The purpose of the present study was to investigate the relationships between perceived maternal rejection and psychological distress of adolescents. In addition to that, mediator roles of early maladaptive schemas in this relationship were explored. A total of 356 second-grade high school students (198 females and 158 males) were participated in the study. Participants ranged in age from 15 to 18 (M = 16.17, SD= 0.53). Data was collected by a questionnaire packet consisting Demographic data form, Young Schema Questionnaire (YSQ), Parental Acceptance and Rejection Questionnaire (PARQ) , trait part of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI-T), trait part of State-Trait Anger Inventory (ANG-T) Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS). Preceding the main analyses, factor analysis for YSQ was performed. It yielded three higher-order factors for YSQ as Impaired Limits- Exaggerated Standards, Disconnection-Rejection, and Impaired Autonomy-Other Directedness. Following factor analysis, ANOVAs were employed to assess differences between adolescents perceiving high acceptance and high rejection in terms of psychological distress measures (i.e., anger, positive affect, negative affect, and anxiety). It was found that adolescents perceiving high rejection were more likely to experience anger, negative affect, and anxiety than those perceiving high acceptance. In order to test whether Impaired Limits-Exaggerated Standards, Disconnection-Rejection, and Impaired Autonomy-Other Directedness mediate the relationship between perceptions of maternal rejection and adolescents&rsquo / anger, positive affect, negative affect, and anxiety respectively, separate hierarchical regression analyses were conducted as suggested by Baron and Kenny (1986). Mediation analyses revealed in general that both maternal rejection and schema domains had main effects on psychological distress measures. However, none of the schema domains did mediate the relationship between maternal rejection and psychological distress measures except for the disconnection-rejection schema domain. The result revealed that disconnection-rejection schema domain mediated the relationship between maternal rejection and anger. These findings were discussed with reference to the relevant literature. Future research topics were suggested and therapeutic implications of the study were discussed.

In his defense of negative freedom, Isaiah Berlin&rsquo / s main target is the political voluntarism of enlightenment rationalism which has paved way to totalitarian and authoritarian political regimes of the 20th century which brought the sacrifice of individual freedom. For Berlin, in contrast to Platonic realism of enlightenment rationalism in which there is a substantial belief in reason&rsquo / s capacity for giving us the knowledge of the supreme good, the nominalist foundations of negative freedom can provide us a secure grounding in the justification of the rights over the goods. By declaring the inviolable rights and relying on the principle of neutrality, negative freedom eliminates the risk of political voluntarism stemming from enlightenment rationalism or scientism. Since the 1980s, in Turkey, political and social oppositions to Rousseauian enlightenment of the Turkish state have deployed the epistemic and political tools of negative freedom. This appeal has aimed to open a legitimate space for the language of freedom as non-intervention under which each individual chooses his personal values without the fear of state intervention. In contrast to the interventionist claims of state, negative freedom, it has been believed that, has provided a secure grounding for the rights of individuals. Besides, the meta-ethical thesis of the incommensurability of human goods has also been employed for delegitimizing the substantial belief in the monism of the republican regime which relied on the assumption presenting the republican way of life as the supreme good. This missionary zeal for the re-construction of the republic on the premises of negative freedom has not, however, gone unchallenged. Against such identification of democracy with free-market and value pluralism, the republican front defends the restoration of the foundational ideals of the republic by returning to the substantial understanding of national sovereignty under the formulation of &lsquo / militant democracy&rsquo / . In this study, even though I agree with the nominalist epistemology of negative freedom which manifests a skeptic and agnostic attitude toward the power of reason and the insistence of negative freedom on the necessity of the priority of right, I have demonstrated the reasons behind the failure of negative freedom in justifying the priority of the right over the goods. Actually, my analysis has already displayed that concerning the radical consequences of the thesis of incommensurability, it is doubtful whether negative freedom can provide political conditions even for the cause of peace without the presence of absolute sovereign as suggested in Hobbes&rsquo / s political theory. At this point, I have argued that we should take into consideration the achievements of the ideal of autonomy in grounding the priority of the right over the good. Contrary to Berlin&rsquo / s distorted representation of autonomy, I believe that the critical rationalism of autonomy and its understanding of law will protect us not only from the metaphysics of enlightenment rationalism and scientism, but also from the metaphysics of historicism envisaged by Berlin&rsquo / s version of negative freedom.

