An overview of franchising in the hospitality industry of Turkey

Tourism is regarded as one of the fastest growing industries of our time. International hotel chains seem to contribute this development to a great amount. These hotels invest in Turkey since 1950s. Recently, these investments seem to be made majorly as franchises. Today, franchising seems to be one of the major strategies to enter global markets. And the system is popular because of its organisational and financial advantages. Although Franchising is adopted and frequently used in tourism industry, there are not (if any) any studies investigating facts and figures of the subject. In this regard, herein it is aimed to overview the current state of franchising in the Turkish tourism industry. Therefore, international hotel chains operating through Franchising in the hospitality industry of Turkey are reviewed in this study. Findings of the study suggest that international hotel chains aiming to expand in the market of Turkey prefer franchising as the major growth strategy to any other

Detachment of semiflexible polymer chains from a substrate - a Molecular Dynamics investigation

Using Molecular Dynamics simulations, we study the force-induced detachment of a coarse-grained model polymer chain from an adhesive substrate. One of the chain ends is thereby pulled at constant speed off the attractive substrate and the resulting saw-tooth profile of the measured mean force vs height $D$ of the end-segment over the plane is analyzed for a broad variety of parameters. It is shown that the observed characteristic oscillations in the $< f >$-$D$ profile depend on the bending and not on the torsional stiffness of the detached chains. Allowing for the presence of hydrodynamic interactions (HI) in a setup with explicit solvent and DPD-thermostat, rather than the case of Langevin thermostat, one finds that HI have little effect on the -$D$ profile. Also the change of substrate affinity with respect to the solvent from solvophilic to solvophobic is found to play negligible role in the desorption process. In contrast, a changing ratio $\epsilon_s^A / \epsilon_s^B$ of the binding energies of $A$- and $B$-segments in the detachment of an $AB$-copolymer from adhesive surface strongly changes the $$-$D$ profile whereby the $B$-spikes vanish when $\epsilon_s^A / \epsilon_s^B < 0.15$. Eventually, performing an atomistic simulation of a (bio)-polymer {\it polyglycine}, we demonstrate that the simulation results, derived from our coarse-grained model, comply favorably with those from the all-atom simulation.Comment: Latex, 12 pages, 8 figures, to appear in JC

Friction between Ring Polymer Brushes

Friction between ring-polymer brushes at melt densities sliding past each other are studied using extensive course-grained molecular dynamics simulations and scaling arguments, and the results are compared to the friction between linear-polymer brushes. We show that for a velocity range spanning over three decades, the frictional forces measured for ring-polymer brushes are half the corresponding friction in case of linear brushes. In the linear-force regime, the weak inter-digitation of two ring brushes compared to linear brushes also leads to a lower number of binary collisions between the monomers of opposing brushes. At high velocities, where the thickness of the inter-digitation layer between two opposing brushes is on the order monomer size regardless of brush topology, stretched segments of ring polymers take a double-stranded conformation. As a result, monomers of the double-stranded segments collide less with the monomers of the opposing ring brush even though a similar number of monomers occupies the inter-digitation layer for ring and linear-brush bilayers. The numerical data obtained from our simulations is consistent with the proposed scaling analysis. Conformation-dependent frictional reduction observed in ring brushes can have important consequences in non-equilibrium bulk systems.Comment: 10 pages, Latex, two columns forma

Statistical Methodological Issues in Studies of Air Pollution and Respiratory Disease.

Epidemiological studies have consistently shown short term associations between levels of air pollution and respiratory disease in countries of diverse populations, geographical locations and varying levels of air pollution and climate. The aims of this paper are: (1) to assess the sensitivity of the observed pollution effects to model specification, with particular emphasis on the inclusion of seasonally adjusted covariates; and (2) to study the effect of air pollution on respiratory disease in Melbourne, Australia.Air pollution; Autocorrelation; Generalized additive models; Seasonal adjustment; Respiratory disease

Forecasting age-related changes in breast cancer mortality among white and black US women: A functional approach

