To ensure efficient inspection using the magnetic flux leakage (MFL) method, generating a flux density near the saturation level within the tested material is essential. This requirement brings high flux density conditions in the system’s pole regions. Hence, leakage flux within the slot is excessively triggered, leading to distortion of the defect signal. In this context, the system dimensions stand out as one of the most significant factors affecting the mentioned flux distributions. Therefore, various alternative solutions with different system dimensions arise in the design process of the MFL system. This study proposes a magnetic equivalent circuit (MEC) model to achieve optimal system design. The proposed MEC model is designed considering the nonlinear behavior of the material, leakage flux, and fringing effects. Verification results demonstrate that the MEC model consistently tracks the finite element analysis (FEA) results in calculating the flux densities. Furthermore, the relative errors in the flux density calculations of the tested material are at a maximum level of 10.2% and an average of 5.2% compared to the FEA. These findings indicate that the proposed MEC model can be effectively utilized in rapid prototyping and optimization procedures of MFL system design by providing fast solutions with reasonable accuracy.

Magnetic flux leakage (MFL) is a non-destructive testing method used to detect railhead surface defects. For effective MFL testing, the homogeneity of the magnetic flux density distribution (MFDD) within the railhead is crucial. Inhomogeneous formation of the MFDD within the railhead reduces the efficiency of the MFL testing. The homogeneity of the MFDD depends on the distance between poles (DBP) of the MFL testing system. According to the literature, as the DBP parameter increases, the MFDD becomes more homogeneous. In this study, four different homogeneity levels of the MFDD are introduced based on the DBP parameter. 3D finite element method (FEM) modelling simulation is conducted to obtain MFL testing analyses. The analyses are performed on a rail that contains rectangular surface defects of varying depth and length. The results of this study are evaluated using characteristic features of the MFL signal B X component, namely the slope of the baseline, the bottom value and the peak-to-peak value. The results show that if the homogeneity level of the MFDD within the railhead is higher, the bottom value and slope of the baseline decrease and the peak-to-peak value increases. This indicates that higher homogeneity of the MFDD enhances the detection efficiency of the MFL testing. Eventually, it is found that with the formation of nearly 100% homogeneous MFDD in the railhead, the slope of the baseline, the bottom value and the peak-to-peak value are enhanced by up to 83%, 77% and 12%, respectively.

In recent years, the illumination in Turkey has increased significantly with the spread of LED technology. The main difficulty in illumination historical artifacts is to accurately reveal their identities by animating visual details, content, and emotions with efficient lighting installation, thus preserving their integrity, and carrying them into the future. The study aims to make historical artifacts more attractive with 3D simulation, prevent visual discomfort, and reduce energy loss. This report is the first attempt to address the illumination of the Aphrodisias open-air museum found in the west of Turkey. The 3D simulation is implemented and analysed for the selected zones. The desired results are successfully achieved through the simulation and experimental studies by finding the light sources with performance parameters, such as CCT, CRI, and luminous efficacy according to the location and texture. The results promote modern technologies for the openair museums in Turkey and offer solutions for safe night visits, energy efficient illumination, and enhancing visual aesthetics.

Magnetic flux leakage (MFL) method is one of the non-destructive testing methods used to detect defects such as cracks, holes, and corrosion within ferromagnetic materials. Signals produced by MFL sensors, identify the defects occurred in structure of tested material also include noise components. The amount and property of the noise varies according to the test system and material structure. As a result of improper filtering, signals representing defects are lost in noise or distorted and become meaningless. In this study, the effectiveness of wavelet transform and iterative Gauss filtering methods on the signals obtained by applying MFL method was examined. In order to generate MFL signals, magnetic test system were designed in ANSYS Maxwell simulation environment. As a test material, a steel plate with 3 different size defects was used. Discrete wavelet transform methods and iterative Gauss filter were applied on the signals produced by the magnetic system. Signal distortions and symmetry disturbances which occured on the filtered signals were examined. According to experimental results, it is seen that iterative Gaussian filter produces more successful results than wavelet transform methods on MFL signals.