The present study investigated the role of attachment dimensions, relationship status, and gender in subjective well-being. The participants were 389 (288 females, 101 males) volunteered students from the Faculty of Education at Middle East Technical University. Three questionnaires, namely Experiences in Close Relationships Inventory (ECRI) Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS), and Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) were administered to the students. Three separate stepwise multiple linear regression analyses were conducted to examine the predictive power of the avoidance dimension of attachment, anxiety dimension of attachment, gender (coded as dummy variable), and relationship status (coded as dummy variable) on three components of subjective well-being identified as positive affect, negative affect, and satisfaction with life. Findings revealed that avoidance dimension of attachment, gender, and anxiety dimension of attachment predicted the life satisfaction of university student as measured by Satisfaction with Life Scale. Results also yielded that avoidance dimension of attachment predicted positive affect scores of the students whereas anxiety dimension of attachment predicted negative affect scores of the students as measured by Positive Affect and Negative Affect subscales of Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS).

This thesis aims to investigate socio-psychological factors that affect foreign language learners&rsquo / pronunciation and focuses on the relationship between in-class injunctive norms for English pronunciation and Fear of Negative Evaluation (FNE). Injunctive norms are a type of social norms that define the expected behavior from the group members and sanctions for disobedience. They are evaluative in their nature. FNE is one of the three components of foreign language classroom anxiety and experienced when a person is in an evaluative situation. For this study, the quantitative data were collected through a questionnaire developed by the researcher and the qualitative data were gathered from the interviews. Freshman students at the Department of Foreign Language Education at Middle East Technical University participated in the study. v The results indicated that speaking with native like or Turkish-like English pronunciation and having some pronunciation mistakes, which are commonly observed in the classroom, are approved according to in-class injunctive norms for English pronunciation. However, if speakers cannot achieve sounding native like when they are trying to emulate native pronunciation, or if they make pronunciation mistakes which are not commonly observed in the classroom or overemphasized by the instructors, these performances are not approved. Speaking with an English pronunciation in the classroom which is not approved according to these norms triggers FNE in the learners. Therefore, learners generally prefer speaking with Turkish-like English pronunciation, which is within the frame of inclass injunctive norms. The results also demonstrated that the pronunciation rules that teachers emphasize become a part of injunctive norms / therefore, teachers have an important role in the determination of these norms.

The present study aimed to explore both situational (Emotional Display Rules and Affective Events) and dispositional antecedents (Four of Big Five personality dimensions / Extraversion, Neuroticism, Conscientiousness and Agreeableness) of emotional labor. Potential interaction effects of situational and dispositional variables on emotional labor / and long-term consequences of the construct were also examined. Data were collected from table servers working in caf&eacute / s, restaurants, and hotels in Ankara, Istanbul, Kusadasi, (Aydin) and Antalya. The study was performed in three stages. In the first stage, diary study was conducted and Affective Events Scale was created for the service work. In the second stage, psychometric properties of the new scale were pilot tested. In the main study, reliabilities of the scales, hypotheses and potential moderation effects were tested with a total sample of 254 employees. Results revealed that emotional display rules were a significant predictor of both surface and deep acting. Positive events positively predicted emotional labor. Among dispositional antecedents, agreeableness was the only dimension that predicted surface acting. Deep acting was predicted by all of the personality dimensions utilized in the study, especially by agreeableness. On the other hand,conscientiousness had a marginally significant moderation effect on the relationship between emotional display rules and surface acting. With respect to consequences of emotional labor, both surface acting and deep acting positively predicted personal accomplishment. Deep acting was also positively related to job satisfaction, and negatively related to turnover intentions. Findings discussed and practical implications, limitations, and directions for future research were presented.

