Aims: Congestive heart failure (CHF) is characterized by symptoms and signs of volume overload and tissue perfusion insufficiency and accompanied by neurohormonal activation. Copeptin is a part of pre-pro-vasopressin and synthesized in equal molar amounts with vasopressin. We aimed to evaluate the sensitivity and specificity of copeptin in indicating the diagnostic value of CHF Methods: This retrospective study included a total of 80 patients including 40 with heart failure and 40 healthy individuals. The groups were compared in terms of demographic features, laboratory findings including copeptin levels. Results: There was no statistically significant difference between the groups in terms of gender (p>0.05). Age, hypertension, diabetes mellitus, smoking were statistically significantly higher in the heart failure group compared to the control group (p<0.05). In both groups, serum copeptin levels were higher in men than in women. Copeptin levels in the heart failure group were statistically significantly higher than in the control group (p<0.05). In the heart failure group, there was a negative correlation between serum copeptin levels and age, gender, hypertension, smoking, HDL cholesterol, hematocrit, creatinine levels. Conclusion: Copeptin is a good indicator of the course of the disease in patients with heart failure.

This research aims to examine and determine the attitudes, i.e. the interest of teachers, physical and health education teachers, and parents for the introduction of inclusive sports programs in the educational system of schools that would be integrated and available to all students regardless of the abilities, opportunities, individuality of each child as and to difficulty. The research was conducted on a sample of N=426 respondents, of which there were N=370 parents, N=49 teachers, and N=7 physical and health education teachers. For the implementation of this research, a survey method was used through the application of questionnaires/attitude scales for teachers, physical and health education teachers, and parents. We processed the research results using descriptive statistics, frequencies, and percentages and presented them tabularly and graphically. The total number of students in the four elementary schools where the research was conducted is N=1082 students, of which there were N=16 students with developmental disabilities. Of these, 14 students work according to an individual plan and program (IPP), and 13 students have a teaching assistant. Out of a total of N=1082 students, 292 students with typical development attend one of the school sections, and 2 students with developmental difficulties. Parents, teachers, and teachers are in favor of introducing inclusive sports programs into the educational system of schools that would be integrated and accessible to all students, regardless of the abilities, opportunities, and individuality of each child, as well as the difficulty.

Using the descriptive-analytical method and grammatical analysis, this paper explores the phenomenon of lexical and grammatical polysemy in the 90 th Qur'anic surah al-Balad. Contemporary works from Cognitive Linguistics and the tafsir tradition form the basis of the research. Some key lexical units in this surah are characterised by polysemy, as observed by commentators of the Qur'an. The commitment to a specific semantic structure during interpretation can lead to semantic changes in the text’s higher structures. The paper’s aim is to present the cognitive implications of the use of such expressions, and to discover why Qur'an translators opted for specific interpretive matrices in the Bosnian language.

Abstract Research into sustainable construction is increasingly focusing on the use of renewable materials in construction. These materials represent a promising alternative to conventional building materials as they are derived from renewable sources and are usually more environmentally friendly in terms of production, transport and end-of-life treatment. The Department of Ecological Building Technologies at the Vienna University of Technology has been investigating the hygrothermal behaviour and applicability of renewable materials for many years. Not only traditional building materials such as straw, wood, sheep’s wool and hemp have been investigated, but also innovative materials such as mushroom fabric. The research covered various aspects such as moisture protection, fire protection, thermal insulation, durability and resistance to external influences. The overall aim was to deepen the understanding of ecological building materials, overcome barriers to their use, and develop damage-tolerant constructions from them. The robust properties of wheat straw, sheep’s wool, hemp, cellulose and other materials underline their potential as efficient and environmentally friendly building materials. The data and insights gained will not only help to prove the effectiveness of these materials in the construction industry, but also to address concerns and uncertainties about their functionality.

In a decision-making scenario, one group member may need, independently from the other members, to choose an item, e.g., a restaurant, that will be experienced by the group. In a prior research on restaurant recommendation, we have identified two primary tasks of such an organizer of a lunch/dinner event, who is in charge of selecting a proper restaurant for the group: anticipating the other group members’ preferences, to properly enter these preferences in the recommender system, and reconciling incompatible preferences, if they arise in the elicitation phase. To support the first task, we augmented a group recommender system with a machine learning model that predicts group members’ food preferences, about dishes that can be consumed in the restaurant, based on other available information about the members (demographics and preferred cuisine). However, in a user study, we found that supporting functionality to be not effective in improving the quality of the choices made by the organizer. In this paper, we investigate the causes of this poor performance. We analyze the possibility that the poor performance may relate to: the deployed ML models used for food preference prediction, the amount of data about food preferences used for training the ML model, and the complexity of the preference anticipation task. The results of our experiments suggest that neither the ML model nor the scarcity of the preference data is responsible for the observed poor value of the implemented preference recalling function. While a user study seems to confirm the impossibility of accurately predicting food preferences from the considered user’s characteristics (demographics and preferred cuisine).