Manyetik kaçak akı yöntemi, ferromanyetik özellikteki materyallerde oluşan çatlak, delik, korozyon gibi kusurları algılama amaçlı kullanılan tahribatsız test yöntemlerinden biridir. Manyetik akı sensörlerinden alınan işaretler test edilen materyal yapısında oluşan kusurları tanımlamakla birlikte gürültü bileşenlerini de içermektedir. Gürültü miktarı ve niteliği ise test sistemi ve materyal yapısına göre farklılıklar göstermektedir. Uygun olmayan bir filtreleme işlemi sonucunda, kusurları temsil eden işaretler, gürültü içerisinde kaybolmakta veya bozularak anlamını kaybetmektedir. Bu çalışmada manyetik kaçak akı yöntemi ile alınan işaretler üzerinde dalgacık dönüşümü ve tekrarlı gauss filtreleme yöntemlerinin etkinliği incelenmektedir. Manyetik kaçak akı işaretlerini üretmek amacıyla, ANSYS Maxwell benzetim ortamında manyetik test sistemleri tasarlanmıştır. Test materyali olarak, üzerinde farklı büyüklükte 3 yapay kusur bulunan bir çelik plaka kullanılmıştır. Manyetik sistemden alınan işaretler üzerinde, ayrık dalgacık dönüşümü ve tekrarlı Gauss fitreleri uygulanmıştır. Filtrelenen işaretler üzerinde oluşan işaret bozulmaları ve simetri bozukluğu ele alınarak incelenmiştir. Deney sonuçlarına göre, manyetik kaçak akı işaretleri üzerinde, tekrarlı Gauss fitresinin dalgacık dönüşümü yöntemlerinden daha başarılı sonuçlar ürettiği görülmektedir.

Abstract The feasibility of using time–frequency (TF) ridges estimation is investigated on multi-channel electroencephalogram (EEG) signals for emotional recognition. Without decreasing accuracy rate of the valence/arousal recognition, the informative component extraction with low computational cost will be examined using multivariate ridge estimation. The advanced TF representation technique called multivariate synchrosqueezing transform (MSST) is used to obtain well-localized components of multi-channel EEG signals. Maximum-energy components in the 2D TF distribution are determined using TF-ridges estimation to extract instantaneous frequency and instantaneous amplitude, respectively. The statistical values of the estimated ridges are used as a feature vector to the inputs of machine learning algorithms. Thus, component information in multi-channel EEG signals can be captured and compressed into low dimensional space for emotion recognition. Mean and variance values of the five maximum-energy ridges in the MSST based TF distribution are adopted as feature vector. Properties of five TF-ridges in frequency and energy plane (e.g., mean frequency, frequency deviation, mean energy, and energy deviation over time) are computed to obtain 20-dimensional feature space. The proposed method is performed on the DEAP emotional EEG recordings for benchmarking, and the recognition rates are yielded up to 71.55, and 70.02% for high/low arousal, and high/low valence, respectively.

Hyperspectral Images (HSI) require sufficient labeled samples and a complex classifier to identify an area. Support Vector Machine (SVM) is one of the most competent algorithms in this field. Neural Networks (NN) is another approach used for classification problems, and both have been widely proposed in the literature. The Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) method has also received significant attention in the deep learning field recently. Nevertheless, during NN training, the overfitting problem may cause continuous dragging of the algorithm toward larger error. In this case, a regularization technique is needed to constitute the most useful decision boundary. The Eigenvalue Decay method is one of the regularization techniques that may be applied for HSI. This study investigates the performance of Multilayer Perceptron trained with an Eigenvalue Decay (MLP-ED) algorithm for HSI classification. The SVM, CNN with Pixel-Pair and CNN-Ensemble methods are used as comparison algorithms for MLP-ED performance assessment. All methods were tested with 3 different high-resolution HSI datasets. While SVM is one of the classic classifiers, and the 2 new CNN algorithms show high performance, the proposed MLP-ED method has more computational efficiency and achieves higher success than the others do.

