ABSTRACT The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly impacted the forest-products industry locally and globally, including the availability of raw materials, supply chain, production, and product sales. Therefore, it was essential to study the effect of COVID-19 in Central and Southeast European countries, including Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina, where the forest-products industry plays a vital global role. An international group of wood scientists developed and implemented the web-based questionnaire that consisted of four parts: demographic questions, production changes, COVID data gathering, governmental response to COVID-19, and lessons learned. Participants were mainly from furniture production, joinery, and wood processing. Results indicate that more than 80% of respondents reported negative changes. The COVID-19 pandemic has seriously affected the supply chain, and the most significant changes were in the availability of solid wood (23%) and engineered wood products (21%). Among the most critical issues were increased prices of all materials, increased transportation costs, extended delivery times, limited quantities for all materials, and total disruption of supply chains.

Background Despite anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) re-ruptures being common, research on patient experiences after knee trauma has primarily focused on the time after primary ACL reconstruction. Integrating qualitative research and patient experiences can facilitate researchers and clinicians in understanding the burden of an ACL re-rupture. The aim of the study was to explore the experiences of an ACL re-rupture journey in young active females aiming to return to knee-strenuous sports after primary ACL reconstruction. Method Fifteen young (19[range 16–23] years old) active females who suffered an ACL re-rupture were interviewed with semi-structured interviews. Qualitative content analysis using deductive approach based on Wiese-Bjornstal’s ‘integrated model of response to sport injury’ was used. Results The results are presented in two timelines 1) from first ACL injury to ACL re-rupture, and 2) from ACL re-rupture to present day, and further stratified according to the domains of the ‘integrated model of psychological response to injury’. Results in the first timeline are summarised into seven categories: Finding hope for the journey; Accepting my ACL injury; I succeeded; What matters now? Who am I?; Where will this end? What is going to happen? In the second timeline, eight categories were identified: Fighting spirit; A helping hand; Working hard; I am a new me; I am destroyed; Loneliness; Painful changes; and, I could have made it to the pro´s. Conclusion Young active females who suffered an ACL re-rupture did not express any positive experience following their first ACL injury, however, in contrast, expressed positive experiences and personal growth after going through the ACL re-rupture journey, characterized by a lot of struggling, and ultimately led to the experience of becoming a new, stronger person.

Objectives Comprehension of speech in adverse listening conditions is challenging for hearing-impaired (HI) individuals. Noise reduction (NR) schemes in hearing aids (HAs) have demonstrated the capability to help HI to overcome these challenges. The objective of this study was to investigate the effect of NR processing (inactive, where the NR feature was switched off, vs. active, where the NR feature was switched on) on correlates of listening effort across two different background noise levels [+3 dB signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and +8 dB SNR] by using a phase synchrony analysis of electroencephalogram (EEG) signals. Design The EEG was recorded while 22 HI participants fitted with HAs performed a continuous speech in noise (SiN) task in the presence of background noise and a competing talker. The phase synchrony within eight regions of interest (ROIs) and four conventional EEG bands was computed by using a multivariate phase synchrony measure. Results The results demonstrated that the activation of NR in HAs affects the EEG phase synchrony in the parietal ROI at low SNR differently than that at high SNR. The relationship between conditions of the listening task and phase synchrony in the parietal ROI was nonlinear. Conclusion We showed that the activation of NR schemes in HAs can non-linearly reduce correlates of listening effort as estimated by EEG-based phase synchrony. We contend that investigation of the phase synchrony within ROIs can reflect the effects of HAs in HI individuals in ecological listening conditions.

The fifth edition of the WHO Blue Book on urological tumours, specifically in the bladder chapter, represents a refinement and update in the classification of bladder tumours building on the aggregate major changes made in previous editions. Progress in the molecular underpinnings of urothelial tumours, particularly with promising stratifiers for more precision‐based treatment approaches, have been made. Special attention has been paid to burning questions in bladder pathology, such as grading, heterogeneous lesions, inverted tumours and substaging. The concept of neuroendocrine tumours will be explained precisely.

The aim of this research was to determine the differences related to morphological characteristics and body composition among female players of Montenegro national junior volleyball team and Kosovo national junior volleyball team. A sample of the subject consists of a total of 25 top-level female junior players who were members of two national teams, participants of the European Championship qualifying 2020. The first sub-sample of the subjects consisted of 13 players of National team of Montenegro, of the average age 17.13 ± 0.54, while the other sub-sample consisted of 12 players of National team of Kosovo, of the average age of 16.35 ± 0.41. Anthropometric characteristics in the body composition were evaluated by a battery of 11 variables: body height (cm), body weight (kg), triceps skinfold (mm), back skinfold, biceps skinfold, abdominal skinfold, thigh skinfold, calf skinfold, body mass index (BMI), percentage of fat (%) and muscle mass (kg). Statistically significant differences (p< 0.05) between body composition and morphological characteristic of the female volleyball players of two national teams, Montenegro and Kosovo, were determined by using a discriminatory parametric procedure with t-test for small independent samples. The results showed that the female volleyball players of Montenegro are somewhat higher, also they have greater body mass index, greater muscle mass and a significantly lower percentage of fat, compared to the female volleyball players of Kosovo. When it comes to variables of skinfolds, it was demonstrated only one statistical significance in favor of the Montenegrin National team, variable skinfold thigh.

