The AMY2B gene encodes pancreatic amylase, a critical enzyme for starch digestion. While previous studies have examined AMY2B copy number variation (CNV) in domestic and some wild animals, less is known about wild carnivores inhabiting regions with limited anthropogenic starch exposure. We analyzed blood samples for serum amylase activity and copy number variation in AMY2B gene from 8 wolves (Canis lupus), 11 brown bears (Ursus arctos), and 3 red foxes (Vulpes vulpes) from Bosnia and Herzegovina. AMY2B gene copy number was assessed using droplet digital PCR (ddPCR), and serum amylase activity and glucose levels were quantified. Although the number of fox samples was limited, foxes and wolves consistently harbored two copies of AMY2B, while brown bears exhibited higher CNV (3.67–8.40, mean 5.88). Serum amylase activity was highest in foxes, moderate in wolves, and variable but lower in bears. Despite differences in AMY2B copy number and serum amylase activity, circulating glucose concentrations did not differ significantly among species. Our findings suggest that variation in AMY2B copy number among wild carnivores may be associated with species-specific evolutionary histories and dietary adaptations, providing insight into genomic mechanisms underlying carbohydrate utilization in natural populations.

The purpose of this paper is to develop machine learning (ML) models for prediction of surface roughness and cutting forces of 42CrMo4 steel in hard turning process. A full factorial experimental design with four input parameters: cutting speed, depth of cut, feed and insert radius was used to develop ML models for predicting the performance of turning process. The backward linear regression, random forest (RF) and XGBoost were used. Also, for the linear regression model and for the best RF and XGBoost model five-fold cross validation was done to confirm that the models provide reliable generalization estimates rather than performance dependent on a single data split. The XGBoost model demonstrates the most compact clustering of residuals with fewer large errors, indicating better overall stability and predictive consistency compared to the linear regression and RF models. The application of different ML methods with monitoring of standardized residuals on unseen data confirms the reliability of the developed models in real application conditions. This study provides a structured and comparative modeling framework across multiple output variables, where backward linear regression, RF and XGBoost models were developed. Several architectural and hyperparameter variations of the RF and XGBoost models were evaluated to ensure optimal configuration for each output. Also, variable influence was examined through permutation feature importance for ensemble models and statistical significance testing for linear regression, enabling interpretation and discussion of the influence of input variables on selected outputs.

A proper diet that provides balanced nutrients according to species, breed, age, sex, and purpose is essential for achieving optimal animal growth, development, and physiological function. In relation to this statement, the aim of this study was to quantitatively assess the effects of different dietary regimens on the morphometric characteristics of the small intestine of late puerperal rats, with a emphasis on the duodenum and jejunum. The research included measurements of the height and width of intestinal villi, and the depth of crypts, in order to determine specific morphological changes associated with the influence of the diet. The experiment involved 18 adult rats divided into three groups: the first group received standard commercial rat feed (control group), the second group was fed bakery products, and the third group was given a diet consisting exclusively of meat. Over a 49-day period, body weight, organ weights, and intestinal segment lengths were measured. Histological analyses of duodenum and jejunum samples were performed, alongside detailed morphometric assessment of the intestinal mucosa. Significant alterations in intestinal villi were observed. In the duodenum, the greatest villus height and width, as well as crypt depth, were observed in rats that had meat-based diet. Similarly, in the jejunum, rats from the same group exhibited the greatest villus height and crypt depth, while the mean measure of the villus width was almost identical to mean measure in rats that were fed with commercial food. These findings suggest that diet composition profoundly influences intestinal architecture and function. Overall, the study emphasizes the critical role of balanced nutrition in maintaining gastrointestinal health, systemic homeostasis, and optimal development, not only in laboratory animals but also in a broader veterinary and biomedical context.

