The objectives of this study were to evaluate patients’ attitudes towards hypertension treatment according to the chronic care model and to assess the implementation of hypertension clinical guidelines in family medicine. The cross-sectional study was carried out in two randomly selected primary health care centers (Bijeljina and Prijedor), respectively in Bosnia and Herzegovina, covering the period between March and April 2016. This study sample consists of 791 respondents with hypertension purposing to measure specific actions and quality of care for hypertensive patients. The Patient Assessment of Chronic Illness Care (PACIC) was used. Treatment for the indicators of hypertension was assessed by analyzing patients' medical charts according to the recommendations of clinical guidelines. More than half of the evaluated indicators of treatment for hypertension were documented in medical charts of 84.07% patients. The average overall PACIC score was 4.18 (SD 0.59), being an average of the separate scores of 4.19 (SD 0.57) in men and 4.17 (SD 0.60) in women. Subscale means of PACIC were as follows: patient activation 4.33, delivery system design 4.36; goal setting 4.03; problem solving 4.51; follow-up and co-ordination 3.67. No statistically significant correlations in the overall score and subscale scores were found by demographic characteristics. Non-smokers had a significantly higher overall score compared to smokers (p = 0.001). As implementation of the guidelines became stronger, the reported PACIC scores rose. Continuing the education of patients in order to achieve better health care outcomes is imperative.

Abstract A silica-based inorganic sorbent was synthesized by the thermal decomposition of ammonium heptamolybdate on silica and applied for the preconcentration and simultaneous determination of Cd, Co, Cr, Cu, Fe, Mn, Ni, and Pb in river water samples using a column system with flame atomic absorption spectrometry. Attenuated total reflection-Fourier transformation infrared spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy, and electron dispersive spectroscopy were used for sorbent characterization. The effects of pH, sample volume, eluent type, eluent concentration, eluent volume, sample flow rate, and matrix ions (Al, Bi, Ca, Mg, and Zn) on the recovery of the metals in model solutions were investigated. The adsorption capacities (µmol g−1) of SiO2-MoO3 were 88.96 (Cd), 169.69 (Co), 153.85 (Cr), 188.88 (Cu), 179.05 (Fe), 163.81 (Mn), 136.31 (Ni), and 38.61 (Pb). The detection limits of the method were 9.09, 10.82, 10.77, 49.57, 31.64, 6.40, 8.86, 19.15 µg L−1 for Cd, Co, Cr, Cu, Fe, Mn, Ni, and Pb, respectively, with a preconcentration factor of 25. The developed method was used for the determination of the target metals in real samples and the recoveries for spiked samples were found to be from 91.2% to 102.9%.

The prime significance of species belonging to the genus Culicoides Latreille, 1809 (Diptera: Ceratopogonidae) is their ability to transmit viruses such as bluetongue virus (BTV) to wild and domestic ruminants. Prior to 1998, BTV was considered exotic in Europe, but according to recent history of its outbreaks, it has become endemic in southern and eastern European countries circulating beyond its expected historical limits, into the Balkan region. The wind-borne long-distance dispersal of Culicoides spp. over water bodies and local spreading between farms emphasize the necessity of filling in the information gaps regarding vector species distribution. In most Balkan countries, data on Culicoides fauna and species distribution are lacking, or information is old and scarce. During this study, 8586 specimens belonging to 41 species were collected. We present the first faunistic data on Culicoides species in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM), Kosovo, Montenegro and Serbia. For other countries (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria and Croatia), all historical records were compiled for the first time and then expanded with our findings to various extents. In all countries, confirmed or suspected BTV vector species belonging to the subgenera Avaritia and Culicoides were collected. The total number of species sampled during our field collections was 20 in Bosnia and Herzegovina (15 new records), 10 in Bulgaria (2 new records), 10 in Croatia (5 new records), 13 in FYROM, 9 in Kosovo, 15 in Montenegro, and 28 in Serbia. Of these, 14 species were registered for the first time in this part of the Balkans. This paper provides the first data about Culicoides fauna in FYROM, Kosovo, Montenegro and Serbia, as well as new records and an update on the checklists for Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria and Croatia. These findings provide preliminary insights into the routes of BTV introduction and spreading within the Balkans, and present a valuable contribution to further research related to Culicoides-borne diseases in Europe.

A power uprate of the nuclear power plant will affect some systems, which will be exposed to new loads, transients and operating parameters. After defining of new loads, transients and operating conditions, work to qualify a system begins with modelling of this pipe system as well as modelling of supports which are active in the system. Pipe supports in pipe model are defined depending on the supports function and also their correct stiffness. After analysis is done, reaction forces are obtained in points where pipe supports are defined in the pipe model. Reaction forces from pipestress analysis, in the points where pipe supports are defined, becomes attacking forces in pipe supports analysis. A complete calculation of support is explained as well as the way to use required standard. The calculation includes stiffness calculation, calculation of membrane stress and membrane plus bending stress. In order to qualify the support a limit load analysis is performed. Finally, it is showed that pipe support could be qualified according to the standard ASME NF-3200. This paper describes use of software Pipestress and Ansys in stress analysis of piping systems and pipe supports.

