Background: Although stoma is a crucial surgical procedure, this operation has a physical and psychosocial impact on the patient, their habits and quality of life, which they should be properly educated on. Objectives: The purpose of the work is to analyze the impact of health care, key factors and problems that affect the final outcome of treatment in patients with a stoma, as well as suggestions and guidelines for improvement. Material and Methods: The results of 10 studies were reviewed including clinical trials, randomized prospective and retrospective studies published between 2011 and 2021. Results: Education of patients, their families, and medical staff is crucial in improving the quality of life of patients with stoma but also in reducing potential complications of stoma, along with stoma marking. It is also necessary to pay special attention to psychosocial problems in patients, as well as stoma problems in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Conclusion: More needs to be invested in educating staff, patients and their families about stoma, and integrating stoma patients into society in order to improve their life quality.

Background 4-hydroxychlorothalonil (HCT, R182281), a transformation product of the fungicide chlorothalonil, was recently identified in human serum and breast milk. There are indications that HCT may be more toxic and environmentally persistent than chlorothalonil. Objective Our aim was to investigate serum concentrations of HCT in pregnant women in Sweden and Costa Rica. Methods We developed a quantitative analytical method for HCT using liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry. We measured HCT in 1808 serum samples from pregnant women from the general population in Sweden (1997–2015) and in 632 samples from 393 pregnant women from an agricultural population in Costa Rica (2010–2011). In Swedish samples, we assessed time trends and investigated seasonality. In the Costa Rican samples, we evaluated variability between and within women and explanatory variables of HCT concentrations. Results HCT was detected in all serum samples, and the limit of detection was 0.1 µg/L. The median HCT concentration in the Swedish samples was 4.1 µg/L (interquartile range [IQR] of 2.9 − 5.8 µg/L), and 3.9 times higher in the Costa Rican samples (median: 16.1 µg/L; IQR: 10.6 − 25.0 µg/L). We found clear seasonal variation with higher concentrations in the first half of each year among Swedish women. In the Costa Rican study, women working in agriculture and living near banana plantations had higher HCT concentrations, whilst higher parity and having a partner working in agriculture were associated with decreased HCT, and no clear seasonal pattern was observed. Impact statement For the first time, this study quantifies human exposure to the fungicide chlorothalonil and/or its transformation product 4-hydroxychlorothalonil (HCT, R182281) and finds higher serum concentrations in women from a tropical agricultural setting as compared with women from the general population in Sweden.

Апстракт: Савремени оружани конфликти учинили су паравојне формације актуелним проблемом, а који се тематизује на нивоу међународног хуманитарног права, али и на нивоу националне легислативе. Традиционални појмови плаћеника и страних бораца последњих година допуњени су појмом страних терористичких борца, као и појмом приватних војних и безбедносних компанија. Циљ овог рада је да се укаже на кључне проблеме њиховог одређења, односно статуса, као и дилема и контроверзи које се намећу у вази са њиховим правним третманом, али и њиховим учешћем у савременим оружаним сукобима. На основу прегледа академске литературе, анализе докумената, званичних саопштења и медијских садржаја представљене су ове четири категорије паравојних формација, а као оквир за илустрацију уочених дилема и контроверзи коришћени су ратови у Авганистану, Ираку и Украјини.    

Este trabalho objetivou sugerir caminhos pedagógicos necessários para consolidar o processo de ensino e aprendizagem de Matemática no ensino técnico de nível médio integrado na Educação Profissional e Tecnológica (EPT) e suas relações com o trabalho. Metodologicamente, configura-se como um artigo de pesquisa qualitativa que emprega o procedimento de revisão bibliográfica. É importante compreender que a Matemática é indispensável para evolução da humanidade, para todo desenvolvimento tecnológico da era moderna, tendo suas suposições definidas por modelos usuais da natureza que especificam um padrão inquestionável na produção de conhecimento.  O professor de Matemática da EPT precisa ampliar estratégias didáticas que possam envolver discentes na construção do pensamento matemático, tendo em conta toda a dinâmica e estado de espírito do aprendiz. Nota-se que o contexto do processo de ensino e aprendizagem de Matemática no ensino técnico de nível médio integrado na EPT é uma temática polêmica, já que, envolve diversas questões sobre práticas pedagógicas, muitas vezes resistentes a modelos tradicionais de aprendizagem, provocando incertezas no enfrentamento de novos modelos matemáticos.  

This paper presents assessment of selected concept of medium voltage (MV) and low voltage (LV) power supply system of motorway energy consumers/systems on the Pan-European motorway corridor, branch Vc, in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) through methods of reliability analyses. Assessment of selected concept is performed through comparison with different, enhanced and reduced, possible MV network and MV/LV transformer substation configurations. Comparison and analysis of different configurations have been made using of serial, parallel, serial-parallel and delta-star reliability model and Fault tree model. Objective was to confirm that selected concept offers optimized technical solution which provides reliable power supply, failure rate of the supply system as low as possible, together with relative simplicity of design. The results from the selected approach of reliability analyses indicate that this power supply concept entirely based on direct power supply from the primary transformer stations 110/x kV, which ensures two-sided MV power supply of MV/LV transformer substations and their redundant configuration provides reliable power supply of motorway consumers.