Acidic wastewater generated during sulfuric acid leaching of reduced tionite within the EUROTITAN process was treated using three low-cost adsorbents: fly ash, bentonite, and red mud slag. Tionite is a solid residue originating from the sulfate route of TiO2 production, whereas the investigated wastewater is a secondary acidic stream produced during hydrometallurgical treatment of reduced tionite. The initial wastewater was characterized by low pH and elevated concentrations of Fe, Al, Ti, B, Cu, Mn, Pb, Cr, and Li. Batch adsorption experiments were carried out by varying contact time from 4 to 24 h and adsorbent dosage from 5 to 15 g/L. The results showed distinct selectivity depending on adsorbent type and solution chemistry. Bentonite exhibited the most stable performance, achieving nearly complete removal of Pb, Cu, B, and Li, while Fe and Al were only partially removed and Ti removal remained limited. Fly ash showed high affinity toward Pb and Cu, but its performance was strongly affected by dosage and contact time. Red mud slag demonstrated excellent Pb removal, high Cu removal, and time- and dosage-dependent Ti removal, although partial dissolution of Fe- and Al-bearing phases occurred under strongly acidic conditions. Overall, the results confirm that industrial by-products and natural clay materials can contribute to partial purification of acidic metallurgical wastewater, while additional neutralization or polishing steps are required for complete treatment.

Purpose: To review the potential relationship between vitamin B12 and colorectal cancer, with particular emphasis on its involvement in one-carbon metabolism and epigenetic regulation.Methods: This narrative review summarises current evidence on the biological mechanisms and epidemiological associations linking vitamin B12 status with colorectal cancer risk.Results: Available evidence indicates a biologically plausible but epidemiologically inconsistent relationship between vitamin B12 and colorectal cancer. Studies assessing dietary intake frequently report an inverse association, particularly for rectal cancer, whereas analyses of circulating vitamin B12 concentrations yield heterogeneous, and often conflicting findings.Conclusion: Vitamin B12 does not act as an isolated protective factor but as part of a complex metabolic and nutritional system. Although its potential protective role in colorectal carcinogenesis is biologically based, it remains insufficiently confirmed, emphasising the need for further integrated research.

Inertial motion sensing plays an important role in real-time human–machine interaction applications, including interactive systems, virtual environments, and motion-controlled interfaces, where low latency and accurate motion tracking are important. This paper presents the design and implementation of an embedded inertial sensing system that acquires, processes, and transmits motion data from consumer-grade inertial measurement units (IMUs) under real-time constraints. Rather than introducing a new sensor fusion algorithm, the contribution lies in a systems-oriented methodology comprising a predictive clock-advancement mechanism that prevents cumulative timing drift, an automated matrix-based calibration procedure for hardware-agnostic deployment, and a benchmarking framework for end-to-end real-time system evaluation. Implemented on a resource-constrained embedded platform, the framework integrates sensor acquisition, lightweight filtering, sensor fusion, and real-time orientation estimation within a single processing pipeline. Motion data are transmitted using the CemuHook UDP (User Datagram Protocol) motion protocol (DSU) to demonstrate interoperability with existing motion-control software while maintaining low end-to-end latency and stable throughput. Experimental results show stable sampling frequency, low communication latency, accurate orientation estimation, and low computational overhead. The presented system provides an embedded inertial sensing framework that can be adapted to a range of real-time motion-sensing applications beyond the communication protocol used for demonstration.

Introductory programming courses remain challenging for many students, which motivates educators to adopt gamification to enhance engagement and learning. More recent work explores adaptive gamification, where game elements and task flow are tailored to individual learners. A key requirement for such adaptation is the ability to predict student success on upcoming tasks. Using a dataset of task attempts collected from a gamified introductory programming activity, we examine the predictive value of coarse-grained knowledge components, task difficulty, and dynamic student performance features. The results show that behavioral signals are substantially more informative than task properties: a student's prior success history and their position within a lesson sequence are the strongest predictors of future correctness. Although advanced topics such as file handling and structures are associated with increased failure rates, their impact is secondary to students' evolving engagement patterns. These findings highlight the role of momentum and practice effects in gamified programming environments and suggest that adaptive systems should prioritize real-time learner progression when providing instructional support. Dataset and the code for our experiments is available at https://osf.io/cajby.

This thesis addresses the challenge of supporting novice programmers in the GenAI era without undermining fundamental skill acquisition. Using digital activity logs, self-reported characteristics, and GenAI usage patterns from an introductory programming course, it develops models that capture student learning behaviors. These models are then used to create personalized AI-based intervention strategies that guide students toward independent problem-solving.

