The increasing body of research is focused on developing tools and applications that aid the learning process of children with or without disabilities. However, learning by gaming is still not recognized by formal educational systems. The author believes that the application of this approach is particularly slow at the level of primary and secondary education in countries with low and middle income, such as Bosnia and Herzegovina. Integrating serious games into curricula in these contexts could significantly benefit the students, as well as the community in general. This work, therefore, promotes technology as one of the crucial educational and pedagogical components. It provides an overview of selected educational games created for pre-school and elementary school children with specific learning intentions revolving around alphabet, colours and elementary science. A pilot study was performed with neuro-typical and neuro-atypical children, and professionals working at an NGO ``EDUS - Education for All''. The findings show that both students and instructors have a positive attitude towards the game design and logic, and more importantly, towards the technology itself. In the end, we believe that the games presented in this paper can be valuable resources for teachers, as well as for children and parents.

SUMMARY – The purpose of the study was to assess the level of serum malondialdehyde (MDA) concentration and its association with the stage and histopathologic sizes of colorectal cancer (CRC). One hundred and two patients having undergone surgical treatment of CRC between January 2014 and December 2015 were included in this cross-sectional study. The patients were divided into four groups (stage I-IV) according to the TNM classification. Control group included 30 subjects with no signs of malignancy and inflammatory diseases. In each patient, preoperative blood samples were obtained for determination of MDA concentration by ELISA immunoassay. Serum levels of MDA were progressively increased in patients with CRC, reaching the highest value in the fourth stage of CRC. Serum concentrations of MDA were significantly higher in pT4 group as compared with pT3 and pT2 groups of CRC patients (p<0.01). Significantly higher levels of MDA were found in the N1 and N2 groups of CRC patients as compared with N0 group, as well as in patients with metastatic disease as compared with those without metastasis (p<0.001). In conclusion, the progression of CRC is associated with a significant increase in serum MDA levels.

We examine a machine learning approach for detecting common Class and Method level code smells (Data Class and God Class, Feature Envy and Long Method). The focus of the work is selection of reduced set of features that will achieve high classification accuracy. The proposed features may be used by the developers to develop better quality software since the selected features focus on the most critical parts of the code that is responsible for creation of common code smells. We obtained a high accuracy results for all four code smells using the selected features: 98.57% for Data Class, 97.86% for God Class, 99.67% for Feature Envy, and 99.76% for Long Method.

Abstract The micromechanics of kink band formation in open-hole fibre composites under compressive loading is described. The objective being the development of a methodology for designing of structural components with open-holes. Our results explain why failure by kink band formation propagates from the edges of an open-hole in a direction almost perpendicular to the loading direction and why the 0 degree plies govern the compressive failure of an open-hole laminate. The proposed design methodology accounts for the microstructure, including the fibre/matrix bonding, and the nonlinear behaviour of the constituents, enabling it to prevent local failure at the hole edges, or global failure, by kink banding of a laminate containing stress concentrations.

While the increasing penetration of renewable energy resources (RERs) into the electric power grid reduces greenhouse gas emissions, it may drive the grid’s parts towards the “weak grid” conditions under which grid instability may occur due to small disturbances leading to voltage oscillations affecting the operation of renewable generation plants. To avoid such grid weak issues, one effective way is to reinforce the power grid by updating its components. A cost-effective grid reinforcement needs the information of critical components whose updates can significantly strengthen the power grid for renewable energy operation. In this paper, we study the identification of such critical components by the impact analysis of power network structure on grid strength. It is shown that the critical network components are shared by critical transmission paths between renewable energy resources and synchronous generation resources in a power grid. Moreover, critical transmission paths can be identified with the network structure information represented in node admittance matrix and node impedance matrix. Numerical results are demonstrated in the IEEE-9 bus and IEEE-39 bus systems.

