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In this study, in which the adsorption of Cd(II) ions from aqueous solutions with the carbonization product obtained from the carbonization of paper mill waste sludge at different temperatures for two hours, it was observed that the adsorption efficiency increased with the increase of the carbonization temperature. The adsorption efficiency of Cd(II) ions depends largely on the pH of the environment. By contacting the 100 mg/L solution of Cd(II) with the carbonization product at 300, 400 and 500 °C at a dose of 5 g/L for 240 min at pH 5.5, the current Cd(II) ions were 45.3%, 52.4% and 61% removed. These values increased to 56%, 65.3% and 73.4% when the initial concentration of Cd(II) ions was taken as 50 Mg/L. When the dose was applied as 20 g/L for the initial concentration of 100 mg/L, all of the existing Cd (II) ions (except the carbonization product at 300 °C) were adsorbed. The results obtained for each carbonization product were applied to the Langmuir and Freundlich isotherms. The cadmium adsorption kinetics were defined with a second order model and the cadmium adsorption isotherm was determined to fit the Langmuir model better. The applicability of the results to the isotherm equations and the changes in the value of the isotherm constants depending on the carbonization temperature were examined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Calcium carbonate is one of the coating pigments widely used in paper industry. Especially, in recent years calcium carbonate filler has gained high importance in alkaline pulping. In Turkey industry actually imports calcium carbonate; whereas, there are rich calcite reservoirs in the country. In this study two different types of domestic ground (GCC) calcite samples were used. Physical and chemical properties of calcite samples were tested firstly. CaCO3 percentages of both samples were 97.3 % and 97.6 % (min. 95 % CaCO3). MgCO3 and Fe2O3 percentages were within the desired limits. Brightness values were 95.5 % and 94.5 % and yellowness 1.1 % and 1.5 % elrepho. These values also were within the requested limits. Under 2 microns particle size and over 10 microns particle size fractions were 95 % and 89 % (min. 80) and 1 % and 2 % (max. 2) respectively. Dry matter rates were between 40 %-65 %, for the pilot plant-coating machine. During the preparation of coating color calcium carbonate has been used together with kaolin. The ratios of calcium carbonate to kaolin were 30/70, 40/60, 50/50, 60/40, 70/30, 100/0. In coating color preparation latex was used as a binder because of its wide applications. Latex percentages were 11, 12, and 13 %. Coated papers were glossed and physically tested. As a result, both calcium carbonate samples were found suitable for using in coating color preparation. By the utilization of domestic calcium carbonate in coated paper production, there will be foreign currencies saving.

In this study, paper processing residues containing a large extent cellulosic fibrous with inorganic filler such as calcite and clay minerals were used in the manufacturing of high density polyethylene (HDPE) composite. The residues ranging from 10 to 60wt% were loaded into HDPE in order to evaluate the effect of the paper processing residue filler on mechanical properties of HDPE. The composites were produced using mixing process by a high-speed thermo-kinetic mixer and molding process. Mechanical properties of the produced composites were analyzed using standard test methods. According to results, it was observed that the flexural modulus of composites increased with increasing filler contents. Especially, the flexural strength was increased by 26.3% for the 40wt% filler content. The tensile strength of paper industry mill residues filled HDPE composites exhibited an increase of 10-20% compared to that of HDPE matrix. Consequently, in the present study, paper processing residues filler without any modifying agent was used for the production of HDPE composites having better mechanical properties compared to HDPE. Thus, paper processing residues which have no economic value and cause an environmental problem have