BACKGROUND This investigation provides an important insight into Eurasian consumers' food safety beliefs and trust issues influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic. An online survey was conducted in 15 European and Asian countries involving more than 4000 consumers. RESULTS It has confirmed that different socioeconomic characteristics, cultural aspects, and education levels shape food safety perceptions within Eurasian countries. The COVID-19 pandemic influenced their beliefs and trust in food safety, which is relatively low on average. However, it is significantly higher for European consumers (especially EU ones) as compared to their Asian counterparts. Both Asian and European respondents agreed that food fraud and climate changes represent a food safety issue. However, European consumers were less concerned regarding the food safety of genetically modified foods and meat and dairy analogs/hybrids. Asian consumers were, to a greater extent, worried about the risk of getting COVID-19 from food, restaurants, food retail establishments, and home food deliveries. CONCLUSION The greatest extent of trust, when food safety assurance is concerned, Eurasian consumers have put into food scientists and food producers holding a food safety certificate. Broadly, they are uncertain to what extent their federal governments and food inspectors are competent, able, and efficient in ensuring food safety. Higher education of Eurasian consumers was followed by increased food safety confidence in all parts of the food chain. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

In order to ensure sufficient recovery of the human body and brain, healthy sleep is indispensable. For this purpose, appropriate therapy should be initiated at an early stage in the case of sleep disorders. For some sleep disorders (e.g., insomnia), a sleep diary is essential for diagnosis and therapy monitoring. However, subjective measurement with a sleep diary has several disadvantages, requiring regular action from the user and leading to decreased comfort and potential data loss. To automate sleep monitoring and increase user comfort, one could consider replacing a sleep diary with an automatic measurement, such as a smartwatch, which would not disturb sleep. To obtain accurate results on the evaluation of the possibility of such a replacement, a field study was conducted with a total of 166 overnight recordings, followed by an analysis of the results. In this evaluation, objective sleep measurement with a Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 was compared to a subjective approach with a sleep diary, which is a standard method in sleep medicine. The focus was on comparing four relevant sleep characteristics: falling asleep time, waking up time, total sleep time (TST), and sleep efficiency (SE). After evaluating the results, it was concluded that a smartwatch could replace subjective measurement to determine falling asleep and waking up time, considering some level of inaccuracy. In the case of SE, substitution was also proved to be possible. However, some individual recordings showed a higher discrepancy in results between the two approaches. For its part, the evaluation of the TST measurement currently does not allow us to recommend substituting the measurement method for this sleep parameter. The appropriateness of replacing sleep diary measurement with a smartwatch depends on the acceptable levels of discrepancy. We propose four levels of similarity of results, defining ranges of absolute differences between objective and subjective measurements. By considering the values in the provided table and knowing the required accuracy, it is possible to determine the suitability of substitution in each individual case. The introduction of a “similarity level” parameter increases the adaptability and reusability of study findings in individual practical cases.

Measuring cardiorespiratory parameters in sleep, using non-contact sensors and the Ballistocardiography technique has received much attention due to the low-cost, unobtrusive, and non-invasive method. Designing a user-friendly, simple-to-use, and easy-to-deployment preserving less error-prone remains open and challenging due to the complex morphology of the signal. In this work, using four forcesensitive resistor sensors, we conducted a study by designing four distributions of sensors, in order to simplify the complexity of the system by identifying the region of interest for heartbeat and respiration measurement. The sensors are deployed under the mattress and attached to the bed frame without any interference with the subjects. The four distributions are combined in two linear horizontal, one linear vertical, and one square, covering the influencing region in cardiorespiratory activities. We recruited 4 subjects and acquired data in four regular sleeping positions, each for a duration of 80 seconds. The signal processing was performed using discrete wavelet transform bior 3.9 and smooth level of 4 as well as bandpass filtering. The results indicate that we have achieved the mean absolute error of 2.35 and 4.34 for respiration and heartbeat, respectively. The results recommend the efficiency of a triangleshaped structure of three sensors for measuring heartbeat and respiration parameters in all four regular sleeping positions.

