Summary This protocol describes a synthetic genomics pipeline to clone and engineer the entire 190-kbp genome of the African swine fever virus (ASFV) genotype II in yeast using transformation-associated recombination cloning. The viral genome was cloned using DNA directly extracted from a clinical sample. In addition, the precise deletion of a non-essential gene and its replacement by a synthetic reporter gene cassette are presented. This protocol is applicable to other ASFV genotypes and other large DNA viruses.

We present a complete analysis of Lepton Flavor Universality (LFU) violations in leptonic τ decays in motivated models addressing the B-physics anomalies, based on the SU(4)×SU(3)×SU(2)×U(1) gauge group. We show that the inclusion of vector-like fermions, required by B-physics data, leads to sizable modifications of the leading-log results derived within an Effective Field Theory approach. In the motivated parameter-space region relevant to the B-physics anomalies, the models predict a few per-mil decrease of the effective W -boson coupling to τ , within the reach of future experiments.

Background The pandemic of Coronavirus infectious disease 2019 (COVID-19) poses a major public health challenge, and an effective vaccine is the potential mechanism to resolve this specific situation. The present study aimed to evaluate acceptance of COVID-19 vaccination among patients attending the Oncology Clinic of University Clinical Hospital Mostar. Material/Methods This cross-sectional observational study enrolled 364 patients with cancer from the Oncology Clinic of University Clinical Hospital Mostar during February 2021. Data were collected using a questionnaire that captured general information about the participants and their attitudes toward COVID-19 vaccination. Results Of the participants, 41.8% answered “Yes” when asked if they would take the vaccine once it becomes available, 37.6% answered “Not sure”, and 20.6% answered “No”. For patients in favor of vaccination, the main reasons reported were fear of getting sick (77.6%), the desire to contribute to herd immunity (57.8%), and trusting the recommendations of health professionals (57.2%). The main reasons for the patients’ vaccination refusal/indecision were doubts about the results from clinical trials of COVID-19 vaccines (49.1%), concerns about adverse effects (24.5%), and confusion about the various vaccine options (19.8%). The majority of participants (82.4%) stated that recommendation by their oncologist could influence their decision about vaccination. Of the participants who indicated unwillingness (refusal or indecision) to be vaccinated against COVID-19, 65.3% stated that recommendation by their oncologist could influence their decision about vaccination. Conclusions The findings from the present study showed most patients had refused or were indecisive regarding immunization with COVID-19 vaccine. Increasing physician awareness of this situation may result in higher rates of vaccination.

Heavy metals are naturally occurring elements, but they are regarded as significant environmental pollutants due to their high density and high toxicity even at low concentrations. The aim of this paper is the evaluation of the pollution level of heavy metals in the river and riverbank sediments, as well as the estimation of their origin and spatial differences along the course of the Vrbas River through Banja Luka. The concentrations of metals have been assessed using the Inductively coupled plasma ? optical emission spectrometry and Advanced mercury analyzer for mercury determination. The anthropogenic impact on heavy metal concentration in sediments was estimated by the calculating of pollution indices: geoaccumulation index (Igeo), contamination factor (Cf), pollution load index (PLI) and potential ecological risk index (Er). Obtained results indicate that there is no statistically significant spatial difference in metal concentration, indicating that heavy metals in sediments have a constant source. The anthropogenic impact expressed by the values of pollution indices showed that sites are generally uncontaminated by Co, Cr and V and moderately contaminated by Zn, Cu and Ni. On the contrary, lead, mercury and cadmium pose the highest ecological risk. The anthropogenic source of Pb, Hg and Cd is industry, municipal waste and the combustion of fossil fuels. The obtained results demonstrate the high ecological risk and the need for environ-mental monitoring, with the aim to support an efficient strategy to reduce local pollution and contamination of the investigated system.

Engineering distributed control systems is a complex task, where the complexity and, thus, costs of the software development are growing rapidly. To keep the software complexity at an acceptable level and save time for development and subsequent maintenance, new solutions are sorely needed. In this paper, we investigate the advantages of using skills - universal control device interfaces - for generating complex logic in distributed control environments. By enriching a skill interface with the information about the dynamic behavior of a component under control, we compose the functionalities of individual control devices. The logic, required for such composition, is automatically derived from the interface description and the production plan, identifying the required skill sequence. The evaluation, executed using two industrial demonstrators, shows that the approach successfully handles different behavioral models and is capable of generating fault-tolerant orchestrators, including error handling scenarios. Overall, for developing a complex logic in a distributed skill-based automation system, the proposed approach shows significant savings in development time allowing to automate the skill composition task.