Bu çalışmada, materyallerin kusur analizini gerçekleştirerek güvenli materyal kullanımı sağlayan tahribatsız test yöntemleri incelenmektedir. Tahribatsız test işleminde kullanılacak yöntemin, çalışma şartları açısından test edilecek materyal üzerinde uygulanabilir olması gerekmektedir. Örneğin girdap akımları yöntemi, çalışma şartları gereği ferromanyetik metalleri test edemezken, ferro olmayan metalleri test edebilmektedir. Bu şartlar göz önüne alınarak seçilen test yöntemi ile materyal düzenli aralıklarla tahribatsız muayene edilerek kusurlu materyal bölgeleri tespit edilmektedir. Bu şekilde güvenli materyal kullanımı sağlanarak büyük maddi kayıplar önlenmiş olur. Tahribatsız test yöntemlerinin bir kısmı güvenilir sonuçlar üretmesi açısından endüstride yaygın olarak kullanılmaktadır. Bu bağlamda manyetik kaçak akı, akustik emisyon, ultrasonik, girdap akımları ve radyografi yöntemleri bu çalışmada incelenmiştir. Yöntemlerin işleyiş prensipleri, literatürde yapılmış çalışmalar ve gerçekleştirilmiş deneyler incelenerek açıklanmıştır. Yöntemler karşılaştırmalı olarak seçilen kriterlere göre sınıflandırılmıştır. Tahribatsız test yöntemleri konusunda kapsamlı bir çalışma literatürde bulunmamaktadır. Bu çalışma ile geniş içeriğe sahip bir derleme ortaya çıkarılmıştır.

Objective: Spinal cord injuries are frequently encountered and is a major health problem due to the severe disability they cause. The neurological damage of acute spinal cord trauma triggers primary mechanisms of injury and cell death activation cascades leading to tissue damage. The aim of this study was to investigate the therapeutic effects of vitamin D-3 in a rat model of spinal cord injury.Materials and Methods: The study was performed at Haydarpasa Numune Training Hospital, Istanbul, Turkey. Twenty-one Spraque-Dawley rats were randomly assigned to the following study groups: the control group, undergoing laminectomy procedure; trauma group, undergoing spinal cord injury after laminectomy; and trauma plus vitamin D-3 group, undergoing spinal cord injury after laminectomy and subsequent administration of vitamin D-3 on days 1, 3, 5, 7 intraperitoneally with a dosage of 1 mcg/kg/day. The functional outcome was evaluated by using inclined plane test and Drummond and Moore motor function score on days 1, 7, 14, 21. Spinal cord samples of the control, trauma and trauma plus vitamin D-3 groups were obtained for histopathologic evaluations after clinical examinations and were examined under light microscope.Results: Inclined plane test scores and motor function scores of vitamin D-3 group were significantly higher than the trauma group at 1st, 2nd and 3rd weeks.Conclusion: In our study we have investigated the therapeutic effects of vitamin D-3 and found out that it has a positive impact to the recovery process of the spinal cord injury.

Introduction: Ankle-Brachial Index (ABI) has been shown to be a strong predictor of the extent and severity of cardiovascular diseases (CVD). We aimed to determine the early risk estimation of CVD by using ABI and Framingham risk score (FRS) in this study.Materials and Method: In this study, 250 people aged >= 50 years were included. We calculated FRS of the participants using an automatic calculator. We calculated ABI by using the blood pressure data of the four extremities.Results: The mean value of ABI was 1.13 +/- 0.12 (min=0.80, max=1.96). Of the participants, nine (3.6%) had low ABI (<= 0.95). There were significant negative correlations between ABI and age, cigarette smoking, high blood pressure and FRS. In the people aged >= 60 years, ABI risk increase (<= 0.95) was found to be 3.878 times greater compared with people aged <60 years. Among diabetics, the value for FRS1 was found to be 16.349 times greater compared to non-diabetics.Conclusion: The prevalences of the main risk factors of CVD are quite high in the population. Screening the individuals aged 50 or more is necessary for the early diagnosis and management of main risk factors of CVD. Low ABI (<= 0.95) and FRS can be used to estimate the risk of future cardiovascular events.

