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European Geosciences Union introduced PICO (presentation with interactive content, http://www.egu2014.eu/pico.html) in 2013 at General Assembly. I guess other conferences have also this option.

What do you think about that? Is it better than poster? What do you think about "2-minute madness" (two-minute-long summary of your contribution) to present your PICO at PICO spots (discussion is during the PICO session)?

International Plant Breeding Congress

10-14 NOVEMBER, 2013, ANTALYA, TURKEY

FIRST ANNOUNCEMENT

General Information

The congress will be organized by Plant Breeders Sub-Union of Turkey (BİSAB) together with Turkish Plant Breeders Association (TUBID), Turkish Seed Union (TURKTOB), ECO Seed Association (ECOSA), along with other such national and international organizations. The congress will be under three different sections as field and horticultural crops and genetic resources. It is intended that the subjects should be kept broad in order to provide opportunity to the science community to present their work as oral or poster presentations that can be off value for plant breeding.

As there have been many different scientific meetings around the world, we intended to bring three different community together, namely science, research and private investment, in a friendly environment of Antalya / Turkey to share what they have and get benefit from each other.

BISAB is a young organization established in 2008 as being the legal representative of Turkish Plant Breeders. Anybody who runs a breeding program is becoming member to BISAB. Further information about BİSAB is available in BISAB web page www.bisab.org.tr

“Local Organizing Committee” consist of

• Plant Breeders Sub-Union of Turkey

• Turkish Plant Breeders Association

• Turkish Seed Union

• ECO Seed Association

• Faculty of Agricultures of Universities

• General Directorate of Agricultural Research and Politics of Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Livestock

Venue

The Congress will take place in WOW Topkapi Palace Hotel in Antalya, Turkey.

http://www.wowhotels.com/wowtopkapipalace.asp)

Subjects

Congress will cover following subjects:

• Conventional Breeding

• Molecular Genetics and Biotechnology

• Genetic Engineering and Genomics

• Genetic Resources for Pre-Breeding

Language

Official languages of the Congress are Arabic, English, Russian and Turkish. Simultaneous translation on these languages will be during the congress.

Instructions for Abstract Submission

Abstracts could be in any of the congress languages. If abstract submitted in Arabic, Russian and Turkish, an English translation of abstract is requested. Abstracts shall not exceed 250 words written in MS Word or a compatible format. State the name(s) of author(s) [presenting author should be underlined], address and email address shall be provided via e-mail as attached file.

Abstract submissions will start on April 1st and will end September 20th 2013. It could be made to the Organizing Committee Secretariat by e-mail.

Corresponding author should indicate whether wants to present his/her paper as oral or poster. The author shall register for congress in following 15 days after his/her abstract’s acceptance. Otherwise, the abstracts will not be included in the program. All accepted abstracts will be published in a special Book of Abstracts and/or in CD. Accepted abstracts will be made available on Congress web page after acceptance. The last day of the publishing of the abstracts on congress web page is 20th October 2013. The final program will be on the web page 15 days before the Congress.

Review of the Abstracts

Abstracts will be reviewed by the at least three members of the Scientific Committee of the congress. If corresponding author has already made a selection between oral or poster, it will be considered by the reviewing team. If submissions are not accepted as oral presentation, the corresponding author will have the opportunity either to accept poster presentation or withdraw his/her submission. All reviewing process will take almost two weeks.

Full Manuscripts

Full papers, selected among the oral presentations by the Scientific Committee will be published in Journal of Crop Breeding and Genetics after congress.

Registration Fees

Registration fees include access to scientific sessions, the congress abstract book or CD, the congress materials and all coffee breaks. Since the hotel price where the congress takes place is all inclusive no extra charge will be asked for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Registration fees are:

Before September 6th After September 6th

Students 100 € 150 €

Regular Participants 200 € 250 € Accompanying Persons 75 €

Onsite registration 300 €

Please consider that the registration fee does not include accommodation, transfer and excursions. In case of cancellation, refunds are possible until September 20th, 2013, except for a handling fee of 50 € for regular participants / students; full refunding for accompanying persons. No refunds are allowed after September 20th, 2013. Payments can be made via credit card, EC card, and bank transfer. Congress registration could be made by web page and sending e-mail by registration form.

Contact

Please contact for any question to the Organizing Committee e-mail address (ipbc2013@gmail.com). Or call +90 312 433 33 65 – 66. Further information and registration form is in our web page.

See you in Turkey…

Dr. Vehbi ESER Asoc. Prof. Dr.

Head of Organizing S. Ahmet BAĞCI

Committee President of BISAB

I have downloaded time series data from the IMF-IFS website for 31 different countries. The time series are about GDP, constant prices, national currency (yearly); lending interest rate (monthly); exchange rate (monthly); import/export (yearly) and inflation rate (yearly).

I summarize these data into five variables, which I then input into a Self-Organizing Map. The aim would be to find clusters of homogeneous countries that are suitable for a monetary union.

