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The objective of this study is to investigate the environmental factors such as supports and barriers that have been faced by those children with SLD between the before and after COVID-19 lockdown and their involvement, participation frequency and desire for change. The participation features as well as the environmental factors at home, school and community settings of these children (n: 61; mean age: 9.37 ± 1.50 year)during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown were assessed by using the Participation and Environment Measure for Children and Youth (PEM-CY) instrument via Internet access. The differences in participation frequency, involvement, desire for change, and environmental factors (supports and barriers) for school and community settings between the pre and post COVID-19 pandemic lockdown were found to be p < 0.01. There were no statistical differences at home settings in terms of participation frequency and supports (p > 0.05). This study provides information about the participation levels of children with special needs during the COVID-19 pandemic and the environmental factors faced by these children. The results are expected to contribute to the rehabilitation program that may improve the participation levels of children with special needs, and determine where greater efforts are needed to support so as to raise their participation levels and improve environmental features after the quarantine process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Double row facility layout problem (DRFLP) is a frequently used layout type in flexible manufacturing systems. In this layout, machines or departments are placed along both sides of a corridor, which is a path for the use of transportation vehicles and workers. The problem involves determining which side of the corridor the machines will be on and their exact locations on the row in order to minimize transportation costs within the facility. This study focuses on a multi-product DRFLP with different processing routes. New mixed integer mathematical models were developed for the scenarios with and without identical machines. The effectiveness of the models was evaluated on the randomly generated test problems. Optimal solutions were obtained in both models for small-sized problems. For large-sized problems, the solution values reached within pre-determined time limit (21600 s) were reported. While the gap (%) values at the end of the solution time determined in the model without identical machines ranged between 8.05 and 32.26, these values were between 5.26 and 25.73 for the model with identical machines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: The physical or emotional difficulties faced by academicians negatively affect their productivity. The aim of this study is to translate and adapt a Turkish version of the Work Limitations Questionnaire-Short Form (WLQ-SF) and investigate its validity and reliability. The WLQ-SF assesses academicians who have suffered from physical or emotional health limitations in the past 2 weeks while working. Methods: In this study, the mean age of 104 participants who completed the Turkish version of the WLQ-SF was 37.75±9.43 years. The test-retest reliability was evaluated using the WLQ-SF with a 7-day interval. The test-retest reliability assessed through intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) and Cronbach's alpha (a) were used to determine the construct validity and time-invariant reliability of the scale over time. Results: The WLQ-SF provided construct validity with 68.62% variance under two factors (Bartlett's test of sphericity value, 407.830; Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) value, 0.746; p=0.0001) and was found to be valid. It demonstrated a high test-retest reliability (ICC =0.96) and good internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha =0.83) for all domains. Therefore, the WLQ-SF in the Turkish language is a valid and reliable test. Conclusion: The Turkish version of the WLQ-SF was found to be valid and reliable for evaluating the effect of physical and emotional health among academicians. It is an important scale to measure the impact of both physical and emotional health at work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, for the first time, the classical single row facility layout problem is extended to its dynamic type by considering several planning periods. This new problem consists of two types of costs e.g. material handling cost and rearrangement cost of the departments at the beginning of each period. The problem is formulated by a mixed integer linear programming model. Because of the high complexity of the problem, two well-known meta-heuristic algorithms e.g. the GA and the SA are proposed to solve the problem. In addition, both of the algorithms are hybridized considering the restart and acceptance probability strategies. In order to study the performance of the proposed algorithms, 20 benchmark problems are generated randomly. Considering one of the generated benchmarks, the parameters of the algorithms are tuned by a typical method and final experiments are performed accordingly. The obtained results strongly prove the superiority of the SA hybridized by the restart strategy as it shows much better performance comparing to other proposed algorithms in more than 60% of the benchmarks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In facility layout problems, ergonomic issues are generally not considered in the first place; instead, traditional layout aspects are taken into account. However, with the developing technology, legal responsibilities, and awareness of both the public and private