A novel method is presented for systems with periodic references and/or disturbances by employing controllers in an array structure for each dispersed harmonic components. The method is based on automatically and appropriately setting the complex levels of the harmonic components of the control signal. Both computer simulation and real time experimental results are presented to illustrate the usefulness and effectiveness of the proposed method.

Traumatic injury to the central nervous system results in the delayed dysfunction and neuronal death. Impaired mitochondrial function, generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS), and lipid peroxidation occur soon after traumatic spinal cord injury (SCI), while the activation of compensatory molecules that neutralize ROS occurs at later time points. The aim of the current study was to investigate the putative neuroprotective effect of the COX2 inhibitor meloxicam in a rat model of SCI. In order to induce SCI, a standard weight-drop method that induced a moderately severe injury (100 g/cm force) at T10, was used. Injured animals were given either 2 mg/kg meloxicam or saline 30 min postinjury by intraperitoneal injection. At seven days postinjury, neurological examination was performed and rats were decapitated. Spinal cord samples were taken for histological examination or determination of malondialdehyde (MDA) and glutathione (GSH) levels, myeloperoxidase (MPO) activity and DNA fragmentation. Formation of ROS in spinal cord tissue samples was monitored by using a chemiluminescence (CL) technique. SCI caused a significant decrease in spinal cord GSH content, which was accompanied with significant increases in CL, MDA levels, MPO activity, and DNA damage. On the other hand, meloxicam treatment reversed all these biochemical parameters as well as SCI-induced histopathological alterations. Furthermore, impairment of the neurological functions due to SCI was improved by meloxicam treatment. The present study suggests that meloxicam, reduces SCI-induced oxidative stress and exerts neuroprotection by inhibiting lipid peroxidation, GSH depletion, and DNA fragmentation.

This cross-sectional, analytic study was conducted to investigate the depression and factors affecting the quality of life in the relatives of the patients with cancer. The sample of the study consisted of 110 relatives of the cancer patients who were treated at the Department of Medical Oncology of Meram Medical Faculty of Selcuk University. WHOQOL-Bref’s scale of quality of life was used to measure the patients’ quality of life. Depression status was evaluated with Beck depression inventory. Of the interviewers, 53.6% were male, 46.4% female, 86.4% married, 55.5% primary school educated, and the mean age was 47.3±13.5 years and 44.5% were the offsprings of the cancer patients. The mean value of Beck depresyon inventory was 8.0±7.7. According to the values of the inventory, 65.5% were normal, 24.5% mildly, 7.3% moderately and 2.7% severely depressed. The gender, occupation, education and marital status of the relatives of the cancer patients did not affect the depression status (p>0.05). When we compared the quality of life scores and depression status, there were significant differences in psychological health (p=0.000), perception of overall health and the satisfaction from life (p=0.002), general health and the quality of life (p=0.008), physical health (p=0.001) and environmental area (p=0.025) while there was no statistically significant difference in social relationships (p=0.089) between the cases with and without depression. Cancer is an important health problem for both the cancer patients and their relatives. The relatives of cancer patients would inevitably be affected by the cancer patients psychologically. Anxiety and depression are the major concerns in these cases, and empathic approach of physicians and health care personnel is necessary to cope with these problems.

Abstract Background: Oxidative stress is a mediator of secondary injury to the spinal cord following trauma. Objective: To investigate the putative neuroprotective effect of α-lipoic acid (LA), a powerful antioxidant, in a rat model of spinal cord injury (SCI). Methods: Wistar albino rats were divided as control, vehicle-treated SCI, and LA-treated SCI groups. To induce SCI, a standard weight-drop method that induced a moderately severe injury (100 g/cm force) at T10 was used. Injured animals were given either 50 mg/kg LA or saline at 30 minutes postinjury by intraperitoneal injection. At 7 days postinjury, neurologic examination was performed, and rats were decapitated. Spinal cord samples were taken for histologic examination or determination of malondialdehyde (MDA) and glutathione (GSH) levels, myeloperoxidase (MPO) activity, and DNA fragmentation. Formation of reactive oxygen species in spinal cord tissue samples was monitored by using a chemiluminescence (CL) technique. Results: SCI caused a significant decrease in spinal cord GSH content, which was accompanied with significant increases in luminol CL and MDA levels, MPO activity, and DNA damage. Furthermore, LA treatment reversed all these biochemical parameters as well as SCI-induced histopathologic alterations. Conversely, impairment of the neurologic function caused by SCI remained unchanged. Conclusion: The present study suggests that LA reduces SCI-induced oxidative stress and exerts neuroprotection by inhibiting lipid peroxidation, glutathione depletion, and DNA fragmentation.

