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Background: COVID-19 is a multi-systemic infectious disease. Nearly 20%-30% of hospitalized patients have evidence of acute myocardial involvement, portending a poorer prognosis. However, information about the long-term effects of the disease on cardiac functions is sparse. As a result, there is a growing concern about the cardiac sequelae of COVID-19 among survivors. This study aimed to investigate the effects of prior mild-moderate COVID-19 infection on cardiac functions, using speckle tracking echocardiography. Methods: Patients who have been diagnosed with COVID-19 within the previous 6 months and age-, sex-, and risk factor-matched healthy adults were included. All patients underwent a comprehensive echocardiographic examination. Both conventional and 2-dimensional speckle tracking echocardiographic measurements were performed. Serum cardiac biomarkers were also obtained on the day of the echocardiographic study. Results: Compared with healthy controls, COVID-19 survivors had similar left and right ventricular longitudinal strain values at 6 months. Also, left and right atrial peak systolic strain values did not differ between the groups. Conclusion: Our study is valuable in putting forth the unaffected ventricular and atrial functions on long term in uncomplicated COVID-19 cases and may decrease the survivors' anxiety and the number of unnecessary applications to cardiology clinics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Relevance ranking algorithms rank retrieved documents based on the degrees of topical similarity (relevance) between search queries and documents. This paper aims to introduce a new relevance ranking method combining a probabilistic topic modeling algorithm with citation data. Data and Method: We applied this method to the iSearch corpus of c. 435,000 physics papers. We first ran the topic modeling algorithm on titles and summaries of all papers for 65 search queries and obtained the relevance ranking lists. We then used citation data with the existing relevance rankings, thereby incrementally refining the results. The outcome produced better relevance rankings with papers covering various aspects of the topic searched as well as the more marginal ones. Finally, we evaluated the retrieval performance of the proposed method. Findings: Findings suggest that the topic modeling algorithm might sometimes overlook the terms used in different contexts in the papers. However, the fusion of citation data to relevance ranking lists provides additional contextual information, thereby enriching the results further with various papers of higher relevance. Moreover, results can easily be re-ranked. Implications: We argue that once it is tested on dynamic corpora for computational load, robustness, replicability, and scalability, the proposed method can, in time, be used in both local and international information systems such as TR-Dizin, Web of Science, and Scopus. Originality: The proposed method is, as far as we know, the first one that shows that relevance rankings produced with a topic modeling algorithm can be incrementally refined using citation data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the association between theory of mind (ToM) and aggression has been theorized, empirical findings have not revealed a clear link between these constructs. In the current meta-analytic review, we integrated findings from 83 studies (141 effect sizes) involving 41,650 participants from 18 countries to elucidate the association between ToM and aggression in typically developing children, adolescents, and adults. We found a significant negative association between ToM and aggression overall (r = −0.15). Moreover, each type and function of aggression were negatively associated with Theory of Mind (ToM). Bullying—a distinct form of aggression—was not associated with ToM. The strength of the association between overall aggression and ToM varied as a function of methodological variables: First, studies that used self-report questionnaires to measure ToM and aggression yielded the strongest effect sizes, compared to those that used task-based assessments or questionnaires completed by others (parents, teachers, peers). Second, there was a difference in the ToM measurement with the measures examining ToM with non-false belief understanding tasks yielding a stronger mean effect than those that focused exclusively on false-belief understanding. Third, the magnitude of the negative association was found to increase with participants' age, though significant negative associations between ToM and aggression held across the lifespan. These results point to the critical link between ToM and aggressive tendencies and suggest the value in implementing interventions to improve mental state understanding across the age range to foster positive social interactions. • We integrated findings from 83 studies (141 effect sizes) to elucidate the association between ToM and aggression in typically developing children, adolescents, and adults. • We found a significant negative association between ToM and aggression overall. • The association was significant and negative across all age groups. • The association was negative and significant for different forms and functions of aggression. • There were significant moderators of the association such as measurement of aggression and ToM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: This paper aims to find out the factors that are likely to increase the citation impact of Turkey-addressed international papers. Method: For this purpose, we downloaded bibliographic records of some 226,000 TR-addressed papers that were published between 2006 and 2015, there from selected a sample (2%) using stratified probabilistic sampling technique, and obtained relevant data from various sources such as the number of citations and coauthors, journal impact factors (JIF) and journal quartiles pertaining to each paper in the sample. We then identified 19 independent variables on article, journal, cooperation, support and access levels and analyzed the data using the hurdle model. Findings: The strongest factors increasing the number of citations of TR-addressed papers are five-year JIFs