Abstract Innovation is crucial for the competitiveness of countries in the global market. Countries oriented to progress must invest in innovative activities. Using the example of the Western Balkan countries, this study investigated their innovative competitiveness. The indicators of the Global Innovation Index (GII) were used for the years 2019, 2020, and 2021. A multi-criteria approach was based on the innovative SMART approach. The weights of the criteria were determined using the CRITIC (criteria importance through intercriteria correlation) method, while the CRADIS (compromise ranking of alternatives from distance to ideal solution) method ranked the Western Balkan countries according to their innovative characteristics. The results showed that Montenegro had the best innovation indicators, followed by Serbia, while Albania had the worst indicators. This research showed an innovative approach of using four normalizations, and the advantages of these normalizations were used to contribute to stabilization in multi-criteria decision-making.

Several recent works show impressive results in mapping language-based human commands and image scene observations to direct robot executable policies (e.g., pick and place poses). However, these approaches do not consider the uncertainty of the trained policy and simply always execute actions that are suggested by the current policy as the most probable ones. This makes them vulnerable to domain shift and inefficient in the number of required demonstrations. We extend previous works and present the PARTNR algorithm that can detect ambiguities in the trained policy by analyzing multiple modes in the probability distributio of pick and place poses using topological analysis. In this way uncertainty in action can be estimated with single inference (and training single model) instead of using ensemble of models. Additionally, PARTNR employs an adaptive, sensitivity-based, gating function that decides if additional user demonstrations are required. User demonstrations are aggregated to the dataset and used for subsequent training. In this way, the policy can adapt promptly to domain shift and it can minimize the number of required demonstrations for a well-trained policy. The adaptive threshold enables to achieve the user-acceptable level of ambiguity to execute the policy autonomously and in turn, increase the trustworthiness of our system. We demonstrate the performance of PARTNR in a table-top pick and place task.

Aktivnosti Centra za istraživanje moderne i savremene historije Tuzla u 2021. godini // Activities of Center for Research of Modern and Contemporary History Tuzla in 2021.

The Yugoslav Communists, since their very appearance on the socio-political scene, have occupied a significant place in the historical perspective. During the Second World War in Yugoslavia, there was a significant change in political and social relations. The existence of ideological and civil war in the period 1941-1945 is crucial for understanding war and post-war events. The People's Liberation Army, ie the party's military instrument for the implementation of political and social changes, proved to be a key and decisive factor for the establishment of communist rule. The communist party did not observe the war in Yugoslavia through anti-fascism and anti-fascist struggle but through the so-called national liberation struggle and the socialist revolution. The key goal of the Communist Party was a fundamental change of social paradigm. In order to realize that idea, the party acted realpolitik. Initially, the party promoted common goals. Nevertheless, the party turned to its partial interests as soon as favorable military-political circumstances were created. The initial promotion of common goals was just a mimicry of the real intentions of the party. The Communist Party had a clearly defined political platform and goals for the national liberation struggle. These goals included taking over and establishing power, modeled on the Soviet Union. The conflict in Yugoslavia contained all the elements of an ideological-civil war because all the warring parties used the turmoil of war to carry out their political goals. In the context of the CPY, the basic form of the uprising was the partisan war, which escalated into a war against the enemy, those who were considered a threat to the party's future plans. In 1942, the People's Liberation Army was formed with the first divisions and corps (within it), while the decisive battles in 1943 definitely strengthened the People's Liberation Movement. A real understanding of the place and role of the Yugoslav communists, within the framework of historical reality, is the basic problem of this research. The aim is to review this phenomenon without any idealization, but also without the reduction of historical relevance, to review this phenomenon. There is no doubt that the Yugoslav communists achieved enormous success, in a political and social context. In the first years of first Yugoslavia, it was a marginal group, which was soon banned. However, during the great war, in which the collapse of the previous state took place, as well as the forms of civil war, the Yugoslav communists had the opportunity to reorganize the social, political, and economic order. The research within this paper is limited by the interest in the activities of the Yugoslav communists, from their appearance on the political scene to the moments when they become a powerful political force, without which the period behind us cannot be understood. The elaboration of the mentioned topic implied the application of all basic methods of scientific research. Of the general scientific methods, the hypothetical-deductive method and the comparative method were used. Obtaining empirical data was achieved by applying the method of analysis (content) of relevant documentation.

