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Since its founding era (1923-1945), Turkish banking sector has undergone several developmental stages during which the Turkish economy and its banking sector have experienced high inflation, financial instability, and inefficiency. After the political and currency crises of 2000-2001, the Turkish government and Central Bank of Turkey (CBT) with the help of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) imposed several restructuring programmes to strengthen the private banks, progress with privatisations and establish supervisory entities. Consequently, Turkey's banking sector began to recover during the period 2002 until 2008. However, after 2008, financial imbalances were beginning to be reflected again in the Turkish banking sector and its economy. A review of the Turkish banking literature clearly demonstrates which essential finance and banking areas have been under-evaluated. For instance, the links among risk-taking activities, the transmission of monetary policy through different channels, and competition are all significantly unexplored. Hence, this thesis assesses the three main areas in the Turkish banking sector by studying the impact of Non-Performing Loans (NPLs) on Turkish bank efficiency, examining the transmission of monetary policy through Bank Lending Channel (BLC) in Turkish banks whilst considering the impact of bank characteristics, and investigating the relationship between competition, stability, and efficiency in Turkish banks. Initially, this thesis investigates bank efficiency whilst considering the impact of NPLs. To compute technical, allocative, and cost efficiency, the current thesis uses a modified Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) approach with NPLs identified as an undesirable output. The obtained results suggest that there is a negative relationship between NPLs and all three kinds of efficiency. To consider more closely what balance sheet items and employee characteristics tell us about efficiency, this thesis investigates efficiency determinants by applying a quantile regression technique. In addition to investigating the balance sheet items, this thesis considers two unique efficiency determinants, namely employees' gender and education. The results reflect the positive impact of capitalisation and Net Interest Margin (NIM) on all kinds of efficiency. In contrast, the relationship between Net Non-Interest Margin (NNIM) and efficiency in Turkish banks has been found to be negative. This negative sign emphasises the fact that Turkish banks do not reflect an efficient approach in managing their non-interest sources of income. Furthermore, the findings show that a higher percentage of female employees can have a positive impact on the efficiency, innovation, flexibility, and management culture of the banks. Moreover, the results gained from evaluating education, confirm the positive impact of having more educated employees. This thesis further examines the monetary transmission mechanism through BLC with consideration of NPLs by applying the Bayesian estimation. In addition to capitalisation, liquidity, and size, this thesis introduces technical and allocative efficiency as an additional characteristic. The results show the existence of BLC in Turkish banks from 2002 until 2017. The results also highlight that the efficiency scores in the Turkish banks can determine the bank's sensitivity to any monetary policy shock. The results also confirm the impact of other characteristics (size, liquidity, and capitalisation) on a bank's approach toward interest rate changes. Larger and more liquid banks with higher capitalisation are more stable. Finally, this thesis evaluates the impact of competition on financial stability and efficiency by deploying the Boone indicator to measure bank competition, the Z-score to measure for financial stability, and a DEA approach to compute technical efficiency. Three main hypotheses are tested: 'bad management'1, 'bad luck2', and 'moral hazard'3. This thesis tests 1 This hypotheis is discussed by Berger and De Young (1997). It explains that higher costs will be incurred by banks with lower levels of efficiency due to the fact that in these banks credit is inadequately monitored, and operating expenses are not managed efficiently. 2 Berger and De Young (1997) discuss more on exogenous events rather than managers' skills or their risk-taking appetite to explain NPLs ratio in a bank. 3 Moral hazard hypothesis explains that weaker banks are more vulnerable to risk-taking attitude and danger than stronger banks. the relationship between the 'bad management' hypothesis and efficiency in Turkish banks. The Boone indicator for forty-two Turkish banks was found to be negative. Only two banks represent a positive Boone indicator, Diler Yatirim Bankasi A.S and Istanbul Takas ve Saklama Bankasi A.S. The positive Boone score for these two banks shows that they are competing for the amount of equity. The results support a positive relationship between competition and stability, which supports the competition-stability theory. The results also reflect the similar relationship between competition and efficiency. Hence, enhancing competition reduces NPLs and has a positive effect on financial stability. In conclusion, the findings of this thesis and its evaluations emphasise the importance of bank efficiency and managing the NPLs ratio. Strengthening and improving a bank's balance sheet quality and controlling the NPLs ratio should be one of the CBT's main actions. This thesis not only confirms the importance of bank efficiency in the process of money generation, profit making, and capitalisation but also in the fields of competition and stability. Hence, boosting efficiency scores should be one of the main missions for Turkish regulators and policy makers. In addition, optimising interest and non-interest income sources also would improve the possibility for banks to utilise their financial and non-financial sources. Moreover, having gender diversity in the workplace and hiring more educated people would improve the management culture of Turkish banks as it would usher in novel ideas and different perspectives. It would also increase flexibility and create more innovations. Experiencing volatile economic indicators like inflation rate fluctuation and unstable economic conditions should be enough to bring the sense of necessity needed to impose an efficient reform plan to address these fundamental issues.

