With everyday advances in the field of pharmaceuticals, medicinal plants have high priority regarding the introduction of novel synthetic compounds by the usage of environmentally friendly extraction technologies. Herein, a supercritical CO2 extraction method was implemented in the analysis of four plants (chamomile, St. John’s wort, yarrow, and curry plant) after which the non-targeted analysis of the chemical composition, phenolic content, and antioxidant activity was evaluated. The extraction yield was the highest for the chamomile (5%), while moderate yields were obtained for the other three plants. The chemical composition analyzed by gas chromatography-high-resolution mass spectrometry (GC-HRMS) and liquid chromatography-high-resolution mass spectrometry (LC-HRMS) demonstrated extraction of diverse compounds including terpenes and terpenoids, fatty acids, flavonoids and coumarins, functionalized phytosterols, and polyphenols. Voltammetry of microfilm immobilized on a glassy carbon electrode using square-wave voltammetry (SWV) was applied in the analysis of extracts. It was found that antioxidant activity obtained by SWV correlates well to 1,1-diphenyl-2-picrylhidrazine (DPPH) radical assay (R2 = 0.818) and ferric reducing antioxidant power (FRAP) assay (R2 = 0.640), but not to the total phenolic content (R2 = 0.092). Effective results were obtained in terms of activity showing the potential usage of supercritical CO2 extraction to acquire bioactive compounds of interest.

Abstract The author analyses the discourse about Kosovo in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) during the 1980s. During these years, Serbian media developed several stereotypes to discredit the political leaders of BiH and accuse them of fomenting unrest in Kosovo. The author assesses these stereotypical depictions as well as the response of the Islamic Community and political leadership in BiH to these accusations. He asks what the attitude of Serbia’s political elite towards BiH was, and what role the Serbian political leadership played in the media attacks. He then investigates the evolution of the BiH leadership’s stances towards the events in Kosovo between the beginning and the end of the 1980s. And finally, through a close reading of session minutes and media, he assesses the increasingly deviating views of the BiH political leaders vis-á-vis the situation in Kosovo.

Abstract This paper seeks to empirically explore how an international financial integration influences a country’s GDP growth. The long run relationship is tested by PMG estimator for the sample of ten EU countries from Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe (CEE-10 countries) between 1995 and 2017. Prior to the conducting of dynamic panel analysis based on PMG estimators, several panel unit root tests were conducted, as well as panel co integration tests. The findings offer mixed impact financial integration on growth. Among the measures of financial integration, growth of the CEE-10 countries is mostly driven in the long run by FDI inflows as well as remittances and financial openness. On the contrary, the study suggests a reversal relationship between growth and financial integration measured by Gross Foreign Assets and Liabilities in percentages of GDP. It might be explained with a fact that CEE-10 countries have not yet reached a certain level of financial development in order to benefit from financial integration. The study concludes that international financial integration does not per se enhance economic growth and country’s growth in the CEE-10 countries can be reached at a higher level of financial integration, further increase their financial openness and financial development.

The mesiodens is the most frequent type of supernumerary tooth which can appear in the maxillary midline area. The etiology of mesiodentes is not fully understood. This report shows a case of incomplete fusion of an unerupted mesiodens with a permanent maxillary central incisor, aligned in the dental arch. Intraoral and radiographic examinations indicated fusion of the crown and cervical part of the root of the supernumerary tooth with the permanent incisor. The clinical situation was further complicated by the presence of another supernumerary tooth located palatally. The treatment approach has included two phase surgical therapy to extract the supernumerary teeth. Early diagnosis and appropriate surgical treatment of mesiodentes are important to decrease the risk of clinical complications. Pre-operative 3D imaging is strongly advisable since it allows accurate data to be obtained, and reduces the extent of surgery and the possibility of procedural complications. In most cases, a multidisciplinary collaboration is necessary for precise diagnosis and predictable treatment outcome.

Background: Dental documentation which includes main information about a patient and dental treatment provided is a very important asset of each dental office. Objective: This research aims to analyze the way of fulfilling and keeping mandatory dental records and periodic reporting forms by doctors of dental medicine in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (FB&H). Methods: The study was observational with a cross-sectional design using a questionnaire as a study tool. The questionnaire was distributed electronically to the participants working in public health care facilities and private practice. Results: A total of 426 Doctors of Dental Medicine (DDM) participated in the study, of whom 58.7% of respondents were employed in dental offices in the public health sector and 41.3% in dental offices in the private health sector. Dental records are filled out only manually by 53.5% of respondents, while 9.4% fill out the records only electronically, while 37.1% of respondents fill out records both manually and electronically. The manner of keeping dental documentation between respondents employed in dental offices in the public health sector and dental offices in the private health sector differs significantly (p<0.05). Almost all respondents understand the purpose and significance of keeping dental records. Conclusion: This paper points out that good dental records are of great importance as they allow monitoring the quality of services provided to patients for a longer period.