Thermal mismatch between different components of a system could be sources of problems like residual stress induced cracking, thermal fatigue or even optical misalignment in certain high technology applications. Use of materials with tailored thermal expansion coefficient is a counter-measure to overcome such problems. With its negative thermal expansion coefficient zirconium tungstate (ZrW2O8) is a candidate component to be used in synthesis of composites with controlled thermal expansion coefficient (CTE). ZrW2O8 is typically produced by solid-state reaction between zirconium oxide and tungsten oxide at 1200oC. However, it has been demonstrated that ZrW2O8 can also be synthesized using wet chemical techniques, which provide a superior chemical homogeneity that often extents down to the atomic scale, and the convenient means of controlling nucleation and growth of the primary crystallites. With the commonly adopted wet chemical approaches, it is possible to crystallize particles with sizes in the submicrometer range at temperatures as low as 600 oC or even lower. In these studies, precursors are aged either below 100 oC (7 days &ndash / 3 weeks), or at 160-180 oC under hydrothermal conditions (1&ndash / 2 days). Besides the obvious disadvantage in the ageing steps, use of tungsten sources with high cost in all approaches, constitutes the other disadvantage. Production of composites with tunable controlled thermal expansion (CTE) has been achieved by blending negatively and positively expanding materials in different proportions. In majority of these studies composites have been produced by conventional sintering methods. Spark Plasma Sintering (SPS) is a recent technique / in which sintering can be achieved at relatively low temperatures in short durations. There is only one study made by Kanamori and coworkers on the use of SPS in sintering of a composite, in which ZrW2O8 is one of the constituents [1]. This study aims the synthesis of ZrW2O8 particles and composites that possess tunable or zero CTE. A novel precursor recipe for ZrW2O8 synthesis was developed. In preparation of the precursor a total of 2 days of ageing and a temperature less than 100 oC was used. It was developed using a cost-effective tungsten source, namely tungstic acid and its final pH was lower than 1. The particles obtained from &lsquo / unwashed&rsquo / procedure had sizes in micrometer range, while those obtained from &lsquo / washed&rsquo / case had sizes in the range of 400-600 nm. These precursors could readily be crystallized at 600 oC, which in turn provided the desired particle sizes for composite applications. Experimental details on the precursor development are hereby presented with a discussion on the effects of solution parameters (i.e. solubility of tungstic acid, adjustment of the stoichiometry, ageing time) on the phase purity of the fired product. Zirconium oxide (ZrO2) has positive vi thermal expansion, therefore ZrW2O8/ZrO2 was selected as the composite system, and for their synthesis both conventional and spark plasma sintering methods were experimented. Composition ranges that provide composites with almost zero CTE&rsquo / s were determined. The composite having a composition of containing 35% ZrW2O8, 65% ZrO2, and 35 w/o Al2O3 and sintered at 1200 oC for 24 hours had an expansion coefficient of 0.20 x 10-6/K for conventional method, while the one having a composition of 55% ZrW2O8, 45% ZrO2 and sintered at 1000 oC for 5 minutes had an expansion coefficient of 0.94 x 10-6/K for spark plasma sintering method. For characterization of the products X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), photon correlation spectroscopy (PCS), and thermal and dilatometer analyses (DTA/TGA/DMA) were used.

We study the properties of thinning and Markov chain thinning of renewal processes. Among others, we investigate whether some special renewal processes can be obtained through Markov chain thinning.

