Category: Sci/Tech

Turkey defends Internet filtering plans

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Turkey’s government has defended a new regulation that will filter the Internet and restrict access to websites that show pornography, bomb-making and violent content.

Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc said Tuesday that among websites the government wants restricted are also those “explaining how to kill your wife.”

Critics say the new regulation, set to come into effect in August, amounts to more censorship in an already heavy-handed effort to control information.

via Turkey defends Internet filtering plans – seattlepi.com.

June 1, 2011
Armenian pupils to represent Turkey

Armenian pupils to represent Turkey

According to Hürriyet Daily, Ferikoy Armenian school team, Turkey, won the Mind Lab intellectual contest finals on May 14, with the best 16 school teams of Turkey participating.

The Armenian pupils who won the contest will participate in the 6th International Mind Lab Olympiad to be hosted by Portugal from June 14 to 16, representing Turkey. They will compete with pupils of their age from all over the world.

Source: Panorama.am

via Armenian pupils to represent Turkey – Society – Panorama | Armenian news.

May 29, 2011
Asses’ milk helps you lose weight, research finds

Cleopatra famously bathed in it as part of her beauty regime. But now a study claims that asses’ milk could be a good way to lose weight and protect your heart.

Richard Alleyne

By Richard Alleyne, Science Correspondent in Istanbul

Researchers have found that milk from donkeys, which was still being drunk in Victorian times, contains less fat and is more nutritious than cow’s milk.

They also found that it be a natural protection to the heart as it contains omega three and six fatty acids, similar to fish oil, which reduce cholesterol.

As it is also much closer to human milk it could be used in young children who are allergic to normal dairy products.

High levels of calcium that make it good for your bones add to its health giving properties.

The study at the University of Naples, Italy, compared the effect of donkey milk compared to cow’s milk in diet and health.

In experiments, they found that the cow’s milk and donkey milk provided the same amount of energy but that the latter caused more weight gain as it raised metabolism.

Rodents that were given the donkey milk also showed lower levels of triglycerides, unhealthy fats that affect the heart, and less stress on the metabolic system.

The study, which was presented at the European Congress on Obesity in Istanbul, concluded that its “consumption should be encouraged”.

Earlier research has shown that it could even be better than semi-skimmed, soya or formula milk, especially in young children as it contains high levels of calcium for bones.

Its make up is very similar to human breast milk and because it is low in proteins it can be used in young children who are allergic to proteins in cows’ milk.

via Asses’ milk helps you lose weight, research finds – Telegraph.

May 28, 2011
Peak Games raises $5M for social gaming

May 25, 2011 | Dean Takahashi

Turkish game publisher Peak Games has raised $5 million to make social games for emerging markets.

The deal shows that investors are looking beyond established markets to emerging countries where social games are still catching on. Peak Games, which has more than 10 million monthly active users on Facebook, is targeting its games at Turkey, the Middle East and North Africa.

The investment comes from Earlybird Venture Capital, an early-stage venture capital firm based in Munich, Germany.

Sidar Sahin, chief executive of the game company in Istanbul, said in an interview that it hopes to expand its roster of social games into markets such as Brazil and the broader Middle East region.

“We believe the next big Facebook games will come from an emerging market,” Sahin said.

While other companies try a one-size-fits-all approach for international markets, Peak Games focuses on making local versions of games that are culturally relevant to the people in the region. That’s key to getting a higher monetization than normal for an emerging market, said Rina Onur, co-founder and chief strategy officer.

Michael Pachter, analyst for Wedbush Morgan, said Peak Games shows that the social gaming market is a global one and that it may already own a leadership position in markets such as Turkey, the Middle East and North Africa.

Sahin founded the company in October, 2010, and it already has 50 employees and 10 games. The company has 10 million monthly active users playing traditional Turkish and Arabic card and board games on Facebook.

Onur said the company’s method is to understand its audience and make games directly for them. She noted that Turkey is the fourth-largest market for Facebook, with more than 28 million users. The number of Facebook users in the broader region grew 78 percent from a year ago.The company says it can reach as many as 56 million Facebook users now and expects that to grow to 250 million by 2015.

Previously, Peak Games raised $2.5 million from Hummingbird Ventures and serial business angels Evren Ucok and Demet Mutlu, bringing its total fundraising to date to $7.5 million in six months.

On a daily basis, 2 million people play the company’s games across five time zones, four continents, and five languages. The titles include Okey, Okey Plus, Poker Star, Komşu Şehir, Komşu Kabile, İkon Kız (FabGirl), Bizim Dünya, Komşu Çiftlik and Petiler. Okey, a card-based game, has more than 4.5 million monthly active users.

The company develops its own games and has also partnered with several leading social game developers in the West, including The Broth and MagnetJoy.

Rivals include Zynga, Disney-Playdom and EA-Playfish, as well regional players such as Brazil-focused firms Mentez and Vostu

via Peak Games raises $5M for social gaming | VentureBeat.

May 26, 2011
Turkey to partner with Sikorsky to export choppers to countries in region

Turkey will become an important hub for producing and exporting choppers in the near future, Ministry of Defense officials told the Anatolia news agency on Wednesday.

Sikorsky’s Blackhawk S-70i model is likely to be the kind of helicopter Turkey and the American aerospace company will export.

Sikorsky’s Blackhawk S-70i model is likely to be the kind of helicopter Turkey and the American aerospace company will export.

The source said that Turkey and American company Sikorsky will produce choppers in Turkey and start exports as soon as possible to third countries. He noted that Turkey aims to acquire know-how in the defense field with this project in order to make the country a potential helicopter production hub.