While most recommender systems cater to individual users’ needs, there are numerous situations where these systems are needed to meet groups’ demands. These systems are broadly labelled as Group Recommender Systems (GRSys). Traits like interpersonal relationships, group mood, and emotional contagion are essential to fulfilling the group’s needs. However, the group’s characteristics are frequently ill-defined and dynamic and are typically absent from systems modeling. Moreover, GRSys must maneuver between the needs of the group and the individuals when opinions differ and can contradict each other. The third edition of GMAP proposes consolidating a community of scholars interested in group modeling, adaptation, and personalization. Through the workshop, researchers continue their examination of the difficulties and possibilities of creating efficient procedures and instruments to facilitate collective decision-making. GMAP 2024 offered this unique opportunity to gather scholars from different fields to enrich discussions over GRSys’ research. The workshop also allowed attendees to strengthen their networks and establish new connections conducive to cutting-edge collaborative research.

Adaptive and personalized systems have become pervasive technologies, gradually playing an increasingly important role in our daily lives. Indeed, we are now accustomed to interacting with algorithms that leverage the power of Language Models (LLMs) to assist us in various scenarios, from services suggesting music or movies to personal assistants proactively supporting us in complex decision-making tasks. As these technologies continue to shape our everyday experiences, ensuring that the internal mechanisms guiding these algorithms are transparent and comprehensible becomes imperative. The EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) recognizes the users’ right to explanation when confronted with intelligent systems, highlighting the significance of this aspect. Regrettably, current research often prioritizes the maximization of personalization strategy effectiveness, such as recommendation accuracy, at the expense of model explainability. To address this concern, the workshop aims to provide a platform for in-depth discussions on challenges, problems, and innovative research approaches in the field. The workshop specifically focuses on investigating the role of transparency and explainability in recent methodologies for constructing user models and developing personalized and adaptive systems.

RNA interference (RNAi) is a crucial mechanism that can contribute to immunity against infectious microbes through the action of DICER-LIKE (DCL) and ARGONAUTE (AGO) proteins. In the case of the fungal pathogen Botrytis cinerea and the oomycete Hyaloperonospora arabidopsidis, plant DCL and AGO proteins have proven roles as negative regulators of immunity, suggesting functional specialization of these proteins. To address this aspect in a broader taxonomic context, we characterized the colonization pattern of an informative set of DCL and AGO loss-of-function mutants in Arabidopsis thaliana upon infection with a panel of pathogenic microbes with different lifestyles, and a fungal mutualist. Our results revealed that AGO1 and AGO4 function as positive regulators of immunity to a bacterial and a fungal pathogen, respectively. Additionally, AGO2 and AGO10 positively modulated the colonization by a fungal mutualist. Therefore, analysing the role of RNAi across a broader range of plant-microbe interactions has identified previously unknown functions for AGO proteins. For some pathogen interactions, however, all tested mutants exhibited wild type-like infection phenotypes, suggesting that the roles of AGO and DCL proteins in these interactions may be more complex to elucidate.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1021/acsomega.3c08932.].