and journal quartiles (Q1) in which TR-addressed papers appeared and the number of references in papers' reference lists. These factors also reduce the number of papers with zero citations. Papers published in cooperation with other countries collect higher numbers of citations. Factors such as the subjects of papers, whether papers received monetary support or not, and methods by which papers can be accessed (open or closed access) have no impact on the number of citations received. Implications: Findings indicate that academic promotion and support policies encouraging publishing in high impact journals while forestalling publishing in low impact journals should be developed in order to increase the scientific impact of TR-addressed papers. Originality: This is the first study using hurdle model to investigate the direct impact of several article, journal, collaboration, monetary support and access level explanatory variables on the number of citations that TR-addressed papers receive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

TÜBİTAK has introduced the Incentive Program for International Scientific Publications (UBYT) in 1993 in order to increase the quantity, quality and impact of TR-addressed publications indexed in Web of Science (WoS) and support their authors. Some changes take place from time to time in the algorithms used in the program to identify publications to be supported and to calculate the amounts of monetary support to be paid. The new support algorithm introduced in 2019 aims to improve the shortcomings of the previous one. This paper is a comparative investigation of the impact of the new algorithm on supported journals, publications and the amounts of payments. For this, we first compare the functioning of the old and new support algorithms. We then analyze the impact of the new algorithm on the Program's supported journals lists as well as on the publications having article influence scores (AIS) that were supported in 2015 according to the old algorithm. Findings show that ongoing problems such as providing relatively more support to low impact publications and paying different amounts to publications in different fields do not seem to have completely been solved with the new algorithm. We discuss the major issues with performance-based research funding systems that solely use bibliometric measures to determine the impact of publications and offer some suggestions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the peer review system is seen as indispensable for scientific publishing, there are also problematic sides. This article has been written due to the Peer Review Week that has been celebrated on September 21-25. In the study, the weaknesses of the peer review process are discussed and the suggested models are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: Research examining disruptive behaviors in clinical groups of preschool and school-aged children has consistently revealed significant difficulties in their emotion knowledge and empathy but intact performance in their theory-of-mind (ToM). However, it is largely not known if these difficulties in emotion knowledge and empathy as opposed to ToM are specific to extreme forms of disruption in clinical groups or rather represent broad deficiencies related to disruptive behaviors in general, including the milder levels exhibited by typically developing children. Milder disruptive behaviors (e.g., whining, arguing, rule-breaking and fighting) in peer contexts might relate to normative variations in socio-cognitive and emotional skills like ToM, emotion knowledge and empathy. To illuminate whether the same pattern of relations observed in clinical samples would arise in typical development, this study aims to examine the role of ToM, emotion knowledge and empathy in typically developing preschoolers' disruptive behaviors. Methods: We used individual tasks to measure 116 typically developing Turkish preschoolers' ToM, emotion knowledge (understanding anger and sadness) and empathy for pain, and received mothers' reports about children's levels of disruptive behavior in peer contexts. Results: Path analysis showed that among these skills, it was only empathy which predicted disruptive behaviors significantly (β = −0.25, p< 0.05). Understanding sadness predicted higher empathy (β = 0.18, p< 0.05) and higher empathy predicted lower disruptive behaviors, but the mediation of empathy in the link between understanding sadness and disruptive behavior was not significant (β = −0.05, p> 0.05, 90% CI = −0.106, 0.001). Conclusions: Overall, our results indicate that empathizing with others' emotions is more important than understanding their mental states and emotions for lower disruptive behaviors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Graduate theses and dissertations are one of the most important research outputs of universities. Yet, it is often difficult to find and provide access to them. Although it is now possible to get access to full-texts of theses and dissertations through the Internet, access problems still persist. In this paper, we investigate the issues of open access to graduate theses and dissertations in Turkey. We first reviewed the collection of the Higher Education Council Theses Center to find out what percentage of theses is accessible full-text. We then, through a questionnaire survey, collected the views of the authors of theses who opted to restrict access to their theses temporarily. Access to about one third of theses is restricted. As it was difficult to reach the authors of older theses and get their consent to make their theses available online, most of the restricted theses belong to pre-2006 period. An overwhelming majority (94%) of the authors restricted access to their theses because they wanted to publish papers based on their theses while two thirds (63%) did so because they feared of their theses being plagiarized. Yet, 81% of them said they support open access to theses and dissertations in general. Findings suggest that the issue of open access to theses needs to be dealt with from a broader perspective. We discuss the various access issues on the basis of our findings and offer some suggestions to solve