served as a filler material for HDPE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study operating pressure driven systems which is known their efficiency in literature, for paper and pulp industry wastewaters in batch conditions were executed by using NFloose/NFtight membrane combination. The batch NFloose/NFtight experiments were respectively applied at 12 and 20 bars by conventional membrane filtration process, at a stirring rate of 300 cycle/min, at pH 10 and at a temperature of 25 °C. Determination of most suitable membrane at batch operating conditions were made by using 8 different membranes (for NFloose NP010, NFG, MPF36 and CK3001 and for NFtight NP030, NF270, DS-5DK, ESNA) through organic matter removal and filtrate flux values. In NFloose membranes at a filtrate flux of 4.12 L/m² h removal of 61.0% TOC and 76.9% COD and MPF36 membrane was determined to be best NFloose membrane. The filtrate water obtained by MPF36 were later passed through NFtight membranes. In all NFtight membranes generally the organic matter removal efficiency was good and ESNA was selected to be the best membrane in terms of effluent quality by obtaining organic matter removal at rates of 93.9% TOC and 94.2% COD with 10.05 L/m² h filtrate flux. From this point of view, in short term operation of paper wastewaters by pressure driven NFloose/NFtight integrated membrane system, it was seen that good quality of outlet water with 7.15 pH and a conductivity coefficient of 144 μS/cm and at 13 mg/L TOC and 28 mg/L COD concentrations could be obtained also that good quality of reuse water could be produced in terms of aimed effluent water. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bu çalışmada, büyük oranda selüloz lifler ile inorganik katkılar (kalsit ve kil mineralleri) içeren kağıt üretim atıkları, farklı oranlarda (ağırlıkça %10-60) yüksek yoğunluklu polietilen (YYPE) kompozit üretiminde kullanılarak kağıt üretim atığı katkısının mekanik özellikler üzerindeki etkisi incelenmiştir. Kompozitler yüksek hızlı termo-kinetik mikseri ve kalıplama prosesi kullanılarak üretilmiştir. Üretilen kompozitlerin mekanik özellikleri standart test metotları kullanılarak analiz edilmiştir. Sonuçlara göre, kompozitlerin eğilme modül değerlerinin artan katkı oranıyla arttığı görülmüştür. Özellikle, eğilme dayanımının ağırlıkça %40 katkı içeren kompozitte %26.3 oranında arttığı ortaya konmuştur. Kağıt atık katkılı YYPE kompozitlerin çekme dayanımı YYPE matris ile kıyaslandığında %10-20 oranında artış görülmüştür. Sonuç olarak, sunulan çalışmada kağıt üretim atık katkıları hiçbir modifikasyon ajanı kullanılmadan kompozitlerin üretimi gerçekleştirilmiş ve buna rağmen kompozitlerin mekanik özelliklerinde gelişme sağlanmıştır. Bu sayede, endüstriyel atık olarak ekonomik bir değeri olmayan kağıt üretim atığı polimer kompozit yapı içerisinde kullanılarak iyi mekanik özelliklere sahip kompozitler üretilmiştir.

Kalsit (CaCO3), kağıt endüstrisinde yaygın olarak kullanılan bir kuşeleme pigmentidir. Ayrıca, son yıllarda kalsit, dolgu maddesi olarak uzun ömürlü alkali kağıt yapımında da büyük bir önem kazanmıştır. Türkiye'de zengin kalsit yatakları olmasına rağmen kağıt sanayiinde kullanılan kalsit ithal edilmektedir. Bu çalışmada, iki tip yerli toz (GCC) kalsit kullanılmıştır. Bu örneklerin CaCO3 oranı % 97.3 ve % 97.6 (min. % 95)'dır. MgCO3 ve Fe2O3 oranları ise, istenen sınırlar içersindedir. Örneğin parlaklık değerleri % 95.5 ve % 94.5 sarılık değerleri ise % 1.1 ve % 1.5 elrepho olarak belirlenmiştir. 2 mikronun altındaki ve 10 mikronun üzerindeki fraksiyonlar sırasıyla % 95, % 89 ve %1 ve % 2 olarak bulunmuştur. Kuşe pilot tesisinde, kuşe boyası konsantrasyonu % 40- % 65 arasında alınmıştır. Hazırlanan kuşe boyasının kalsit ve kaolen oranları 30/70, 40/60, 50/50, 60/40, 70/30 ve 100/0'dır. Kullanılan latex yapıştırıcı değerleri ise % 11, % 12 ve % 13'dür. Kuşelenen kağıtlar perdahlama öncesi ve sonrası fiziksel ve optik testlere tabi tutulmuşlardır. Sonuç olarak her iki CaCO3 örneklerinin fiziksel ve optik özellikleri bakımından kuşeleme için uygun olduğu anlaşılmıştır. Yerli kalsit rezervlerinin kullanılması ülkemiz için döviz tasarrufu sağlayacaktır.