The disparity in breast cancer mortality rates among white and black US women is widening with higher mortality rates among black women. We apply functional time series models on age-specific breast cancer mortality rates for each group of women, and forecast their mortality curves using exponential smoothing state-space models with damping. The data were obtained from the Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) program of the US (SEER, 2007). Mortality data were obtained from the National Centre for Health Statistics (NCHS) available on the SEER*Stat database. We use annual unadjusted breast cancer mortality rates from 1969 to 2004 in 5-year age groups (45-49, 50-54, 55-59, 60-64, 65-69, 70-74, 75-79, 80-84). Age-specific mortality curves were obtained using nonparametric smoothing methods. The curves are then decomposed using functional principal components and we fit functional time series models with four basis functions for each population separately. The curves from each population are forecast and prediction intervals are calculated. Twenty-year forecasts indicate an over-all decline in future breast cancer mortality rates for both groups of women. This decline is steeper among white women aged 55-73 and black women aged 60-84. For black women under 55 years of age, the forecast rates are relatively stable indicating no significant change in future breast cancer mortality rates among young black women in the next 20 years.Breast cancer mortality, racial and ethnic disparities, screening, trends, forecasting, functional data analysis

Roles of International Schools in International Relations: Albanian Case

International schools are phenomenon and providing quite diverse education inorder to meet nearly the entire educational model of many countries. Hence, their students come from families who are in their countries for a limited period of time. These families want their children to be educated in these schools on one hand; and on the other hand,when they go back to their countries of origin or other countries, their children's education should not be interrupted. As a result of these demands and circumstances, international schools are partial when education is concerned, democratic when recipients are concerned and international when impacts are concerned.The role of democratic education has been discussed and suggested as a part ofpeaceful coexistence for many years. It seems that international schools and democratic education have been linked and provided an example for other educational institutions.This research paper has investigated an international school based in Tirana in orderto understand and see how much their education is partial, democratic and international.The paper uses qualitative methods with structured interviews. The structured questionnaire was used to collect data from teachers and parents. Subjects' syllabuseswere investigated for assessment on partiality, democracy and international. The paperused content analysis in this part within the framework of the qualitative method. There spondents had diverse backgrounds which were very important to provide a wider perspective

Forecasting age-specific breast cancer mortality using functional data models

Accurate estimates of future age-specific incidence and mortality are critical for allocation of resources to breast cancer control programs and evaluation of screening programs. The purpose of this study is to apply functional data analysis techniques to model age-specific breast cancer mortality time trends, and forecast entire age-specific mortality function using a state-space approach. We use yearly unadjusted breast cancer mortality rates in Australia, from 1921 to 2001 in 5 year age groups (45 to 85+). We use functional data analysis techniques where mortality and incidence are modeled as curves with age as a functional covariate varying by time. Data is smoothed using nonparametric smoothing methods then decomposed (using principal components analysis) to estimate basis functions that represent the functional curve. Period effects from the fitted functions are forecast then multiplied by the basis functions, resulting in a forecast mortality curve with prediction intervals. To forecast, we adopt a state-space approach and an extension of the Pegels modeling framework for selecting among exponential smoothing methods. Overall, breast cancer mortality rates in Australia remained relatively stable from 1960 to the late 1990's but declined over the last few years. A set of K=4 basis functions minimized the mean integrated squared forecasting error (MISFE) and accounts for 99.3% of variation around the mean mortality curve. 20 year forecast suggest a continual decline at a slower rate and stabilize beyond 2010 and by age, forecasts show a decline in all age groups with the greatest decline in older women. We illustrate the utility of a new modelling and forecasting approach to model breast cancer mortality rates using a functional model of age. The methods have the potential to incorporate important covariates such as Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) and interventions to represent mammographic screening. This would be particularly useful for evaluating the impact of screening on mortality and incidence from breast cancer.Mortality, Breast Cancer, Forecasting, Functional Data Analysis, Exponential Smoothing

Cascading of Molecular Logic Gates for Advanced Functions: A Self-Reporting, Activatable Photosensitizer

Cataloged from PDF version of article.Logical progress: Independent molecular logic gates have been designed and characterized. Then, the individual molecular logic gates were coerced to work together within a micelle. Information relay between the two logic gates was achieved through the intermediacy of singlet oxygen. Working together, these concatenated logic gates result in a self-reporting and activatable photosensitizer. GSH=glutathione

Partitioning a call graph

Splitting a large software system into smaller and more manageable units has become an important problem for many organizations. The basic structure of a software system is given by a directed graph with vertices representing the programs of the system and arcs representing calls from one program to another. Generating a good partitioning into smaller modules becomes a minimization problem for the number of programs being called by external programs. First, we formulate an equivalent integer linear programming problem with 0–1 variables. theoretically, with this approach the problem can be solved to optimality, but this becomes very costly with increasing size of the software system. Second, we formulate the problem as a hypergraph partitioning problem. This is a heuristic method using a multilevel strategy, but it turns out to be very fast and to deliver solutions that are close to optimal