Functional appliances are key to success in early orthodontic therapy. Their application is most useful in the period of a pre-puberty and pubertal growth spurt, in order to achieve facial aesthetics and improve the patient's health. The aim of treatment with functional appliances is to act on the muscles and ligaments, thereby influencing the movement and growth of the lower jaw forward, when it comes to the distal bite. The devices are used to correct malocclusions in all three spatial planes: sagittal, vertical, and transferal. In the sagittal dimension, the distal bite is corrected and Angle class I occlusion is established. In the transferal dimension, appliances are used to expand the dental arches. In the vertical dimension, appliances are used to correct an open or deep bite. Most often, mobile functional appliances are used, which consist of special upper and lower parts, such as the Twin block and the "M" block. Other types of functional devices have been used for many years, they consist of one part and their disadvantage is discomfort for patients and the impossibility of use in the presence of septal deviation or any other airway obstruction (activator and all its modifications, as well as Bionator). Recently, fixed functional appliances are also used, the advantage of which is that they do not depend on the cooperation of the patient and that they hold the mandible in an anterior position for 24 hours, achieved on the basis of an adequately taken construction bite. Their application is not conditioned by the puberty growth spurt but can be used by post-adolescents and young adults. In the production of functional appliances, the most important thing is to take a good construction bite, which determines how the muscle power will be transferred to the tissues, teeth, and jawbone. They determine the course of treatment and its duration. Muscle activation is performed in sagittal, transverse, and vertical directions, individually for each patient depending on the type of device.

Smoking is a global public health problem, and control measures should be implemented in the community so as to reduce the number of smoking-related diseases and healthcare costs. Community pharmacies are ideal places for providing tobacco cessation counselling as a type of public health service, because they are the most accessible health facilities with direct contact with patients. We aimed to examine attitudes towards the implementation of such services, conducting surveys on a sample of pharmacy students (N=300), community pharmacists (N=383) and the general public (N=987) in the Republic of Serbia. The introduction of smoking cessation services at pharmacies was supported by pharmacy students (59.7%), pharmacists (49.2%), and the general public (36.7%). No difference was found between pharmacistsàttitudes in terms of their gender, age, level of education and years of experience. We found evidence that pharmacists as public health practitioners were recognized mostly by students (94.3%). The majority of them (86.3%) recognized the need for additional education in order to implement new services, and every third pharmacist recognized a gap in their education. The data indicate the need for directed research in order to explore the educational needs and competences for practicing pharmacists and enable them to perform services such as smoking cessation in the future.

The most significant characteristic of the investment interventions that are the subject of this paper is that their activation periods are one year and that their cash inflows are one-time. If there are several independent operations of this type, all those with a positive net present value, and therefore an internal rate of return that is higher than the actualization rate, will be accepted. In the case of competing operations (at certain rates of actualization), especially those whose exploitation periods are different, we may have the case that one of them is better from the aspect of net present value, and the other from the aspect of internal rate of return. The decision on their proper ranking must be based on determining the net present value for exploitation periods that are mutually equal. In the paper, we analyzed two ways of equalizing exploitation periods, the method of reciprocal interventions and the method of replacement, and obtained relevant information for their ranking, which was also confirmed by the annuity method.

Rheumatic heart disease (RHD) is the leading cause of valvular heart disease in underdeveloped nations. It remains a significant public health issue in Sub-Saharan African countries. This study aimed to determine the pattern, severity, and complications of RHD in Somalia. This was a retrospective cross-sectional study of all patients diagnosed with rheumatic heart disease. A total of 8526 echocardiographic examinations were done in our center over a two-year study period from January 2020 to December 2021. Patients with congenital cardiac disease, post-operative cases, myxomatous and old age degenerative disease were all excluded. Of 433 patients, 286 (66.1%) were female, and the mean age was 46.5 ± 20.3. The isolated mitral valve (MV) affected 222 (51.3%). Dual involvement of mitral and aortic valve (AV) was present in 190 (44%). Overall isolated or combined valve involvement, mitral regurgitation (MR) was the most common valve lesion 345 (79.7%), followed by mitral stenosis (MS) 160 (37%). According to the severity of lesions, severe MR was 230 (53.1%) patients, followed by severe MS (n=129, 29.8%). The most common complication of RHD depicted in our study were secondary pulmonary hypertension and enlarged left atrium, 23.8% (n=103) and 19.6% (n=85), respectively. In conclusion, in our study majority of RHD patients were females. Both isolated and in combination, MV was the most commonly affected, and mitral regurgitation was the most common valvular lesion. In our study high percentage of patients already had complications at the time of diagnosis.