The exploration of renewable energy sources and energy efficiency are becoming crucial for putting climate change under control. Thanks to large investments in development of technology for transformation of wind energy to useful form of energy, wind energy became one of the most sustainable energy source. According to the fact that horizontal wind turbines (HAWT) are more common, vertical wind turbines (VAWT) are gradually becoming more interesting because of less direction of wind sensitivity that those turbines have. Geometric parameters of rotor, such as aero foil shape, pitch angle, chord length, rotor radius, blades length, number of blades, significantly influence to the helical VAWT rotor performances. In order to be able to do influence analysis of those parameters to the helical VAWT performances, it is necessary to perform huge number of expensive experimental testing. In order to determine optimal number of needed experiments, special attention has to be put on experimental research designing. With correct design of experiment, expenses of helical VAWT rotor development are significantly increased, by using computer simulations tools that are very reliable in those experiment designs and computer simulations can replace preliminary experiment researches. In this paper, by using SolidWorks Flow Simulation tool, the research of influence of pitch angle, chord length, rotor radius and rotor height on the rotor torque, was performed. Design of Experiments and Optimization option, enables defining and performing huge number of computer simulated experiments, where chosen variables are changing their values in the plan range, defined with minimum and maximum, and all according to perform optimal study for more than one variable. Testing on rotor with three blades of NACA 0018 aero profile, with 5 m/s wind velocity, was simulated and presented in this paper.

3D printing technology is leading to great advancements and expanding the limits in many engineering fields and education. Geometrical accuracy of the parts produced by 3D printing could be a very important characteristic for some purposes. In this paper the geometrical accuracy of parts produced by FDM (Fused Deposition Modelling) 3D printing technology is investigated. For this purpose a benchmark part is designed and size, form, orientation and location accuracy of different features on it are evaluated using coordinate measuring machine. Two different FDM desktop 3D printers are used for the benchmark part printing.

The research-driven laboratory experiment described herein has at its core the individual development of students, combining core subject matter with the opportunity to explore, in a research environment, areas outside of traditional curricula; however, it maintains the pedagogical training for an undergraduate major degree in chemistry and sciences in general. The laboratory can feasibly be implemented in high schools to expose students to an engaging and intellectually fulfilling aspect of chemistry early in their career. This seven-week project is based on the growth and study of crystals and encourages students, from the outset, to conceive, propose, design, plan and carry out their own research on chemicals and conditions of their own choosing. The wide array of laboratory equipment, analytical instrumentation and techniques that the students are potentially exposed to, from micropipettes and optical microscopes to scanning electron microscopy and powder X-ray diffraction, puts these projects on a par with senior capstone research projects. The feedback from the students for the seven years this project has been in operation is almost unanimous in enthusiasm and praise.

Abstract This article investigates a new current control strategy for grid connected doubly fed induction generators (DFIG) under unbalanced grid voltage conditions. DFIG dynamic model is represented in synchronously rotating symmetrical component dq frames of references. A proportional controller which feed forwards estimated disturbance terms is proposed for power control in unbalanced voltage conditions to accomplish positive sequence power demand and also to dissipate negative sequence components which cause double frequency oscillations in power. DFIG parameters are not required to be known since it estimates the machine parameters relevant nonlinear terms with a disturbance observer (DOB). The novel controller structure is implemented by using dSPACE ds1103 digital controller which controls a 1.1 kW DFIG experimental setup.

Motivation: Discovering the evolution of a tumor may help identify driver mutations and provide a more comprehensive view on the history of the tumor. Recent studies have tackled this problem using multiple samples sequenced from a tumor, and due to clinical implications, this has attracted great interest. However, such samples usually mix several distinct tumor subclones, which confounds the discovery of the tumor phylogeny. Results: We study a natural problem formulation requiring to decompose the tumor samples into several subclones with the objective of forming a minimum perfect phylogeny. We propose an Integer Linear Programming formulation for it, and implement it into a method called MIPUP. We tested the ability of MIPUP and of four popular tools LICHeE, AncesTree, CITUP, Treeomics to reconstruct the tumor phylogeny. On simulated data, MIPUP shows up to a 34% improvement under the ancestor‐descendant relations metric. On four real datasets, MIPUP's reconstructions proved to be generally more faithful than those of LICHeE. Availability and implementation: MIPUP is available at https://github.com/zhero9/MIPUP as open source. Supplementary information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.