Multimodal emotion and sentiment recognition is commonly addressed by early fusion, which concatenates modalities before classification, or late fusion, which combines independently trained unimodal predictors. Early fusion can be accurate but monolithic, while late fusion is modular but may lose cross-modal interactions. This paper revisits XAI-guided adaptive fusion (\xgaf), a tree-based mixture of unimodal and cross-modal experts whose sample-level weights are derived from TreeSHAP attribution magnitudes. We focus on the effect of SHAP attribution reduction when experts have unequal feature dimensionalities. In this setting, mean-abs and median-abs reductions can suppress high-dimensional cross-modal experts, whereas sum-abs reduction preserves total attribution mass. On MELD 7-class emotion recognition, sum-abs \xgaf{} nearly matches early fusion across three face-sequence aggregators; the Transformer variant reaches 0.5983 \wf{}, compared with 0.6018 for early fusion and 0.4598 for probability-average late fusion. McNemar testing shows no significant difference between sum-abs \xgaf{} and early fusion on MELD ($p=1.000$), while \xgaf{} remains significantly better than late fusion ($p<0.0001$). On CMU-MOSEI 3-class sentiment recognition, sum-abs \xgaf{} reaches 0.6519 \wf{}, slightly exceeding early fusion (0.6485) and late fusion (0.5696). Ablation studies show that the main gain comes from adding cross-modal experts, especially the trimodal expert, rather than from complex per-sample routing. Diagnostics further show that mean-abs and median-abs weights are nearly uniform, while sum-abs weights concentrate on the trimodal expert. Thus, the main contribution is a transparent empirical analysis of how SHAP reduction, expert dimensionality, and cross-modal expert design affect modular multimodal fusion.

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The Carpathian water buffalo represents a locally adapted but under-characterized genetic group found in Central and Eastern Europe. Genome-wide information on its genetic diversity, population structure and potential adaptive variation remains limited, particularly for Hungarian and Romanian populations. In this study, we genotyped 263 water buffalo individuals from Hungary and Romania using the GeneSeek Genomic Profiler Bovine 100K SNP array to evaluate genetic diversity, the population structure, runs of homozygosity (ROH) and candidate genomic regions showing signatures of selection. After quality control, 214 Hungarian and 33 Romanian individuals and 6605 SNPs were retained for downstream analyses. Both populations showed moderate genetic diversity, with the Romanian population displaying higher minor allele frequency, observed heterozygosity and nucleotide diversity than the Hungarian population. In contrast, the Hungarian buffalo showed a higher burden of runs of homozygosity, including a larger proportion of long ROH segments, suggesting stronger recent autozygosity or a more restricted breeding structure. Principal component analysis and neighbor-joining phylogeny separated the two populations, whereas ADMIXTURE indicated shared ancestry and a within-population substructure rather than complete population-specific differentiation. The integration of standardized FST, absolute allele-frequency differences and ROH islands identified six candidate regions under a positive signature of selection in each population. These regions harbored genes previously associated with immune response, reproduction, growth, milk production and thermotolerance in bovids. Functional enrichment was limited, with significant Gene Ontology terms detected only in the Hungarian candidate regions. Our results provide a regional genomic baseline for the future conservation and breeding management of Carpathian water buffalo. Given the use of a cross-species SNP array and unequal sample sizes, the candidate selection signals should be interpreted as hypothesis-generating and warrant validation using higher-density buffalo-specific genomic data.

Background/Objectives: Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) is a complex myocardial disease in which structural remodeling extends beyond conventional parameters such as maximal wall thickness (MWT). This study aimed to evaluate isoperimetric analysis as a geometry-based approach for characterizing left ventricular (LV) morphology and to compare its performance with fractal analysis in distinguishing HCM from non-HCM subjects. Methods: This retrospective study included 120 subjects (60 HCM and 60 controls) who underwent clinically indicated CMR. Endocardial contours were delineated on short-axis cine images at end-diastole. The isoperimetric index (IPI), cavity-corrected IPI (CC-IPI), and fractal dimension (FD) were calculated. Group comparisons, correlations, and receiver operating characteristic analyses were performed. Results: Patients with HCM showed significantly higher IPI and CC-IPI values than controls (p < 0.001), including in sex-stratified analyses. IPI and CC-IPI correlated strongly with MWT (r = 0.867) and LV mass index (r = 0.807 and 0.803, respectively), moderately with native T1 (r = 0.567), and weakly with end-diastolic volume index (r = 0.256 and 0.253, respectively) and stroke volume (r = 0.237 and 0.229, respectively). No association was observed with late gadolinium enhancement. IPI and CC-IPI showed a strong linear correlation (R2 = 0.997), with both indices demonstrating high discriminatory performance (AUC = 1.00). Conclusions: HCM is associated with notable alterations in LV endocardial geometry beyond myocardial hypertrophy alone. IPI and CC-IPI provide simple, size-normalized, and physiologically interpretable morphologic descriptors that complement conventional CMR parameters and FD-based contour complexity analysis.

