Standardization problem of author affiliations in citation indexes

Academic effectiveness of universities is measured with the number of publications and citations. However, accessing all the publications of a university reveals a challenge related to the mistakes and standardization problems in citation indexes. The main aim of this study is to seek a solution for the unstandardized addresses and publication loss of universities with regard to this problem. To achieve this, all Turkey-addressed publications published between 1928 and 2009 were analyzed and evaluated deeply. The results show that the main mistakes are based on character or spelling, indexing and translation errors. Mentioned errors effect international visibility of universities negatively, make bibliometric studies based on affiliations unreliable and reveal incorrect university rankings. To inhibit these negative effects, an algorithm was created with finite state technique by using Nooj Transducer. Frequently used 47 different affiliation variations for Hacettepe University apart from “Hacettepe Univ” and “Univ Hacettepe” were determined by the help of finite state grammar graphs. In conclusion, this study presents some reasons of the inconsistencies for university rankings. It is suggested that, mistakes and standardization issues should be considered by librarians, authors, editors, policy makers and managers to be able to solve these problems.     

Ternary encoding based feature extraction for binary text classification

A novel framework for termset based feature extraction is proposed for binary text classification. The proposed approach is based on the encoding of the terms within a termset. The ternary codes ‘+1’ and ‘?1’ are used to represent the class that the term supports, whereas ‘0’ denotes no support to any of the classes. Four different encoding schemes are proposed where the term weights and the term occurrence probabilities in the positive and negative documents are used to define the ternary code of a given term. The ternary patterns are utilized to define novel features by splitting them into positive and negative codes where each code is treated as a different feature extractor. Use of the derived features individually and together with bag of words representation are both investigated. The histograms of the resultant features are also employed to study the improvements that can be achieved using a small number of additional features to augment bag of words representation. Experiments conducted on four benchmark datasets with different characteristics have shown that the proposed feature extraction framework provides significant improvements compared to the bag of words representation.     

Carboxymethyl sago pulp/chitosan hydrogel as an immobilization medium for activated sludge for p-nitrophenol biodegradation

In this study, carboxymethyl sago pulp (CMSP) derived from sago waste was successfully crosslinked with ferric ions in the presence of chitosan forming a novel immobilization matrix for p-nitrophenol (PNP)-acclimated activated sludge. On the basis of the shortest biodegradation time of PNP, the optimized operational conditions of immobilization were found to be: 7 w/v% CMSP, 9 g L⁻¹ of activated sludge, 0.1 M ferric ion, and 15 min of crosslinking time. Observable inhibited PNP biodegradation was exhibited by the suspended activated sludge at the initial PNP concentration of 400 mg L⁻¹. In contrast, complete mineralization was achieved by the CMSP/chitosan-immobilized activated sludge (CMSP/Ch-AS) beads. The results revealed the important role of CMSP/Ch hydrogel in protecting activated sludge from the toxicity of PNP. The CMSP/Ch-AS beads could be reused consecutively up to three and two cycles, respectively, for the biodegradation of PNP at 200 and 400 mg L⁻¹, with the attainment of more than 99% of PNP removal at each cycle. © 2019 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2019 , 136, 47531.     

Cobalt loaded organic acid modified kaolin clay for the enhanced catalytic activity of hydrogen release via hydrolysis of sodium borohydride

Inorganic acids such as hydrochloric acid (HCl), nitric acid (HNO₃) and sulphuric acid (H₂SO₄) are generally used in the acid modification of clays. Here, CoB catalyst was synthesized on the acetic acid-activated kaolin support material (CH₃COOH -kaolin- CoB) with an alternative approach. This prepared catalyst, firstly, was used to catalyze the hydrolysis of NaBH₄ (NaBH₄-HR). The structure of the raw kaolin, kaolin-CH₃COOH, and CH₃COOH-kaolin-CoB samples were characterized by X-ray diffraction spectroscopy (XRD), Fourier transforms infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), scanning electron microscope (SEM), and nitrogen adsorption. At the same time, this catalyst performance was examined by Co loading, NaBH₄ concentration, NaOH concentration, temperature and reusability parameters. The end times of this hydrolysis reaction using raw kaolin-CoB and CH₃COOH-kaolin-CoB were found to be approximately 140 and 245 min, respectively. The maximum hydrogen generation rates (HGRs) obtained at temperatures 30 °C and 50 °C were 1533 and 3400 mL/min/g_catalyst, respectively. At the same time, the activation energy was found to be 49.41 kJ/mol.     

