Tick-borne encephalitis (TBE) represents an important public health problem in Europe. We analyzed the epidemiology of TBE based on data from humans, animals, and Ixodes ricinus ticks in endemic regions of continental Croatia. In the period from 2017 to 2023, cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and serum samples of 684 patients with neuroinvasive diseases, 2240 horse serum samples, and 300 sheep serum samples were tested for TBEV. In addition, 8751 I. ricinus ticks were collected. CSF samples were tested using RT-PCR. Serological tests (serum, CSF) were performed using commercial ELISA, with confirmation of cross-reactive samples by a virus neutralization test. Eighty-four autochthonous human TBEV cases were confirmed. The majority of patients were in the age group of 40–69 years (58.3%) with a male predominance (70.2%). TBE showed a bimodal seasonality with a large peak in April–August and a small one in October–November. In addition to humans, TBEV IgG antibodies were found in 12.2% of horses and 9.7% of sheep. Seasonal tick abundance corresponds to the reported number of human infections. Continental Croatia is still an active natural focus of TBE. Continuous monitoring of infections in humans, sentinel animals, and ticks is needed for the implementation of preventive measures.

During the 3-year field research in the Sarajevo Canton (from 2019 to 2022), numerous new sites for many alien species were noted. Three of them were covered by this paper. These are: Digitalis purpurea L., Symphyotrichum novi belgii (L.) G. L. Nelson and Armoracia rusticiana Gaertn., Mey et Scherb.. The aim of the research and the paper is to provide new data on these species. This is important for the lack of specific data for alien species about their distribution, environmental conditions in which they develop, which can be very important in fight against them or in their adequate control. For each locality, where the plants were found, number of other parameters were provided, such as: altitude, latitude and longitude, soil type and phytocenological affiliation. Altitude, latitude and longitude were determined by the "MagelaneXplorist 500" GPS. Maps were also done with help of the "ArcGis Pro 2.8.4." program with registered localities. The name of plants were aligned with the www.europlusmed.org. Numerous papers and material from the "Herbarium Collection of the National Museum of BiH – SARA" were reviewed, and yet it was found out that all the localities were new for the researched species. Here we provided all previously published and data on herbarized plants for the whole of BiH.

We report on the development of a novel pixel charge readout system, Grid Activated Multi-scale pixel readout (GAMPix), which is under development for use in the GammaTPC gamma ray instrument concept. GammaTPC is being developed to optimize the use of liquid argon time projection chamber technology for gamma ray astrophysics, for which a fine grained low power charge readout is essential. GAMPix uses a new architecture with coarse and fine scale instrumented electrodes to solve the twin problems of loss of measured charge after diffusion, and high readout power. Fundamentally, it enables low noise and ultra low power charge readout at the spatial scale limited by diffusion in a time projection chamber, and has other possibly applications, including future DUNE modules.

Ixodid ticks are distributed across all countries of the Western Balkans, with a high diversity of species. Many of these species serve as vectors of pathogens of veterinary and medical importance. Given the scattered data from Western Balkan countries, we have conducted a comprehensive review of available literature, including some historical data, with the aim to compile information about all recorded tick species and associated zoonotic pathogens in this region. Based on the collected data, the tick fauna of the Western Balkans encompasses 32 tick species belonging to five genera: Ixodes , Haemaphysalis , Dermacentor , Rhipicephalus and Hyalomma . A range of pathogens responsible for human diseases has also been documented, including viruses, bacteria and parasites. In this review, we emphasize the necessity for integrated surveillance and reporting, urging authorities to foster research by providing financial support. Additionally, international and interdisciplinary collaborations should be encouraged that include the exchange of expertise, experiences and resources. The present collaborative effort can effectively address gaps in our knowledge of ticks and tick-borne diseases. Graphical Abstract

Darwinian evolution, including the selection of the fittest species under given environmental conditions, is a major milestone in the development of synthetic living systems. In this regard, generalist or specialist behavior (the ability to replicate in a broader or narrower, more specific food environment) are of importance. Here we demonstrate generalist and specialist behavior in dynamic combinatorial  libraries composed of a peptide-based and an oligo(ethylene glycol) based building block. Three different sets of macrocyclic replicators could be distinguished based on their supramolecular organization: two prepared from a single building block as well as one prepared from an equimolar mixture of them. Peptide-containing hexamer replicators were found to be generalists, i.e. they could replicate in a broad range of food niches, whereas the octamer peptide-based replicator and hexameric ethyleneoxide-based replicator were proven to be specialists, i.e. they only replicate in very specific food niches that correspond to their composition. However, sequence specificity cannot be demonstrated for either of the generalist replicators. The generalist versus specialist nature of these replicators was linked to their supramolecular organization. Assembly modes that accommodate structurally different building blocks lead to generalist replicators, while assembly modes that are more restrictive yield specialist replicators.

