Crna topola (Populus nigra L.) je jedna od najznačajnijih europskih vrsta drveća koja nastanjuje aluvijalna staništa uz obale velikih rijeka. U Bosni i Hercegovini postoji značajan neiskorišten zemljišni potencijal pogodan za reintrodukciju autohtonih crnih topola, kao i podizanje intenzivnih i ekstenzivnih nasada hibridnih i američkih crnih topola. Cilj ovoga istraživanja je utvrditi početak i završetak fenoloških faza listanja, kao i zimsko zadržavanje lista, što će pomoći pri selekciji pogodnih klonova autohtonih crnih topola za reintrodukciju na određenom lokalitetu i za određene mikroklimatske uvjete u svrhu očuvanja autohtonog genofonda, te klonova hibridnih topola za osnivanje plantaža u Bosni i Hercegovini. Istaživan je materijal 161 klona autohtonih crnih topola iz 26 populacija iz slivova 6 rijeka, te 11 klonova proizvodnih hibridnih topola (euro-američke ili kanadske) i američkih crnih topola. Klonovi se nalaze u klonskom arhivu u Žepču, koji je podignut 2006. godine. Promatrana je fenologija listanja i to od 14.3.- 22.4.2019. godine i to u šest fenoloških faza 0 - uspavani pupoljak, 1 – napukli pup, 2 – probijanje pupa, 3 – pup otvoren, listovi skupljeni, 4 – listovi se razdvajaju, 5 – listovi potpuno razvijeni). Zadržavanje lista praćeno je od 30.8.-4.11.2019. godine i ocjenjivano u tri kategorije: 1 - prisutni svi listovi na stablu, 2 - 50% listova je preostalo na stablu, 3 – nema preostalih listova na stablu. Efektivna duljina vegetacijske sezone definirana je kao vrijeme između pojavljivanja faze pucanja pupova (ocjena 3) i ocjena opadanja lišća 2 (tj. kada je 50% lišća ostalo na stablu). Analiza varijance pokazala je statistički značajne razlike između klonova iz različitih populacija za duljinu trajanja fenoloških faza listanja. Fenološka faza 1 (napukli pupovi) najranije se javila 14.3. a faza 5 (potpuno otvoreni listovi) najranije 8.4. Rezultati zadržavanja listova pokazuju da su 4.11. svi klonovi u klonskom arhivu odbacili list 100%. Najkraću efektivnu duljinu vegetacijskog perioda imali su klonovi populacije Bugojno (154 dana), a najdužu klonovi Populus boleana i Populus nigra var. italica te klonovi populacija Čapljina (sliv rijeke Neretve); Dobrinje, Visoko, Babina rijeka, Maglaj, Doboj (sliv rijeke Bosne); Kopači i Tegare (sliv rijeke Drine). Rezultati istraživanja su značajni za odabir klonova sa boljom prilagodbom na uvjete staništa, te obnovu i uporabu klonskog reprodukcijskog materijala crnih topola u Bosni i Hercegovini.

<p>Steel 17-7PH is austenitic-martensitic steel with high strength, hardness, and resistance to creep, and<br />corrosion. It is designed for aerospace components, but can also be used for other applications that require<br />high strength and corrosion resistance, as well as leaf springs for operation at temperatures up to 316 &deg;C. It<br />can be used in a solution-treated or heat-treated state to obtain a wide range of property values. This<br />paperwork shows that modification of the contents of alloying elements with a narrower interval of Cr, Ni,<br />and Al can be obtained from austenitic-martensitic steel 17-7PH which by, a subsequent heat treatment,<br />can have values of mechanical and chemical properties required for components of an automotive engine.<br />Chromium is an alphagenic alloying element that stabilizes the ferrite region, nickel is a gammagenic<br />alloying element that stabilizes austenite and gives these steels good strength and toughness, even at low<br />temperatures and aluminum increases corrosion resistance in low-carbon corrosion-resistant steels<br />Research has determined the most suitable interval of Cr, Ni, and Al, which in combination with the<br />cryogenic heat treatment RH950 at -50 &deg;C gives the mechanical and chemical properties that meet the<br />requirements for steel with standard chemical composition.</p>

INTRODUCTION Cutaneous leishmaniasis (CL) is one of the neglected tropical diseases that affects impoverished communities throughout the world. In Pakistan CL is an endemic disease. AIMS AND OBJECTIVES This study aimed to determine the incidence of CL infection in the Baluchistan province of Pakistan from January 2020 to March 2022 during the COVID-19 pandemic. METHODOLOGY A total of 1047 clinically suspected cases of CL from Bolan Medical College Hospital, Quetta, were followed up in the study. The data regarding the epidemiological characterstics, pathological information, and treatment of patients was collected. RESULTS Out of 1047 probable cases of CL, 594 (56.73%) cases were found to be positive for CL. Females had the highest infection rate, with the majority of reported cases being in the 0-9-year age group. Most CL cases were reported in April in the year 2020, with a few cases reported in June. But in the year 2021, the highest number of cases were reported in December. The number of overall cases has gradually increased in the year 2022, most likely because of the reduction in COVID-19 pandemic restrictions. The p value for the positive as compared to suspected cases in the years 2020, 2021, and 2022 was calculated as 0.8925, 0.8763, and 0.8535 respectively. CONCLUSIONS Further epidemiological studies and health education campaigns are recommended to increase public awareness. It is strongly advised that local, provincial, and national health authorities establish and maintain effective leishmaniasis surveillance systems to promptly identify disease outbreaks and implement timely control measures.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.