Fokus rada je na motivaciji kao jednom od glavnih čimbenika u poučavanju i učenju stranih jezika, kao i na načinu na koji se učenici motiviraju za njihovo učenje. Kao potpora empirijskom istraživanju testirani su aspekti motivacije (intrinzične i ekstrinzične) kako bi se ispitao njihov doprinos tijekom online nastave izazvane Covidom-19 i nakon povratka u škole. U prilog dobivenim rezultatima dane su preporuke koje bi mogle poslužiti budućoj organizaciji online nastave, ali i poslužiti pedagoško-psihološkim i didaktičko-metodičkim kompetencijama nastavnika. Istraživanje je potvrdilo povećanje i intrinzične i ekstrinzične motivacije nakon povratka u školu, za razliku od razdoblja provedenoga u online nastavi s izuzetkom aspekta učenja njemačkoga jezika. Prisutna intrinzična motivacija za učenje njemačkoga jezika u predikciji učenja njemačkoga jezika daje bolje rezultate iz razdoblja 2019. u odnosu na razdoblje 2021. Zanimljivo je da su učenici 2019. više uživali u samostalnom učenju tijekom online nastave nego danas u učionicama. Utjecaj analiziranih aspekata ekstrinzične motivacije proveden je uz pomoć korištenih metoda i nastavnih oblika rada. Utvrđene vrijednosti pokazuju veću snagu u 2021. godini u odnosu na 2019. godinu. Implikacije nedostatka digitalnih kompetencija ozbiljno zahtijevaju restrukturiranje obrazovnoga rada učitelja.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES A better understanding of the factors influencing D-dimer levels in code stroke patients is needed to guide further investigations of concomitant thrombotic conditions. This study aimed to investigate the impact of time from symptom onset and other factors on D-dimer levels in patients with acute ischemic stroke (AIS) or transient ischemic attack (TIA). METHODS Data on consecutive AIS and TIA patients treated at our tertiary-care stroke center between January 2015 and December 2020 were retrospectively assessed. Patients with available D-dimer levels were evaluated for eligibility. Multivariable non-linear regression analyses were performed. RESULTS In total, 2467 AIS patients and 708 TIA patients were included. The median D-dimer levels differed between the AIS and TIA groups (746 µg/L [interquartile range 381-1468] versus 442 µg/L [interquartile range 244-800], p<0.001). In AIS patients, an early increase in D-dimer levels was demonstrated within the first 6 h (standardized beta coefficient [β] 0.728; 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.324-1.121). This was followed by an immediate decrease (β -13.022; 95% CI -20.401 to -5.643) and then by a second, late increase after 35 h (β 11.750; 95% CI 4.71-18.791). No time-dependent fluctuation in D-dimer levels was observed in TIA patients. CONCLUSION The time from symptom onset may affect D-dimer levels in patients with AIS but not those with TIA. Further studies confirming these findings and validating time-specific variations are needed to enable D-dimer levels to be used efficiently as an acute stroke and thrombotic risk biomarker.

This paper presents a novel event-triggered control (ETC) design framework based on measured $\mathcal{L}_{p}$ norms. We consider a class of systems with finite $\mathcal{L}_{p}$ gain from the network-induced error to a chosen output. The $\mathcal{L}_{p}$ norms of the network-induced error and the chosen output since the last sampling time are used to formulate a class of triggering rules. Based on a small-gain condition, we derive an explicit expression for the $\mathcal{L}_{p}$ gain of the resulting closed-loop systems and present a time-regularization, which can be used to guarantee a lower bound on the inter-sampling times. The proposed framework is based on a different stability- and triggering concept compared to ETC approaches from the literature, and thus may yield new types of dynamical properties for the closed-loop system. However, for specific output choices it can lead to similar triggering rules as “standard” static and dynamic ETC approaches based on input-to-state stability and yields therefore a novel interpretation for some of the existing triggering rules. We illustrate the proposed framework with a numerical example from the literature.

Mammography is the leading methodology used to diagnose breast cancer. Effective, cheap and reliable, the mammography can be used to screen large populations, if the imagery produced can be analysed efficiently. State-of-the-art generative artificial intelligence approaches can be used to create tools able to aid in this task. Here we present a study focused on the emerging research topic of the application of generative diffusion models to the task of anomaly detection and we apply if for detecting anomalies on mammograms. Diffusion models exhibit promising results in making pixel-level predictions with image level annotations, but no such application has been published so far regarding mammography. We have, therefore, developed a novel approach utilizing U-net backbone that is able to generate mammograms with Fréchet Inception Distance (FID) of 14.62. We showed its ability to perform anomaly detection with Intersection over Union (IoU) of 0.195 which demonstrates the viability of our approach for early-stage research.

Data curation is an essential component of large-scale pretraining. In this work, we demonstrate that jointly selecting batches of data is more effective for learning than selecting examples independently. Multimodal contrastive objectives expose the dependencies between data and thus naturally yield criteria for measuring the joint learnability of a batch. We derive a simple and tractable algorithm for selecting such batches, which significantly accelerate training beyond individually-prioritized data points. As performance improves by selecting from larger super-batches, we also leverage recent advances in model approximation to reduce the associated computational overhead. As a result, our approach--multimodal contrastive learning with joint example selection (JEST)--surpasses state-of-the-art models with up to 13$\times$ fewer iterations and 10$\times$ less computation. Essential to the performance of JEST is the ability to steer the data selection process towards the distribution of smaller, well-curated datasets via pretrained reference models, exposing the level of data curation as a new dimension for neural scaling laws.