sector to ergonomic issues, ergonomic concerns in designing any production area are getting more attention. The aim of this paper is to find an optimal single row facility layout arrangement taking into account both ergonomic and traditional layout aspects. The considered ergonomic feature is the noise exposure. If one worker exposures continuous high level of noise, temporary or permanent hearing loss may occur, which is not desired in the working life. To show the effect of noise exposure on layout, a mathematical model with noise constraint was developed. Moreover, a goal programming model which takes noise exposure, closeness ratings and material flow aspects as objectives was proposed. Traditional Analytical Hierarchy Process was utilized to gain the weights of the objectives. The applicability of the model was demonstrated by the solution of a hypothetical problem. The proposed models were tested and validated on different conditions to find out the effect of noise exposure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Materials, products and workers have to move in order to perform the daily schedule of the organizations. This movement which is done by vehicles or material handling systems is an important cost element for the organizations. A good facility layout design may reduce this cost by minimizing the interdepartmental flow. Till today, most of the facility layout planning studies have been focused on production facilities. On the other hand, having vehicles with high fuel consumption and having continuously moving personnel makes facility layout important for also military facilities. In this study, in order to remedy this deficiency in the literature, we focused on military facilities. In addition to conventional transportation costs, the allocation of infirmary and quick reaction team which affects human health and personnel safety has also considered. We presented a multi-objective mixed integer programming model for this bi-objective facility layout problem. We applied this model on a military facility problem which is created by utilizing real data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A theoretical prediction of the propagation characteristics of Laguerre--Gaussian beams after passing through a blunt-tip axicon is presented. An ideal axicon generates theoretically perfect diffraction-free and smooth-on-axis intensity Bessel beams, while experiments and calculations show that a zeroth-order Bessel beam deviates from its perfect behavior. Strong intensity modulation occurs due to interference around the center of the beam. The origin of these oscillations should be explored to increase the quality of beam shaping. This research shows that these oscillations can be reduced by stopping the beam center for a small portion or by optimizing input beam parameters. On the other hand, since they have singularity at the beam center, higher-order Bessel beams would be affected less by the bluntness of the axicon. In order to prove this idea, a series of calculations with wavelengths of 1030, 515, and 343 nm were conducted. The tip of the axicon was modeled as a hyperbola with a base angle of 0.5°. Our calculations indicate that zeroth-order Bessel beams are much more sensitive than the higher-order Bessel beams to axicon bluntness. Moreover, not only the axicon geometry and wavelength of the illuminating light, but also the input beam parameters are quite important when enhancing the quality of beam shaping. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Single row facility layout problem is the problem of arranging departments on a straight line. The main objective of the single row facility layout problem is to minimize the total material handling cost. However, it is not explanatory to use one objective. Hence, researchers pay more attention to model facility layout problems with qualitative and quantitative objectives. In this study, a weighted goal programming approach and a NSGA-II algorithm are proposed to solve multi-objective single row facility layout problem with the objectives of minimizing total flow distance and maximizing closeness rating scores. These objectives are taken into account for single row facility layout problem, for the first time, in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• A multi-start iterated local search is proposed for corridor allocation problem. • Variable neighborhood descent (VND) is utilized within iterated local search. • Five neighborhood search mechanisms are employed in VND and perturbation. • Effectiveness of the algorithm is tested on several benchmark instances. • Best known results are improved for 34 of 82 benchmark instances. The corridor allocation problem (CAP) seeks the optimal arrangement of departments along the two sides of a corridor with respect to two key considerations; there should be no gap between two consecutive departments, and both of the rows should start at the same level of the corridor. In this study, a new and comprehensive multi-start iterated local search (ILS) algorithm is developed for CAP to search the solution space more effectively. The proposed algorithm utilizes a variable neighborhood descent (VND) for local search. The VND algorithm employs five neighborhood search mechanisms (swap, insert, inverse, cross, and block insert) and a tabu list to avoid cycling. The performance of the proposed ILS is evaluated on well-known instances of various sizes. Objective function values of 34 out of 82 benchmark instances are improved by the proposed algorithm. The computational results also show that the algorithm is capable of dealing with larger-sized problems with up to eighty departments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• A