Reusable water oxidation catalyst with dual active center for enhanced water oxidation: Iridium oxide nanoparticles immobilized on monodisperse-porous Mn5O8 microspheres

A reusable catalyst with dual active center for chemical water oxidation is synthesized for the first time by immobilization of iridium oxide nanoparticles (IrO₂ NPs) on monodisperse-porous manganese oxide microspheres acting both catalytic active center and support. Individual catalytic activity of manganese oxide microspheres is explained by multiple oxidation states of manganese which are capable of forming oxidative oxygen species. Monodisperse-porous microspheres in the form of Mn₅O₈, MnO₂ and Mn₂O₃ are used for synthesis of different catalysts and the highest activity in water oxidation is observed with the catalyst synthesized using Mn₅O₈ microspheres. The catalytic activity is correlated with the total Mn(II) and Mn(III) percentage of manganese oxide type selected for composite catalyst. The oxygen evolution up to 244 μmol is achieved in 30 min with the catalyst synthesized using Mn₅O₈ microspheres. Maximum TON and TOF numbers are obtained as 298 and 557 h^?1 with excellent reusability.     

Unary probabilistic and quantum automata on promise problems

We continue the systematic investigation of probabilistic and quantum finite automata (PFAs and QFAs) on promise problems by focusing on unary languages. We show that bounded-error unary QFAs are more powerful than bounded-error unary PFAs, and, contrary to the binary language case, the computational power of Las-Vegas QFAs and bounded-error PFAs is equivalent to the computational power of deterministic finite automata (DFAs). Then, we present a new family of unary promise problems defined with two parameters such that when fixing one parameter QFAs can be exponentially more succinct than PFAs and when fixing the other parameter PFAs can be exponentially more succinct than DFAs.     

Synthesis and characterizations of poly(ether)/poly(phenol)s including azomethine coupled benzothiazole side chains: the effect of reaction conditions on the structure,optical, electrochemical,electrical and thermal properties

A new Schiff base, 4-((6-ethoxybenzothiazole-2-ylimino)methyl)benzene-1,2-diol (3,4-HBAEBT) was synthesized by the condensation reaction of 3,4-dihydroxybenzaldehyde (3,4-HBA) and 2-amino-6-ethoxybenzothiazole. The Schiff base, then, was converted to its polymer derivatives by oxidative polycondensation reaction in both organic (P-1) and aqueous alkaline medium (P-2). Spectral observations indicated different structural properties for each polymerization condition. Organic and aqueous alkaline medium produced poly(ether) and poly(phenol) structures, respectively. The obtained polymers were separately studied with respect to optical, electrochemical, electrical and thermal properties. With exception of thermal degradation behaviors, the other investigated properties as well as morphological characteristics of both polymers were considerably different. In the fluorescence measurements a solvatochromic effect was recorded and the emission colors of the polymers could be changed as turquoise-green by solvent change.     

Synthesis of Quaternary,Long-Chain N-Alkyl Amides and Their Corrosion Inhibition in Acidic Media

New cationic surfactants were synthesized by the quaternization of a number of straight-chain amide derivatives with triethylamine or pyridine. The corrosion inhibition tests of the surface-active compounds were performed at room temperature for 24 h on carbon steel coupons in acidic media using the gravimetric method. The acidic media used were 1.5 M HCl and 1.5 M H₂SO₄. Almost all of the synthesized cationic surfactants showed efficient inhibition of corrosion in the test. To establish the inhibition efficiencies of the inhibitors, surface characterization studies (contact angle measurements, SEM analysis and optical profilometer images) of the metal coupons used were performed.