Defense Minister Vecdi Gönül announced on April 21 that Sikorsky had won a $3.5 billion deal to sell 109 choppers to Turkey. Under the agreement, part of those 109 choppers would be produced in Turkey. According to details Gönül shared with the media at that time, the Sikorsky helicopters to be produced in Turkey would be designed specifically for Turkey’s needs in the 10-ton category, each with a capacity to carry 18 passengers. The choppers will be produced according to a 10-year plan and used for multiple purposes, from defense to firefighting. The state-owned Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI) is the main contracting party for the production of certain parts.

The source mentioned that, besides the agreement to sell helicopters to Turkey, Sikorsky agreed to export at least 200 choppers produced in Turkey to its customers around the world. The official underlined that Turkey had acquired an important opportunity for the transfer of know-how in defense technology from the United States with this agreement. “Soon or later, Turkey will become an important center for producing and exporting these helicopters,” officials said. According to the agreement, local companies in Turkey will produce the transmission, engine, software, avionic and optical systems, flight remote systems and the landing gear of the helicopters.

A leap forward in Turkish defense industry

While opening the country’s defense industry to the world, Turkey has placed greater importance on its national defense industry in the past few years than it has in the history of the republic.

As the infrastructure of its defense sector improved, the country began designing and producing its own defense products using only domestic resources. The 10th International Defense Industry Fair (IDEF’11), which was recently held in İstanbul with the participation of 575 domestic and foreign companies from 44 countries, was a recent opportunity to observe the transformation the Turkish defense industry has undergone in the past few years. Turkey introduced a number of firsts in its defense industry at this fair to attract the attention of foreign customers. Turkey’s first domestically built warship, the Heybeliada, Turkey’s first national tank, the Altay, Turkey’s first guided bomb, produced by Turkish Mechanical and Chemical Industry Corporation (MKEK) and developed by the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK), as well as its first domestically produced rifles were among the products exhibited at IDEF’11.

In other figures that further highlight the increased activity in the Turkish defense industry, defense product manufacturers earned total revenue of $2.73 billion and spent $666 million in research and development activities last year, up from $2.31 billion and $505 million, respectively, in 2009. In February, a Turkish defense company secured a $600 million deal –Turkey’s largest single sale in defense industry exports — in Malaysia.

In line with these developments, international companies have placed the Turkish defense industry on the top of their potential partner countries. The head of French missile and missile systems producer MBDA said in a previous statement they see potential for cooperation with Turkey’s strong defense industry. Antoine Bouvier, CEO of MBDA, told the Anatolia news agency that Turkey’s defense industry has made strategic investments in the recent past and that his company could be involved in more partnerships with companies from Turkey. “We see strong potential in Turkey for cooperation in various fields of the defense industry,” Bouvier said.

via Turkey to partner with Sikorsky to export choppers to countries in region.

May 26, 2011
Cellphones harm memory, pregnancy, brain cells–in rats, mice & rabbits. Maybe.

By Melissa Healy, Los Angeles Times/ For the Booster Shots Blog

May 23, 2011, 7:38 p.m.

Steady exposure to the electromagnetic radiation given off by cellphones during use may disrupt fetal development, disturb memory and weaken the barrier that protects the brain from environmental toxins, says a welter of new research being presented this week in Istanbul, Turkey.

The authors of the studies, published in the past two years, highly preliminary and conducted on rabbits, mice and rats, suggested that the non-ionizing radiation emitted by cellphones and the base stations that broadcast cellphone signals may fundamentally damage cells by means other than the heat that they generate. That is a highly controversial assertion, because scientists have asserted that the only kind of radiation that causes cancer and DNA damage is ionizing radiation such as that emitted by nuclear material. The microwave radiation emitted by working cellphones simply does not have the power to scramble DNA or disrupt cell function, they say.

The studies were conducted by scientists working under the umbrella of the Environmental Health Trust, a nonprofit organization devoted to identifying and controlling environmental health risks. The EHT has been especially active in showing that non-ionizing radiation emitted by cellphones is damaging to humans.

In one of the studies reviewed in Istanbul, mice exposed to two hours per day of radio frequency emissions from a transmitting cellphone were less able to to learn and rerun mazes, suggesting that cellphone radiation might impair spatial memory — the kind of recall that helps us navigate from place to place. A second study found that the barrier between bloodstream and brain that protects the latter from most toxins became more permeable when male rats (although not females) were exposed to 20 minutes of radio frequency radiation such as that emitted by cellphones. A third study found that exposing pregnant and non-pregnant rabbits to six minutes a day of electromagnetic radiation led to the release of “secondary messengers, such as free radicals,” which in turn destroyed DNA and fat molecules. (The babies born after such exposures, however, were fine).

The Istanbul meeting, convened by the Environmental Health Trust and Gazi University, comes a day before the International Agency for Research on Cancer — an agency of the World Health Organization — is to meet to decide whether research has demonstrated that radio frequency electromagnetic fields emitted by mobile phones are potentially cancer-causing. The agency has overseen a 10-year, $14-million epidemiological study called the Interphone Study Group, an international consortium of researchers that set out to determine whether cellphone use is linked to increased rates of gliomas or meningiomas (both forms of brain cancer), parotid gland cancer or cancer of the acoustic nerve.

The Interphone Study Group’s findings, released in May 2010, failed to establish that mobile phone use raises an individual’s risk for any of the cancers. But after the international effort turned up a troubling but ambiguous signal that brain cancer was more common among the heaviest cellphone users they surveyed, the group decided further research on the subject was “merited.”

via Cellphones harm memory, pregnancy, brain cells–in rats, mice & rabbits. Maybe. – latimes.com.

May 25, 2011