Mucopolysaccharidoses (MPSs) are known as rare genetic diseases which are caused by mutation in the enzyme heparin sulfate, which normally leads to degradation and accumulation of glycosaminoglycans in the cells. There are 11 types of MPSs, whereby neuropathy may occur in seven of them (MPS I, II, IIIA, IIIB, IIIC, IIID and VII). Accumulation of degraded heparin sulfate in lysosomes causes cellular dysfunction and malfunction of several organs. However, the exact molecular mechanism how protein degradation and storage leads to cellular dysfunction is not understood, yet. Nonetheless, several genetic and biochemical methods for diagnosis of MPSs are available nowadays. Here we provide an overview on known molecular basis of MPS in general, including enzyme defects and symptoms of MPS; however, the main focus is on MPS type III together with potential and perspective therapy-options.

BACKGROUND: Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is heritable and a potential consequence of exposure to traumatic stress. Evidence suggests that a quantitative approach to PTSD phenotype measurement and incorporation of lifetime trauma exposure (LTE) information could enhance the discovery power of PTSD genome-wide association studies (GWASs). METHODS: A GWAS on PTSD symptoms was performed in 51 cohorts followed by a fixed-effects meta-analysis (N = 182,199 European ancestry participants). A GWAS of LTE burden was performed in the UK Biobank cohort (N = 132,988). Genetic correlations were evaluated with linkage disequilibrium score regression. Multivariate analysis was performed using Multi-Trait Analysis of GWAS. Functional mapping and annotation of leading loci was performed with FUMA. Replication was evaluated using the Million Veteran Program GWAS of PTSD total symptoms. RESULTS: GWASs of PTSD symptoms and LTE burden identified 5 and 6 independent genome-wide significant loci, respectively. There was a 72% genetic correlation between PTSD and LTE. PTSD and LTE showed largely similar patterns of genetic correlation with other traits, albeit with some distinctions. Adjusting PTSD for LTE reduced PTSD heritability by 31%. Multivariate analysis of PTSD and LTE increased the effective sample size of the PTSD GWAS by 20% and identified 4 additional loci. Four of these 9 PTSD loci were independently replicated in the Million Veteran Program. CONCLUSIONS: Through using a quantitative trait measure of PTSD, we identified novel risk loci not previously identified using prior case-control analyses. PTSD and LTE have a high genetic overlap that can be leveraged to increase discovery power through multivariate methods.

Accurate downlink channel state information (CSI) is one of the essential requirements for harnessing the potential advantages of frequency-division duplexing (FDD) massive multi-input multi-output (MIMO) systems. The current state-of-art in this vibrant research area include the use of deep learning to compress and feedback downlink CSI at the user equipments (UEs). These approaches focus mainly on achieving CSI feedback with high reconstruction performance and low complexity, but at the expense of inflexible compression rate (CR). High training overheads and limited storage capacity requirements are some of the challenges associated with the design of dynamic CR, which instantaneously adapt to propagation environment. This paper applies transfer learning (TL) to develop a multi-rate CSI compression and recovery neural network (TL-MRNet) with reduced training overheads. Simulation results are presented to validate the superiority of the proposed TL-MRNet over traditional methods in terms of normalized mean square error and cosine similarity.

Malware traffic classification (MTC) is a key technology for solving anomaly detection and intrusion detection problems. And hence it plays an important role in the field of network security. Traditional MTC methods based on port, payload and statistic depend on the manual-designed features, which have low accuracy. Recently, deep learning methods have attracted significant attention due to their high accuracy in terms of classification. However, in practical application scenarios, deep learning methods require a large amount of labeled samples for training, while the available labeled samples for training are very rare. Furthermore, the preparation of a large amount of labeled samples requires a lot of labor costs. To solve these problems, this paper proposes two methods based on semi-supervised learning (SSL) and transfer learning (TL), respectively. Our proposed methods use a large amount of unlabeled data collected in the Internet traffic, which can greatly improve the accuracy classification with few labeled samples. Through experiments, we obtained the best method to improve the accuracy of few labeled samples in different situations. Experiment results show that our proposed methods can satisfy the requirement of MTC in the case of few labeled samples.