The study population consisted of 41 institutions from 9 categories which were military, public or private hospital, public or private school, governmental agency, public-operated service industry, public-operated manufacturing industry, privately operated financial service industry, privately operated service industry, privately operated high tech manufacturing industry and privately operated traditional manufacturing industry. The survey started on December 21st2007 and continued until January 11th 2008.We totally sent out 2,133 questionnaires, returned 1,940 questionnaires, the returns-ratio reached 91.0%, eliminated invalid questionnaires were 50, the effective questionnaires were 1,890,effective questionnaires returns-ratio was 88.6%. Data was analyzed by using descriptive statistics, reliability analysis, correlation analysis, exploring factor analysis and level linear model. The major results of this study are as following: 1.Machiavellianism of organizational members has a significant effect on perceptions of organizational politics. 2.Positive affect of organizational members has a significant effect on perceptions of organizational politics. 3.Negative affect of organizational members has a significant effect on perceptions of organizational politics. 4.The degree of centralization has a significant effect on perceptions of organizational politics. 5.The degree of formalization has no effect on perceptions of organizational politics. 6.Organizational hierarchical Level has no effect on perceptions of organizational politics. 7.Organization size has no effect on perceptions of organizational politics. 8.The degree of centralization has no moderate effect on the relationship between machiavellianism and perceptions of organizational politics. 9.The degree of formalization has no moderate effect on the relationship between machiavellianism and perceptions of organizational politics. 10.Organizational hierarchical Level has no moderate effect on the relationship between machiavellianism and perceptions of organizational politics. 11.Organization size has no moderate effect on the relationship between machiavellianism and perceptions of organizational politics. 12.The degree of centralization has no moderate effect on the relationship between positive affect of organizational members and perceptions of organizational politics. 13.The degree of formalization has no moderate effect on the relationship between negative affect of organizational members and perceptions of organizational politics. 14.Organization size has no moderate effect on the relationship between positive affect of organizational members and perceptions of organizational politics. 15.Organizational hierarchical Level has no moderate effect on the relationship between positive affect of organizational members and perceptions of organizational politics. 16.The degree of centralization has moderate effect on the relationship between positive affect of organizational members and perceptions of organizational politics. 17.The degree of formalization has no moderate effect on the relationship between positive affect of organizational members and perceptions of organizational politics. 18.Organization size has no moderate effect on the relationship between positive affect of organizational members and perceptions of organizational politics. 19.Organizational hierarchical Level has no moderate effect on the relationship between positive affect of organizational members and perceptions of organizational politics.

In this document, we study the nonnegative least squares primal-dual method for solving linear programming problems. In particular, we investigate connections between this primal-dual method and the classical Hungarian method for the assignment problem. Firstly, we devise a fast procedure for computing the unrestricted least squares solution of a bipartite matching problem by exploiting the special structure of the incidence matrix of a bipartite graph. Moreover, we explain how to extract a solution for the cardinality matching problem from the nonnegative least squares solution. We also give an efficient procedure for solving the cardinality matching problem on general graphs using the nonnegative least squares approach. Next we look into some theoretical results concerning the minimization of p-norms, and separable differentiable convex functions, subject to linear constraints described by node-arc incidence matrices for graphs. Our main result is the reduction of the assignment problem to a single nonnegative least squares problem. This means that the primal-dual approach can be made to converge in one step for the assignment problem. This method does not reduce the primal-dual approach to one step for general linear programming problems, but it appears to give a good starting dual feasible point for the general problem.

Il gene-targeting in colture cellulari associato alla tecnica del trasferimento nucleare oggi rappresenta il sistema d'elezione nella creazione di animali transgenici. Purtroppo la ricombinazione omologa (HR) è poco efficiente soprattutto in cellule somatiche. La positive-negative selection (PNS) è la tecnica di arricchimento usata per geni non attivamente trascritti nel tipo cellulare utilizzato. In questo lavoro abbiamo scelto come locus bersaglio la b-lattoglobulina bovina e testato tre nuove cassette di selezione negativa, che non codificando per antibiotico-resistenze, determinano condizioni di coltura meno tossiche. / Gene-targeting of cultured cells combined with nuclear transfer currently is the most effective procedure to produce transgenic livestock. Nevertheless homologous recombination (HR) is a low frequency event in mammalian cells, above all in somatic cells. Positive-negative selection (PNS) is the enrichment strategy to target genes that are not actively transcribed in the cell type of choice. In this work we chose to target the bovine b-lactoglobulin gene and we tested three new negative selection cassettes in bovine fibroblasts. Such new targeting vectors allow a single selective drug employ and produce less toxic culture conditions.