Sentiment analysis on Twitter: A text mining approach to the Syrian refugee crisis

The use of social media has become an integral part of daily routine in modern society. Social media portals offer powerful public platforms where people can freely share their opinions and feelings about various topics with large crowds. In the current study, we investigated the public opinions and sentiments towards the Syrian refugee crisis, which has affected millions of people and has become a widely discussed, polarizing topic in social media around the world. To analyze public sentiments about the topic on Twitter, we collected a total of 2381,297 relevant tweets in two languages including Turkish and English. Turkish sentiments were considered important as Turkey has welcomed the largest number of Syrian refugees and Turkish tweets carried information to reflect public perception of a refugee hosting country first handedly. We performed a comparative sentiment analysis of retrieved tweets. The results indicated that the sentiments in Turkish tweets were significantly different from the sentiments in English tweets. We found that Turkish tweets carried slightly more positive sentiments towards Syrians and refugees than neutral and negative sentiments, nevertheless the sentiments of tweets were almost evenly distributed among the three major categories. On the other hand, the largest number of English tweets by a significant margin contained neutral sentiments, which was followed by the negative sentiments. In comparison to the ratio of positive sentiments in Turkish tweets, 35% of all Turkish tweets, the proportion of English tweets contained remarkably less positive sentiments towards Syrians and refugees, only 12% of all English tweets.     

Fatty acid profile and proximate composition of Pacific mullet (Mugil so‐iuy) caught in the Black Sea

This study demonstrates proximate composition and fatty acid profile of Pacific mullet caught in Turkey. The highest moisture and protein contents were observed with muscle tissues as 83.74 and 10.52%, while the highest fat and ash contents were attributed to female gonads as 11.80 and 0.94%, respectively, with a significant variation amongst months (P < 0.05). Significant variation (P < 0.05) usually occurred amongst months within the same sex for total saturated fatty acids ( ∑ SFA), monosaturated fatty acids ( ∑ MUFA), polyunsaturated fatty acids ( ∑ PUFA), eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) in muscle, although overall mean values between sexes were not found significant. Except for EPA, no variation observed for gonads while significant changes occurred (P < 0.05) with liver samples amongst months. Overall total values of ∑ SFA, ∑ MUFA, ∑ PUFA, DHA and EPA in muscle samples were 29.59, 29.26, 18.06 and 4.48%, respectively, while in gonads ranged as 30.26–33.23%, 35.17–37.47%, 11.87–14.88%, 4.38–5.34% and 3.02–5.02%. These FAs were 21.57–33.11%, 32.89–50.96%, 14.78–20.08%, 0.89–9.94% and 5.85–9.54% for liver, respectively. The results of this study showed that muscle and gonads of Pacific mullet were rich in n‐3 PUFA, especially, EPA, DHA, increasing the value of this species for human consumption.     

A new approach to eliminating EOG artifacts from the sleep EEG signals for the automatic sleep stage classification

Neural Computing and Applications - Interference between EEG and EOG signals has been studied heavily in clinical EEG signal processing applications. But, in automatic sleep stage classification...     

Preparation of polyacrylamide hydrogels at various charge densities by postmodification

In this study, first polyacrylamide hydrogels were synthesized by free‐radical crosslinking polymerization of acrylamide monomer with N,N′‐methylenebis(acrylamide) as a crosslinker in an aqueous solution at 22°C. Then, a series of hydrogels at various charge densities were prepared by partial hydrolysis of polyacrylamide precursors in a 0.1M sodium hydroxide solution at 60°C. The hydrolysis time was varied between 20 and 180 min. The chemical structures and internal morphologies of the hydrogels before and after alkaline hydrolysis were characterized with attenuated total reflectance/Fourier transform infrared and scanning electron microscopy measurements. The swelling ratio of the hydrolyzed hydrogels was measured in buffer solutions at various pHs. From differential curves of dQ_v/dpH versus pH (where Q_v is the equilibrium swelling ratio of the hydrogels), the volume phase transition pH of the hydrogels was found to be 4.33 ± 0.05, regardless of the charge density of the hydrogels. In water at 22°C, the hydrogels with greater charge density showed a more rapid swelling rate because of their higher porosity and hydrophilicity. Moreover, in buffer solutions with the pH changing from 9.0 to 2.0 at 22°C, the hydrogels with greater charge density also exhibited a more rapid deswelling rate than the hydrogels with less charge density. In conclusion, the postmodification method is a good way of preparing pH‐sensitive hydrogels with fast responsiveness. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci, 2009     

Improvement of anthocyanin content in the cv. Öküzgözü wines by using pectolytic enzymes

The effect of the addition of two commercial pectolytic enzymes on the anthocyanin and chemical composition of Öküzgözü wines was studied. A rapid HPLC-diode array detection (DAD) method was developed for the analysis of anthocyanins in wines. Direct injection of filtered wine samples followed by selective detection at 520 nm allowed quantitation of these compounds in red wines. Thirteen anthocyanin compounds were detected in wines and, addition of the two enzyme preparations improved the extraction of anthocyanins. Moreover, the wines treated with enzymes had higher values in total phenolics, tannins, and colour intensity than the control wines.     

Effect of AC interference on the corrosion behavior of cathodically protected mild steel in an artificial soil solution. Part I: Investigation on formed corrosion product layer

AC-induced corrosion is a big threat even for cathodically protected pipelines nowadays. While this phenomenon was intensively investigated in the last decades, the corrosion mechanisms due to AC interference remain unclear. In the present work, investigations on the surface processes on cathodically protected mild steel during AC polarization have been performed. They utilized high-speed potential measurements that have demonstrated the influence of the polarization parameters on the resulting alternating voltage. The corrosion product layer was characterized with scanning electron microscopy, electron probe microanalysis, and Raman spectroscopy, which clearly show the effect of the parameters of the applied alternating current on the surface under different cathodic protection (CP) conditions. It was demonstrated that the properties of the formed corrosion product layer, meaning the layer thickness, amount of oxygen, and so on, is not only dependent on the AC polarization parameters but also on the CP potential itself.