Spatial assessment of soil erosion is an important indicator of ecological soil change and global environmental changes. This is especially true for countries with rich forest cover such as Bosnia and Herzegovina. In this study, the risk of soil erosion was assessed using the Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation (RUSLE) model and the impact of changes in the forest ecosystem, current conditions were compared with possible future forest management scenarios, and measures and solutions were proposed to reduce soil erodibility in vulnerable areas of the Pale Municipality in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The studied area is at increased risk of soil erosion due to natural conditions (mountain relief, climate change, and the frequency of extreme climatic events—drought and heavy rains, which occur more and more frequently in a short period of time) and due to anthropogenic factors, such as large-scale deforestation and conversion of mountain areas for tourism purposes, tracing and construction of ski slopes and ski resorts in general, and expansion of settlements. All this leads to threats to water conservation areas, landslides, floods, forest fires, and additional reduction of forest areas due to drying of forests and expansion of settlements. GIS as a tool provides us with a quick and accurate way to find possible solutions to problems resulting from the intensive use and inadequate monitoring. In this study, we have tried to offer possible solutions and show the benefits that can be obtained by varying the factors that affect soil erodibility and depend on vegetation cover, that is, land use (C-factor). This study presents the application of RUSLE methods in combination with GIS for the purpose of planning economic activities, such as winter tourism development in the community of Pale. An increase in soil loss due to inappropriate land use was found, with the average annual soil loss due to deforestation in the ski area increasing to 909.43 t ha−1 year−1.

Immunotherapy, based on immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) targeting the programmed cell death ligand 1 (PD-L1) and/or programmed death receptor 1 (PD-1), has substantially improved the outcomes of patients with various cancers. However, only ~30% of patients benefit from ICIs. Tumor PD-L1 expression, assessed by immunohistochemistry (IHC), is the most widely validated and used predictive biomarker to guide the selection of patients for ICIs. PD-L1 assessment may be challenging due to the necessity of different companion diagnostic assays for required specific ICIs and a relatively high level of inter-assay variability in terms of performance and cutoff levels. In this review, we discuss the role of PD-L1 IHC as a predictive test in immunotherapy (immuno-oncology), highlight the complexity of the PD-L1 testing landscape, discuss various preanalytical, analytical, and clinical issues that are associated with PD-L1 assays, and provide some insights into optimization of PD-L1 as a predictive biomarker in immuno-oncology.

In order to decide the appropriate arrangements of fictitious charges in the charge simulation method, the use of the Monte Carlo method is proposed for the estimation of the probability density function of two variables, the radius ratio, and the angle ratio. Τhe scale and shape parameters of the Weibull's distribution are determined by the maximum likelihood estimator. The obtained results are used to calculate the electric field at arbitrary points in the neighborhood of high voltage transmission lines. The comparisons between the results computed by this method, the results calculated by the genetic algorithm, and those measured, confirm the effectiveness and accuracy of the proposed method.

Introduction Data on safety and effectiveness of RPV from the real-world setting as well as comparisons with other NNRTIs such as efavirenz (EFV) remain scarce. Methods Participants of EuroSIDA were included if they had started a RPV- or an EFV-containing regimen over November 2011-December 2017. Statistical testing was conducted using non-parametric Mann–Whitney U test and Chi-square test. A logistic regression model was used to compare participants’ characteristics by treatment group. Kaplan–Meier analysis was used to estimate the cumulative risk of virological failure (VF, two consecutive values > 50 copies/mL). Results 1,355 PLWH who started a RPV-based regimen (11% ART-naïve), as well as 333 initiating an EFV-containing regimen were included. Participants who started RPV differed from those starting EFV for demographics (age, geographical region) and immune-virological profiles (CD4 count, HIV RNA). The cumulative risk of VF for the RPV-based group was 4.5% (95% CI 3.3–5.7%) by 2 years from starting treatment (71 total VF events). Five out of 15 (33%) with resistance data available in the RPV group showed resistance-associated mutations vs. 3/13 (23%) among those in the EFV group. Discontinuations due to intolerance/toxicity were reported for 73 (15%) of RPV- vs. 45 (30%) of EFV-treated participants (p = 0.0001). The main difference was for toxicity of central nervous system (CNS, 3% vs. 22%, p < 0.001). Conclusion Our estimates of VF > 50 copies/mL and resistance in participants treated with RPV were similar to those reported by other studies. RPV safety profile was favourable with less frequent discontinuation due to toxicity than EFV (especially for CNS).

The evolution of fifth-generation (5G) networks needs to support the latest use cases, which demand robust network connectivity for the collaborative performance of the network agents, such as multirobot systems and vehicle-to-anything (V2X) communication. Unfortunately, the user device’s limited communication range and battery constraint confirm the unfitness of known robustness metrics suggested for fixed networks, when applied to time-switching communication graphs. Furthermore, the calculation of most of the existing robustness metrics involves nondeterministic polynomial (NP)-time complexity, and hence are best fitted only for small networks. Despite a large volume of works, the complete analysis of a low-complexity temporal robustness metric for a communication network is absent in the literature, and the present work aims to fill this gap. More in detail, our work provides a stochastic analysis of network robustness for a massive machine-type communication (mMTC) network. The numerical investigation corroborates the exactness of the proposed analytical framework for the temporal robustness metric. Along with studying the impact on network robustness of various system parameters, such as cluster head (CH) probability, power threshold value, network size, and node failure probability, we justify the observed trend of numerical results probabilistically.