Skin sensitization is a crucial endpoint in the safety assessment of chemicals, with the Direct Peptide Reactivity Assay (DPRA) emerging as a valuable in chemico method for evaluating a substance's sensitization potential. This review delves into the principles, applicability, and limitations of the DPRA within the context of the Adverse Outcome Pathway (AOP) framework for skin sensitization. We examine the DPRA'srole in addressing the molecular initiating event of skin sensitization, its integration into Integrated Approaches to Testing and Assessment (IATA), and its performance in predicting sensitizers. The review also highlights the challenges in testing certain categories of chemicals and the importance of considering the DPRA's results alongside other complementary methods. By providing a comprehensive overview of the DPRA, this review aims to inform researchers, regulators, and clinicians about its utility and limitations in the context of skin sensitization testing.

Consumption of fish has increased in last 50 years. Fish as a food is changing red meat because it has unsaturated fat and it is the best source of omega 3 fatty acids. Beside it is full of minerals, vitamins and it has high biological value of proteins.The content of heavy metals in the muscle tissue of fish is directly related to the pollution of the water they come from The analysis of the content of heavy metals was done by the Institute of Public Health of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina.The content of lead (Pb) in the tested samples of fresh fish ranged from 0.0015 to 0.0381 mg/kg. The measured content of cadmium (Cd) in the examined samples was in the range of 3.3*10-5 to 0.0053 mg/kg. The content of arsenic (As) in the tested samples ranged from 0.0085 to 1.1668 mg/kg. The mercury (Hg) content in the tested samples of fresh fish ranged from 0.0033 to 0.0991 mg/kg, which is within the allowed values prescribed by the Rulebook. It has been statistically proven that there is a significant difference in the measured values of lead, arsenic and cadmium in the samples of sea and freshwater fish. Aim of this work was to establish do the samples of fresh fish contain concentration of heavy metals more than concentrations prescribed in Rule book about allowed amounts of certain contaminants in food. Thereby ten samples of fresh fish were tested, five samples of marine fish and five samples of freshwater fish. Results showed that all samples of fish satisfy allowed concentration of heavy metals according to the Rule book.

We use the Kolmogorov-Arnold-Moser (KAM) theory to investigate the stability of solutions of a system of difference equations, a certain class of a generalized May's host-parasitoid model. We show the existence of the extinction, interior, and boundary equilibrium points and examine their stability. When the rate of increase of hosts is less than one, the zero equilibrium is globally asymptotically stable, which means that both populations are extinct. We thoroughly describe the dynamics of 1:1 non-isolated resonance fixed points and have used the KAM theory to determine the stability of interior equilibrium point. Also, we have conducted several numerical simulations to support our findings by using the software package Mathematica.

The concept of usufruct as an independent right, ius in re aliena, was not questioned in Justinian’s sources, while on the other hand, its systematisation, development, and legal nature in analyses of classical law were the subject of serious debates among Romance experts, mainly in Italian Romance studies from the beginning of the 20th century. Some experts in Romance studies understood usufruct as pars dominii, i.e. part of the property right that the owner retains for himself, thereby denying him the position of a special right. Such a concept originates from the glossator and post-glossator schools and, the paper analyses strong reflections of their teaching on contemporary legal doctrine. The paper deals with the concept and definition of usufruct and conducts analysis into the legal sources and reasons that led to differences in the understanding of the legal nature of the institute in the Roman legal tradition.

Large language models (LLMs) have demon-001 strated powerful capabilities in natural lan-002 guage processing, yet their vast number of pa-003 rameters poses challenges for deployment and 004 inference efficiency. Structured model pruning 005 emerges as a viable approach to reduce model 006 size and accelerate inference, without requir-007 ing specialized operators and libraries for de-008 ployment. However, structured pruning often 009 severely weakens the model’s capability. De-010 spite repetitive fine-tuning can restore the capa-011 bility to a certain extent, it impairs LLMs’ util-012 ity as versatile problem solvers. To address this 013 issue, we propose a novel structured pruning 014 algorithm tailored for LLMs. It derives the im-015 portance of different components, namely rows 016 and columns in parameter matrices, based on in-017 termediate data dependencies. Then it removes 018 coupled components across different layers si-019 multaneously and preserves dependency rela-020 tionships within remaining parameters, avoid-021 ing significant performance degradation. The 022 pruned model requires only few epochs of fine-023 tuning to restore its performance, ensuring the 024 model’s ability to generalize. Empirical eval-025 uations on LLaMA, Vicuna, and ChatGLM3 026 demonstrate our algorithm’s efficacy, yielding 027 20% parameter reduction while retaining at 028 least 94.4% of original performance metrics. 029