This study evaluates the effects of non-invasive home telemonitoring methods of managing congestive heart failure (CHF) patients with particular focus on complexity of intervention, patient characteristics, patient severity, and key enabling technologies (KETs) adopted. Our goal was to capture all possible aspects of previously documented outcomes and provide updated and clearer evidence on mixed effects on common themes. Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) published between 1 January 2012 and 6 June 2019, focusing on home telemonitoring of patients with only CHF or CHF coexisting with other chronic disease(s), were retrieved from online resources (PubMed, Embase, MEDLINE(R), Your journals@Ovid, Elsevier, and ClinicalTrials.gov). The snowball sampling method and forward citation tracking on Google Scholar were also adopted to identify additional relevant studies. Retrieved studies were in a language known by the authors (i.e., English, Spanish or Italian). Quality assessment of individual studies for shortcomings in design, management, evaluation, and reporting was done using the Cochrane risk of bias (RoB) tool. Variables of interest were synthesized as differences in relative risk (RR), or as weighted mean differences (WMD). Outcomes were assigned as primary or secondary based on a principal judgement of clinical importance, and secondarily on highest recurrent counts in included studies. In all, 28 RCTs involving 10,258 patients were included in the qualitative synthesis, out of which 24 were used for the quantitative synthesis. These studies focused on non-invasive telemonitoring practices for home monitoring of CHF patients, through the deployment of different kinds of electronic/mobile devices, with most having wireless communication capabilities. Moreover, studies focusing on implantable monitoring devices in terms of inputs, data and patient performance were also included. Brain natriuretic peptide (BNP) ((WMD = -27.75; 95% CI (-53.36, -2.14); p-value = 0.034), rehospitalization/hospitalization for heart failure (RR = 0.88; 95% CI (0.79, 0.98); p-value = 0.015), cardiovascular death/heart failure hospitalization (RR = 0.70; 95% CI (0.51, 0.97); p-value = 0.03), and six minute walk test (6MWT) (WMD = 25.61; 95% CI (9.22, 41.99); p-value = 0.002) significantly improved in the telemonitoring group, while the number of visits to a nurse (WMD = 1.42; 95% CI (0.33, 2.52); p-value = 0.011) increased considerably compared to usual care. Although there were limitations to the evidence provided in this review such as wide variations in certain variables (e.g., sample populations, RoB assessment, telemonitoring tools, follow-up periods), issues with allocation concealment and blinding of participants and personnel, and paucity of data for synthesizing particular outcomes of interest, overall, telemonitoring seems to offer much better results in the treatment of CHF patients compared to usual care. This systematic review and meta-analysis has been retrospectively registered in the Open Science Framework (OSF) repository with https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/NDXCP. All data related to this study, including the electronic supplementary data, can be found at this link: osf.io/57q3h.

Player performance in an intense sport such as basketball is known to be related to attributes such as speed, agility, and power. This study presents a comparative analysis of associations between anthropometric assessment and physical performance in different age groups of elite youth basketball players, while simultaneously identifying the predictors for speed and agility in these players. U14 (n = 44), U15 (n = 45), and U16 (n = 51) players were tested for anthropometry, lower-body power, speed, and agility. U16 players were found to be taller, heavier, more muscular than U14 and U15 players. In addition, the U16 group showed better performance in all performance tests. Age had a significant positive correlation with countermovement (CMJ) and drop jump (DJ) performance in U14 players, and a significant negative correlation with 15m and 20m sprint times in the U15 group. CMJ and DJ emerged as the most significant predictors for sprint and agility variables, respectively. Body fat percentage was found to be a significant predictor for the speed and agility tests in all age groups, but a negative lower-body power predictor. Therefore, besides all sport-specific and fitness tests, it is essential to place emphasis on the percentage of body fat when designing players’ individualized training programs, and during team selection.

The goal of our research is improvement of mathematics curriculum and popularization of mathematics among students of economics in developing countries. We analyze and compare curricula of pure mathematics courses that are taught to university students of faculties of economics in Japan and in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Data set contains math syllabuses in 2021/22 school year from six public universities in Bosnia and Herzegovina and seven from Japan. The text corpus was pre-processed and then the Term Frequency – Inverse Document Frequency algorithm, and Sentence Transformed Multi QA model were applied to build word vectors, find the similarity among Japanese and Bosnia and Herzegovina mathematics syllabuses using cosine similarity approach, and to find the key competences of these two countries mathematics syllabuses using the word cloud. Our results show the following similarity between the curricula: 60.7 percent using TF-IDF and 80.3 percent using Multi QA model. The key competences in the Japanese mathematics course are narrow and focused, in contrast to Bosnia and Herzegovina’s.