them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Predatory journals, which are a major concern of the academic community, generally do not properly fulfill the reviewing and editorial processes which are the most important pillars of scientific communication. In line with the principle of the accumulation of science, the papers that have not been faithfully reviewed in these journals cause a bad effect on the scholarly communication. In this study, the impact of 17 journals with addresses in Turkey in Cabells' Predatory Report (formerly Cabells' Journal Blacklist) to the literature were examined. For this purpose, the journal and article level descriptive statistics were examined for the aforementioned journals, and analyses were made for the citations from the papers published in the journals indexed in the Web of Science citation database. A total of 3427 papers were published in these journals, which started to be published between 2010 and 2015, and 389 citations were made to these papers from the journals listed in the WoS. Such highest citations come from Turkey (24.16%), then China (7.20%) addressed papers. In addition, although there are no papers in fields such as art, humanities and physics, it has been seen that there are citations to papers from these fields. This is important in terms of showing the widespread impact of science. A paper published without serious peer review in any predatory journal affects all fields of science in terms of its method, findings and discussions. Therefore, to reduce the misleading or false effect of predatory journals on the literature, a more skeptical behavior should be displayed about citing the papers published in these journals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study was carried out in order to identify green (environmentally friendly) practices in university libraries in both institutional and individual contexts. Within the scope of this research, descriptive method was used, and also two questionnaires were used as data collection tools from library directors and librarians. Within the frame of the study, online questionnaire was sent to 165 directors and 1614 librarians working in 165 university libraries (out of 182 in total) in Turkey. 45 directors and 341 librarians responded to the survey. The directors' survey has six main sections including sustainable environment, water saving, energy saving, sustainable resources and materials, indoor air quality, innovation in design and implementation, and aims to collect information on an institutional basis. The librarian survey consists of three main parts which are demographic information, environmental awareness and attitude in daily life, and green libraries. The obtained data were analyzed by IBM Statistics SPSS 23.0 software package. In the study, it was found out that even though university libraries in Turkey fulfill some criteria such as proximity to public transportation, use of alternative options in transportation and water-efficient plumbing, monitoring water use, turning off electrical appliances when not in use, use of double glazed windows, taking precautions against paper waste with recycling or donation of printed resources, there are still deficiencies. Also, differences between universities have been identified in terms of green approaches/implementations and some libraries such as Atılım, Bilkent, Başkent and Yaşar University libraries have been observed to be greener than others within sustainable environment, water and energy saving, sustainable materials-resources, indoor air quality and design and application innovations. Although librarians have a low level of perception and awareness in green libraries and environmental sustainability issues, they have positive opinions about the initiatives promoting education and awareness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study predatory journals originated from Turkey in the Beall list, which situated in the context of the literature as an authority, have been identified and studied in detail. Results show that 3.2% of the journals in the list originated from Turkey. Accordingly, it is seen Turkey ranks second after India in the list. While the number of Turkish journals in the list was at a certain level from 2003 to 2010 (seven journals in 2010), it started to show a sudden increase since 2011 and reached 41 in 2016. We believe that the criteria discussed by the researchers (the criteria set by Beall or the others who criticize the Beall list) will guide the researcher to determine the predatory journals in order to be able to avoid them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The possibility of creating and easily distributing something via a digital platform creates an enormous material volume. With the increase of scientific publications it becomes harder for scholars to choose the most related and significant resources from the others (Henning & Gunn, 2012). Bibliometrics measures the impact of scholars between each other, but the impact of articles across the entire web is not limited by this. On the other hand, altmetrics measures the impact of articles from the web, alongside bibliometric data. The aim of this study is to investigate the probable relationships between traditional metrics and altmetrics by analysing the PLoS Article-Level Metric (ALM) dataset. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information seeking models are important to design more efficient information retrieval systems. For this purpose, information retrieval systems transaction log studies were performed based on the Session, but there has never been a comparison whether different types of session groups are compatible with each other or not. In this study, three different types of Web-based information retrieval systems are studied the search session models using clustering methods. Results have shown that searching behaviors are clustered into distinct groups by characteristic of sessions and revealed although being different groups, they show similarities. Session-based analysis is important for the understanding of user search behavior; this can help to system designers to develop systems to meet the needs of various user groups in a better way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, impressions from Digital Humanities 2016 held in Kraków, Poland in July 11-16, 2016 is presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many universities have developed interactive and web-based campus maps. The spatial features of Geographical Information Systems (GIS) are usually incorporated in such maps, thereby facilitating visual searches. The aim of this study is to design and develop an interactive, user-friendly and web-based Beytepe Campus Map to process visual queries. The Google Maps API application builder has been used to design the user interface for our campus map. Data has been gathered about several different places on campus and they were tagged on the map using CommunityWalk's place-pointing feature. Brief notes (dormitory capacities, pictures, phone numbers, etc.) about each place using explanation buttons have been added. A simple ontology comprising eight categories, each with its own sub-categories to represent the places at the Beytepe Campus has been developed. The MapCruncher software of Microsoft has been used to cut the map and paste it on to Google Maps for predefined granularity levels. A new button added to place the Beytepe campus map on Google Maps. To develop the mashup application using Google Maps API, we wrote the programming code using the Google Code Playground. We used JavaScript and JavaScript libraries to modify the user interface. In summary, the new campus map is more functional. The user interface can be improved in terms of design and functionality by adding new features. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT) positively affects the improvement of functional mitral regurgitation (MR) in patients with heart failure with reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF). However, geometric changes in the mitral valve apparatus, subvalvular structures and their contribution to improving mitral regurgitation after CRT have not been clearly defined. Our study aimed to evaluate the geometric parameters of mitral valve apparatus measured with three‐dimensional (3D) transesophageal echocardiography (TEE) before CRT implantation and to determine the parameters predicting the improvement of MR after CRT. Methods: In this prospective study, we included thirty patients with moderate or severe MR and HFrEF planned for CRT implantation who had an indication for TEE. Before CRT implantation, effective regurgitant orifice (ERO) and regurgitant volume (RV) measurements were performed. Detailed quantitative measurements of the mitral valve were done from recorded images by 3D TEE. ERO and RV measurements were repeated to evaluate MR at the end of the third month. Results: There were no significant changes in left ventricular EF and left ventricular diameters at third‐month follow‐up, whereas ERO and RV values were decreased. The posterior leaflet angle was higher in the non‐responder group than the responder group (28.93 ± 8.41 vs 41.25 ± 10.90, p = 0.006). The posterior leaflet angle was an independent predictor of decreased RV and ERO. Conclusion: Among HFrEF patients with moderate or severe functional MR who underwent CRT implantation had a lower posterior leaflet angle, which was measured by 3D TEE, in the patient group whose MR improved after CRT. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background Nondipping blood pressure pattern carry a high risk of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular complications due to a higher cumulative pressure overload. We aimed to define the role of strain analysis for detecting subclinical left ventricular systolic dysfunction in recently diagnosed nondipper and dipper hypertensive patients with normal left ventricular systolic function. Methods Study population consisted of two groups of patients, Group 1: 45 dipper patients and Group 2: 43 nondipper patients. Global and segmental two-dimensional longitudinal strain analysis were measured by speckle tracking method. Results The analysis of two-dimensional left ventricular global longitudinal strain and strain rates showed that there was a significant difference between groups (−18.1%±3.1% for nondippers vs −20.5%±2.4% for dippers, P<.001 for global longitudinal strain and −1.2±0.2 1/s for nondippers vs −1.31±0.16 1/s for dippers, P<.001 for global longitudinal strain rate). The nighttime systolic, diastolic, and mean blood pressure measurements were significantly higher in the nondipper group. Nocturnal dipping rates were statistically different between the groups ( P<.001). Interventricular septum, posterior wall thickness, relative wall thickness, left atrial dimension, left ventricular mass, and mass index were higher in the nondipper group. Multivariate analysis demonstrated left atrium size, nocturnal dipping rate, daytime mean blood pressure, and nighttime systolic, diastolic, and mean blood pressure as independent predictors of global longitudinal strain. Conclusion In our study, two-dimensional speckle tracking examination showed that the left ventricular systolic function is impaired even in the subclinical period in recently diagnosed nondipper hypertensive patients with deformational analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scopus uses some criteria to decide which journals to index in the database. This paper evaluates the journals indexed in Scopus database according to these criteria. The study universe consisted of 2013 Scopus journal list downloaded from SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) web page on September 18th, 2014. Countries that have more than 1000 journals and less than 100 journals in Scopus were left out of the study. The 203 journals were selected from 6,151 journals by the systematic sampling method and of these, 203 journals were analyzed with regard to the Scopus journal selection criteria. Based on the analysis of findings, we found that the most problematic criteria were having an online referee list, having publication ethics, citation levels of journals and internationalization. On the other side, regular publishing, having English journal website, having English titles and abstracts and having references in Roman Script were the most successful criteria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]