Background: The association between diabetes mellitus type 2 (T2DM) and pulmonary embolism (PE) is still unclear. Objective: The aim of this study was to determine the prognostic value of prothrombotic, proinflammatory markers, and troponin for pulmonary embolism and its complications in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus. Methods: The retrospective cohort study included 294 patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus divided into two groups: (a) the first group with pulmonary embolism (n=165); (b) the control group without pulmonary embolism (n=129). The data were collected from May 2018 to May 2023. In all patients we analyzed: anthropometric parameters, laboratory parameters (troponin, D-dimer, CRP, fibrinogen, uric acid, glucose, total cholesterol, HDL cholesterol, LDL cholesterol, triglycerides), arterial blood pressure, antiphospholipid antibodies, HOMA-IR index, CT angiography of the pulmonary artery, rate of adverse clinical events in pulmonary embolism (need for inotropic catecholamine support, fibrinolysis, cardiopulmonary resuscitation) and rate of intrahospital mortality from pulmonary embolism. Results: Troponin levels were significantly higher in the PE group compared to the non-PE group (p = 0.002). D-dimer, CRP, uric acid, fibrinogen and HOMA- IR were significantly elevated in the PE group compared to the non-PE group (p < 0.001). Patients with pulmonary embolism in T2DM proved to have significantly more in-hospital death within 10 days of hospital admission (p<0.001), compared to patients with T2DM, without pulmonary embolism. Conclusion : Prothrombotic, proinflammatory markers, and troponin have good prognostic value for short-term outcomes in PE among patients with T2DM.

Quality of experience (QoE) is a multidimensional concept that has been in the focus of the research community for quite some time, especially after the rapid development of information and communication technology (ICT). It has been examined in many contexts (web, telecommunications, economy, medicine, etc.), for different media types (text, audio, video, augmented/virtual reality, etc.) and systems in various domains. Given that logistics and transport is a potent ICT-based domain for research activity in the future, in order to ease and improve the investigation of QoE in the contexts of logistics and transport, we aim to sum the recommendations and lessons learned for the investigation of QoE on the basis of our existing research. These suggestions cover how to treat the concept of QoE and relate it to other fields, techniques and environments to examine and treat QoE, as well as future technologies that need to be included. We provide insight into how these challenges can affect examination of QoE in logistics and transport and discuss ways to overcome them.

The main matter of this research is phenomenon of reading, has won totally different sense among the society which is witnessing the biggest achievements in technology. A lot of people used to write about the fact of how much important reading is and how the reading activity influences personality development in total, one of them was Nil Gaiman, which warns about the future of illiterate generations. On the other side position of literate society, the one that fosters active reading is out of the crisis to be unhappy, uneducated, personalities without flat and emphaty which most often give themselves to some vices. In this paper the function of literature has been highlighted that represents people need, that forms him and his views on the world. Value and importance of literature has been explained in details by Bogdan Popovic in his essay "About literature", hundred year ago. There we are ablo to see two different perspectives of literature reading, especially on fiction and here we can realise how ideas even a long years distance have stayed the same. One of the ideas that has been mentioned in this paper is how reading is a key and libraries are gates of future. Role of teachers in the process of learning, development and nurturing the active reading is the key in the process of education. Alongside the family from where everything starts and incentivises, school is also responsible for growing generations of active readers, the ones that will see the future in libraries. At the end of this paper some annual informations about usage od literature for kids and adults are adults, actually the informations of how much people are visiting the state library "Dositej Obradovic" in Novi Pazar are included.