculty, gender, level and achievement scores.

This qualitative exploratory case study focused on understanding how democracy and human rights education is carried out in a public elementary school in Turkey. A preliminary research was done in the USA in order to provide insight and experience into the study. An elementary school was chosen as a single case in Ankara. The study examined the perceptions of the school community (teachers, students, administrator and parents) related to democracy and human rights education through interviews. The participation to the study was completely based on voluntary action. Six teachers, 38 students, 16 parents and an administrator were interviewed. Observations and document analyses also enabled the researcher to find out the current instructional process concerning democracy and human rights education in different grade levels at elementary education. Content analysis was used to analyze the data. Research results revealed that democracy is not only a goal to be reached, and not just a form of government but also a concept experienced in all stages of schools. The major finding of the study was that there is a gap between what the school teaches as theory and the reality experienced in school and at home. All participants agreed that democracy and human rights education should start at early grades, preferably in kindergarten through establishing authentic learning environments where a variety of instructional methods, techniques, materials, textbooks and technology are employed. Besides, the school community indicated the importance of character education, school culture and values that are reflected through the hidden curriculum in schools for effective democracy and human rights education.

In this thesis, a low bit rate video coding system based on three-dimensional (3-D) wavelet coding is studied. In addition to the initial motivation to make use of the motion compensated wavelet based coding schemes, the other techniques that do not utilize the motion compensation in their coding procedures have also been considered on equal footing. The 3-D wavelet transform (WT) algorithm is based on the &ldquo / group of frames&rdquo / (GOF) concept. The group of eight frames are decomposed both temporally and spatially to their coarse and detail parts. The decomposition process utilizes both orthogonal and bi-orthogonal wavelet analysis filters. The transform coefficients are coded using an embedded image coding algorithm, called the &ldquo / Two-Dimensional Set Partitioning in Hierarchical Trees&rdquo / (2-D SPIHT). Due to its nature, the 2-D SPIHT is applied to the individual subband frames. In the reconstruction phase, the 2-D SPIHT decoding algorithm and the wavelet synthesis filters are employed, respectively. The Peak Signal to Noise Ratios (PSNRs) are used as a quality measure of the reconstructed frames. The investigations reveal that among several factors, the multi-level (de)composition is the dominant one effective both on the signal compression and the PSNR level. The encoded videos compressed to the ratio of 1:9 are reconstructed with the PSNR of about 30 dB in the best cases.

A video data model that allows efficient and effective representation and querying of spatio-temporal properties of objects has been previously developed. The data model is focused on the semantic content of video streams. Objects, events, activities performed by objects are the main interests of the model. The model supports fuzzy spatial queries including querying spatial relationships between objects and querying the trajectories of objects. In this thesis, this work is used as a basis for the development of an XML-based video database system. This system is aimed to be compliant with the MPEG-7 Multimedia Description Schemes in order to obey a universal standard. The system is implemented using a native XML database management system. Query entrance facilities are enhanced via integrating an NLP interface.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of Stress Management Training Program on perceived stress, self-efficacy and coping styles of preparatory school students in Middle East Technical University. Pre-posttest experimental control group design was used to investigate the effectiveness of Stress Management Training Program. Before the main study, reliability and validity studies of Perceived Stress Scale (PSS-10), College Adjustment Self-efficacy Scale (CASES) and Student Coping Instrument (SCOPE) were carried out with one hundred and forty one students. Three hundred and sixty six students (154 females and 212 males) contributed the main study. Among them, sixteen students were randomly assigned in the experimental and control group. While the Stress Management Training Program was applied for experimental group, control group did not receive any treatment. The program continued for six weeks, once a week for 90 minutes. The program included the effective and in-effective ways of coping with stress, emotions and thoughts that affect behaviors, relaxation training, problem solving and assertiveness training. ANOVA, Mann-Withney U and two-related samples Wilcoxon tests were used to analyze data. The results of analysis of variance showed a gender difference between males and females. Females had higher scores in perceived stress, socially related life events and emotion-focused coping. The results of Wilcoxon test showed a significant reduction between pre and post test scores of experimental group in perceived stress scores and the frequency of socially related life events. No difference was found for CASES and SCOPE.At the end of the study, the findings were discussed and recommendations were presented.