Every ecosystem is a complex organization of carefully mixed life forms; a dynamic and particularly sensible system. Consequently, their progressive decline may accelerate climate change and vice versa, influencing flora and fauna composition and distribution, resulting in the loss of biodiversity. Climate changes effects are the principal topics of this volume. Written by internationally renowned contributors, Biodiversity loss in a changing planet offers attractive study cases focused on biodiversity evaluations and provisions in several different ecosystems, analysing the current life condition of many life forms, and covering very different biogeographic zones of the planet.

BackgroundSwallowing accelerometry has been suggested as a potential non-invasive tool for bedside dysphagia screening. Various vibratory signal features and complementary measurement modalities have been put forth in the literature for the potential discrimination between safe and unsafe swallowing. To date, automatic classification of swallowing accelerometry has exclusively involved a single-axis of vibration although a second axis is known to contain additional information about the nature of the swallow. Furthermore, the only published attempt at automatic classification in adult patients has been based on a small sample of swallowing vibrations.MethodsIn this paper, a large corpus of dual-axis accelerometric signals were collected from 30 older adults (aged 65.47 ± 13.4 years, 15 male) referred to videofluoroscopic examination on the suspicion of dysphagia. We invoked a reputation-based classifier combination to automatically categorize the dual-axis accelerometric signals into safe and unsafe swallows, as labeled via videofluoroscopic review. From these participants, a total of 224 swallowing samples were obtained, 164 of which were labeled as unsafe swallows (swallows where the bolus entered the airway) and 60 as safe swallows. Three separate support vector machine (SVM) classifiers and eight different features were selected for classification.ResultsWith selected time, frequency and information theoretic features, the reputation-based algorithm distinguished between safe and unsafe swallowing with promising accuracy (80.48 ± 5.0%), high sensitivity (97.1 ± 2%) and modest specificity (64 ± 8.8%). Interpretation of the most discriminatory features revealed that in general, unsafe swallows had lower mean vibration amplitude and faster autocorrelation decay, suggestive of decreased hyoid excursion and compromised coordination, respectively. Further, owing to its performance-based weighting of component classifiers, the static reputation-based algorithm outperformed the democratic majority voting algorithm on this clinical data set.ConclusionGiven its computational efficiency and high sensitivity, reputation-based classification of dual-axis accelerometry ought to be considered in future developments of a point-of-care swallow assessment where clinical informatics are desired.

Copyright © 2011 by Academy of Sciences and Arts of Bosnia and Herzegovina. E-mail for permission to publish: amabih@anubih.ba him an internationally acknowledged scholar. As Professor Kecmanovic authored or edited a great many widely read psychiatry textbooks he has contributed enormously to the education of medical students, psychiatric residents, psychiatrists, psychologists and psychiatric social workers in the former Yugoslavia in general and in the Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina in particular. Kecmanovic’s latest book is entitled Controversies and Dilemmas in Contemporary Psychiatry. As the title suggests, it deals with those topics in psychiatry that are debatable in the fi rst place. And there are many of them. As Kecmanovic put it, if we take all the dilemmas out of psychiatry there is not much psychiatry left . Kecmanovic does not take sides. He dissects arguments, casts light on the pros and cons. He explains how some dilemmas might be resolved, and why others are not likely to be resolved because the resolution of them is simply beyond the scope of psychiatry. Kecmanovic is focused on the most important and most intriguing questions that psychiatrists cannot help but confront – no matter whether they are more interested in conceptual issues or in day-to-day clinical practice. Indeed, most psychiatrists are not keen on discussing controversies and dilemmas in contemporary psychiatry because they believe that debating burning psychiatric questions unveils the weaknesses of psychiatry and thereby tarnishes the public image of psychiatry. In this book Kecmanovic forces psychiatrists to face up to the aspects of their job that are only apparently question-free. Th at is only one of the reasons why the book deserves their attention. Kecmanovic has chosen to discuss those subject-matters that, in his opinion, contain the main controversies and dilemmas in contemporary psychiatry, such as the defi nition of mental disorder, mental health, similarities and difDusan Kecmanovic is one of the most prominent psychiatrists in the former Yugoslavia. Before leaving Sarajevo in 1993 he was Professor of Psychiatry and Political Psychology at Sarajevo University, and a member of the Academy of Sciences and Arts of Bosnia and Herzegovina. His publications – 24 books and more than 250 papers (as the primary author) published by reputed publishers and in respected journals – made Acta Medica Academica 2011;40(1):195-196 DOI 10.5644/ama2006-124.27

Objective. Th e aim of this paper is to determine the concentration ofnitric oxide (NO) in the saliva of subjects resulting from the presenceof various metal restorative activities in the oral cavity. Patients andmethods. Th e research was conducted on 20 subjects (12 women and8 men), aged 18-30, with no metal fi llings in their oral cavity and 20subjects (11 women and 9 men) aged 18-30 with prosthetic and conservativework in their oral cavities made of various metals. Th e pHof the saliva was established by means of an “Orion” type pH meter atan optimal temperature of 250C. Th e concentration of NO was determinedby conversion of NO3-2 into NO2-2 with the help of elementaryzinc and then by colorimetric testing of the NO2-2 concentration bymeans of the Griess reagent. Results. Our results established that theconcentration of NO in patients with various metals (60.18±10.24) is33.7% higher, which is statistically insignifi cant, in relation to the controlgroup (45.01±6.28). Conclusion. Various metal restorative activitiesstemming from dentistry practice do not cause changes in the pHvalues of saliva and NO concentrations.

Coronary angiography is an invasive diagnostic procedure in which radiocontrast is injected into the coronary arteries under X-ray guidance in order to display the coronary anatomy and possible luminal obstruction. Despite the advances in other diagnostic methods, it remains to be "the golden standard" of coronary disease diagnostics. Although today the complication rate is far lower than previously, the possibility of complication still exists, and an invasive cardiologist must be able to complete the procedure flawlessly, and to competently deal with complications, should they occur. In order to be able to do that, he/she must master the proper techniques in performing the coronary angiography procedure, and be comfortable with all the available access-sites.

BackgroundThis study investigates the variations of Heart Rate Variability (HRV) due to a real-life stressor and proposes a classifier based on nonlinear features of HRV for automatic stress detection.Methods42 students volunteered to participate to the study about HRV and stress. For each student, two recordings were performed: one during an on-going university examination, assumed as a real-life stressor, and one after holidays. Nonlinear analysis of HRV was performed by using Poincaré Plot, Approximate Entropy, Correlation dimension, Detrended Fluctuation Analysis, Recurrence Plot. For statistical comparison, we adopted the Wilcoxon Signed Rank test and for development of a classifier we adopted the Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA).ResultsAlmost all HRV features measuring heart rate complexity were significantly decreased in the stress session. LDA generated a simple classifier based on the two Poincaré Plot parameters and Approximate Entropy, which enables stress detection with a total classification accuracy, a sensitivity and a specificity rate of 90%, 86%, and 95% respectively.ConclusionsThe results of the current study suggest that nonlinear HRV analysis using short term ECG recording could be effective in automatically detecting real-life stress condition, such as a university examination.