Abstract In armed conflicts and crises, children with disabilities face serious threats to their lives and safety, including those related to their inability to flee attacks, risk of abandonment, lack of access to assistive devices, lack of access to basic services and denial of education as well as experiences of stigma, abuse, psychological harm and poverty. Children with disabilities experience multiple and intersecting forms of human rights violations based on their disability and age. Since 2015, Human Rights Watch has documented the impact of armed conflict on children with disabilities in Afghanistan, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, the Gaza Strip in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, South Sudan, Syria and Yemen. While international human rights specifically call for the protection of children with disabilities in situations of armed conflict, the United Nations, governments, parties to the conflict and humanitarian actors have long neglected their specific rights and needs. There is an urgent need for the United Nations and governments to increase efforts to protect children with disabilities as part of their international commitments to protect all children impacted by hostilities. Their attention and investment in those most at risk of violence during armed conflicts will in turn enhance protection measures for everyone.

Interaction channels are unique opportunities to improve customer satisfaction by offering a consistent problem-solving experience. The role of employees in the contact center is to maintain an appropriate relationship between the company and the customer, thus they are personally responsible for the customer experience. In this paper, an objective evaluation method for evaluating customer-agent interaction, i.e. evaluating calls is proposed. The motivation for evaluating calls stems from the key performance characteristics of a contact center.

Image segmentation has an important role in image processing and computer vision and it is widely used in numerous applications, including feature extraction, pattern recognition, scene analysis, object tracking. Due to its simplicity and effectiveness, multilevel thresholding approach to image segmentation has gained increased research attention in recent years. In this paper, the ability of two recently proposed metaheuristic algorithms, Honey badger algorithm and Chef-based optimization algorithm to ascertain the optimal threshold values based on Kapur’s entropy is systematically examined. The performance of the two multilevel thresholding image segmentation methods are assessed on a dataset of nine standard benchmark images. Based on a fixed number of independent runs, for each test image and a given number of thresholds, the multilevel thresholding performance is reported using the mean and standard deviation of Kapur’s entropy as well as the best objective function value and the associated threshold values.

Compared to conventional fire detection techniques, high-precision computer vision-based fire detection systems have a number of desirable characteristics, such as the ability to monitor large areas, provide a bountiful amount of information, and are easy to maintain. This paper extensively and systematically investigates the use of simple color-based rules for pixel-wise flame recognition in still images. The rules are evaluated on a hundred and nineteen test images that correspond to fires in urban environments. The performances of the considered flame recognition rules are reported in terms of Recall, Balanced accuracy, Accuracy, F1 score, and Matthews correlation coefficient. The best-performing rule is identified. More complex classifiers are formed by combining two or more simple rules. The experimental results show that simple color-based rules and some of their combinations can offer effective fire recognition performance.

The paper presents an early prototype of an online tool named SpeeD, which is aimed at conversion of a recorded speech into the corresponding conceptual database model. SpeeD is the first tool that provides such functionality. The tool is currently able to process English speech and generate the model represented by the corresponding UML class diagram.

Food safety is a story that unites all civilizations, cultures, and nations, and it is interlaced with various methods for making food safer. Concern for nutritious and safe food is as ancient as humankind itself, and many of the food safety issues that persist today are not new. Diverse records from the ancient world, as well as the religious writings of the three monotheist religions, actually refer to food, its intake, and prohibitions, as well as pathological diseases that may follow from inappropriate intake. Over time, food safety has evolved into a scientific discipline concerned with the handling, preparation, transport, and distribution of food to avoid the transmission of illnesses. The current state of food safety knowledge is the result of past discoveries, innovations, and laws. In modern times, the right to consume safe food is a fundamental human right. It contributes to and promotes sustainable development while supporting the economy, trade, and tourism. Nevertheless, despite significant improvements, we still know relatively little about food-borne illnesses and how infections affect humans.

The aim of our study was to assess the values of hematological profile of Alpine goats in Bosnia and Herzegovina in order to monitor health status of goats; moreover, to determine the effect of age on hematological parameters of goats. A total of 40 apparently healthy Alpine goats included in this study were divided into four groups according to age: <1 year old (Group 1), 1 to 3 years old (Group 2), 3 to 5 years old (Group 3) and >5 years old (Group 4). The following hematological parameters were measured: Red Blood Cell count (RBC), hematocrit (HCT), hemoglobin (HGB), Mean Cell Volume (MCV), Mean Cell Hemoglobin (MCH), Mean Cell Hemoglobin Concentration (MCHC), Reticulocyte count (RETIC), White Blood Cell (WBC), as well as white blood cells differentiation and determination of absolute values white blood cells; platelet count (PLT), and Mean Platelet Volume (MPV). All values investigated in our study were within reference range, except MCHC, percentage of neutrophils and percentage of monocytes. For investigated hematologic parameters, significant (P < 0.05) age-related differences were found for HCT, MCV, MCHC, WBC, lymphocytes and platelet count. Recorded differences might be influenced by undetected infections, genetics, nutrition, fluctuations in the climate or management.