Ozyegin University

There are various kinds of software applications like mobile and Web applications. These applications have different types of user interfaces and user interaction methods. Hence, test automation tools are either dedicated or configured for a particular kind of application. Test scenarios can be implemented in the form of scripts and test execution can be automated separately for each type of application. However, there are systems of systems that embody multiple types of applications deployed on various platforms. Test scenarios might cross-cut these applications to be controlled collectively in the test script. In this paper, we propose an approach for testing cross-platform systems of systems. We present an application of it on a real system that involves a mobile and a Web application that are supposed to work in coordination. Our approach integrates a set of existing tools to facilitate test automation. It provides testers with a unified interface for developing test scripts that involve both mobile and Web applications. We conduct an industrial case study and show that our tool can reduce the testing effort significantly.

The aviation industry continues to experience a significant underrepresentation of women, particularly in technical and leadership roles. Researchers have conducted various studies to understand the challenges women face in the aviation industry across different countries and occupations. This chapter aims to conduct a systematic literature review to identify the factors hindering women's involvement and progress in the aviation industry. By analyzing existing research, the chapter provides a comprehensive overview of the obstacles faced by women in aviation and suggests potential strategies to promote gender diversity and equity in the industry. The study's insights and recommendations can help aviation companies, policymakers, and other stakeholders create inclusive and fairer workplaces. This chapter consolidates the latest research on the subject, making it a useful resource for researchers investigating and addressing the challenges women encounter in aviation.

Mothers adopt various emotion socialization strategies and sometimes exhibit contradictory responses. Thus, it is essential to understand how mothers differentiate in their use of emotion socialization strategies, and whether a set of emotion socialization responses is associated with individual differences in emotion regulation, mental health, and parental sense of competence during toddlerhood. Therefore, we used a person-centred approach to identify mothers’ emotion socialization responses and then compared mothers based on the aforementioned characteristics. The mothers (N = 680) with toddlers (M = 23.56 months) responded to the Coping with Toddlers’ Negative Emotions Scale, the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire, the Brief Symptom Inventory, and the Parental Sense of Competence Scale. The 3-profile-solution revealed: Unspecified (moderate scores in all emotion socialization strategies), supportive (high scores in supportive emotion socialization strategies) and mixture profiles (high in all emotion socialization strategies). The supportive and mixture profiles scored highly in cognitive reappraisal. Unspecified and mixture profiles did not vary in expressive suppression and mental health symptoms, but they scored lower than supportive profile mothers. In the parental sense of competence, the supportive profile scored higher than the mixture profile. The results showed mothers mainly using supportive emotion socialization strategies can demonstrate adequate emotion regulation and benefit from psychological well-being that potentially boosts parenting competence.

Studies of health care expenditure often exclude explanatory variables measuring wealth, despite the intuitive importance and policy relevance. We use the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey to assess impacts of income and wealth on health expenditure. We investigate four different dependent variables related to health expenditure and use three main methodological approaches. These approaches include a first difference model and introduction of a lagged dependent variable into a cross-sectional context. The key findings include that wealth tends to be more important than income in identifying variation in health expenditure. This applies for health variables which are not directly linked to means testing, such as spending on health practitioners and for being unable to afford required medical treatment. In contrast, the paper includes no evidence of different impacts of income and wealth on spending on medicines, prescriptions or pharmaceuticals. The results motivate two novel policy innovations. One is the introduction of an asset test for determining rebate eligibility for private health insurance. The second is greater focus on asset testing, rather than income tests, for a wide range of general welfare payments that can be used for health expenditure. Australia's world-leading use of means testing can provide a test case for many countries.

Decorative “muqarnas” add charm to the design element and may influence the characteristics of an interior space. This study hypothesises that muqarnas in traditional Turkish baths (hammams) affect acoustic performances of such interior spaces. To test this hypothesis, a bath with muqarnas as the dome transition element was selected and a comparative study, in terms of acoustics quality with and without the decorative muqarnas, was conducted. Furthermore, the effect of different muqarnas configurations on acoustic quality of the interior space has been tested via optimisation simulations. With the use of optimisation model, a form of parametric muqarnas in the selected interior space was optimised according to the acoustic objectives. The optimisation tests were conducted with the objectives of increasing C 50 (Clarity), C 80, Reverberation Time (RT), Speech Transmission Index (STI), and decreasing RT. It was found that muqarnas do have an impact on acoustic performance of the interior space and the optimisation experiments suggest that different muqarnas configurations have different impact on the acoustic quality.