two-stage solution approach is proposed for a multi-floor facility layout problem. • The Dantzig-Wolfe decomposition algorithm was first applied to the multi-floor facility layout problem. • 84 new test problems with different properties were produced for MFLP. • Better results were found for all test problems of the literature. The multi-floor facility layout problem (MFLP) is one of the most important and complex facility layout problems that has many applications in designing the facilities of manufacturing and service sectors. In this study, a hybrid version of the Dantzig-Wolfe decomposition algorithm is proposed to solve the MFLP for the first time. The proposed solution approach is performed in two steps. In the first step, a mathematical formulation is applied to assign the departments to the floors in a way that the departments with higher material flow between them be located on the same or closer floors. In the second step, the output of the first step is considered and the MFLP is decomposed into a master problem and some sub-problems to form the Dantzig-Wolfe decomposition algorithm and find the optimal layout of each floor separately. Then the integrated layout of multiple floors is formed easily. The proposed algorithm is evaluated using some sample problems from the literature and some newly generated test problems. The obtained results show the superiority of the proposed algorithm compared to the approaches of the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research is made to determine the organizational justice and organizational commitment of teachers, and to examine the relationship between the levels of organizational justice and organizational commitment. For the purpose of the research, personal information form and a questionnaire are used to assess the organizational justice and organizational commitment of the teachers who work for the Ministry of National Education in Bayat, Afyonkarahisar during the 2013-2014 term. The data obtained have been analyzed with SPSS 21.0 program in computer. As a result of the analysis, it is assessed that the teachers' organizational justice and organizational commitment levels are at high level. It is concluded from the questionnaires also that there is a positive and high level relationship between the organizational justice and organizational commitment for teachers. In other words, increasing of teachers' perception of organizational justice enables to increase their organizational commitment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, a new failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA) model is proposed for evaluating occupational safety risks. In the classical FMEA, risk priority numbers (RPNs) are calculated by multiplying the risk scores of the occurrence, severity, and detectability. However, RPN numbers generated by classical FMEA have been the subject of severe criticism in the literature. To overcome the drawbacks of the classical FMEA, this study proposes a new Multiple Attribute Decision Making (MADM) model. The proposed risk evaluation model combines the full consistency method (FUCOM) and graph theorymatrix approach (GTMA) under a fuzzy environment. The risk scores of failure models and the weights of risk factors have been obtained using the fuzzy FUCOM method. On the other hand, the RPN value of each failure mode is calculated by utilizing fuzzy GTMA. Fuzzy GTMA considers all possible dependencies among risk factors, which in turn produces more accurate rankings. The fuzzy judgements of the decision makers are aggregated by using the least squares distance method. The proposed model is implemented in a real-life case study and the failure modes are ranked. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In this article, a bi-objective facility layout problem (BOFLP) is considered by combining the objectives of minimization of the total material handling cost (quantitative) and the maximization of total closeness rating scores (qualitative), with the predetermined weights are assigned to the respective objectives. A simulated annealing (SA) algorithm is proposed to solve the BOFLP, as well as a comparison of SA with the previous works is provided. It is shown that the SA algorithm works better than the previous works; thus proving the fact that the proposed SA algorithm is an efficient method for solving BOFLP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we propose a new hybrid meta-heuristic algorithm based on simulated annealing supplemented with tabu list for the Multi Objective Facility Layout Problem (MOFLP). It is a SA approach supplemented with a tabu list. The main advantage of this approach is that a short term memory provided by the tabu list can be used to avoid solution re-visits while preserving the stochastic nature of the SA method. The goal of the new hybrid heuristic algorithm is to find the solutions forming the set of efficient solutions (pareto optimal set) of the MOFLP's in a relatively short time. The hybrid meta-heuristic is illustrated with a practical example of plant with 8 departments and 4 objectives. An efficient set of layouts corresponding to pre-determined weights are obtained. And also the set of efficient pareto-optimal solutions of the problem are determined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we consider the facility layout problem which combines the objective of minimization of the total material handling cost and the maximization of total closeness rating scores. Multi-objective optimization is the way to consider the two objectives at the same time. A simulated annealing (SA) algorithm is proposed to find the non-dominated solution (Pareto optimal) set approximately for the multi-objective