A 2-year study was done to compare fruit morphological and chemical composition of three nectarine cultivars grown in south Hercegovinia conditions. A high variability among and within cultivars was found and significant differences were observed among them in all properties analyzed. On the basis of evaluated data, the best fruit performance was registered in ‘Caldesi 2000’ and ‘Venus’ grown in the condition of this part of the Mediteran. This evaluation may help to select a set of nectarine cultivars with better fruit quality attributes, which in our growing conditions might be indicated in ‘Caldesi 2000’ and somewhat in ‘Venus’. The highest average of fruit width (61.18 mm) and fruit weight (148.24 g) was found in cultivar Caldesi 2000. As for friut thickness, also cultivar Caldesi 2000 had the highest value (55.39 mm). The results for the highest fruit length (60.48 mm) had Venus cultivar also fruit stone weight length, width and thickness. The contents sugars (glucose, fructose) total soluble dry matter, and total acids in fruits were found in cultivar Venus, but pH and sucrose were found in cultivar Sun Grand.

Pored oblika i ukrasa, natpisi predstavljaju najkarakterističniji i najznačajniji faktor naučne i umjetničke vrijednosti stećaka. Kada je poznato vrijeme nastanka natpisa, onda istraživači imaju bolja polazišta za svestranije proučavanje stećaka. Prije svega, datacija natpisa značajno pomaže u praćenju razvoja jezika i pisma. Svaki datirani stećak predstavlja značajnu i stabilnu stepenicu na slabije poznatom putu u razvoju srednjovjekovnog pisma. Na ovom mjestu dajemo prilog dataciji natpisa na stećku Vukašina Dobrašinovića iz Vrsinja u naselju Konjsko u blizini Trebinja. Ranije ponude datiranja ukazuju na odstupanjameđu vrsnim epigrafičarima i prave dodatne nejasnoće na polju epigrafike. Novim arhivskim pokazateljima historijat Dobrašinovića iz Vrsinja dobija svoje konture. Egzaktno utvrđena životnost Vukašina Dobrašinovića (1421-1428) je relevantna polazna osnova za datiranje natpisa na njegovom nadgrobnom spomeniku pa time i jasnija osnova za daljnje proučavanje jezika i pisma. 

Ljubomir Maksimović: Vizantijski svet i Srbi, Beograd: Istorijski institut, 2008,Studia historica collecta, knjiga 6, 535 str. (Dženan Dautović)   Spomenica akademika Marka Šunjića (1927-1998), ur. Dubravko Lovrenović,Filozofski fakultet u Sarajevu, Sarajevo 2010, 366 str. (Nedim Rabić)

U antičko doba bile su prisutne predstave zmija u mnogim mitovima i kultovima. Zmija je često bila simbol života i smrti. Kao kultna životinja javlja se u Mitraizmu, a kao simbol zla javlja se u hrišćanskoj tradiciji. Na području velikog rudarskog nalazišta Japra pronađena su dva ulomka keramike sa predstavama zmija koje su bile omotane oko drške. Prema analogijom sa sličnim slučajevima može se reći da su ove posude povezane sa kultom Mitre i korišteni u vjerske svrhe.  

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations provide a blueprint of a better future by "leaving no one behind", and, to achieve the SDGs by 2030, poor countries require immense volumes of development aid. In this paper, we develop a causal machine learning framework for predicting heterogeneous treatment effects of aid disbursements to inform effective aid allocation. Specifically, our framework comprises three components: (i) a balancing autoencoder that uses representation learning to embed high-dimensional country characteristics while addressing treatment selection bias; (ii) a counterfactual generator to compute counterfactual outcomes for varying aid volumes to address small sample-size settings; and (iii) an inference model that is used to predict heterogeneous treatment-response curves. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our framework using data with official development aid earmarked to end HIV/AIDS in 105 countries, amounting to more than USD 5.2 billion. For this, we first show that our framework successfully computes heterogeneous treatment-response curves using semi-synthetic data. Then, we demonstrate our framework using real-world HIV data. Our framework points to large opportunities for a more effective aid allocation, suggesting that the total number of new HIV infections could be reduced by up to 3.3% (~50,000 cases) compared to the current allocation practice.

Frontal polymerization (FP) is a self-sustaining curing process that enables rapid and energy-efficient manufacturing of thermoset polymers and composites. Computational methods conventionally used to simulate the FP process are time-consuming, and repeating simulations are required for sensitivity analysis, uncertainty quantification, or optimization of the manufacturing process. In this work, we develop an adaptive surrogate deep-learning model for FP of dicyclopentadiene (DCPD), which predicts the evolution of temperature and degree of cure orders of magnitude faster than the finite-element method (FEM). The adaptive algorithm provides a strategy to select training samples efficiently and save computational costs by reducing the redundancy of FEM-based training samples. The adaptive algorithm calculates the residual error of the FP governing equations using automatic differentiation of the deep neural network. A probability density function expressed in terms of the residual error is used to select training samples from the Sobol sequence space. The temperature and degree of cure evolution of each training sample are obtained by a 2D FEM simulation. The adaptive method is more efficient and has a better prediction accuracy than the random sampling method. With the well-trained surrogate neural network, the FP characteristics (front speed, shape, and temperature) can be extracted quickly from the predicted temperature and degree-of-cure fields.