Measurements of the suppression and correlations of dijets is performed using 3 $\mu$b$^{-1}$ of Xe+Xe data at $\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{NN}}} = 5.44$ TeV collected with the ATLAS detector at the LHC. Dijets with jets reconstructed using the $R=0.4$ anti-$k_t$ algorithm are measured differentially in jet $p_{\text{T}}$ over the range of 32 GeV to 398 GeV and the centrality of the collisions. Significant dijet momentum imbalance is found in the most central Xe+Xe collisions, which decreases in more peripheral collisions. Results from the measurement of per-pair normalized and absolutely normalized dijet $p_{\text{T}}$ balance are compared with previous Pb+Pb measurements at $\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{NN}}} =5.02$ TeV. The differences between the dijet suppression in Xe+Xe and Pb+Pb are further quantified by the ratio of pair nuclear-modification factors. The results are found to be consistent with those measured in Pb+Pb data when compared in classes of the same event activity and when taking into account the difference between the center-of-mass energies of the initial parton scattering process in Xe+Xe and Pb+Pb collisions. These results should provide input for a better understanding of the role of energy density, system size, path length, and fluctuations in the parton energy loss.

This case report describes a diagnosis of Paget-Schroetter syndrome in a man in his 50s with a network of small veins in the left infraclavicular region discovered after unsuccessful left subclavian vein puncture.

Objective Published reports describing awareness and knowledge of familial hypercholesterolemia (FH) among pediatricians are few and differ considerably across countries. We aimed to assess awareness and knowledge of the FH among pediatricians in Serbia. Methods A web-based cross-sectional study using a self-designed questionnaire was conducted during the annual congress of the Serbian Association of Preventive Pediatrics in 2020. Results A total of 141 pediatricians completed the questionnaire (response rate 16.1%). Overall, 91% of participants have knowledge about genetic inheritance of FH, 84.3% were aware of long-term health risks of FH, 77% were familiar with normal cholesterol values in children and 71% knew the FH prevalence in the general population. On the other hand, only 36.8% declared that they were familiar with international guidelines for FH drug treatment and only 26.2% declared to have patients with FH. Conclusion There is a substantial lack of practical clinical knowledge among Serbian pediatricians on managing children with FH. In addition, an extremely low questionnaire response rate (16.1%) suggests that most pediatricians are not aware of the clinical importance of FH in childhood.

Background Immunocompromised patients with acute diverticulitis are at increased risk of morbidity and mortality. The aim of this study was to compare clinical presentations, types of treatment, and outcomes between immunocompromised and immunocompetent patients with acute diverticulitis. Methods We compared the data of patients with acute diverticulitis extracted from the Web-based International Registry of Emergency Surgery and Trauma (WIRES-T) from January 2018 to December 2021. First, two groups were identified: medical therapy (A) and surgical therapy (B). Each group was divided into three subgroups: nonimmunocompromised (grade 0), mildly to moderately (grade 1), and severely immunocompromised (grade 2). Results Data from 482 patients were analyzed—229 patients (47.5%) [M:F = 1:1; median age: 60 (24–95) years] in group A and 253 patients (52.5%) [M:F = 1:1; median age: 71 (26–94) years] in group B. There was a significant difference between the two groups in grade distribution: 69.9% versus 38.3% for grade 0, 26.6% versus 51% for grade 1, and 3.5% versus 10.7% for grade 2 ( p  < 0.00001). In group A, severe sepsis ( p  = 0.027) was more common in higher grades of immunodeficiency. Patients with grade 2 needed longer hospitalization ( p  = 0.005). In group B, a similar condition was found in terms of severe sepsis ( p  = 0.002), quick Sequential Organ Failure Assessment score > 2 ( p  = 0.0002), and Mannheim Peritonitis Index ( p  = 0.010). A Hartmann’s procedure is mainly performed in grades 1–2 ( p  < 0.0001). Major complications increased significantly after a Hartmann’s procedure ( p  = 0.047). Mortality was higher in the immunocompromised patients (p  = 0.002). Conclusions Immunocompromised patients with acute diverticulitis present with a more severe clinical picture. When surgery is required, immunocompromised patients mainly undergo a Hartmann’s procedure. Postoperative morbidity and mortality are, however, higher in immunocompromised patients, who also require a longer hospital stay.