facility layout problem we tackle. The Pareto optimal sets generated by the proposed algorithm was compared with the solutions of the previous algorithms for multi-objective facility layout problem. The results showed that the approximate Pareto optimal sets we have found include almost all the previously obtained results and many more approximate Pareto optimal solutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In today's market conditions, increasing global competition, rapid changes in technology and shorter life cycle of product the facility layout to be evaluated as the dynamic facility layout problem (DFLP). The purpose of DFLP is to assign the departments to locations for a multi-period planning horizon so that the sum of the material handling and rearrangement costs is minimized. DFLP is generally formulated as a quadratic assignment problem (QAP) which is NP-hard. The larger the size of the problem, the harder to find the optimal solution. In this paper, a simulated annealing (SA) heuristic is developed to solve the DFLP. To test the performance of the proposed SA heuristic, a set of problems from literature is used. The results obtained show that the proposed heuristic is very effective for DFLP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Localization of incident fields into very small volumes (hot-spots) allows strong light-matter interactions at the hot spots. This makes path interference effects, Fano resonances, visible. Fano resonances can appear due to the coupling of a bright plasmon (i) to a longer lifetime dark plasmon mode or (ii) to a quantum object (QO) of a much longer lifetime. The second phenomenon provides a very important utility: the voltage tunability of the linear/nonlinear response. The level-spacing of the QO, such as defect-centers and quantum dots, are voltage-tunable which can make a sharp Fano resonance appear and disappear. Here, we compare the two phenomena by solving the equations of motions for the near-field plasmon amplitudes, derived from two different Hamiltonians. While the two plasmon amplitudes look similar to each other, except for the population inversion parameter 'y ', our results show that quantum emitter enables fine spectral tuning of the plasmon amplitude, thus, providing better enhancement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses a new meta-heuristic algorithm to solve a closed loop layout problem. The proposed algorithm applies a modified version of the recently invented migrating birds optimization method. The computational experiments show that in most of the benchmark problems the results obtained from the proposed migrating birds optimization method is better than those obtained by other methods which are published in the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights: [•] Molecular structure of [Cu(ClO4)2(C5H6N2)4] complex has been characterized. [•] XRD and EPR techniques have been used to characterize the title complex. [•] Cu(II) metal center exhibits Jahn–Teller distortion with an elongation. [•] EPR results show that the local symmetry of Cu2+ ions is rhombic. [•] The ground state wave function of Cu2+ ion has been found and interpreted. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Aim: To determine the prevalence of consanguineous marriages, causes of it and knowledge of women about the substance of "consanguineous marriages cause disabled baby births". Methods: the number of women aged 15-49 years is 854. Sample size of the study calculated as 258. By systematic sampling method 1 of every 3 house was gone and 274 women were reached. The questionnaire of the study was applied by face to face interview. Results: Of 220 married or recently married women of the study consanguineous marriages was 44 (20.1%). Of women contributed to the study 218 (79.6) declared that consanguineous marriages might cause health risks at babies from consanguineous marriages, 40 (14.6%) might not cause health risks and 16 (5.8%) have no idea. Conclusion: The prevalence of study consanguineous marriage found in this study was concordant with the North District results of Turkey Health and Population Survey 1998. As every one of five women stated consanguineous marriage might not cause health risks in new born infants or they have no opinion on this subject, it make us to think to give education to the population in this district might be necessary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Crimean-Congo Hemorrhagic Fever (CCHF) can also be transmitted through unprotected contact directly with blood or body fluids as well as from laboratories. This study aimed to determine the seroprevalence of CCHF disease in the employees of the State Hospital of Yozgat Province, located in Central Anatolia of Turkey, and also to present the risk factors for healthcare workers. Methodology: A total of 112 volunteer employees of Yozgat State Hospital were included in the study. The study volunteers were divided into two groups: one having had a contact with CCHF patients and patient's samples and the other a non-contact group. Results: In the contact group, 2 (2.9%) out of 67 subjects tested positive for anti-CCHF IgG; however, in the non-contact group, none of the subjects tested positive (Fisher's exact test p > 0.05). Of the two employees who tested positive, one was working at the microbiology laboratory and the other was from the emergency department. Conclusion: Although cases of nosocomial transmission of CCHF have been reported previously, questions on the mode of transmission of the disease are still unanswered. The risk factors for the disease should, therefore, be identified in order to take the necessary measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]