In recent years, distributed generation (DG) has become increasingly popular as a means of mitigating the impact of climate change and ensuring a reliable and resilient power supply. To optimize the use of DG, it is essential to determine the most effective DG sizing and siting for a given power system. This problem has been researched, and several heuristic algorithms have been proposed and tested. This paper focuses on applying particle swarm optimization (PSO) to this problem to minimize real power loss. Five different PSO variants in single and three DG unit scenarios using the IEEE 33 bus system are tested to reveal the efficiency of the variants and their potential for improving the solution's performance. By comparing the performance of the different PSO variants with the ones in the literature, we found that PSO outperformed other heuristic algorithms for this problem. Our findings highlight the importance of choosing the suitable optimization algorithm for DG sizing and siting to achieve the best possible outcomes for power systems operations.

As threats in the maritime domain diversify, securing data transmission becomes critical for underwater wireless networks designed for the surveillance of critical infrastructure and maritime border protection. This has sparked interest in underwater Quantum Key Distribution (QKD). In this paper, we present an FPGA-based real-time implementation of an underwater QKD system based on the BB84 protocol. The QKD unit is built on a hybrid computation system consisting of an FPGA and an on-board computer (OBC) interfaced with optical front-ends. A real-time photon counting module is implemented on FPGA. The transmitter and receiver units are powered with external UPS and all system parameters can be monitored from the connected computers. The system is equipped with a visible laser and an alignment indicator to validate successful manual alignment. Secure key distribution at a rate of 100 qubits per second was successfully tested over a link distance of 7 meters.

Terms such as human trafficking and modern-day slavery are ephemeral but reflect manifestations of oppression, servitude, and captivity that perpetually have threatened the basic right of all humans. Operations research and analytical tools offering practical wisdom have paid scant attention to this overarching problem. Motivated by this lacuna, this study considers two of the most prevalent categories of human trafficking: forced labor and forced sex. Using one of the largest available datasets due to Counter-Trafficking Data Collective (CTDC), we examine patterns related to forced sex and forced labor. Our study uses a two-phase approach focusing on explainability: Phase 1 involves logistic regression (LR) segueing to association rules analysis and Phase 2 employs Bayesian Belief Networks (BBNs) to uncover intricate pathways leading to human trafficking. This combined approach provides a comprehensive understanding of the factors contributing to human trafficking, effectively addressing the limitations of conventional methods. We confirm and challenge some of the key findings in the extant literature and call for better prevention strategies. Our study goes beyond the pretext of analytics usage by prescribing how to incorporate our results in combating human trafficking.

On February 6th, 2023, an earthquake sequence with moment magnitudes (Mw) of 7.8 and 7.5 rocked southern and eastern Turkiye, affecting 15 million-residents and a significant portion of Turkiye’s industrial community. In the days following the earthquake sequence, a reconnaissance team was organized to visit the industrial districts in the five provinces of the earthquake region. While performance and functionality of 131 industrial facilities were inspected using the proposed data-collection protocols, 18 interviews with industrial representatives were conducted. The inspection and interview results show that the earthquake sequence had a significant impact on industrial facilities, resulting in enormous economic losses and business disruptions lasting three months to two years. While the sequence imposed severe demands on the facilities, their poor performance is mostly due to discrepancies between seismic design code requirements and building practice. The most affected facilities were found to be those built before 2000, as well as precast reinforced concrete structures with pin-supported roofs. As a result, these types of facilities in earthquake-prone areas are strongly advised to be re-evaluated. Furthermore, various nonstructural building components, such as claddings and equipment/machinery, were substantially damaged at the majority of the assessed sites, causing lengthy interruptions. To reduce future seismic losses and disruptions to industry, the proposed protocols and findings of this field study can be utilized to support further resilience studies on the development of business continuity plans and risk management approaches for industrial facilities.

This commentary is based on our observations during our fieldwork in the earthquake region in Turkey that took place in February 6, 2023 in 11 provinces where 49% of the entire Syrian population in Turkey live. In this commentary, we focus on the case of Syrians, who have been subject to what we call double displacement. Syrian refugees who were already displaced due to the war and faced with many problems in establishing a new life in Turkey once again lost their homes and livelihoods due to the earthquake, exposing them to increased risks and vulnerability.

In this study, we first introduce a new application of the asymmetric traveling salesman problem which is about a small restaurant with one cook and a single stove. Once a meal has started cooking on the stove, the cook prepares the next meal on the table where the preparation time is dependent on the previous meal prepared. For the solution of this problem, besides several simple construction algorithms and a new version of the simulated annealing (SA) algorithm, we focus on enhanced versions of the recently introduced migrating birds optimization (MBO) algorithm. The original MBO algorithm might suffer from early convergence. Here we introduce several different ways of handling this problem. The extensive numerical experimentation conducted shows the superiority of the enhanced MBO over the original MBO (about 2.62 per cent) and over the SA algorithm (about 1.05 per cent).