Introduction The presence of focal cortical and white matter damage in patients with multiple sclerosis (pwMS) might lead to specific alterations in brain networks that are associated with cognitive impairment. We applied microstructure-weighted connectomes to investigate (i) the relationship between global network metrics and information processing speed in pwMS, and (ii) whether the disruption provoked by focal lesions on global network metrics is associated to patients’ information processing speed. Materials and methods Sixty-eight pwMS and 92 healthy controls (HC) underwent neuropsychological examination and 3T brain MRI including multishell diffusion (dMRI), 3D FLAIR, and MP2RAGE. Whole-brain deterministic tractography and connectometry were performed on dMRI. Connectomes were obtained using the Spherical Mean Technique and were weighted for the intracellular fraction. We identified white matter lesions and cortical lesions on 3D FLAIR and MP2RAGE images, respectively. PwMS were subdivided into cognitively preserved (CPMS) and cognitively impaired (CIMS) using the Symbol Digit Modalities Test (SDMT) z-score at cut-off value of −1.5 standard deviations. Statistical analyses were performed using robust linear models with age, gender, and years of education as covariates, followed by correction for multiple testing. Results Out of 68 pwMS, 18 were CIMS and 50 were CPMS. We found significant changes in all global network metrics in pwMS vs HC (p < 0.05), except for modularity. All global network metrics were positively correlated with SDMT, except for modularity which showed an inverse correlation. Cortical, leukocortical, and periventricular lesion volumes significantly influenced the relationship between (i) network density and information processing speed and (ii) modularity and information processing speed in pwMS. Interestingly, this was not the case, when an exploratory analysis was performed in the subgroup of CIMS patients. Discussion Our study showed that cortical (especially leukocortical) and periventricular lesions affect the relationship between global network metrics and information processing speed in pwMS. Our data also suggest that in CIMS patients increased focal cortical and periventricular damage does not linearly affect the relationship between network properties and SDMT, suggesting that other mechanisms (e.g. disruption of local networks, loss of compensatory processes) might be responsible for the development of processing speed deficits.

The breakthrough performance of large language models (LLMs) comes with major computational footprints and high deployment costs. In this paper, we progress towards resolving this problem by proposing a novel structured compression approach for LLMs, called ZipLM. ZipLM achieves state-of-the-art accuracy-vs-speedup, while matching a set of desired target runtime speedups in any given inference environment. Specifically, given a model, a dataset, an inference environment, as well as a set of speedup targets, ZipLM iteratively identifies and removes components with the worst loss-runtime trade-off. Unlike prior methods that specialize in either the post-training/one-shot or the gradual compression setting, and only for specific families of models such as BERT (encoder) or GPT (decoder), ZipLM produces state-of-the-art compressed models across all these settings. Furthermore, ZipLM achieves superior results for a fraction of the computational cost relative to prior distillation and pruning techniques, making it a cost-effective approach for generating an entire family of smaller, faster, and highly accurate models, guaranteed to meet the desired inference specifications. In particular, ZipLM outperforms all prior BERT-base distillation and pruning techniques, such as CoFi, MiniLM, and TinyBERT. Moreover, it matches the performance of the heavily optimized MobileBERT model, obtained via extensive architecture search, by simply pruning the baseline BERT-large model. When compressing GPT2, ZipLM outperforms DistilGPT2 while being 60% smaller and 30% faster. Our code is available at: https://github.com/IST-DASLab/ZipLM.

