En 2010, une fouille ouverte dans le quartier de Şifa à Izmir a permis de dégager, dans les niveaux de surface, les vestiges d’une grande maison ottomane. Dans ces contextes, la céramique était abondante. Elle illustre les différents types de vaisselle culinaire, de table et de service, employés dans une demeure d'une grande ville cosmopolite de Méditerranée orientale, dans la seconde moitié du XVIIIe s. Aux côtés des productions locales, on trouve un large échantillonnage de céramiques produites dans d’autres ateliers (...) anatoliens et balkaniques mais aussi une grande variété de produits étrangers, en particulier européens, qui témoignent des relations commerciales établies entre deux grands ports de Méditerranée, Marseille et Smyrne. En effet, l’approvisionnement en vaisselle de terre de Smyrne – le port le plus important pour le commerce français, le plus vaste et le plus riche de l’Empire ottoman – a bénéficié des flux commerciaux dont Marseille était l’origine ou le relais. (shrink)

In order to prepare bioethics and clinical ethics courses for clinicians in Turkey, we needed to know the attitudes of physicians when placed in ethically difficult care situations. We presented four cases to 207 physicians who are members of the Physicians’ Association in Kocaeli, Turkey. Depending on the decisions they made in each case, we determined whether they were aware of the ethical aspects of the cases and the principles they chose as a basis for their decisions. We aimed to (...) gain information about their ethical tendencies and moral sensitivity. A small number of physicians stated that they would ‘show respect for a patient’s living will’ in the first case, but more stated that they would ‘let the patient refuse the treatment’ in the second. In the third case, where medical confidentiality was the significant ethical issue, most of the physicians said that they would act in order to maintain confidentiality. For the last case, more than half the physicians chose to ‘tell the truth’ to the patient. The paternalism shown in the doctors’ decisions on the first two cases was no longer observed in those made for the last two cases. We concluded that the physicians who participated in our study have low sensitivity to living wills (or advance directives) and patients refusing treatment. However, when issues of medical confidentiality and truth-telling are concerned, they take care to protect the autonomy of the individual and are relatively more aware of the ethical aspects of these cases. (shrink)

The aim of this study was to assess the opinions and role of intensive care unit (ICU) nurses regarding the distribution of ICU beds. We conducted this research among 30% of the attendees at two ICU congresses in Turkey. A self-administered questionnaire was used, which included 13 cases and allocation criteria. Of the total (136 nurses), 53.7% participated in admission/discharge decisions. The most important criterion was quality of life as viewed by the physician; the least important was the patient’s social (...) status. According to the findings, the nurses thought that medical benefit and avoiding discrimination were important. On the other hand their ignorance of patients’ autonomous preferences arouses suspicions about these nurses’ role in advocating for patients’ rights. For this reason, nurses’ role in allocation decisions should be clearly described and should also be the basis on which intensive care nurses’ duties in allocation decisions should be determined. (shrink)

The aim of this study was to assess the attitudes of Turkish pregnant women and antenatal health care providers towards prenatal HIV testing. A self-administered questionnaire was used. The relationships between the different groups' knowledge and attitudes were analysed by using the chi-squared statistic. A total of 494 pregnant women and 181 care providers participated. Forty-four per cent of the pregnant women thought that prenatal HIV testing should be mandatory, and 84% of the health care providers thought it should be (...) performed routinely or be mandatory. The majority of the pregnant women (74%) and half of the care providers agreed that the test results should be disclosed first to the pregnant woman. The study results also revealed that most of the prenatal care providers would not protect pregnant women's autonomy and privacy, contrary to the pregnant women's own preferences. It is essential to establish national prenatal HIV testing policies in order to prevent unethical practices and ensure satisfaction for pregnant women and health care providers. (shrink)

Notwithstanding the advantages of physical power, the struggle for survival among societies is not merely a matter of serial armed clashes but of the nation's spiritual resources that in the end always decide upon the victory.