Glial tumours associated with subarachnoid haemorrhage are very rare. A 64-year-old woman admitted with a history of 3 weeks seizures and a left sided hemiparesis and dysphasia. The magnetic resonance disclosed heterogeneously enhancing a right temporal mass. During surgery, suddenly an abrupt and extensive swelling had occurred both in tumour and the brain tissue. The surgery was completed with a gross total tumour resection together with a partial temporal lobectomy. Postoperative computerized tomography demonstrated a massive subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH). A cerebral Magnetic Resonance (MR) angiography showed neither an aneurysm nor arteriovenous malformation. Coincidence of an intracerebral tumour and subarachnoid haemorrhage would be devastating.

Intercity transportation is shared mainly road transportation modes by 95 %. Of course, these cause big problems in the city life such as traffic congestion, air pollution, noise pollution and traffic accidents. Traffic congestion mainly occurs a connection points between intercity traffic and D-100 Expressway and TEM Highway, the Bosphorus Crossings and the same sections that have same ramps along these roads. Some examples of last explanations are Kozyatagi and Kasacilar ramps. These sections can cause the traffic congestion mainly peak hours. They result in economic and social loses. If advanced electronic devices and equipment can control these sections effectively, the traffic congestion would be diminishing as satisfied manner. To reach this aim, the traffic control mechanisms are in use in different countries. The parameters that reflect the traffic characteristics can be measured using loop or other types of detectors in real time and then the evaluation can be made by using proper algorithms for warning the drivers along the road. To warn the driver, we can apply the Variable Message Sign (VMS) along the road. Finally, we can control the traffic flow along the road or along the Bottleneck section. The main traffic rules say that to decrease the traffic flow at certain section, the need is decreasing the vehicle speed or concentration before this section (FHWA, 1985; Takashi, 1975). In this study, the bottleneck at the Kozyatagi is analysed using traffic control mechanisms. The main aim of analyses is to show that if the traffic control mechanism is applied properly, the Bottleneck congestion can be solved. To reach this aim, the each test is done by using VISSIM simulation program along the 2.5 hours of simulation.

The Fuzzy Logic Signal Controller for 4-leg intersection, representing the urban road network is designed for this study. The input information of Fuzzy Signal Controller for each approaches in the intersection are the average saturation degree of flow that evaluated from microscopic flow data of the through. The microscopic flow data are measured by detectors located on the middle of the lines. These data are the information of green times for each signal plan. This controller evaluates the average saturation degree of each flow on the legs then calculates and decides the next green times after the previous green times for each cycle. After that signal times become more familiar with the dynamic of intersection flows. Finally, the performance developments by new Fuzzy Signal Controller are tested with VISSIM simulation space at the 4-leg intersection. Test results shows that there is an improvement about capacity usage and average delay times, when it is compared with the fixed time signal control systems.

The steadily increasing traffic jam on urban freeways have led to the use of several control mechanisms. Basically, these are formed by using ramp metering and variable speed control actions. In the variable speed control, the control mechanism is maintained by limiting the free flow speed of the vehicles between the specified freeway sections. The first and second Bosphorus Bridge Crossing are playing an important role in the city traffic of Istanbul. The first and second Bosphorus Bridge Crossing are very congested peak hours of day. The traffic jam may be reduced by variable speed control actions. To alleviate the jam due the lane drops in upstream flow on the first Bosphorus Bridge during the evening peak, the simulation based tests are applied. The result of these test shows that the delay per vehicle and the stops per vehicle on the first Bosphorus Bridge are decreased satisfactorily, but there is little bit change in the capacity usage.