This thesis reflects the voices of 9 to 10 year-old primary school children in Iran and England. The findings were collected from 81 Iranian pupils within five single-sex primary classrooms and 41 English pupils in two primary classrooms. The study is mainly focused on Iranian pupils and their views. However, since all the terms used in this study originated within the Western education system, it was prudent to undertake the study in England too. It aimed to deepen understanding of the concepts as well as to have a better reflection on my findings in Iran. In order to listen to the voices of pupils, two methods of data collection were applied: participant observation and individual semi-structured interviews. As a participant observer, I facilitated six hours of workshops with each classroom adopting the community of enquiry as my pedagogical method. The selected stories of ‘One Thousand and One Nights’ were used as a ‘springboard or trigger’ to facilitate the classroom inquiry. The findings suggest that the stories of ‘One Thousand and One Nights’ may enable children’s voice in four ways. First, stories engaged children in discussion on topical issues that matter to them. Second, they open up space for imaginative journeys and help children to ‘go visiting’ different views of story characters. Third, these stories contain astonishment which may foster children’s imagination. Finally, they nurture moral reasoning by picturing moral dilemmas. The findings also revealed that building of a reciprocal relationship between teacher/pupils and pupils/pupils is required when giving voice. In addition to this, it was recommended to transform a classroom into a shared space where all the children can be seen and heard.

Although there has traditionally been a resistance to the study of adaptations, adaptation studies as a subsection of 'intertextuality‘ currently has a significant place in academic debates. Hamlet is "the Mona Lisa of literature" (T.S. Eliot), and has been the subject of constant scrutiny, mythologizing and adaptation. Hamlet has been adapted and appropriated into and by various cultural contexts. Even confining our attention to the same medium as Shakespeare‘s text, there exists an array of theatrical adaptations in languages and cultures as diverse as Persian, Korean, Arabic, German, Russian, and Turkish. Borrowing Ludwig Wittgenstein‘s metaphor of 'family resemblance,‘ I argue the usefulness of his idea, enabling us to examine not simply a small number of common properties among adaptations of Hamlet, but rather to explore the 'complicated network of similarities overlapping and criss-crossing‘ (Philosophical Investigations, §66). I further propose subdividing the 'global family‘ of Hamlets from around the world that participate in this/these web-like resemblances into 'local families‘ of adapted Hamlets, to enable better intercultural and cross-cultural studies. In this thesis I analyse seven theatrical adaptations of Hamlet in Turkish, Russian, Arabic and Persian cultural contexts, from the perspectives of postmodernism, globalisation and altermodernism. I also scrutinise the Persian family of Hamlet in the light of 'intertextuality‘. Given that each adaptation per se brings together 'self‘ and 'other‘ at the same time, I go on to coin two new terms: homointertextuality and heterointertextuality, in order to explore fully the various connections of the adaptations of Hamlet in Iran with the 'cultural self‘ (Persian culture) and the 'cultural other‘ (Anglophone culture).

The main objective of this thesis is the computational implementation and assessment of multi-scale constitutive modelling strategies based on the volume averaging of the strain and stress tensors over a representative volume element (RVE) under infinitesimal strains assumption. The computational procedure is based on the finite element discretisation at both macro- and microscopic levels. Four classes of multi-scale constitutive models are considered, corresponding to: the Taylor, the linear boundary displacement, the periodic boundary displacement fluctuations and the uniform boundary traction assumptions. The corresponding finite element formulation is described in detail including the derivation of the homogenised tangent moduli which are crucial for the use of the Newton-Raphson method in the iterative solution of non-linear macro-scale problems. The code developed possesses a recursive hierarchical structure. Under this scheme the main equilibrium procedure, operating on the macroscopic level, calls itself each time it requires to evaluate the material behaviour by homogenisation of microstructure. A comprehensive set of numerical examples is presented. Application of the multiscale methodology to materials with linear elastic microscopic constituents is considered first. The effect of the fibre orientation in the micro-cell and anisotropy of the RVE on the homogenised material properties are also discussed. Existing analytical methods are used to benchmark the numerical results. The effect of the topology of cavities on the homogenised material properties and the overall yield surface under different boundary conditions are also studied in the context of elasto-plastic material models. Finally, a materially non-linear fully coupled two-scale boundary value problem is solved numerically, demonstrating the suitability of the developed framework to large scale computations. The present research shows that the adopted multi-scale methodology provides an effective tool for the constitutive modelling of heterogeneous materials in the linear and non-linear range.

