Simple Summary Boar spermatozoa can be exposed to many harmful factors. The low antioxidant capacity of spermatozoa makes them susceptible to reactive oxygen species. The protection of spermatozoa from these harmful effects lies in the seminal plasma, which is enriched by antioxidant enzymes. This study aimed to measure the antioxidant status of boar seminal plasma, and to determine spermatozoa DNA status, and the total number of motile spermatozoa after the concurrent joint application in the boars’ diet of two commercial products with antioxidative potential. Abstract The study was conducted on a commercial pig farm located in Serbia. Thirty Duroc or Landrace breed boars were randomly selected for this study. The experimental group was fed a compound feed with added organic selenium and Oxynat 3D. The antioxidant status parameters of boar seminal plasma were evaluated using a biochemical analyzer and commercial Randox kits. The sperm chromatin structure assay (SCSA) using flow cytometry (FC) provided information about spermatozoa’s DNA status. Additionally, the total number of motile spermatozoa and spermatozoa kinematic parameters were measured using the computer-assisted sperm analysis (CASA) system. The aim of this study was to improve the parameters of semen by combining two preparations that have a potential antioxidant effect, but also to establish the level of various antioxidant enzymes in native sperm. There was no statistically significant difference in total antioxidant capacity and glutathione peroxidase activity in the seminal plasma obtained from the experimental and control groups of boars. Regarding the superoxide dismutase activity, the research results showed a difference in the control group compared to the experimental one. Moreover, spermatozoa DNA fragmentation and the total number of motile spermatozoa showed statistically significant lower and higher values, respectively, in experimental compared to the control groups. The combination of these two preparations shows significantly enhanced vital parameters of semen. To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first in which the ejaculate parameters were examined after the application of a combination of these two antioxidant supplements.

Objectives To evaluate the sleep patterns among young West Balkan adults during the third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. Design and setting Cross-sectional study conducted using an anonymous online questionnaire based on established sleep questionnaires Insomnia Severity Index (ISI) and Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) (February–August 2021). Participants Young adults of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Serbia. Results Of 1058 subjects, mean age was 28.19±9.29 years; majority were women (81.4%) and students (61.9%). Compared with before the pandemic, 528 subjects (49.9%) reported a change in sleeping patterns during the pandemic, with 47.3% subjects reporting sleeping less. Mean sleeping duration during the COVID-19 pandemic was 7.71±2.14 hours with median sleep latency of 20 (10.0–30.0) min. Only 91 (8.6%) subjects reported consuming sleeping medications. Of all, 574 (54.2%) subjects had ISI score >7, with majority (71.2%) having subthreshold insomnia, and 618 (58.4%) PSQI score ≥5, thus indicating poor sleep quality. Of 656 (62.0%) tested subjects, 464 (43.9%) were COVID-19 positive (both symptomatic and asymptomatic) who were 48.8%, next to women (70%), more likely to have insomnia symptoms; and 66.9% were more likely to have poor sleep quality. Subjects using sleep medication were 44 times, and subjects being positive to ISI 15.36 times more likely to have poor sleep quality. In contrast, being a student was a negative independent predictor for both insomnia symptoms and poor sleep quality, and mental labour and not working were negative independent predictors for insomnia symptoms. Conclusions During the third wave of the pandemic, sleep patterns were impaired in about half of young West Balkan adults, with COVID-19-positive subjects and being women as positive independent predictors and being a student as negative independent predictor of impaired sleep pattern. Due to its importance in long-term health outcomes, sleep quality in young adults, especially COVID-19-positive ones, should be thoroughly assessed.

