This study evaluated the effects of different seed priming treatments on the ex situ propagation of the Balkan endemic species Silene sendtneri Boiss. Seeds were subjected to hydropriming, silicic acid, salicylic acid, proline and combined salicylic acid–proline treatments prior to in vitro cultivation. Following aseptic germination, seedlings were transferred to Murashige and Skoog medium supplemented with 1.0 mg L−1 BA and 0.2 mg L−1 IBA, and their shoot multiplication response, rooting, and acclimatization success were assessed. Seed priming significantly influenced subsequent propagation stages. Plantlets derived from seeds treated with 0.5 mM salicylic acid and 10 mM proline + 0.5 mM salicylic acid exhibited the highest multiplication rates, superior morphological quality, increased rooting frequency, and the greatest acclimatization success. Hydropriming and higher proline concentrations generally resulted in reduced propagation performance. The results indicate that seed priming can influence multiple stages of the ex situ propagation process and may represent a simple and practical addition to micropropagation protocols aimed at improving conservation-oriented plant production of endemic species.

Magnesium is an essential mineral involved in numerous physiological and neurobiological processes. However, the biological effects of distinct Mg forms remain insufficiently characterized. This study compared the systemic and neurobiological effects of a multi-form Mg supplement (Magnesium Breakthrough™, Mg BT™, BIOptimizers, Reno, NV, USA) with commonly used single-form Mg compounds in a rat model. Sixty-day-old male Wistar rats were assigned to a control group or to groups receiving Mg BT™ or individual Mg compounds (oxide, citrate or glycinate). Treatments were administered by gastric gavage for 30 days at 50 mg/kg/day of elemental Mg. A comprehensive panel of endpoints was evaluated, including Mg distribution in biological fluids and tissues, metabolic markers, glucose tolerance, synaptic protein expression (synaptophysin, PSD95, phospho-PSD95, drebrin), cortical gene expression (NR2B, BDNF), behavioral outcomes, and liver and kidney histology. Magnesium from the multi-form supplement increased serum Mg without affecting glucose homeostasis and modulated proteins involved in synaptic plasticity, accompanied by mild anxiolytic-like effects without changes in locomotion. No adverse histological alterations were observed, while preserved renal CLDN-19 expression indicated maintained tubular integrity. These findings suggest that supplementation with the multi-form Mg BT™ supplement influences multiple evaluated biological domains, including systemic, behavioral and molecular parameters, with effects comparable to those observed with individual magnesium compounds under the experimental conditions applied.

Background: Childhood nutritional status is a key indicator of growth and development and is influenced by biological, environmental, and behavioral factors. Understanding regional and urban–rural differences is crucial for targeted public health interventions. Aim: This study aimed to examine regional and urban–rural differences in the nutritional status of first-grade children in Montenegro, using Body Mass Index (BMI) and Waist-toHeight Ratio (WHtR) as primary indicators. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted among 286 first-grade children aged 6–7 years from northern and central regions of Montenegro. Anthropometric measurements, including body height, body mass, and waist circumference, were collected following ISAK standards. Methods: Body Mass Index (BMI) and Waist-to-Height Ratio (WHtR) were evaluated in 286 first-grade schoolchildren (135 boys, 151 girls) from Northern and Central Montenegro, stratified by region and urban-rural environment. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and the Chi-square test (p<0.05). Results: No significant regional or urban-rural differences were found in BMI distribution (p>0.05). However, boys showed a high combined overweight/obesity prevalence in Northern (36.6%) and Central (30.2%) regions. For WHtR, a highly significant regional divergence was found among girls (p<0.001); girls from the Central region demonstrated a critically higher prevalence of abdominal obesity (32.8%) compared to Northern peers (8.3%). Urban-rural environment had no significant impact (p>0.05). Conclusions: These findings suggest relatively homogeneous patterns of nutritional status among first-grade children in Montenegro, regardless of region or settlement type. Nevertheless, the presence of overweight and obesity highlights the importance of early monitoring and preventive interventions. School- and community-based programs promoting healthy nutrition and physical activity are essential to mitigate childhood obesity and support long-term health outcomes.