Importance There is a lack of validated biomarkers for disability progression independent of relapse activity (PIRA) in multiple sclerosis (MS). Objective To determine how serum glial fibrillary acidic protein (sGFAP) and serum neurofilament light chain (sNfL) correlate with features of disease progression vs acute focal inflammation in MS and how they can prognosticate disease progression. Design, Setting, and Participants Data were acquired in the longitudinal Swiss MS cohort (SMSC; a consortium of tertiary referral hospitals) from January 1, 2012, to October 20, 2022. The SMSC is a prospective, multicenter study performed in 8 centers in Switzerland. For this nested study, participants had to meet the following inclusion criteria: cohort 1, patients with MS and either stable or worsening disability and similar baseline Expanded Disability Status Scale scores with no relapses during the entire follow-up; and cohort 2, all SMSC study patients who had initiated and continued B-cell-depleting treatment (ie, ocrelizumab or rituximab). Exposures Patients received standard immunotherapies or were untreated. Main Outcomes and Measures In cohort 1, sGFAP and sNfL levels were measured longitudinally using Simoa assays. Healthy control samples served as the reference. In cohort 2, sGFAP and sNfL levels were determined cross-sectionally. Results This study included a total of 355 patients (103 [29.0%] in cohort 1: median [IQR] age, 42.1 [33.2-47.6] years; 73 female patients [70.9%]; and 252 [71.0%] in cohort 2: median [IQR] age, 44.3 [33.3-54.7] years; 156 female patients [61.9%]) and 259 healthy controls with a median [IQR] age of 44.3 [36.3-52.3] years and 177 female individuals (68.3%). sGFAP levels in controls increased as a function of age (1.5% per year; P < .001), were inversely correlated with BMI (-1.1% per BMI unit; P = .01), and were 14.9% higher in women than in men (P = .004). In cohort 1, patients with worsening progressive MS showed 50.9% higher sGFAP levels compared with those with stable MS after additional sNfL adjustment, whereas the 25% increase of sNfL disappeared after additional sGFAP adjustment. Higher sGFAP at baseline was associated with accelerated gray matter brain volume loss (per doubling: 0.24% per year; P < .001) but not white matter loss. sGFAP levels remained unchanged during disease exacerbations vs remission phases. In cohort 2, median (IQR) sGFAP z scores were higher in patients developing future confirmed disability worsening compared with those with stable disability (1.94 [0.36-2.23] vs 0.71 [-0.13 to 1.73]; P = .002); this was not significant for sNfL. However, the combined elevation of z scores of both biomarkers resulted in a 4- to 5-fold increased risk of confirmed disability worsening (hazard ratio [HR], 4.09; 95% CI, 2.04-8.18; P < .001) and PIRA (HR, 4.71; 95% CI, 2.05-9.77; P < .001). Conclusions and Relevance Results of this cohort study suggest that sGFAP is a prognostic biomarker for future PIRA and revealed its complementary potential next to sNfL. sGFAP may serve as a useful biomarker for disease progression in MS in individual patient management and drug development.

Portal vein aneurysm (PVA) is a rare vascular abnormality, representing 3% of all venous aneurysms in the human body, and is not well understood. It can be congenital or acquired, located mainly at the level of confluence, main trunk, branches and bifurcation. A PVA as an abnormality of the portal venous system was first reported in 1956 by Barzilai and Kleckner. A review from 2015 entitled “Portal vein aneurysm: What to know” considered fewer than 200 cases. In the last seven years, there has been an increase in the number of PVAs diagnosed thanks to routine abdominal imaging. The aim of this review is to provide a comprehensive update of PVA, including aetiology, epidemiology, and clinical assessment, along with an evaluation of advanced multimodal imaging features of aneurysm and management approaches.

Background: Possible solutions to overcome the many challenges of home delivery are collection and delivery points (CDPs). In addition to commercial facilities, the role of CDPs can also be played by users’ households, providing a crowd storage service. Key decisions regarding CDPs relate to their location, as well as the allocation of users to selected locations, so that the distance of users from CDPs is minimal. Methods: In this paper, the described problem is defined as a p-median problem and solved for the area of the city of Belgrade, using the heuristic “greedy” and the simulated annealing algorithm. Results: Fifty locations of CDPs were selected and the users allocated to them were distributed in over 950 zones. The individual distances between users and the nearest CDPs and the sum of these distances, multiplied by the number of requests, were obtained. An example of modification of the number of CDPs is presented as a way of obtaining solutions that correspond to different preferences of operators and/or users in terms of their distances from the CDPs. Conclusions: User households can be used as CDPs to achieve various benefits. Locating CDPs, i.e., selecting households, can be solved as a p-median problem, using a combination of heuristic and metaheuristic algorithms. In addition, by modifying the number of medians, the total and average distances between users and CDPs can be better managed. The main contributions of the paper are the establishment of users’ households as potential locations of CDPs, the establishment of a framework for analysis of impact of the number of CDPs on the sum and average distances from the customers, as well as the creation of a basis for upgrading and modifying the model for implementation in the business practice.