The 21st century is rapidly becoming the age of new and oftentimes confusing innovations in media, so much so that it is frequently referred to as the "new media" (Beach, 2007). It has become evident that we live in an era with extremely complex, and rapidly changing media scenes. Media studies now appears in major institutions of higher education as a regular post-graduate study, either for a master's, EdD, PhD, or other doctoral work. Despite the acceptance of media studies by respected institutions of higher education, the curriculum and what is offered in a media studies program seems to be inconsistent. This inconsistency and the variety of media studies offerings could be a positive or negative force, due to the lack of common ground. Additionally, media studies teachers also seem to face many challenges to justify the inclusion of media studies in the curriculum (Buckingham, 2005). The purpose of this research was an investigation and examination of three media studies programs and colleges/universities, as to what constitutes a good media studies program in higher education. More extensive research in the future will be well served by examining all university/college programs. The attempt here is not a justification of curriculums and their benefits, but to examine and describe some of the differences and similarities. In my research on media studies three interrelated areas seemed to be of particular note by scholars of media studies, which I have broadly divided into three interrelated areas: (1) The critique of artistic styles and aesthetic forms; (2) The study of the production process (e.g., technologies and markets); and (3) The sociological analysis (of ideological effects, reception and consumption, ethic, culture, etc.) (Gillespie, 2005, p. 22). The intent of this research was to see if these three interrelated subjects are within the contents of the study at the universities as part of a curriculum of media studies. This then begs the question for my research: How do the targeted universities incorporate the essentials necessary for a good media studies program in higher education? Review of archival data along with phone interviews revealed that each school of media study claimed to be different and more progressive than others. However, review of the curriculum demonstrated that in fact they all followed the same procedure and taught basically the same courses. Additionally, there is a significant commonality in patterns of course design to cover the artistic styles, the production process, and sociological/ideological effects of the knowledge acquired by the alumni. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

This study evaluates the current environment for mixed-income transit oriented development along DART rail within the city limits of Dallas. A close look at income and racial disparity is used as the foundation for advocating for a more proactive and aggressive approach to the development of affordable units proximate to affordable transportation choices. Assembling financing for mixed-income TOD projects is especially challenging, and multiple layers of federal, state, and city funding mechanisms are required for achieving the capital requirements of the development. Both typical affordable housing funding methods and new and nontraditional funding methods for multifamily housing were researched and evaluated with the intention to propose possibilities for catalyzing development in DART station areas within the City of Dallas that have, to this point, experienced underdevelopment.

Degeneracy has been the subject of much research in the field of mathematical programming, since it is related to the computational efficiency of the simplex algorithm. In the presence of degeneracy, the simplex algorithm may cycle forever by visiting the same set of bases indefinitely. Even if cycling does not occur, the simplex algorithm may "stall" in the same basic feasible solution of the problem for a long sequence of degenerate pivot steps before its optimality is established or a better solution is found. Studying degeneracy is not only important computationally, it is also of theoretical value in the field of computational complexity because to prove the optimality of a current degenerate solution, or to find a strictly better solution, in the simplex algorithm is computationally equivalent to solving another linear program in itself. This dissertation is concerned with the phenomenon of degeneracy as it affects the simplex algorithm for solving linear programming problems. In the first chapter, we present an overview of degeneracy, its computational and theoretical significance in the operation of the simplex algorithm, and a summary of the current methods for resolving it. Chapter 2 contains a study of degeneracy and methods for resolving it in the primal simplex algorithm for pure and generalized networks. In particular, we study Cunningham's method of strong feasibility for avoiding cycling in the primal network simplex algorithm and show that it is equivalent to the st and ard lexico-simplex algorithm for general LP's. In Chapter 3, degeneracy in the dual network simplex algorithm is discussed and a perturbation based method is presented to avoid cycling under degeneracy in that method. Finally, Chapter 4 presents a specialization of the lexico-simplex algorithm to the Generalized Upper Bounding Technique for structured linear programs and its application in avoiding cycling in the primal simplex algorithm for network flow problems with additional linear constraints.