The fourth industrial revolution (Industry 4.0) anticipates unplanned changes of production processes. Production changes may trigger synthesis, and preferably optimization, of architecture-level decisions, such as service deployment and composition. Performing such architecture-level decisions manually is difficult due to the ever-rising complexity of Industry 4.0 systems. In order to (semi-)automate the architecture synthesis and optimization, we propose an approach of service deployment and composition by using existing domain models. Our contribution is threefold: (1) We suggest a workflow with domain models for architecture synthesis in the industrial automation. (2) We display the formalization on a part of the workflow and provide an initial prototype of service deployment synthesis using a satisfiability modulo theories (SMT) solver. (3) We envision a way of service composition and code generation, and prototypically implemented it as conclusion of the suggested workflow. We demonstrate the practical use of the proposed approach in the Industry 4.0 scenario, i.e., flexible production of new products.

An asset administration shell (AAS), as a key concept of Industry 4.0 (I4.0), provides a machine-accessible interface to any kind of asset. To enable interoperability and smooth integration of the devices into the I4.0 middleware, an application implementing the device's functionality should be able to interact with different AASs. In this work, we investigate the integration of the Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) runtime systems into the I4.0 middleware. For doing this, we specify the function blocks (FBs) for connecting the PLCs with AASs and other I4.0 components, such as registry and discovery server. We analyze the requirements of such FBs while focusing on REST/HTTP- and OPC UA-based AASs, and provide interface specification for IEC 61499- and IEC 61131-3-based FBs. Furthermore, we implemented an FB library that enables communication with an AAS from the respective control applications. Those FBs allow accessing properties and invoking operations of remote AASs, as well as hosting AASs submodels. Common functionalities, such as registering the runtime system at the registry component, or finding AASs, are also supported. The results obtained in this paper will ease interaction with the complex AAS structure from the low-level devices.

DevOps represent the tight connection between development and operations. To address challenges that arise on the borderline between development and operations, we conducted a study in collaboration with a Swedish company responsible for ticket management and sales in public transportation. The aim of our study was to explore and describe the existing DevOps environment, as well as to identify how the feedback from operations can be improved, specifically with respect to the alerts sent from system operations. Our study complies with the basic principles of the design science paradigm, such as understanding and improving design solutions in the specific areas of practice. Our diagnosis, based on qualitative data collected through interviews and observations, shows that alert flooding is a challenge in the feedback loop, i.e. too much signals from operations create noise in the feedback loop. Therefore, we design a solution to improve the alert management by optimizing when to raise alerts and accordingly introducing a new element in the feedback loop, a smart filter. Moreover, we implemented a prototype of the proposed solution design and showed that a tighter relation between operations and development can be achieved, using a hybrid method which combines rule-based and unsupervised machine learning for operations data analysis.

Industrial systems have traditionally been kept isolated from external networks. However, business benefits are pushing for a convergence between the industrial systems and new information technology environments such as cloud computing, as well as higher level of connectivity between different systems. This makes cybersecurity a growing concern for industrial systems. In strengthening security, access control is a fundamental mechanisms for providing security in these systems. However, access control is relatively immature in traditional industrial systems, as compared to modern IT systems, and organizations' adherence to an established cybersecurity standard or guideline can be a deciding factor for choices of access control techniques used. This paper presents the results of a questionnaire study on the usage of access control within industrial system that are being developed, serviced or operated by Swedish organizations, contrasted to their usage of cybersecurity standards and guidelines. To be precise, the article focuses on two fundamental requirements of cybersecurity: identification and authentication control, and presents related findings based on a survey of the Swedish industry. The goal of the study is breaching the gap between the current state and the requirements of emerging systems with regards to access control.

Environmental threats increasingly entail important risks from government responses. In considering the risks of a new vector-borne disease, for example, decision-makers must also grapple with potential risks from responses such as the aerial spraying of pesticides. In communicating about these complex risks, public officials often choose different “frames” that promote different conceptualizations of the issue. Yet prior research has paid limited attention to how public officials frame the related risks of the environmental threat and the public response. This paper starts to fill that gap by conducting a content analysis of statements by public officials regarding risks from the threat of a local outbreak of the Zika virus in South Florida in 2016, as well as risks from the response of aerial pesticide spraying. Based on limited prior research, we hypothesize that public officials are likely to have adopted a “risk maximization” frame that stressed the high risks from exposure to Zika, but a “risk trade-off” frame when discussing aerial spraying. In actuality, we find that officials strongly favored a “reassurance” frame that downplayed both types of risks. Based on this analysis, we suggest framing strategies for disease outbreaks and other threats with potentially risky government responses may vary significantly depending on local contexts and that the South Florida experience was a missed opportunity to test the strategy of trade-off framing.