Introduction: The early approaches to prevent the spread of COVID-19 included lockdown and social distancing measures, leading to university closures. These measures forced unparalleled changes to the delivery of healthcare education. Concerns included the preparedness of faculty and students to e-learning as well as the routine availability and funding of equipment and internet bundles. This needed addressing with fully trained healthcare professionals required given rising inappropriate use of antibiotics in India, growing prevalence of non-communicable diseases as well as an increasing number of patients with joint comorbidities. Consequently, there is a need to ascertain the current impact of the pandemic on healthcare student education across India. Materials and Methods: This was a pilot study among 10 purposely selected healthcare educators in both private and public universities. The questionnaire built on published studies. Results: Identified challenges included a lack of familiarity with online education, no bedside teaching, lack of equipment and affordability of internet bundles, poor internet connectivity and postponed examinations. Ways forward included training faculty on e-learning, providing students with loans and other financial support to purchase equipment and internet bundles, establishing COVID-19 prevention protocols and protective equipment, recording lectures and tutorials to make up for lost time and simulated methods to teach clinical aspects. Conclusion: Despite challenges, there was a rapid move to online learning among surveyed universities. Alongside this, courses to address lack of familiarity with e-learning approaches with hybrid teaching approaches here to stay. The next step will be to undertake a wider study and to use the combined findings to provide future guidance.

Aquaculture net pens inspection and monitoring are important to ensure net stability and fish health in the fish farms. Remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) offer a low-cost and sophisticated solution for the regular inspection of the underwater fish net pens due to their ability of visual sensing and autonomy in a challenging and dynamic aquaculture environment. In this paper, we report the integration of an ROV with a visual servoing scheme for regular inspection and tracking of the net pens. We propose a vision-based positioning scheme that consists of an object detector, a pose generator, and a closed-loop controller. The system employs a modular approach that first utilizes two easily identifiable parallel ropes attached to the net for image processing through traditional computer vision methods. Second, the reference positions of the ROV relative to the net plane are extracted on the basis of a vision triangulation method. Third, a closed-loop control law is employed to instruct the vehicle to traverse from top to bottom along the net plane to inspect its status. The proposed vision-based scheme has been implemented and tested both through simulations and field experiments. The extensive experimental results have allowed the assessment of the performance of the scheme that resulted satisfactorily and can supplement the traditional aquaculture net pens inspection and tracking systems.

Nowadays, when applications are being developed faster with the introduction of agile methodologies and new technologies, microservices are emerging. The microservices make applications easier to create and maintain when broken down into smaller parts, which form a whole application. RabbitMQ acts as an intermediary between the various services. It reduces the load and delivery time on server web applications by delegating tasks that would typically take a lot of time and resources. Message queuing allows web servers to respond quickly to requests rather than being forced to perform complex procedures that can take more time and resources. AMQP (Advanced Message Queuing Protocol) is a message protocol that deals with publishers and consumers like any other messaging system. Publishers produce messages while consumers download and process them. The job of message brokers, such as RabbitMQ, is to ensure that messages from publishers go to the right consumers. To do this, the broker uses two key components: exchange and order. We demonstrated that the style of microservice architecture is an approach to the development of an application as a set of small services, each in charge of its own process and communication with other services.

The main aim of the paper is modeling and simulation of fiber optic transmission. It also deals with ways to increase the capacity of fiber optic transmission links by using WDM (Wavelength Division Multiplexing) system. The parameters of the fiber optic transmission link were measured on a real optical transmission links and a model for simulation was set up. A simulation of increasing the capacity of a fiber optic transmission link was made in two ways. The first one is to increase the transmission speeds of the individual channels of the WDM system, and the second one is to increase the number of WDM system channels with lower individual speeds. The simulation results showed that the second method provides better quality of WDM service. The additional experiment was done on an existing ITU T G.655 optical fiber intended for WDM systems whose parameters were measured. Bit error rate and Q parameter for WDM system of 4 and 16 channel was used to check quality of proposed solution.

Imposed changes in social conduct and the dynamics of living in cities, during COVID-19 pandemic, triggered an increase in the demand, availability, and accessibility of open public spaces. This has put forward questions of the relationship between open public spaces and disease transmission, as well as how planning and design strategies might be used to improve resilience in the face of future pandemics. Within this academic framework, this study focuses on object detection and human movement prediction in open public spaces, using the city of Sarajevo as a case study. Video recordings of parks and squares in morning, afternoon and evening are utilized to detect humans and predict their movements. Frame differentiation method proved to be the best for object detection and their motion. Linear regression is used on a dataset collected using the space syntax observation technique gate method. The best R-2 values, 0.97 and 0.61, are achieved for weekdays, for both parks and squares. Authors associated it with the dynamics of space use and frequency of space occupancy, which can be related to physical conditions and activity content of selected locations. The results of study provide an insight into analysis and prediction of direction, as well as density of pedestrian movement, which could be used in decision making directed towards more efficient and health oriented urban planning.