Background: Noninvasive ventilation (NIV) is a cornerstone treatment for hypercapnic respiratory failure in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). The aim of this study was to evaluate the impact of selected comorbidities on the effectiveness of NIV in these patients, and to compare clinical characteristics and outcomes between continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) and bilevel positive airway pressure (BiPAP) modalities.Materials and methods: This prospective, randomized, single-center study included 80 patients with hypercapnic respiratory failure due to COPD, randomized 1:1 to CPAP or BiPAP. Demographic and clinical data, comorbidities, vital signs, and arterial blood gas parameters were recorded at admission and during NIV. The primary outcome was pCO₂ reduction at the end of treatment compared with baseline.Results: Arterial hypertension significantly enhanced pCO₂ reduction with CPAP, but not with BiPAP. Systolic and mean arterial pressure independently predicted the magnitude of pCO₂ reduction, regardless of NIV modality. Patients treated with BiPAP more frequently had decompensated cor pulmonale and severe pulmonary hypertension, while pneumonia was more common in the CPAP group. NIV modality itself was not an independent predictor of pCO₂ reduction.Conclusion: Systemic hemodynamic status and arterial hypertension influence NIV effectiveness in hypercapnic COPD. The cardiovascular status should be considered alongside respiratory parameters when selecting the NIV strategy.

Metabolic syndrome (MetS) is a complex and heterogeneous condition characterized by the coexistence of obesity, type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM), hypertension, chronic low-grade inflammation, and metabolic dysfunction. Increasing evidence suggests that the gut microbiota plays a central role in the development and progression of MetS by influencing host metabolism, intestinal barrier integrity, immune activation, endocrine signaling, and vascular homeostasis. This narrative review summarizes current evidence regarding gut microbiota alterations across major obesity-related metabolic phenotypes, including obesity alone, obesity complicated by T2DM, and obesity associated with hypertension. Obesity is generally characterized by reduced microbial diversity, depletion of beneficial taxa such as Faecalibacterium prausnitzii and Akkermansia muciniphila, impaired short-chain fatty acid (SCFA) signaling, increased intestinal permeability, and metabolic endotoxemia. The coexistence of T2DM is associated with a more pronounced depletion of butyrate-producing bacteria, altered bile acid metabolism, impaired incretin signaling, and enhanced inflammatory activation that may contribute to insulin resistance and hyperglycemia. In hypertensive obesity, gut dysbiosis appears to preferentially involve disturbances within the gut–vascular axis, including reduced SCFA-producing taxa, increased trimethylamine N-oxide production, endothelial dysfunction, oxidative stress, and vascular inflammation. Although microbial signatures partially overlap among metabolic phenotypes, functional alterations in microbial metabolites and host–microbiota interactions may better explain disease heterogeneity than isolated taxonomic changes. Current evidence supports the potential role of microbiota-targeted interventions and integrated multi-omics approaches in future precision medicine strategies for cardiometabolic disease prevention and management.

AIM To evaluate the association between intravaginal therapy with carboxymethyl-β-glucan (CMBG) and polycarbophil and cytological regression of atypical squamous cells of undetermined significance (ASCUS) and cervical intraepithelial neoplasia grade 1 (CIN 1), compared with standard follow-up. METHODS This prospective observational controlled study included 80 women aged 23-49 years with ASCUS or CIN 1. Forty patients received intravaginal CMBG/polycarbophil spray, and 40 were managed with standard follow-up. Allocation was based on clinical assessment and therapy availability, without randomisation. The primary outcome was cytological normalisation after 12 months, based on Papanicolaou smear results. RESULTS After 12 months, abnormal cytology was observed in 4 (10.0%) patients in the treatment group and 18 (45.0%) in the control group (RR 0.22; 95% CI 0.08-0.60; p < 0.001). Normal cytology was observed in 36 (90.0%) and 22 (55.0%) patients, respectively (p < 0.001). Human papillomavirus (HPV) persistence was detected in 2 (5.0%) patients in the treatment group and 5 (12.5%) in the control group (p = 0.432). CONCLUSION Intravaginal CMBG/polycarbophil therapy was associated with a higher rate of cytological normalisation than standard follow-up in women with ASCUS and CIN 1.

This paper extends the post-factual polity framework into AI infrastructure and public administration systems theory. It asks how proprietary analytical platforms alter the state’s capacity to produce, audit, and contest the categories through which risk, threat, eligibility, fraud, and deviance become actionable. Using a structured documentary case analysis of Palantir Technologies across United States agencies and allied jurisdictions, the study applies three diagnostic markers—categorical opacity, contestation displacement, and substitutive dependency—to examine the migration of sovereign classification into vendor-controlled infrastructure. The research gap was identified through an integrative review of public administration, AI governance, algorithmic accountability, systems theory, surveillance studies, and Palantir scholarship. The analysis distinguishes AI epistemic capture from ordinary IT vendor lock-in: the former concerns not merely technical dependence or high exit costs but the loss of public capacity to define and contest consequential administrative categories. The paper argues that administrative law, procurement reform, and algorithmic impact assessment remain necessary but insufficient when agencies lack substitutive capacity. It specifies untangling as a systems-level task involving capacity reconstruction, categorical repatriation, contractual restructuring, and procurement reorientation. Hybrid intelligence is advanced as a post-untangling architecture that embeds machine processing within contestable, accountable, and legally governed human judgment. The contribution is diagnostic, methodological, and design-oriented for AI systems governance.