Kalsit (CaCO3), kağıt endüstrisinde yaygın olarak kullanılan bir kuşeleme pigmentidir. Ayrıca, son yıllarda kalsit, dolgu maddesi olarak uzun ömürlü alkali kağıt yapımında da büyük bir önem kazanmıştır. Türkiye'de zengin kalsit yatakları olmasına rağmen kağıt sanayiinde kullanılan kalsit ithal edilmektedir. Bu çalışmada, iki tip yerli toz (GCC) kalsit kullanılmıştır. Bu örneklerin CaCO3 oranı % 97.3 ve % 97.6 (min. % 95)'dır. MgCO3 ve Fe2O3 oranları ise, istenen sınırlar içersindedir. Örneğin parlaklık değerleri % 95.5 ve % 94.5 sarılık değerleri ise % 1.1 ve % 1.5 elrepho olarak belirlenmiştir. 2 mikronun altındaki ve 10 mikronun üzerindeki fraksiyonlar sırasıyla % 95, % 89 ve %1 ve % 2 olarak bulunmuştur. Kuşe pilot tesisinde, kuşe boyası konsantrasyonu % 40- % 65 arasında alınmıştır. Hazırlanan kuşe boyasının kalsit ve kaolen oranları 30/70, 40/60, 50/50, 60/40, 70/30 ve 100/0'dır. Kullanılan latex yapıştırıcı değerleri ise % 11, % 12 ve % 13'dür. Kuşelenen kağıtlar perdahlama öncesi ve sonrası fiziksel ve optik testlere tabi tutulmuşlardır. Sonuç olarak her iki CaCO3 örneklerinin fiziksel ve optik özellikleri bakımından kuşeleme için uygun olduğu anlaşılmıştır. Yerli kalsit rezervlerinin kullanılması ülkemiz için döviz tasarrufu sağlayacaktır.

The scope of the study is to determine the influence of the addition of different amounts of carob (CP), cinnamon (CNP), and ginger (GP) powders and fluidized bed agglomeration process on the moisture content, water activity and powder properties of milk powders as well as powder yield and the energy consumption of the drying and agglomeration operations. CP, CNP, and GP were directly added to whole milk at different concentrations (1-8% by weight), mixed for 30min and filtered by crude filter paper. Then, the filtrate was spray dried at the inlet and outlet air temperatures of 160 and 80 °C respectively. The powder yield ranged between 55.57-67.07% for milk powder with CP (MPCP), 45.48-61.04% for milk powder with CNP (MPCNP), and 42.42-46.93% for milk powder with GP (MPGP). The addition of the powders decreased the total drying time and energy consumption of the drying process (p<0.05). The agglomeration process was performed at 1.8 m/s, and 80 °C for 15 min. During this process, water (1:0.1 weight: weight, water: powder) was added to powders as a binder. Agglomerates have higher moisture content (3.45-4.60%, wet basis) and water activity (0.171-0.257) values compared to corresponding powders. The solubility times of powders decreased with the increasing amount of ingredients. Higher bulk (200-259 kg/m³) and tapped (339-400 kg/m³) density values were obtained from MPGP compared to other powders. Agglomeration process improved the flow properties of milk powders and increased the bulk and tapped density values. The long solubility times of milk powders (194-244.5 s) reduced to 10-50 s by means of the applied agglomeration process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, radiative heat loads on structural panels of small satellites are simulated for various orbital configurations. Thermal management of small satellites are challenging because of their limited available volumes. Satellites in orbits experience not only extreme temperatures but also rapid temperature changes. In order to provide safe operating conditions, the thermal environment in space must be carefully analyzed. This paper presents a numerical investigation of thermal environment influenced the panels of satellites for various orbital parameters by using Systema Thermica v4.9.0 software with Monte Carlo Ray Tracing (MCRT) method. The results of this study can be useful in the design stage of small satellites operating in similar orbits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Finite element analysis and computer-aided engineering methods have an essential role in modern research and development projects. Although proper element selection for the modeling type is critical for the accuracy of simulations, the selection process might be difficult for researchers in some cases where geometric conditions are challenging. The main objective of this paper is to present the differences in simulation results when three-dimensional cubic and two-dimensional quadrilateral elements are used for the modeling of spot-welded components. Following the modeling of shear specimens having two spot welds with different element types, static analysis, and high cycle fatigue simulations at three different dynamic load cases have been run within the context of this study. Displacement, stress values and tensors, as well as high cycle fatigue life have been evaluated as the output of analysis, and deviations due to different element types have been reported. Accuracy levels of different element types have been determined by comparing the life obtained by simulations with high cycle fatigue tests. The studies conducted within the content of this paper indicate that the rigid spot weld modeling with two dimensional quadrilateral elements give better consistency with the fatigue tests in comparison with the modeling with three dimensional cubical elements. The modeling procedures of correlated high cycle fatigue simulations have been detailed for spot welding, which is one of the most applied methods in aviation, automotive and marine industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a hybrid model chipless radio frequency identification (RFID) tag is introduced. It is constructed by using multi-resonator circuit with a bandstop filter simultaneously. Bandstop filter section is conventionally designed by quarter-wave open-circuited stubs, while the multi-resonator circuit is developed by coupling dual-band codirectional split ring resonators (CDSRRs) to a feeding line. Each stub and CDSRR can provide two and four frequency codes, respectively. The open-circuited stubs can form the resonant frequencies within wide frequency range, while the CDSRRs have notch band characteristics. The proposed hybrid model approach has the ability of combining notch and wide band resonant frequencies on a single circuit. A 12-bit chipless RFID tag is designed by locating two wideband monopole antennas vertically and horizontally at the end of the multi-resonator circuit. The monopole antennas are formed by using two orthogonal ellipses. 