For the GDP and interest rate, the variable is constructed as follows: I apply Hodrick-Prescott filter on the time series and extract only the cyclical components. I then compute cross correlation between the cyclical components of one country and a reference (in my case, the US).

I would like to know if it is necessary to check for stationarity of the time series. I am quite confused about it since I have not really taken a course about time series yet. But my professor told me that when dealing with time series, I should make sure they are stationary (even if in this case the analysis is just statistical, I am not building any auto-regressive model).

Performing ADF test on GDP and interest rate time series yields a large p-value. So I guess that means they are stationary. But does it make sense to make them stationary if I have then to extract only their cyclical components? And, again, does it make sense to perform stationarity test on the cyclical components series itself?

I am sorry for the confused question.

What are the basic concepts of neorealism? Here is how I tried to formulate them, and I would appreciate your thoughts and comments.

The basic tenets of neorealism enable the systematic approach to studying shifts in state behaviour. Six fundamental neorealist concepts are respectively introduced in this section; anarchy, structure, capability, the distribution of power, polarity and national interest. These concepts are evoked by many realist scholars of international relations (Buzan 1993; Herz 1950; Hanami 2003; Jervis 1997; Keohane 1986; Mearsheimer 2001; Oye 1986; Snyder 2002; Waltz 1979; Zakaria 1998), albeit with variations in their precise definitions.

The first two concepts; ‘anarchy’ and ‘structure’; are intertwined. The ‘structure’ of the international system is said to be ‘anarchic’. ‘Anarchy’ does not imply the presence of chaos and disorder. It simply refers to the absence of a world government (Waltz 1979, 88). With no overarching global authority that provides security and stability in international relations, world politics is not formally and hierarchically organized . International politics is structured by ‘anarchy’, in contrast to domestic politics that is structured by ‘hierarchy’. The international system is thus defined in terms of an anarchic international structure.

An ‘anarchic structure’ has two main implications. Firstly, every actor in the international system is responsible for looking after itself, rendering the international system a “self-help system”. This system is thus composed of self-regarding units, who primarily seek to survive . National states are the only entities in international relations that have the centralized legitimate authority to use force to look after themselves. Sovereign states are thus the constitutive units of the international system, and the primary actors in world politics. Therefore, the organizing principle of the international structure is ‘anarchy’, and this ‘structure’ is defined in terms of states. Secondly, states perpetually feel threatened by a potential attack from others. Where no one commands by virtue of authority, no one is obliged to obey (Waltz 1979, 88-93).

As each state constantly feels insecure, each needs to be capable of fending for itself. This leads to the third concept of ‘capability’. Capabilities are instrumental for states to ensure their survival. The survival aim encourages relative gains. A neorealist assessment of the ‘capability’ of a state is determined by five main criteria; its natural resource endowment, its demographic, economic, military and technological capacity. As each state achieves a different level of capability (which primarily serves its survival goal), states within the international system are differentiated via their level of capability. Neorealist scholars thus strive to paint a relational picture of the capabilities each state possesses at any given time. This is referred to as ‘relative capability’.

Because states are perpetually insecure, they perpetually wish to acquire capabilities. The grand paradox of international politics is thus born; the “security dilemma”. In striving to attain security from a potential attack, states are driven to acquire more and more capabilities in order to escape the impact of the capabilities of others. This renders the others more insecure and compels them to prepare for the worst. Since no one can ever feel entirely secure in such a world of competing units, competition ensues and the vicious circle of security and capability accumulation is on (Herz 1950, 36).

In the competition for security, states will achieve varying levels of capability. Thus, capabilities are distributed differently across the constitutive units of the system. Such an assessment of the ‘distribution of capabilities’ constitutes the fourth concept of neorealism. Countries’ ranking depends on how they score on all the aforementioned components of ‘relative capability’.

The notion of ‘polarity’ can be explained in light of the preceding concepts. The ‘polarity’ of the international system is determined by examining the ‘distribution of capabilities’ across units, at any given time. This approach enables the distinct typification of the nature of the international system. It is generally possible to distinguish between three types of polarity; unipolarity, bipolarity and multipolarity. Unipolarity prevails when a single state in the system is markedly superior, relative to all other states in terms of demographic, economic, military and technological capabilities. The current state of the international system can be described as unipolar; the United States maintains military, economic and technological primacy in the world. Bipolarity exists when these capabilities are mainly distributed amongst two prominent actors, much like the Cold War era when the US and the Soviet Union represented the two ‘poles’ of power . Multipolarity occurs when more than two actors possess nearly equal amounts of relative capability. Examples of multipolar structures can be seen in the periods following up to and lasting throughout the First and Second World Wars.

‘National interest’ is an elusive concept. In striving for security, states seek to expand their capabilities vis-à-vis rival states. Thus ensuring territorial, economic and military security constitutes the national interest calculus of a state. At the same time, the level of capability a state possesses vis-à-vis others, constrains or equips states to pursue such interests. In turn, the scope and ambition of a country’s interests are driven by its level of capability (Telhami 2003, 109). Therefore within a neorealist conceptual framework, national interests of states are best understood with reference to their relative capability ranking.