This paper theoretically and experimentally investigates the behavior of asymmetric players in guessing games. The asymmetry is created by introducing r>1\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$r>1$$\end{document} replicas of one of the players. Two-player and restricted N-player cases are examined in detail. Based on the model parameters, the equilibrium is either unique in which all players choose zero or mixed in which the weak player (r=1\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$r=1$$\end{document}) imitates the strong (...) player (r>1\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$r>1$$\end{document}). A series of experiments involving two and three-player repeated guessing games with unique equilibrium is conducted. We find that equilibrium behavior is observed less frequently and overall choices are farther from the equilibrium in two-player asymmetric games in contrast to symmetric games, but this is not the case in three-player games. Convergence towards equilibrium exists in all cases but asymmetry slows down the speed of convergence to the equilibrium in two, but not in three-player games. Furthermore, the strong players have a slight earning advantage over the weak players, and asymmetry increases the discrepancy in choices (defined as the squared distance of choices from the winning number) in both games. (shrink)

Rönesans ve ardında Aydınlanma dönemiyle beraber gerçekleşen bilimsel ilerlemeler fazlaca dikkat çekmeyi başarmıştır. Bunun sonucunda modern bilim, bilginin en güvenilir kaynağı olarak kabul edilerek onun her meseleyi çözebileceği bir zemine oturtturulmuştur. Öyle ki bilim, Tanrı’nın var olup olmadığına dair de bilgi üretebileceği dillendirilmiştir. Bu aşamada ideolojik yaklaşımların ve din adına sergilenen bazı temelsiz akıl dışı argümanların katkısıyla da bilim artık kutsal bir müesseseye dönüştürülmüştür. Kutsala dönüştürülen bilim, bir diğer kutsal olan dinle artık ortak bir zeminde buluşamayacak hale dönüşmüş ve yanlış (...) bir dikotomiye alet edilmiştir. Dolayısıyla artık ilerleyen bilim, yavaş yavaş “Tanrı’yı yok etmeye” başlamıştır. Artık bu hale dönüşen bilim anlayışı ateistlerin de en büyük destek noktaları olmuştur. Kutsala dönüşen bu bilim anlayışı her ne kadar temelde Hıristiyanlık inancına karşıt olarak ortaya çıkmış olsa da yer yer tüm inançlara yansıtılmaya çalışılmıştır. Oysaki bilimden, “bilimin ilerlemesiyle Tanrı’nın yok olacağına” dair veri sunmasını beklemek aslında bilimin sınırlarından bihaber olmayı gerekli kılmaktadır. Bilimin ilerlemesiyle inancın yok olacağı söylemi, İslam dini açısından kabul edilebilir bir argüman olarak görülmemektedir. Çünkü İslam, aklı dinamik olarak tasvir etmekte ve tabiatı Tanrı’nın varlığının delili olarak sunmaktadır. Diğer taraftan bilimin ilerlemesiyle Tanrı’ya yer kalmayacağını iddia edenlerin unutmaması gereken önemli husus, dinin/imanın bir bilgi eksikliği olmadığı aksine bilginin insanı tasdiğe yönelttiği gerçeğidir. Ayrıca Müslümanların bilimde geri kalmalarının sebebini onların inançlarına bağlayanlar, bunu siyasi, sosyal ve ekonomik bazı sebeplerde araması gerekmektedir. (shrink)

When considering the principle of medical confidentiality, disclosure of genetic information constitutes a special case because of the impact that this information can have on the health and the lives of relatives. The aim of this study is to explore the attitudes of Turkish physicians and patients about sharing information obtained from genetic tests.