Abstract Worldwide, cities are implementing circular economy (CE) strategies to reduce the resources they consume and their environmental impact. However, the evidence of the intended and unintended social consequences of the transition to “circular cities” is scattered. The lack of a coherent overview of the evidence on the subject can hinder effective decision-making in policy and practice. This study examines the extent to which the current literature addresses the social impacts that a transition to a CE produces in cities. We used a methodological approach related to systematic mapping to collate the evidence published over the past decade globally. The study finds that social impacts have rarely been considered in studies of circular cities, and where they have been discussed, the scope has been quite limited, only covering employment (mostly of informal sector workers) and governance practices. This scoping review highlights the need to further analyse and integrate social impact considerations into decision-making connected to transitions towards circular cities.

Gender inequalities could lead to grave human and economic consequences, especially amid global health crises of the coronavirus 2019′s (COVID-19) scale. The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated gender inequalities women face and introduced new challenges that are unprecedented to society at large. Adverse effects of COVID-19, compounded by unintended consequences caused by public health policies such as lockdowns (e.g., delayed or canceled health services), have forced women to face issues ranging from COVID-19 infections and deaths, prolonged unemployment, to unparalleled scale and severity of domestic violence. However, though women face a canopy of debilitating challenges, there is a shortage of research that examines health solutions that can mitigate, if not offset, challenges women experience amid COVID-19. In this paper, we aim to shed light on why timely solutions are needed to mitigate gender inequalities and health disparities women face amid COVID-19 promptly. Furthermore, we underscore the imperative for cost-effective interventions that could shed light on the current health crisis and future pandemics.

Highlights • The overall severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) secondary attack rate in this study was 17%.• Adults were more likely to be secondary cases than children.• Particular care should be taken if primary cases present with cough and rhinorrhoea.• Kissing a SARS-CoV-2 case or sharing a meal with a SARS-CoV-2 case increased the risk of infection.• Reducing contact in the household immediately is key to prevent onward transmission.

Legacy landmines in post-conflict areas are a non-discriminatory lethal hazard and can still be triggered decades after the conflict has ended. Efforts to detect these explosive devices are expensive, time-consuming, and dangerous to humans and animals involved. While methods such as metal detectors and sniffer dogs have successfully been used in humanitarian demining, more tools are required for both site surveying and accurate mine detection. Honeybees have emerged in recent years as efficient bioaccumulation and biomonitoring animals. The system reported here uses two complementary landmine detection methods: passive sampling and active search. Passive sampling aims to confirm the presence of explosive materials in a mine-suspected area by the analysis of explosive material brought back to the colony on honeybee bodies returning from foraging trips. Analysis is performed by light-emitting chemical sensors detecting explosives thermally desorbed from a preconcentrator strip. The active search is intended to be able to pinpoint the place where individual landmines are most likely to be present. Used together, both methods are anticipated to be useful in an end-to-end process for area surveying, suspected hazardous area reduction, and post-clearing internal and external quality control in humanitarian demining.

BACKGROUND Gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) is the most common metabolic disorder in pregnancy. Pregnancies with GDM have worse outcomes compared to pregnancies with normal glucose tolerance. The objectives of the study were to determine the prevalence of GDM and perinatal outcomes according to the old WHO criteria and IADPSG criteria. SUBJECTS AND METHODS A retrospective study included 2,405 pregnant women who delivered between January 2009 and December 2010. According to the OGTT results, pregnant women were divided into 4 groups. We analyzed the prevalence of GDM, characteristics of pregnant women and their newborns and perinatal outcomes. RESULTS We found significantly higher prevalence of GDM according to the IADPSG criteria compared to the WHO criteria. Pregnant women with GDM were significantly older, had higher pre-pregnancy BMI, fasting and 2-h plasma glucose. Pregnant women with GDM had worse pregnancy outcomes compared to control group. The overall proportion of overweight and obese pregnant women was the highest in the group of untreated pregnant women with GDM according to the IADPSG criteria. In this group we found significantly higher rate of fetal macrosomia and LGA. The rate of caesarean section was significantly higher in comparison to control group. Pre-eclampsia was significantly more common in groups of pregnant women with GDM compared to control group. CONCLUSION IADPSG diagnostic criteria reveals more women with hyperglycemic disorders in pregnancy. A group of pregnant women who were normoglycemic according to the WHO criteria, but according to the IADPSG were diagnosed GDM, had adverse pregnancy outcomes. Lower values of glycemia, than those defined for diabetes in pregnancy, are associated with adverse pregnancy outcomes.