Dynamic covalent chemistry (DCC) has proven to be a valuable tool in creating fascinating molecules, structures, and emergent properties in fully synthetic systems. Here we report a system that uses two dynamic covalent bonds in tandem, namely disulfides and hydrazones, for the formation of hydrogels containing biologically relevant ligands. The reversibility of disulfide bonds allows fiber formation upon oxidation of dithiol-peptide building block, while the reaction between NH-NH2 functionalized C-terminus and aldehyde cross-linkers results in a gel. The same bond-forming reaction was exploited for the "decoration" of the supramolecular assemblies by cell-adhesion-promoting sequences (RGD and LDV). Fast triggered gelation, cytocompatibility and ability to "on-demand" chemically customize fibrillar scaffold offer potential for applying these systems as a bioactive platform for cell culture and tissue engineering.

Abstract Excavations of the Kopilo cemetery in central Bosnia in 2021 and 2022 have provided the first insights into Bronze and Iron Age burial practices in this part of Europe. We documented a total of 46 inhumation graves, with the variety of finds indicating supra-regional contacts of this population.

It is a continuous imperative to establish the most efficient process of conversion of primary energy from fuel through combustion, which also has the least possible harmful effect on the environment. In this time of expressed demands for decarbonisation, it also means the affirmation of the use of renewable fuels and the indispensable application of appropriate primary measures in the combustion furnace. At the same time, the efficiency of the combustion process depends on several factors, from the type and properties of the fuel to the ambient and technological settings for the process. In this regard, with the aim of determining the static characteristics of combustion, experimental laboratory research was carried out on the combustion of mixtures of brown coal with low heating value and a high ash content with waste woody biomass and different process conditions: temperature, staged combustion air supply (air staging) and in conditions of application of a third or additional fuel (natural gas, reburning technology). Applied experimental methods included the analysis of the combustion process on the basis of input (reactants) - output (products), including the analysis of the composition of flue gases, i.e. the determination of the emission of the key components of flue gases CO2, CO, NOx and SO2, as well as the analysis of the composition of slag, ash and deposits ash, i.e. assessment and evaluation of the behaviour of ash from fuel in that process. Based on the obtained research results, this paper shows the significant positive effects of the application of primary measures in the furnace - compared to conventional combustion: air staging - reduction of net CO2 emissions during co-firing with biomass and reduction of NOx emissions by up to 30%; reburning technology - additional reduction of CO2 and NOx emissions in proportion to the share of natural gas, e.g. at a combustion process temperature of 1350 °C and at a 10% energy share of natural gas during the co-firing of a mixture of brown coal and waste woody biomass, compared to the emission without the use of natural gas, a reduction of NOx emissions by 185 mg/mn3 or by almost 30% was recorded. It was concluded, at the same time, the application of these primary measures in the furnace does not negatively affect the behaviour of ash from the fuel in the given settings of the combustion process.

Since August 2022 customers have to be asked if they are interested in sustainable investment when entering a pension contract. Hence, the provider has to be prepared to offer suitable investment opportunities. Further, the provider has to manage the new risks and chances of those assets in the whole portfolio. We therefore especially look at possible consequences for optimal portfolio decisions of a life insurer and suggest modeling approaches for the evolution of the demand and the sustainability ratings for sustainable assets. We will solve various portfolio problems under sustainability constraints explicitly and suggest further research topics. As a special feature for a life insurer, we particularly look at the role of the actuarial reserve fund and the annual declaration of its return.

Waste disposal is just one of the segments in solid municipal waste management system. During the entire life cycle of waste, starting from waste generation, through storage, collection, transport, recycling, treatment and disposal, several different pollutants are emitted. By disposing solid waste, non-road mobile machinery (NRMM) emits various pollutants into the air such as CO2, CO, NMVOC, PM, PAHs, heavy metals, etc. These substances can pose certain problems for human health and the environment. The subject of this study is the calculation of air emissions of CO2, CH4, N2O, NMVOC, PM10, CO, Cd, Cr and PAHs (chrysene and benz[a]anthracene) from NRMM which are included in the activities of receiving and disposing of waste at the Banja Luka landfill. The study evaluates the emission of pollutants using the EEA guidelines for the assessment of the emission of pollutants into the air, based on the consumption of diesel fuel during the year. This study, which is based on the calculation of NRMM emissions at the Banja Luka landfill, should serve as an example not only to other landfills but also to sectors that use NRMM on the importance of keeping track of pollutant emissions. The goal is to look at these emissions and introduce changes and improvements in this sector by replacing old NRMMs with new ones, optimizing operation, using diesel of satisfactory quality, etc.