A. Murat Tuncer

Accumulation of heavy metals with water quality parameters in Kızılırmak River Basin (Delice River) in Turkey

Kızılırmak River has been used as Ankara’s drinking water source for approximately 1.5xa0years. Therefore, this region’s water, sediment, and fish samples are measured for detecting the heavy metals. This is important for the current situation as well as the future in terms of potential impact. The amount of heavy metals in drinking water should be within the limited values; otherwise, the accumulation of heavy metals will cause many problems to living organisms. Especially high levels of arsenic, cadmium, nickel, mercury, etc. are very dangerous to freshwater ecosystems as for human if the water is being use as drinking water. In this study, water, sediment samples, muscle, and gills of three fish species (Capoeta tinca, Capoeta capoeta, Leuciscus cephalus) were analyzed for the presence of heavy metals such as (Al, Fe, As, Cd, Ni, Mn, Se, Si) to determine present accumulation levels and possible toxic effect. The accumulation pattern of heavy metals in the water, sediment, and fish tissue follows the sequence: Si > Fe > Al > Mn > As > Ni > Se > Cd, Fe > Al > Mn > Ni > As > Se > Cd, and Fe > Al > Mn > As > Ni > Si > Cd. In addition, the detected concentrations of heavy metals in the Kızılırmak and Delice Rivers are compared with other heavy metal studies in the other main rivers and lakes in Turkey.

Effects of G-CSF and high-dose methylprednisolone on peripheral stem cells, serum IL-3 levels and hematological parameters in acute lymphoblastic leukemia patients with neutropenia : a pilot study

Several agents, used either alone or in combination, have been shown to boost absolute numbers of PMLs and CD34+ stem cells in PB. In this study, we compared the effects of three different treatments, G-CSF, HDMP, and G-CSF + HDMP, for neutropenic patients (absolute PML count < 0.5 x 10(9)/l) who were on maintenance therapy for ALL with a control group who received no treatment. Hematological parameters, PB-CD34+33- and -CD34+ HLA-DR- stem cell numbers, and serum IL-3 levels were measured prior to, and a week after, the first day of treatment. WBC and absolute PML counts were significantly increased compared to pretreatment values in all treatment groups. However, peripheral CD34+ 33- and CD34+ HLA-DR stem cell numbers and serum IL-3 levels were increased significantly only in the G-CSF group. There was also a significant increase in serun IL-3 levels in the G-CSF + HDMP group. This study suggests that G-CSF may induce an increase in peripheral stem cell numbers, and that it supports hemopoietic recovery by increasing IL-3 in patients with chemotherapy-induced neutropenia.

Solution to Chaotic Situations in Higher Education: New Generation Universities as Intelligent Organizations

Higher education institutions have been affected by three major developments since 1980s: globalization, growing requirements to lifelong learning and fast and intense developments in information and communication technologies. In this chapter we focus on technology, chaos, new generation and how they interact each other. We try to answer the question of whether new generation universities as intelligent organizations could be a solution to the current chaotic situations of universities or not? New generation was born in a technological world and hence are substantially different from the generations before them. Now, in the twenty-first century, all organizations, whether it to be on the macro scale such as nations or the micro scale such as universities, are trying to find ways of overcoming the challenges created by the technological revolution. At the individual level, researchers, analysts, presidents alike try to create new solutions to deal with these challenges by multidimensional cooperation. The most important characteristic of new generation universities is that they are intelligent organizations. In this chapter, we discuss new generation universities as intelligent organizations on five dimensions as solution to cope with research and development challenges (1) Research and development; (2) teaching, virtualization, mobility; (3) professionalization; (4) organizational culture; (5) glocal citizenship; (6) publication level.

The importance of cell size and surface marker analysis in childhood acute myeloblastic leukemia

In order to evaluate the prognostic significance of cell size and surface marker expression, we evaluated 33 children with newly diagnosed acute myeloblastic leukemia by flow cytometry. We determined: the percentage of small, middle and large cells; large to small cell ratios (LS); large plus middle to small cell ratios (LMS); the percentage of surface markers expressed by each group of cell; the ratios of surface marker percentages expressed by the large blasts to that expressed by small blasts (LS for surface markers); and large plus middle blasts to that by small blasts (LMS for surface markers). For early prognosis, patients who could and could not achieve remission (n = 23 and 10) and for late prognosis, the patients who deceased or relapsed within the first 12 months of the treatment (n = 24) and who survived for more than 12 months (n = 9) were compared, in two classifications. CD3 percentages of the small cells of alive patients were significantly higher than that of dead or relapsed patients. LMS for CD3 and CD20 and LS for CD20 were higher in dead relapsed patients than that of alive patients. The total percentage of CD14 was significantly higher in dead relapsed patients than it was in the alive patients and CD3 was significantly higher in the group of patients who achieved remission than that of the patients who could not achieve remission. It was striking that, expression of CD3, CD7, CD22, CD33, CD14, CD15, CD34 increased or decreased as to cell size, whatever the prognosis. CD10, CD20 and CD13 were expressed on the large cells of the patients who could not achieve remission or died relapsed. We showed that, the blast cell size, individually does not have any prognostic significance in childhood AML and the prognostic significance of surface markers not only depends on their presence or absence but also on their relative configuration of expression by the blasts with different size.