000000000000 and 100100100100 frequency coded two tags have been experimentally investigated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The classical game theory has been extended for soft set structures, and thus, soft game theory, fuzzy soft game theory, intuitionistic fuzzy soft game theory, neutrosophic soft game theory have been introduced. The payoff function in the soft game approaches is the set-valued function and allows the use of set operations to obtain solution, which makes it very convenient and easily applicable in practice. Also, in these game approaches, the strategies can be determined as attributes/parameters. That is, all these soft game theories are designed to manipulate parametric information using a single-attribute function. However, another powerful tool is needed to process parametric information obtained using multi-attribute function. To model such problems mathematically, the concept of hypersoft set has proposed. In this paper, a game theory model based on hypersoft set called hypersoft game theory is constructed. In this game theory, payoff function is the set valued function and the strategies are chosen as multi-attributes. A twoperson hypersoft game is developed and different solution methods (such as hypersoft saddle point method, hypersoft elimination method, hypersoft Nash equilibrium method) are produced for such games. Also, the proposed methods are successfully applied to game theory-based decision making problems that may be encountered in real life. Finally, the two-person hypersoft game is extended to the n-person hypersoft game. Nash equilibrium of an n-person hypersoft game is described and an application for this solution method is presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Smart meters are among the fundamental components of smart grids due to their features such as high-accuracy energy measurement, remote reading, and control. They are also utilized to reduce the rate of illegal electrical energy use in some distribution areas. This paper presents the development of a Wi-Fi smart meter and designing a smart plug-in device for customer-side energy management. In this way, a method that does not require additional infrastructure and extra investment for remotely reading the energy consumption in environments with common Wi-Fi networks, such as large shopping malls, business centers, community buildings, villa cities, and university campuses has been proposed. The Wi-Fi smart meter and smart energy metering module (SEMM) support various user-friendly applications in accordance with the infrastructure of the smart grid and smart building applications. The SEMM is capable of measuring, monitoring, and remotely managing each electrical device. Thanks to the developed mobile application, customers can monitor their Wi-Fi smart meter data and also the consumption of each electrical device through the SEMMs as well as remotely manage these devices. The application examples presented in this study are also aimed at increasing awareness of energy saving for customers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent studies show that the performance of Evolutionary Algorithms often depends on choosing appropriate parameter configurations. Thus, researchers have generally tuned these parameters either looking at the similar research areas in the literature or manually, e.g. Grid Search. However, searching the parameter manually is laborious and timeconsuming; therefore, meta-optimization techniques have become commonly used methods to adjust parameters of an algorithm. These techniques can be classified in two widespread manners: off-line, tuning parameters of an algorithm before the algorithm initiates, and on-line, tuning the parameters while it is working. In this paper, Bipolar Matching Tendency (BMT) algorithm has been chosen as the selection method of a Genetic Algorithm (GA). The new obtained algorithm is named GA-BMT and has been used for the first time as an online metaoptimizer. In addition, the paper utilizes two search algorithms (Grid Search, Coarse to Fine Search) with three meta-optimization methods (Standard GA, Particle Swarm Optimization, GA-BMT) to investigate the best parameter settings of the Standard GA for 17 test functions, and offers a comparative work by comparing their results. Furthermore, non-parametric statistical tests, Friedman and Wilcoxon Signed Rank, were performed to demonstrate the significance of the results. Based on the all results that achieved, GA-BMT presents a reasonable achievement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to provide a comprehensive literature mapping for shuttle bus routing in different functional application areas. For this purpose, articles which were published in the last 20 years were systematically reviewed. Selected papers related to the topic were classified by their publication year, type of publication, solution