The increased need for smart management of agricultural resources resulted in the preparation and implementation of H2020 project SMARTWATER. This publication aims to present the main outcomes of SMARTWATER in three years of implementation (2021-2023), to encourage relevant target groups to participate in the action in 2024 and to promote smart management of agricultural resources. During project implementation different results were obtained. SMARTWATER team will continue with different twinning activities in 2024 aiming to promote smart agriculture practices, increase the competencies of scientists and young researchers and disseminate the project outcomes.

This paper proposes an ac fault ride-through (FRT) method for high-voltage dc (HVDC) transmission systems that serve as an interconnector between the onshore ac grid and an islanded offshore ac grid. In conventional HVDC systems for offshore wind farms FRT is realized by consuming excess power with braking resistors. However, the same method cannot be applied if the offshore ac grid includes not only wind farms but also various loads, which are being considered for integration into multipurpose interconnectors or energy islands. In this article, a novel FRT method based on voltage control for HVDC interconnectors operating with bidirectional power flow is proposed. The proposed method curtails the ac voltage formed by the offshore converter according to the converter’s dc current and voltage. The effectiveness of the proposed FRT method is established through experiments on a mini model.

The optical time-domain reflectometer (OTDR) is a primary test and measurement instrument for detecting, localizing, and qualifying various fiber optic link events induced by breaks, splices, and connectors. However, in spite of a number of innovative enhancements of the OTDR capabilities proposed throughout decades of its use in the communications test application area, few reports can be found about extending the OTDR capabilities beyond detecting and qualifying refractive and reflective events of the fiber under test, to also include prediction of performance and impairments specifically related to the coherent optical orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (CO-OFDM) symbol transmission over fiber link. As large enough OTDR dynamic range (DR) provides alike optical signal-to-noise-ratio (OSNR) even at the far end of the fiber, then the dominantly reflective OTDR trace pattern can be considered as the two-way power-delay profile (PDP) of the fiber. Furthermore, in this work, we also justifiably assume that the cyclic prefix (CP) is applied to guard the OFDM symbol against inter-symbol interference, as well as that the (formerly eventually large) peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) is significantly reduced, e.g., by simple peak clipping at the transmitter. This finally retains the OFDM carrier frequency offset (CFO) as the major OFDM-inherent signal impairment to dominantly determine the bit error rate (BER) floor in this case. Accordingly, in our model, we abstracted the CFO by the additional delays added to the original OTDR trace pulses, which would produce an equal BER increase as the CFO does with the original trace. Inversely, this enables indirect estimation of CFO by simple BER testing, rather than by using dedicated and complex test instrumentation such as vector signal analyzer (VSA), not always at hand in field conditions.

Background: As a complex socio-economic concept, financial inclusion is related to the improvement of access and use of formal financial products and services (such as bank deposits, loans, insurance, etc.) by all participants in the financial system. More inclusive financial systems contribute to poverty reduction, decrease in inequalities among different income groups leading to economic growth, and economies more resilient towards macroeconomic shocks. Purpose: This paper aims to assess the relationship between financial inclusion and inflation in Southeast European countries, focusing on Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Romania, Slovenia, Serbia, and Turkey in the period from 2011 to 2021. Study design/methodology/approach: The financial inclusion index was constructed using Principal Component Analysis (PCA). The connection between the financial inclusion index and inflation was investigated using panel regression modeling (OLS, fixed-effect, and random-effect models). Findings/Conclusions: The research showed that countries with higher levels of financial inclusion are more resilient to inflation. This finding is consistent with other research implying that policymakers and other stakeholders within a financial system should contribute to promoting financial inclusion and building more inclusive financial systems. Limitations/future research: The main limitation of the research is related to data availability for multidimensional index construction. Future research should be directed to providing a better understanding of whether the relationship between financial inclusion and inflation is under the influence of other monetary policy instruments, such as interest rates.