Objective: To summarize the existing knowledge about adrenal gland abscesses, including etiology, clinical presentation, common laboratory and imaging findings, management and overall morbidity and mortality. Design: Systematic literature review. Methods: We performed a search in the PubMed database using search terms: ‘abscess and adrenal glands’, ‘adrenalitis’, ‘infection and adrenal gland’, ‘adrenal abscess’, ‘adrenal infection’ and ‘infectious adrenalitis’. Articles from 2017 to 2022 were included. We found total of 116 articles, and after applying exclusion criteria, data from 73 articles was included in the final statistical analysis. Results: Of 84 patients included in this review, 68 were male (81%), with a mean age of 55 years (range: 29 to 85 years). Weight loss was the most frequent symptom reported in 58.3% patients, followed by fever in 49%. Mean duration of symptoms was 4.5 months. The most common laboratory findings were low cortisol (51.9%), elevated ACTH (43.2%), hyponatremia (88.2%) and anemia (83.3%). Adrenal cultures were positive in 86.4% cases, with Histoplasma capsulatum (37.3%) being the leading causative agent. Blood cultures were positive in 30% of patients. The majority of the adrenal infections occurred through secondary dissemination from other infectious foci and abscesses were more commonly bilateral (70%). A total of 46.4% of patients developed long-term adrenal insufficiency requiring treatment. Abscess drainage was performed in 7 patients (8.3%) and adrenalectomy was performed in 18 (21.4%) patients. The survival rate was 92.9%. Multivariate analysis showed that the only independent risk factor for mortality was thrombocytopenia (p = 0.048). Conclusion: Our review shows that adrenal abscesses are usually caused by fungal pathogens, and among these, Histoplasma capsulatum is the most common. The adrenal glands are usually involved in a bilateral fashion and become infected through dissemination from other primary sources of infection. Long-term adrenal insufficiency develops in 46% of patients, which is more common than what is observed in non-infectious etiology of adrenal gland disorders. Mortality is about 7%, and the presence of thrombocytopenia is associated with worse prognosis. Further prospective studies are needed to better characterize optimal testing and treatment duration in patients with this relatively rare but challenging disorder.

Unlike other adverse drug reactions, visceral organ involvement is a prominent feature of drug reaction with eosinophilia and systemic symptoms (DRESS) syndrome and correlates with mortality. The aim of this study was to systematically review cases published in PubMed-indexed, peer-reviewed journals in which patients had renal injury during the episode of DRESS syndrome (DS). We found 71 cases, of which 67 were adults and 56% were males. Female sex was associated with higher mortality. Chronic kidney disease (CKD) was present in 14% of patients who developed acute kidney injury (AKI) during DS. In 21% of cases, the kidneys were the only visceral organ involved, while 54% of patients had both liver and kidney involvement. Eosinophilia was absent in 24% of patients. The most common classes of medication associated with renal injury in DS were antibiotics in 34%, xanthine oxidase inhibitors in 15%, and anticonvulsants in 11%. Among antibiotics, vancomycin was the most common culprit in 68% of patients. AKI was the most common renal manifestation reported in 96% of cases, while isolated proteinuria or hematuria was present in only 4% of cases. In cases with AKI, 88% had isolated increase in creatinine and decrease in glomerular filtration (GFR), 27% had AKI concomitantly with proteinuria, 18% had oliguria, and 13% had concomitant AKI with hematuria. Anuria was the rarest manifestation, occurring in only 4% of patients with DS. Temporary renal replacement therapy was needed in 30% of cases, and all but one patient fully recovered renal function. Mortality of DS in this cohort was 13%, which is higher than previously reported. Medication class, latency period, or pre-existing CKD were not found to be associated with higher mortality. More research, particularly prospective studies, is needed to better recognize the risks associated with renal injury in patients with DS. The development of disease-specific biomarkers would also be useful so DS with renal involvement can be easier distinguished from other eosinophilic diseases that might affect the kidney.

The complexity of orchestrating Beyond 5G services, such as vehicular, demands novel approaches to remove limitations of existing techniques, as these might cause a large delay in orchestration operations, and thus, negatively impact the service performance. For instance, the human-in-the-loop approach is slow and prone to errors, and closed loop control using rule-based algorithms is difficult to design, as an abundant number of parameters need to be configured. Applying Artificial Intelligence (Al)/Machine Learning (ML), in combination with Network Function Virtualization (NFV) and Software Defined Networking (SDN), seems a promising solution for enabling automation and intelligence that will optimize orchestration operations. In this article, we study the challenges in current ETSI NFV orchestration solutions for B5G C-V2X edge services; propose an Al/ML-based closed-loop orchestration framework; propose how and which Al/ML techniques can alleviate the identified challenges and what are the implications resulting from applying certain Al/ML techniques; and discuss A//ML-based system enablers for B5G C-V2X services.