The specific geographic location of Sarajevo, which is located in a valley surrounded by mountains, provides the opportunity to analyze the relation between the concentration of PM10 and meteorological parameters with and without temperature inversion. The main aim of this paper was to develop forecasting models of the hourly average of PM10 values in the Sarajevo urban area based on meteorological parameters measured in Sarajevo and on the Bjelasnica mountain with and without temperature inversion by using principal component regression (PCR). Also, this research explored and analyzed the differences in the values of the meteorological parameters and PM10 in Sarajevo with and without temperature inversion, and the difference in temperatures between Sarajevo and Bjelasnica with temperature inversion using statistical hypothesis testing with a total of 240 hypothesis tests performed. The measurements of meteorological parameters were taken from 2020 to 2022 for both Sarajevo (630 m) and the Bjelasnica mountain (2067 m), which allowed for the identification of time periods with and without temperature inversion, while measurements of PM10 were taken only in Sarajevo. Data were collected during the heating season (November, December, January, February and March). Since analyses have shown that only January and November had time periods with and without temperature inversion during each hour of the day, a total of seven cases were identified: two cases with and five cases without temperature inversion. For each case, three PCR models were developed using all principal components, backward elimination and eigenvalue principal component elimination criteria (λ<1). A total of 21 models were developed. The performance of the models were evaluated based on the coefficient of determination R2 and the standard error SE. The backward elimination models were shown to have high performances with the highest value of R2= 97.19 and the lowest value of SE=1.32. The study showed that some principal components with eigenvalues λ<1 were significantly related to the independent variable PM10 and thus were retained in the PCR models. In the study, it was shown that backward elimination PCR was an adequate tool to develop PM10 forecasting models with high performances and that it could be useful for authorities for early warnings or other action to protect citizens from very harmful pollution. Hypothesis tests showed different relations of meteorological parameters and PM10 with and without temperature inversion.

Which population factors have predisposed people to disregard government safety guidelines during the COVID-19 pandemic and what justifications do they give for this non-compliance? To address these questions, we analyse fixed-choice and free-text responses to survey questions about compliance and government handling of the pandemic, collected from tens of thousands of members of the UK public at three 6-monthly timepoints. We report that sceptical opinions about the government and mainstream-media narrative, especially as pertaining to justification for guidelines, significantly predict non-compliance. However, free text topic modelling shows that such opinions are diverse, spanning from scepticism about government competence and self-interest to full-blown conspiracy theories, and covary in prevalence with sociodemographic variables. These results indicate that attempts to counter non-compliance through argument should account for this diversity in peoples’ underlying opinions, and inform conversations aimed at bridging the gap between the general public and bodies of authority accordingly.

Triangulation is a vital concern in computational geometry, and it presents the base in work with complex geometric objects. This issue is utilized in diverse fields, such as terrain modelling, finite element mesh generation, image processing, and computer vision. Constructing triangulated random network models of land contours is a well-known NP-hard problem called Minimum Weight Triangulation (MWT). As it is an NP-hard problem, the time required for an exhaustive search technique proliferates as soon as the number of points on a plane increases. In order to solve this problem, nature-inspired swarm intelligence algorithms are being exploited as efficient optimization techniques. In this paper, we have adapted the recently devised Harris Hawks Optimization (HHO) approach for seeking the minimum-weight triangulation of a planar point set. We have experimented with our adjusted HHO approach on various randomly generated instances of 2D points, and the outcomes indicate that our method is robust. Our approach performs better in almost all cases than other nature-inspired algorithms.

The parameters selection process is a global combinatorial optimization problem which positively affects classification accuracy in many areas of science, especially in artificial intelligence and machine learning. In this paper, we propose a two-stage BA-SVM method, where the recent Bat Algorithm (BA) has been exploited to seek optimal parameters of Support Vector Machines (SVMs) in the first phase of BA-SVM, while the One-Versus-One method has been utilized in the second phase to generate acceptable classification outcomes. The presented method is spread on standard benchmarks and compared with three techniques from the literature. Experiments show that the BA-SVM approach was superior in all cases compared to the classification methods from the literature.

Vehicular communication is a critical technology in Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) that aims to improve transportation safety and efficiency. However, traditional radio-based systems, such as Cellular V2X (C-V2X) and Dedicated Short Range Communication (DSRC), may suffer from performance degradation in dense traffic scenarios. To address this issue, Line of Sight (LoS) technologies such as Visible Light Communication (VLC) are being explored as complementary technologies to RF.VLC utilizes LEDs on vehicles to exchange information with preceding and subsequent vehicles, allowing ITS to create a safer and less congested transportation system. Recent studies have shown that combining DSRC and VLC can minimize the performance degradation experienced by RF communication technologies.This paper highlights the need to combine RF and LoS technologies to improve the stability and reliability of V2V communication. It discusses various LoS and RF technologies and presents combinations that can be used for communication. Finally, a hybrid strategy that combines the best properties of individual technologies is proposed, demonstrating the feasibility of such a solution.

When exposed to strong laser fields, atoms or molecules can absorb more photons from the laser field than is necessary for ionization. This process is called above-threshold ionization (ATI). In analyzing this process, the strong-field approximation (SFA) turns out to be a very useful theoretical tool. In the SFA the differential ionization rate, which is an observable quantity, can be expressed as an integral over the ionization time and can be calculated by numerical integration (NI) or using the saddle-point method (SPM). When we use the Slater orbitals to describe the ground-state wave function of the valence electron, the results obtained using the SPM and NI do not agree. We find the reasons for this disagreement and introduce a modified SPM that leads to excellent agreement between the SPM and NI results for various strong laser fields.