Explainable AI (XAI) is essential for building trust in Deep Neural Networks (DNNs). SHAP (SHapley Additive exPlanations) is a well‐known XAI technique for attributing feature importance, but it struggles with exponential computational complexity as the number of features increases. Various approximation methods have been suggested, but they compromise SHAP's theoretical principles. We introduce AA‐SHAP, a novel approach that derives superpixel affinity from the explained model's internals to identify and group superpixels. AA‐SHAP constructs a relevance‐consistency affinity between superpixel interdependence, enabling much faster SHAP calculations on a reduced set of meta‐superpixels while outperforming previous methods in explanation faithfulness. Exact Shapley values are computed on the reduced meta‐superpixel game, preserving all axiomatic guarantees within the aggregated feature space. Evaluated across multiple datasets, both convolutional and transformer classification architectures show that AA‐SHAP produces more faithful attributions than competing methods while improving computational speed and maintaining SHAP's theoretical axioms. The source code is available at https://github.com/vhasic/AA‐SHAP.

The mechanisms linking chronic hyperglycemia to intestinal inflammation and epithelial dysfunction remain incompletely understood, highlighting an important gap in our understanding of diabetes-associated gastrointestinal pathology. In this study, we investigated the effects of sustained hyperglycemia on intestinal inflammation, endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress, and autophagy in a translational porcine model of diabetes. Diabetes was induced in Yucatan mini pigs using a high-fat, high-carbohydrate/fructose diet (HFHFD) followed by streptozotocin administration. Intestinal tissues from the terminal ileum and sigmoid colon were analyzed using histological evaluation, quantitative real-time PCR, and immunohistochemistry. Histological analysis revealed structural alterations in diabetic animals, including villous degeneration, crypt depletion, goblet-cell loss, and increased inflammatory-cell infiltration. Gene expression analysis revealed significant upregulation of inflammatory mediators (NF-κB, TNF-α, IL-6, IL-1β), inflammasome components (NLRP3), and macrophage markers (CD68, CD86, CD163). In parallel, ER stress-related genes (ORMDL3, ATF6) and autophagy-associated genes (NOD2, ULK1, ATG4a) were significantly elevated in diabetic pigs. At the protein level, increased expression of ER stress markers was confirmed in both intestinal regions, while autophagy-related proteins showed less consistent changes and did not fully reflect the observed transcriptional patterns, suggesting a potential disconnect between transcriptional activation and downstream autophagy-related protein expression under diabetic conditions. Chronic hyperglycemia is associated with intestinal inflammation and disruption of cellular stress pathways, including ER stress and autophagy, in a porcine model. These findings provide mechanistic insight into how chronic hyperglycemia contributes to intestinal dysfunction through coordinated alterations in inflammatory signaling, ER stress, and autophagy pathways, identifying these processes as potential targets for therapeutic intervention in diabetes-associated gastrointestinal disease.

AIM To determine the proportion of patients with recorded psychiatric rehospitalisation within one year and examine crude associations with antipsychotic treatment patterns and documented medication adherence. METHODS This retrospective cohort study included 87 patients with International Classification of Diseases, 10th Revision schizophrenia (F20.0-F20.9) hospitalised in Brčko District during 2014-2018 and with documented 12-month follow-up. Relapse was defined as recorded psychiatric rehospitalisation due to worsening psychotic symptoms. A separate audit described discharge treatment in 236 hospitalisation records. Exact tests and crude odds ratios (ORs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were calculated. RESULTS Recorded rehospitalisation occurred in 32/87 patients (36.8%). First-generation antipsychotic exposure (OR 2.11, 95% CI 0.74-6.03; p = 0.215) and antipsychotic polypharmacy (OR 2.16, 95% CI 0.82-5.65; p = 0.164) were not significantly associated with rehospitalisation. Medication non-adherence (OR 11.33, 95% CI 3.58-35.87; p < 0.001) and documented non-cooperation (OR 10.00, 95% CI 3.16-31.62; p < 0.001) showed strong crude associations. In the audit, treatment was identifiable in 183/236 records; polypharmacy was documented in 73.8% and long-acting injectable/depot use in 32.8%. CONCLUSION Documented non-adherence and non-cooperation were strongly associated with recorded rehospitalisation. The findings support structured adherence assessment and post-discharge follow-up but do not establish causal effects of antipsychotic class or regimen complexity.