Inflation refers to an ongoing and overall comprehensive increase in the overall level of goods and services price in the economy. Today, inflation, which is attempted to be kept under control by central banks or, in the same way, whose price stability is attempted, consists of continuous price changes that occur in all the goods and services used by the consumers. Undoubtedly, in terms of economy, in addition to the realized inflation, inflation expectations are also gaining importance. This situation requires forecasting the future rates of inflation. Therefore, reliable forecasting of the future rates of inflation in a country will determine the policies to be applied by the decision-makers in the economy. The aim of this study is to predict inflation in the next period based on the consumer price index (CPI) data with two alternative techniques and to examine the predictive performance of these two techniques comparatively. Thus, the first of the two main objectives of the study are to forecast the future rates of inflation with two alternative techniques, while the second is to compare the two techniques with respect to statistical and econometric criteria and determine which technique performs better in comparison. In this context, the 9-month inflation in April-December 2019 was forecast by Box-Jenkins (ARIMA) models and Artificial Neural Networks (ANN), using the CPI data which consist of 207 data from January 2002 to March 2019 and the predictive performance of both techniques was examined comparatively. It was observed that the results obtained from both techniques were close to each other.

Purpose -The aim of this paper is to discuss the reasons behind the attractiveness of shopping malls for young consumers in Turkey and then to determine the attractiveness factors of malls for this segment from the consumers' perspective.Design/methodology/approach -The study was carried out through a survey of 621 young consumers (aged between 12-24) in three out-of-town selected shopping malls in Bursa, Turkey. For a general evaluation of the data, factor analysis is applied. It is considered as a valuable tool to reduce dimension and group different characteristics of young consumers' mall usage.Findings -The study reveals five mall attractiveness factors from the young Turkish consumers' perspective: retail environment, comfort conditions, socializing in a secure environment, accessibility, leisure. The importance of all these factors for this segment are evaluated with a comparative analysis with the findings of many other studies, analyzing the similar issues in relation to different cultures.Research limitations/implications -The sampling frame for this research was limited to young consumers in Bursa, Turkey. Study findings, although interesting, are clearly not generalizable to all populations of young consumers or even all Turkish young consumers.Practical implications -Identifying mall attractiveness factors for young consumers gives a better understanding about patronage motives than when it is applied to the market as a whole.Originality/value -This is one of the first studies to provide an insight of mall attractiveness factors as identified by young Turkish consumers from the viewpoint of an urban studies researcher, rather than marketing researchers.

This study examines the environmental attitudes of Turkish pre-service teachers of German as a foreign language using the German version of The Revised New Ecological Paradigm Scale (RNEP) and aims to compare New Ecological Paradigm (NEP) level of participants before and after a larger research project that uses documentary movies as a language teaching material. The comparisons were made according to demographic variables such as gender, age, education and language level when determining the NEP levels. A total of 170 pre-service German teachers (147 females, 23 males; age 17-32) contributed to the study. The findings from the present study indicate that environmental education is the most consistent factor in its relationship to levels of environmental concern, which was supported by the previous literature. The results suggest that trans-disciplinary environmental education is prior and necessary for individuals to increase their awareness and to develop abilities to reflect on their environmental responsibilities. The results of the present study also evidence that the use of environmental documentary movies have an important potential to foster environmental awareness of pre-service teachers.

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Increasing contamination of water resources in the world and our country and decreasing water quality over time, not having met the objectives of utilization of water resources; it has increased the importance of water management. The monitoring of the water resources and evaluation of these monitoring results have given direction to the studies' outcome in order to control factors that pollute water resources and reduce water quality. Nilüfer Creek is very important for both being a source of drinking and potable water and a discharge area for wastewaters for the city of Bursa. In this study, the results of the analysis belonging to the period between 2002-2010 which are taken from 15 points by General Directorate of Bursa Water and Sewerage Administration (BUWSA) were evaluated in relation to water quality of the Nilüfer Creek. Non-parametric methods were used in the evaluation of the water quality data due to the lack of normally distributed data. The identification of the best represented parameters of the water quality was provided by applying Principal Component Analysis. According to results of the analysis, the best representative 9 parameters from the 19 water quality parameters were defined as parameters of BOD 5 , COD, TSS, T.Fe, Zn, conductivity, NO 2 -N, Ni and NO 3 -N that taking part of the first two components.