approach, application area, usage of mathematical model and objective function. The existing articles were reviewed based on their functional application areas of employee/personnel, patient/hospital, students, elderly/disabled, and airport shuttles. The results of our analysis indicate that there has been an increasing movement in the usage of shuttle bus routing models through the recent years. This study therefore identifies this increasing attention to the topic as well as recent trends, and highlights research opportunities and literature gaps for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, researchers have started to be interested in population-based swarm-based algorithms in optimization due to their simple structure, high optimization performance, and ease of adaptation. Although swarm-based algorithms solve continuous optimization problems, they can also be used to solve binary optimization problems. In continuous optimization, the search space variables try to approach the optimal value, while in discrete optimization, the search space variables are fixed and expressed with real values. In binary optimization, the decision variables take values of 0 and 1 and are basically in the discrete optimization class. In this paper, the proposed Rat Swarm Algorithm (RSA) to solve continuous optimization problems is examined. RSA is an algorithm based on swarm intelligence. RSA was developed by imitating the chasing and attacking behaviors of rats. In this study, the original RSA was updated again to solve binary optimization problems and Binary RSA (BinRSA) was proposed. In BinRSA, four U-shaped and four T-shaped transfer functions are used while converting the continuous search field values to binary values. Thus, eight variants of BinRSA were obtained. These are named as BinRSA1, BinRSA2, BinRSA3, BinRSA4, BinRSA5, BinRSA6, BinRSA7 and BinRSA8. Among these variants, the most successful variant of BinRSA was determined as BinRSA6. Then the BinRSA6 variant was developed by adding crossover and mutation operators and was named GBinRSA. GBinRSA's performance has been tested in knapsack problems. In addition, the success of GBinRSA was compared with different heuristic algorithms selected from the literature. According to the results obtained, it has been seen that the solution quality of the proposed algorithm is effective and comparable. The results showed that GBinRSA is a preferred heuristic for binary optimization problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the advances in technology, electrical energy needs in rural and less developed regions are not yet fully met in terms of cost and sustainability. Nowadays, small-scale Photovoltaic (PV) systems can be transported to other regions and easily reinstalled so that these systems can be used in areas where needed for home usage and humanitarian purposes. There is no doubt that a PV-based microgrid is needed in rural and remote areas where energy is often important, and grid energy is not available or unstable. Mobility microgrid design studies can reduce time, effort, and costs significantly in such cases. Therefore, the design, modeling, and technical simulation of an isolated system based on solar energy are investigated and analyzed in this paper. This study also highlights the future trends of transportable-based isolated (off-grid) microgrid design which provides a sustainable solution for small-scale PV power generation. Additionally, an optimal solution approach for power management with Energy Storage (ES) and PV energy technologies is presented in the developed of an off-grid PV system. Aside from the designed system's cost-benefit analysis, important criteria such as lifespan, battery performance, and energy production have been evaluated. The Distributed Energy Resources (DER) with the load flow in 24-hour scenario is modeled, and simulated, also the findings are presented. Specifically, an application study for a 60.75 kWp isolated (off-grid) PV system with the 105.98 kWh ES, and 16 kVA diesel generator is discussed in terms of financial, regional, and technical parameters as well as numerical modeling, and MATLAB simulation for the province of Sanliurfa in Turkey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pedestrian traffic has less priority than vehicle traffic in Turkey’s transportation system. In recent years, there has been a growing interest in understanding pedestrians’ behavior. This paper investigates high school students’ (15-18 age range) gap acceptance behavior at unsignalized midblock crossings by designing a before and after study. The midblock crossing is conventional in the first situation. But after, the midblock crossing is raised. This paper aims to find the effect of raised midblock crossing on pedestrians’ acceptable gap behavior. In this study, a midblock crossing near a high school in Izmir City was chosen. Data was gathered by using two video cameras in the morning (7.00-8.00 AM). The obtained data were extracted from the footage. The data were analyzed by performing two-way and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA). The legal crossing rate of the students increased with the installation of the raised midblock crossing. Also, average vehicle speed and 85th percentile speed determined for both situations. Thus, the number of acceptable gaps increased as well as the waiting time decreased significantly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, membrane-based tubular liquid desiccant dehumidification system was designed, and its dehumidification performance was investigated. In the manufactured system, two different membranes, synthetic sausage casing and Tyvek® Solid were used. The air Reynolds number (Re) was varied during the experiments to investigate effect of air velocity on the system performance. In addition, temperature changes in the membrane were observed by images taken with thermal camera. According to the experimental data obtained, the dehumidification efficiency of the system was calculated in between 4.5-6% at 200 Re number for synthetic sausage casing and approximately 18.5% at the same Re number for Tyvek® Solid. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the lateral vibration of a cantilever Timoshenko beam with attachments. It is assumed that the beam carries a mass attached to the free end with a linear spring and there exists a rotational spring at the left end. Depending upon these assumptions, mode shapes and natural frequencies are obtained in terms of nondimensional parameters which describe the effects of additional mass, linear spring and rotational spring. The results are tabulated, and the comparison of Timoshenko and Euler-Bernoulli beam approaches are carried out for some parameters. Results reveal that natural frequencies decrease while the values of end mass increase. Large values of the rotational spring constant cause high natural frequencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purchasing decisions in e-commerce shopping websites are highly influenced by online reviews. Although online reviews contain finegrained consumers' opinions that reflect their preferences towards products; an important challenge, is that the number of online reviews can be very huge for fast and effective analysis. Hence, discovering the thematic structure of documents plays an important role in analyzing online reviews. The proposed system in this paper aims to discover the main consumer interests in online reviews on Turkish e-commerce websites. For this aim, a novel hybrid method combining Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) and word2vec is proposed. Finally, we compare the performance of our work with those of several state-of-theart baselines on 7 datasets collected from well-known Turkish ecommerce websites. The experimental results show how our proposed approach was able to provide significantly improved performance over baselines. Besides, our method enables us to discover very specific topics complying with consumer interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an analytical method to design proportional integral controllers for the stability, performance and robustness of third order plus time delay system models. Controller design is focused on providing desired gain and phase specifications of the controlled system by considering the frequency responses of an ideal system. Equations that give the parameters of the proportional integral controller which satisfy the mentioned properties are built step by step. These include the generalized equations for such systems. With the help of this method, the researcher can provide desired gain crossover frequency and the phase margin for third order plus time delay systems. Therefore, the Bode diagram can be relatively tuned and system performance and robustness can be improved. At the same time, stability of the system can be achieved with the proposed equations. Proposed controller parameters in this paper are applied on two different models. All results are shown graphically and on tables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today, engineers make efforts for post-graduate programs far more than before. The main reasons can be increasing awareness of firms about education, decreasing job opportunities for undergraduate degrees, the increasing demand for being an academician or scholarship opportunities by government. Some firms want their postgraduate student engineers to solve the firm's problems in their master or doctoral thesis as case studies. In this regard industrial engineering is a field that adjusts almost with every sector because of its multidisciplinary nature. Thus, there are many post-graduate theses written in this area. The aim of this paper is to analyze 2,122 postgraduate theses (master & doctoral) which are carried out in the department of industrial engineering in Turkish universities. The data is obtained from the website of Council of Higher Education of Turkey. The time period is determined as 2010-2017 and only the 1780 "permission" theses are analyzed in order to reach keywords for solution approaches and keywords analysis. Nine different indicators are used to analyze the thesis such as; university status, page numbers, language, keywords etc. As a result, this study shows how the theses are clustered according to different indicators and which topics are studied more frequently in recent years. The inference of the paper is important because the results give an insight about the road map of industrial engineering thesis completed in 56 different Turkish universities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates Natural Fiber Thermoplastic Composites (NFTC) which take attention of the researchers and the market having aesthetic and low maintenance properties in many applications. Additive usage is an increasing application for NFTC production to get into the novel markets satisfying strong performance requirements and life stability interests of users. In this article, polymer blends from natural resources including bio-based additives for polymer composites were introduced. Afterwards, favorite additive types and most effective pelletizing processes in literature were analyzed to improve