Graduate School of Informatics

Graduate School of Informatics /Information Systems

In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science Güliz Bulut will defend his thesis.

Title: AUTOMATIC INFORMATION COVERAGE ASSESSMENT OF DIABETES WEBSITES

Date: 3rd September 2018

Time: 10:00 AM

Place: A-212

Thesis Abstract :People frequently access Internet to look up health information. However, as the quality of websites may vary significantly, the treatment recommendations and guidelines provided by some of these web sites may be fallacious. Consequently, patients may unfollow their current treatments suggested by their doctors or start following unfounded treatments. In this thesis, an automated approach is presented to estimate information coverage of websites. The approach is based on a domain-dependent standard knowledge base (KB) and enhanced by open source resources. Elastic net regularized regression is used to construct a model for estimation. As a case study, corpus of type 2 diabetes related web pages is selected. “Standards of Medical Care in Diabetes” published by American Diabetes Association is processed to obtain factual data about treatment of type 2 diabetes. This standard serves as a detailed knowledge base on type 2 diabetes treatment and enables to produce a trustworthy input for evaluation. In light of this KB, the corpus of type 2 diabetes related web pages is processed to retrieve their coverage of factual information. It is observed that, extracting significant terms from a domain-dependent knowledge base provide a basis to measure information coverage of a source

Title: TRANSFER AND MAINTENANCE EFFECTS OF N-BACK WORKING MEMORY TRAINING IN INTERPRETING STUDENTS: A BEHAVIOURAL AND OPTICAL BRAIN IMAGING STUDY

PhD Candidate: Asiye Öztürk

Program: Cognitive Science Department 

Date: 29 August 13:00

Place: Conference Hall-01

Abstract:Working memory training is seen as an effective tool for enhancing performance during a variety of high level cognitive tasks for different groups such as children, older people, and individuals with cognitive problems as well as practitioners of highly cognitive demanding professions. Although there has been some controversy regarding the efficiency of working memory training interventions, it has been shown that n-back working memory training results in improvements in working memory capacity as well as in reasoning skills which points out that it yields both near and far transfer effects. Considering the crucial role of working memory in interpreting profession, this thesis targeted interpreting students in order to investigate transfer and maintenance effects of n-back working memory training through a comprehensive analysis of its near, moderate and far transfer effects as well as possible transfer to consecutive interpreting. Combining behavioural data collection methods and fNIRS (functional near-infrared spectroscopy) as an optical brain imaging technique, the thesis was designed as a longitudinal study in which participants completed a series of tests before and after the training as well as three months after the completion of the training sessions. Compared to an active control group, n-back group had larger performance gains in near and far transfer tasks, and more importantly in consecutive interpreting scores as a result of enhanced working memory capacity, suggesting that common working memory processes are employed in the tasks. Significant neural activity patterns observed in prefrontal cortex reflect the shared cognitive processes of n-back training and consecutive interpreting, which is supported by performance improvements in consecutive interpreting and increased neural efficiency. Therefore, it is believed that findings of this thesis will have original contributions to the field.

Graduate School of Informatics /Cognitive Sciences

In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science Ayşenur Hülagü will defend his thesis.

Title: THE FUNCTIONALITY OF NON-VISUAL GAZE PATTERNS DURING REMEMBERING OF THE PAST AND IMAGINING THE FUTURE: EVIDENCE FROM EYE TRACKING

Date: 2nd August 2018

Time: 13:00 AM

Place: B-116

Thesis Abstract :Future-oriented thoughts play an important role in human mental life. They can be more or less abstract, including themes such as work, relationships, leisure activities and errands, and serve functions such as action planning, decision making and emotion regulation (d’Argembeau et al., 2011). Future-oriented thoughts share some properties with past memories. Both can comprise episodic as well as semantic aspects. Episodic cognition is the capacity for mental time travel and allows a person to relive and prelive events of their own life (Suddendorf et al., 2009) whereas semantic cognition is related to general world knowledge. According to Szpunar et al. (2014), there seems to be a whole continuum of episodic and semantic forms as well as different modes of future thinking such as simulation, prediction, intention, and planning, serving different functions for adaptive behavior. An important but as yet unresolved empirical issue is how one can distinguish episodic and semantic forms of past and future cognition, respectively. Micic et al. (2010) revealed in three experiments that non-visual gaze patterns occur frequently during mental activities, in particular during long-term memory searches. Non-visual eye-movements may therefore indicate mental simulation during remembering the past, which is characteristic of episodic cognition. In this study eye-tracking methodology will be used to find out whether non-visual gaze patterns occur during thinking of the past and into the future and, if so, whether they may be diagnostic of episodic as compared to semantic thinking.

As a result of the interviews for Bioinformatics Master Program 2018-2019 Fall Semester, the names of students who are accepted into the programs are listed below.

* For our accepted students, there will be an orientation meeting before the interactive registration. The place and date of the meeting will be anounced later in our web page.

İrem Aksoy Cankur (Deficiency Program)

Sıla Çınar (Deficiency Program)

Fatma Nisa Esen (Deficiency Program)

Fatma Ülkem Kasapoğlu (Deficiency Program)

Ayşenur Okatan (Deficiency Program)

Sevda Rafatov (Deficiency Program)

As a result of the interviews for Medical Informatics Department M.S. and Ph.D. Programs 2018-2019 Fall Semester, the names of students who are accepted into the programs are listed below.

* For our accepted students, there will be an orientation meeting before the interactive registration. The place and date of the meeting will be anounced later in our web page.

PhD.

Sinem Demirkaya Budak (Deficiency Program)

Babür Erdem (Deficiency Program)

Selin Girgin (Deficiency Program)

Serkan Karadağ (Deficiency Program)

Celal Oğuz Özdemir (Deficiency Program)

Alperen Taciroğlu

Bengü Ruken Yavuz

Master

Nebi Cihan Boydaş (Deficiency Program)

Ayşe Özdemir (Deficiency Program)

Sevda Rafatov (Deficiency Program)

Mehmet Tunahan Sarıoğlu (Deficiency Program)

Engin Tekin (Deficiency Program)

As a result of the interviews for Cyber Security Department Non-Thesis Master Program 2018-2019 Fall Semester, the names of students who are accepted into the programs are listed below.

Students who are accepted into non-thesis M.S. Program and Academic Deficiency Program

The names of students who are accepted into the Software Management program are listed below for 2018-2019 Fall Semester:

Students who are accepted into non-thesis M.S. Program and Academic Deficiency Program

As a result of the interviews for Information Systems M.S. and PhD. Program 2018-2019 Fall Semester, the names of students who are accepted into the program are listed below.

MSc with Thesis

MSc with Non-Thesis

PhD. on Bsc.

PhD. 

As a result of the interviews for Cognitive Science Department M.S. and Ph.D. Programs 2018-2019 Fall Semester, the names of students who are accepted into the programs are listed below.

* For our accepted students, there will be an orientation meeting before the interactive registration. The place and date of the meeting will be anounced later in our web page.

Students who are accepted into non-thesis M.S. Program and Academic Deficiency Program

Students who are accepted into Ph.D. Program

As a result of the interviews for Multimedia Informatics M.S. Program 2018-2019 Fall Semester, the names of students who are accepted into the program are listed below.

* For our accepted students, there will be an orientation meeting before the interactive registration. The place and date of the meeting will be anounced later in our web page.