Activityscape Mapping: Consumer Activity Systems as Service Context

Activity systems are the cognitively linked groups of activities that consumers carry out as a part of their daily life. The aim of this paper is to investigate how consumers experience value through their activities, and how services fit into the context of activity systems. A new technique for illustrating consumers’ activity systems is introduced. The technique consists of identifying a consumer’s activities through an interview, then quantitatively measuring how the consumer evaluates the identified activities on three dimensions: Experienced benefits, sacrifices and frequency. This information is used to create a graphical representation of the consumer’s activity system, an “activityscape map”. Activity systems work as infrastructure for the individual consumer’s value experience. The paper contributes to value and service literature, where there currently are no clearly described standardized techniques for visually mapping out individual consumer activity. Existing approaches are service- or relationship focused, and are mostly used to identify activities, not to understand them. The activityscape representation provides an overview of consumers’ perceptions of their activity patterns and the position of one or several services in this pattern. Comparing different consumers’ activityscapes, it shows the differences between consumers' activity structures, and provides insight into how services are used to create value within them. The paper is conceptual; an empirical illustration is used to indicate the potential in further empirical studies. The technique can be used by businesses to understand contexts for service use, which may uncover potential for business reconfiguration and customer segmentation.

Diagnosis of dominant forcing factors for large-scale vertical velocities during active and break phases of the monsoon

An attempt to diagnose the dominant forcings which drive the large-scale vertical velocities over the monsoon region has been made by computing the forcings like diabatic heating fields,etc. and the large-scale vertical velocities driven by these forcings for the contrasting periods of active and break monsoon situations; in order to understand the rainfall variability associated with them. Computation of diabatic heating fields show us that among different components of diabatic heating it is the convective heating that dominates at mid-tropospheric levels during an active monsoon period; whereas it is the sensible heating at the surface that is important during a break period. From vertical velocity calculations we infer that the prime differences in the large-scale vertical velocities seen throughout the depth of the atmosphere are due to the differences in the orders of convective heating; the maximum rate of latent heating being more than 10 degrees Kelvin per day during an active monsoon period; whereas during a break monsoon period it is of the order of 2 degrees Kelvin per day at mid-tropospheric levels. At low levels of the atmosphere, computations show that there is large-scale ascent occurring over a large spatial region, driven only by the dynamic forcing associated with vorticity and temperature advection during an active monsoon period. However, during a break monsoon period such large-scale spatial organization in rising motion is not seen. It is speculated that these differences in the low-level large-scale ascent might be causing differences in convective heating because the weaker the low level ascent, the lesser the convective instability which produces deep cumulus clouds and hence lesser the associated latent heat release. The forcings due to other components of diabatic heating, namely, the sensible heating and long wave radiative cooling do not influence the large-scale vertical velocities significantly.

A Cellular Array for Multivalued Logic Functions

An algebraic generalization of the well-known binary q-function array to a multivalued q-function array is presented. It is possible to associate tree-structure realizations for binary q-functions and multivalued q-functions. Synthesis of multivalued functions using this array is very simple

Towards Multiculturalism in Turkish Public Service Broadcasting

The announcement of Turkey as a European Union (EU) candidate country in the Helsinki Summit (10, 11 December 1999) marked a distinct change of identity policy and attitudes towards its citizens. A result in the shift of mindset has been the launch of the first public service broadcasting TV channel for Kurdish people on the 1st of January 2009. TRT 6 (Şeş) broadcasting in unofficial Kurdish language is run by Turkish Radio and Television Corporation (TRT). The thesis attempts to elaborate on the discussions surrounding the launch of TRT 6, Turkey’s first public service broadcasting TV channel for its Kurdish citizens. The research aims at finding the discourses of multiculturalism and public service broadcasting through the mainstream Turkish newspapers, Cumhuriyet, Hurriyet, Sabah, Taraf and Zaman. The method used for the research is Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and the representative newspapers of the Turkish print media are under the question: How has the launch of TRT 6, as the first public service broadcasting channel of Turkey in Kurdish language, been discussed by Turkish daily newspapers in terms of multiculturalism and minority media? The most significant results of the research is that the concerning newspapers have mostly discussed the launch of TRT 6 in the same line with their political affiliation. Thus it is comprehensively concluded that the selected newspapers proved holding a high level of political parallelism, and low professionalism. However, it should be noted that Taraf differs itself from others while challenging the hegemonic discourses embedded in the articles of the other newspapers. Moreover, the study detected three types of discourses: Pro-multiculturalism discourse, Unification discourse, and Assimilation discourse. It can be concluded that in Turkey, media owners and even individual journalists have incentives to form ideological alliances with political parties, and media appears to be an instrument of power struggle. Today, Turkey seems to restore Kurdish identity in its identity policy and aims to proceed with the negotiation for membership of the European Union (EU). The country still strives to transform from the traditional nation-state to a multiethnic democratic state, with multiculturalism as a policy discussed throughout the two terms that the AKP government has been in power. However, this transformation is not an easy process because of the deep-rooted traditions of the nation-state structure that has also polarized the Turkish press.