Cystatin F is an inhibitor of cysteine peptidases expressed solely in immune cells. It is the only type II cystatin able to enter endosomal/lysosomal vesicles and to regulate directly the activity of intracellular cysteine cathepsins. Its expression in promonocytic U937 and promyeloblastic HL-60 cells is highly upregulated but, after differentiation with phorbol 12-myristate 13-acetate - PMA, its levels drop significantly. In contrast, the activities of intracellular cysteine cathepsins C, L and S are higher in differentiated cells than in non-differentiated ones due, presumably, to the lower inhibitory capacity of cystatin F. Using immunofluorescence confocal microscopy, proximity ligation assay and co-immunoprecipitation, cathepsins C, L and S were confirmed to be the main interacting partners of cystatin F in U937 and HL-60 cells. The promoter region of the cystatin F gene, CST7, contains a unique binding site for transcription factor C/EBP α, one of the main myeloid differentiation instructors. Using the chromatin immunoprecipitation assay, C/EBP α was shown to bind to CST7 gene in U937 cells. Following cell differentiation with PMA, the binding of C/EBP α was decreased significantly. The protein level of C/EBP α was also significantly lower in differentiated than in non-differentiated cells. It was shown that, during monocyte to macrophage differentiation, the endosomal/lysosomal proteolytic activity can be regulated by cystatin F whose expression is under the control of transcriptional factor C/EBP α.

Multicenter clinical trials that use positron emission tomography (PET) imaging frequently rely on stable bias in imaging biomarkers to assess drug effectiveness. Many well-documented factors cause variability in PET intensity values. Two of the largest scanner-dependent errors are scanner calibration and reconstructed image resolution variations. For clinical trials, an increase in measurement error significantly increases the number of patient scans needed. We aim to provide a robust quality assurance system using portable PET/computed tomography “pocket” phantoms and automated image analysis algorithms with the goal of reducing PET measurement variability. A set of the “pocket” phantoms was scanned with patients, affixed to the underside of a patient bed. Our software analyzed the obtained images and estimated the image parameters. The analysis consisted of 2 steps, automated phantom detection and estimation of PET image resolution and global bias. Performance of the algorithm was tested under variations in image bias, resolution, noise, and errors in the expected sphere size. A web-based application was implemented to deploy the image analysis pipeline in a cloud-based infrastructure to support multicenter data acquisition, under Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model. The automated detection algorithm localized the phantom reliably. Simulation results showed stable behavior when image properties and input parameters were varied. The PET “pocket” phantom has the potential to reduce and/or check for standardized uptake value measurement errors.

INTRODUCTION In spring 2017, the first case of bovine anthrax in 20 years in Switzerland occurred in the canton of Jura. Carcasses of anthrax-deceased animals should not be opened due to the formation of highly resistant spores bearing the risk of environmental contamination and aerosolization. Nevertheless, in the course of this local outbreak, one sick cow from the affected farm, whose blood repeatedly tested negative for Bacillus anthracis, was necropsied after euthanasia under special biosafety precautions at the Institute of Animal Pathology, Vetsuisse-Faculty Bern. Necropsy revealed ventral edema, fetal death, necro-hemorrhagic placentitis and necrotizing iliac lymphadenitis. Bacillus anthracis was isolated only from placenta and altered lymph node. The biosafety measures taken during and after necropsy prevented a contamination of the necropsy environment, which was proven with bacteriological swabs. This case shows that anthrax may elicit unspecific symptoms mimicking other diseases, and veterinarians must be aware of these non-septicemic cases.

We provide an ultraviolet (UV) complete model for the R(D(∗)) anomalies, in which the additional contribution to semi-tauonic b → c transitions arises from decay to a right-handed sterile neutrino via exchange of a TeV-scale SU(2)L singlet W′. The model is based on an extension of the Standard Model (SM) hypercharge group, U(1)Y , to the SU(2)V × U(1)′ gauge group, containing several pairs of heavy vector-like fermions. We present a comprehensive phenomenological survey of the model, ranging from the low-energy flavor physics, direct searches at the LHC, to neutrino physics and cosmology. We show that, while the W′ and Z′-induced constraints are important, it is possible to find parameter space naturally consistent with all the available data. The sterile neutrino sector also offers rich phenomenology, including possibilities for measurable dark radiation, gamma ray signals, and displaced decays at colliders.

To compare the trajectories of motor and cognitive decline in older adults who progress to dementia with the trajectories of those who do not. To evaluate the added value of measuring motor and cognitive decline longitudinally versus cross‐sectionally for predicting dementia.