Background Undergraduate medical education is beginning to concern itself with educating students about professional attributes as well as about clinical knowledge and skills. Defining these characteristics, and in particular seeking the help of the students themselves to define them, can be a useful starting point when considering how to incorporate aspects of professional behaviour into the medical curricula. Method This study explores the views of first-year medical students at Kocaeli University Faculty of Medicine in the 2007–8 academic year. The students (...) were asked the open-ended question: ‘What, in your opinion, are the attributes a good physician should have?’ Four topics were defined by researchers based on the undergraduate and graduate education projects. The attributes expressed by the students were evaluated by the researchers according to these topics and compared with the topics covered in the undergraduate and graduate education projects. Results A total of 127 students responded, and between them suggested 756 attributes. The majority of these attributes (54.6%) were concerned with interpersonal relations and communication, whereas the category representing the fewest attributes (12.3%) was that involving scientific knowledge and medical practice. In general, students' perception corresponded to the concept of the ‘competent physician’ as described in the professionalism projects, but attributes reflecting their world-view were also expressed. Conclusion Experience suggests that the active participation of students in determining which attributes are necessary for a good physician is a positive way of ensuring they embrace the importance of such qualities and attributes in themselves. (shrink)

La autora presenta una critica a la concepcion clasica de los sentidos asumida por la mayoria de autores naturalistas que pretenden explicar el contenido mental. Esta crítica se basa en datos neurobiologicos sobre los sentidos que apuntan a que estos no parecen describir caracteristicas objetivas del mundo, sino que actuan de forma ʼnarcisita', es decir, representan informacion en funcion de los intereses concretos del organismo.El articulo se encuentra también en: Bechtel, et al., Philosophy and the Neuroscience.

Nigerian Pidgin is a popular informal communicative code in Nigerian social, economic and political experience. It is sometimes spoken in formal situations in the hospital setting when participants find it pragmatically convenient. Despite its communicative significance, little research has been carried out on the use of Pidgin in conversational interactions in Nigerian hospitals, a gap this study fills by investigating how Pidgin is used in constructing emotions relating to social and medical conditions in hospitals. Seventy five interactions between doctors and (...) clients in Nigerian Pidgin were sampled; the data analysis was based centrally on relevance theory. Nigerian Pidgin evokes negative and positive emotions. Negative emotions manifest as pain and fear, while positive emotions appear as excitement and relief. Doctors and clients gain access to each other’s intentions through their shared knowledge of Pidgin, their co-construction of ailments, and their contextually based local interactional resources. They thus negotiate emotions as cue-dependent variables that are steered with the help of cognitive processes. (shrink)

Nativists about syntactic processing have argued that linguisticprocessing, understood as the implementation of a rule-basedcomputational architecture, is spared in Williams syndrome, (WMS)subjects – and hence that it provides evidence for a geneticallyspecified language module. This argument is bolstered by treatingSpecific Language Impairments (SLI) and WMS as a developmental doubledissociation which identifies a syntax module. Neuroconstructivists haveargued that the cognitive deficits of a developmental disorder cannot beadequately distinguished using the standard gross behavioural tests ofneuropsychology and that the linguistic abilities of the (...) WMS subject canbe equally well explained by a constructivist strategy of neurallearning in the individual, with linguisitic functions implemented in anassociationist architecture. The neuroconstructivist interpretation ofWMS undermines the hypothesis of a double dissociation between SLI andWMS, leaving unresolved the question of nativism about syntax. Theapparent linguistic virtuosity of WMS subjects is an artefact ofenhanced phonological processing, a fact which is easier to demonstratevia the associationist computational model embraced byneuroconstructivism. (shrink)

The book details several well-argued theories aiming to explain how the full, cohesive vista of human vision and perception is possible. The main query is broken down into several parts. The first deals with how we organize our representations of the world and whether these are processed and connected in a logical and sentential manner, or if these involve random connections across our neurons. The next part focuses on the amount of detail in the visual representations themselves and yields two (...) opposing theories: the “Literalist View”—“You See What You Think You See”—and the non-Literalist or “Functional View”—“You Don't See What You Think You See.” Also discussed is whether the intentional content of neural representations is individuated by factors external or internal to the subject. The last part of the chapter tackles how visual perception is processed and unified via the “Feature Integration Theory” or the “Recollective Theory.”. (shrink)