We present a technically natural microscopic realization of apparent phantom dark energy based on an axion coupled to $N$ copies of two-flavor dark QCD related by a $\mathbb{Z}_N$ exchange symmetry. The symmetry exponentially suppresses the axion vacuum potential, naturally generating the dark-energy scale, while reheating into a single dark sector induces a controlled breaking of $\mathbb{Z}_N$ that simultaneously restores the physical axion periodicity, sets the dark-matter abundance, and drives the late-time dark-energy dynamics. The selected sector contains dark-pion dark matter, whose finite density initially traps the axion away from its vacuum minimum. As the Universe expands and the dark-pion density redshifts away, the axion is released and rolls on the reheating-induced vacuum potential, generating an effective phantom crossing without tuned cancellations. We identify a viable parameter region that simultaneously reproduces the observed dark-matter relic abundance and dark-energy scale, satisfies cosmological and astrophysical constraints, and qualitatively reproduces the DESI preference for an evolving dark-energy equation of state.

Rad analizira usklađenost Zakona o zaštiti ličnih podataka iz 2025. (ZZLP) s Općom uredbom o zaštiti podataka (GDPR), kao i njegov odnos prema općim pravilima odštetnog prava sadržanim u Zakonu o obligacionim odnosima (ZOO). Iako ZZLP kao lex specialis i lex posterior ima prednost u primjeni, ispitano je da li određene nedorečenosti ili kolizije između ova dva zakona podrivaju temeljni cilj GDPR-a – osiguranje djelotvornih, odvraćajućih i razmjernih pravnih sredstava. Utvrđen je visok stepen normativne usklađenosti ZZLP-a s GDPR-om, naročito u pogledu administrativnih i krivičnih sankcija. Međutim, značajna odstupanja uočena su u oblasti naknade štete. Sudska praksa Suda Evropske unije potvrđuje da ne postoji pravilo de minimis, da šteta mora biti stvarna i dokaziva, te da naknada ima isključivo kompenzacijski karakter. Budući da je BiH kandidat za članstvo u EU, ovi standardi su relevantni i za domaće sudove. Ključni problem identificiran je u pitanju uzročnosti i štete, koju ZZLP ne uređuje detaljno, pa se primjenjuju pravila ZOO. Dokazivanje uzročnosti može otežati ostvarivanje zaštite, zbog čega se razmatra mogućnost kvalifikacije obrade podataka kao opasne djelatnosti, čime bi se teret dokazivanja prebacio na obrađivača. Posebno su analizirana pitanja materijalne i nematerijalne štete. Kod materijalne štete, mali iznosi mogu obeshrabriti oštećene, pa se razmatra potencijalna uloga nominalne ili kaznene štete, uprkos restriktivnom stavu Suda EU. Najveći nesklad između ZZLP/GDPR i ZOO odnosi se na nematerijalnu štetu. Dok GDPR i ZZLP dopuštaju naknadu neovisno o intenzitetu i trajanju povrede, ZOO polazi od subjektivnog koncepta koji zahtijeva određeni prag bola ili straha. Stoga se predlaže de lege ferenda prelazak na objektivnu koncepciju nematerijalne štete, prema kojoj sama povreda ličnih prava predstavlja štetu, dok bi intenzitet bola i straha služio samo za određivanje visine naknade. Također su kritizirane procesne manjkavosti, uključujući izostanak alternativne mjesne nadležnosti i nedostatak odredbi o kolektivnoj zaštiti prava. Ključne riječi: zaštita osobnih podataka, GDPR, naknada štete za povredu osobnih podataka, nematerijalna šteta, kolektivna zaštita.