composite productivity. At the end of the paper, the common NFTC production technologies are discussed. A specially designed compounding extruder which is designed to overcome production difficulties and supply high processing performances is introduced. At the end of conducted experiment, the obtained production output rate is presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to investigate the rehydration properties of freeze- and vacuum-dried damson plums (Prunus insititia) at three different temperatures (25, 45 and 60°C). First, kinetic models (Weibull, Peleg, Exponential and First-order) were designed to construct mathematical models and analyze the rehydration kinetics. Second, an artificial Chebsyhev network was designed for modeling of the rehydration kinetics such that a novel extreme learning machine-based feature extraction layer is proposed to improve its modeling capability. The experimental data and artificial models were analyzed considering the randomly selected data sets, and the root mean squared errors (RMSE) were computed to compare accuracy of the models. Due to orthogonality and feature extraction, the proposed enhanced Chebyshev network was obtained as the best approximator model among tested models with the the lowest RMSE values to explain the rehydration behavior of damson plums. While the percentage RMSE values for kinetic models vary in the range of ~3.1 and 4.8%, the maximum and minimum percentage values for Chebyshev networks are 2.32% and 0.51%, respectively. It is concluded that the proposed Chebyshev network can be used as a parsimonious model in the embedded design of the rehydration and drying machines so that predefined rehydration and drying characteristics can be accurately defined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examined the radiation shielding characteristics as linear attenuation (LAC) and half-value layer (HVL) of barium-borotellurite glass (BBT), 20BaO-20B2O3-60TeO2, reinforced with 2.5 mol% of different heavy metal oxides (HMOs), X2O3 (X: Bi, Gd, La, Sm). For this purpose, five different glass systems (BBT: reference, BBTB: Bi2O3, BBTG: Gd2O3, BBTL: La2O3, and BBTS: Sm2O3) were explored by performing the newly developed Phy-X/PSD program for theoretical computations. The LAC and the HVL were found out in the photon energies of 0.015 to 15 MeV. Eventually, the findings were compared with some heavyweight concretes and commercial radiation shielding glasses to make a deeper sense. One can report that all HMOs addition contributed to increasing LAC while decreasing HVL thicknesses in our newly developed BBT system. In particular, the BBTB glass provided the best effectiveness in radiation shielding. Further, the BBTB glass system can compete with commercially available glasses, particularly, it could accomplish to overtake lead-oxide containing ones. This study revealed that BBT glasses with differing HMOs can effectively be used in radiation shielding applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Diclofenac has been one of the widely consumed pharmaceuticals for human and veterinary purposes. The research studies are devoted to investigating its removal from wastewater since its adverse effect on the environment and the organisms have been revealed. Despite its microgram level concentrations in the wastewater or water bodies, it could disrupt the endocrine system, which leads to problems in the metabolism of the higher-level organisms and, thereby, the ecosystem. Therefore, urgent measures should be taken to control diclofenac starting from its consumption and extending to the efficient diclofenac treatment, determination of discharge standards, or the high-level protection of aquatic life. Another problem with diclofenac is the degradation end-products that form through photolysis, or biological reactions remain in the wastewater treatment plants' effluent. These transformation products create further threats for the organisms. This review paper aims to emphasize the adverse effects of diclofenac on the environment, the primary diclofenac sources, its endocrine disrupting effects on the animals, metabolism in the human body, treatment approaches, type of biological and chemical degradation metabolites, or transformation products. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Random Fourier features (RFF) provide one of the most prominent means for nonlinear classification in especially large scale data settings. However, considering the original proposal of RFF, Fourier features are randomly drawn from a certain distribution and used unoptimized. In this paper, we investigate Fourier features via a single hidden layer feedforward neural network (SLFN) and optimize, i.e., learn, those features (instead of drawing randomly). The learned Fourier features are deduced from the radial basis function (rbf kernel), and implemented in the hidden layer of the SLFN which is followed by the output layer. We present extensive experiments with 10 different classification datasets from various fields, e.g., bioinformatics. The learning of Fourier features is observed to be highly superior over the competing techniques such as perceptron in the rbf kernel space or a greedy forward feature selection strategy. On the other hand, the Fourier feature learning performs comparably with SVM (support vector machines with rbf kernel) while providing substantial computational benefits, and this is even without using the max margin regularization. Moreover, when tested in wireless mesh networks, the SLFN delivers promising smart steering capabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]