Software process improvement implies a set of complex and systematic activities of software engineering. It requires theory and models established in management, technical and social sciences. The improvement is based on the assumption that the organization if it owns mature and capable processes, would be able to deliver quality software on time and in line with predicted costs. The maturity models are initially aimed for implementation in enterprise software organizations, government organizations and within the military industry. Their complexity and the size make them difficult to use in small software organizations and companies. In such organizations the interest for use and the efforts to make an efficient and effective organization is always presented, though. In this paper, the basic and derived capability maturity models are described and cases from their implementation are analyzed, along with assessment of results of such projects in business practices. The problem of the software process improvement in small organizations is described, extracting the risks and recommendations for its enhancement. These recommendations are provided in order to set up a foundation for implementation of these models in a specific managerial and organizational environment characterized by small organizations.

The Internet of Things (IoT) connects everyone in the smart world, so the energy consumption of IoT technology is a challenging and attractive research area. The development of technology in the field of IoT has changed the way of life and enriched society with its benefits, but we must not ignore the fact that IoT consumes energy, contributes to toxic pollution, and generates electrical waste. To increase the benefits and reduce the harmfulness of IoT, there are increasing tendencies to move towards green IoT (G-IoT). The G-IoT is considered the future environmentally friendly IoT. Greening ICT technology plays a key role in G-IoT and promises many benefits to society such as efficient production, and reducing the energy used to design and distribute ICT devices and equipment. This paper will present a comprehensive overview of G-IoT technologies and strategies that demonstrate work and efforts to build a green and smart world, contributing to a safe and healthy environment, smart and high quality of life based on enabling technologies, reducing pollution, and reducing energy consumption. ICT technologies that enable G-IoT include Green RFID, Green Wireless Sensor Network (GWSN), Green Cloud Computing (GCC), Green M2M (G-M2M), and Green Data Center (GDC). The paper will also present an analysis of the importance of environmental technology processes in sustainable development, exploring the principles and roles of G-IoT in the progress of society through examining its potential for improving quality of life, environment, economic growth, and green global modernization.

Trata o presente artigo da concordância verbal em Helvécia, comunidade afro-brasileira  localizada no Sul do estado da Bahia, Brasil, com base nos registros de Ferreira (1994) e  Lucchesi, Baxter e Ribeiro (2009), e em duas comunidades afro-brasileiras localizadas no  Baixo Amazonas Paraense, Brasil, a partir dos dados de Costa (2019). Os registros dos  autores são descritos e comentados, privilegiando-se a discussão do uso de ele foi e ele fui. Os  resultados mostram que variantes encontradas em Helvécia, na década de 1960, também são  registradas nas comunidades amazônicas, em 2016, mas que ele fui foi encontrado apenas nas comunidades da Amazônia. Essa variação foi identificada na fala de idosos das duas  comunidades pesquisadas, Arapucu e Silêncio. A hipótese conclusiva é de que esse uso  caracteriza a redução do paradigma verbal do Português Brasileiro e estaria relacionado a  uma alteração ligada ao nível fonético, característica da norma popular. No presente estudo,  dados são apresentados como suporte empírico dessas conclusões.

In the last few years, we have been active participants in globalization and the rapid growth of online commerce. This trend directly impacts logistics, postal, and courier companies. Challenges are visible in the growth and development of these companies, as well as quality of task execution and the ability to adapt to market conditions. With the impact of the SARS-COV-19 virus on the market, and due to locks during the pandemic, shoppers were forced to buy products online. This effect accelerated the trend of purchases via e-commerce, which increased the number of parcels in the technological phases of pick-up and delivery. These companies are the bearers of the first and last technological phase of shipment transport. Due to the increase in the number of shipments, postal and logistics companies are under great pressure. This is because of certain restrictions introduced during the pandemic, but also because of costs, especially fixed costs in the first and last phase of transport. This paper proposes an outsourcing model for the pick-up and delivery to convert fixed costs into variable ones.