‘’Back then, in the Corona…’’ As numbers of the COVID-infected were rising across Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), over the summer and into the autumn of 2020, this phrase appeared as a common opening to individual stories and a new temporal reference that replaced “the war” as the major landmark in personal and collective lives. Corona had already become the past, equated with the days of the lockdown, even though more COVID-19 infections came after the lockdown ended. After lockdown, the death...

Spatial structure is the horizontal and vertical arrangement of individual trees. It affects many processes in the stand such as stability, production and regeneration. Stand structure parameters are used to describe spatial structure on experimental plots. The paper presents methods that describe the stand structure through three levels of diversity related to position, species and size. Research has been conducted on two experimental plots from the area of Olovo. Referent trees and their competitors were selected on both experimental plots, and competitors were defined by referent tree distance. The aim of this paper is to describe the spatial structure on experimental plot of European beech (Fagus sylvatica L.) and experimental plot of European beech and Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.). Indicators of spatial diversity, dimensional diversity and diversity of tree species have been determined to achieve that aim. For each experimental plots are described: horizontal tree distribution (Poisson Distribution, Clapham's Variance – Mean Ratio and Morisita's Index of Dispersion), diameter differentiation (Diameter Differentiation by Füldner and Dominance Index by Hui et al.), species diversity and structural diversity (Species Profile Index by Pretzsch) and species intermingling (Species Intermingling Index by Füldner). Obtained results show that the stand structure of both experimental plots deviates from random distribution. Dimensional diversity parameters indicate stronger intensity of competition for beech trees. Analysis of species diversity showed that beech trees occur in groups or patches, and the other represented species mix more intensive.

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Possibilities to use unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are rapidly growing. With the development of battery technologies, communication, navigation, surveillance, and autonomous systems in general, many UAVs are expected to operate at relatively low altitudes. Thus, the problem of UAV noise impact on human health and well-being will be more pronounced. In this paper, we conducted noise measurements of two UAVs of different performance (quadrotor and hexarotor) in flying up and down, hovering, and overflight procedures. Respondents of good hearing who were confirmed by audiogram measurement and had participated in the survey during UAV noise measurement gave their subjective assessments on the UAV noise perception. UAV noise measurements and subjective respondents’ assessments were analysed and related. UAV noise analysis showed that the parameters measured at the same measurement point for the hexarotor were higher than those for the quadrotor in flying up and down and flying-over procedures. Low frequency noise was present in the noise spectrum of both drones. Participants were able to distinguish between the noise of UAVs and had a generally more negative experience with the hexarotor. Regardless of the noise perception, more than 80% of the respondents believe there are more pros than cons for UAV introduction into everyday life.

Length of the primary forest roads in the Federation of BiH is 11.821,00 km that includes the categories of public and forest truck roads. Cantonal Public companies for forest management in the Federation of BiH are responsible for the design, construction and maintenance of forest truck roads. The starting point in the analysis related to forest truck roads is to determine the quality and quantity of the existing forest road network. This paper deals with data for all forest truck roads in the territory of Federation of BiH that in total includes 2.907 forest truck roads. The following data were collected and analysed: pavement type, pavement width, longitudinal slope and traffic load per year per 24 h. The analysis of these elements can serve as the basis for categorizing of forest truck roads into primary, secondary and access roads, as well as starting point in planning process related to the maintenance works and future forest road construction.

Abstract It is currently unknown how automated vehicle platoons will be perceived by other road users in their vicinity. This study explores how drivers of manually operated passenger cars interact with automated passenger car platoons while merging onto a highway, and how different inter-vehicular gaps between the platooning vehicles affect their experience and safety. The study was conducted in a driving simulator and involved 16 drivers of manually operated cars. Our results show that the drivers found the interactions mentally demanding, unsafe, and uncomfortable. They commonly expected that the platoon would adapt its behavior to accommodate a smooth merge. They also expressed a need for additional information about the platoon to easier anticipate its behavior and avoid cutting-in. This was, however, affected by the gap size; larger gaps (30 and 42.5 m) yielded better experience, more frequent cut-ins, and less crashes than the shorter gaps (15 and 22.5 m). A conclusion is that a short gap as well as external human–machine interfaces (eHMI) might be used to communicate the platoon’s intent to “stay together”, which in turn might prevent drivers from cutting-in. On the contrary, if the goal is to facilitate frequent, safe, and pleasant cut-ins, gaps larger than 22.5 m may be suitable. To thoroughly inform such design trade-offs, we urge for more research on this topic.

In this manuscript, distance and position estimation problems are investigated for visible light positioning (VLP) systems with red-green-blue (RGB) light emitting diodes (LEDs). The accuracy limits on distance and position estimation are calculated in terms of the Cramer-Rao lower bound (CRLB) for three different scenarios. Scenario~1 and Scenario~2 correspond to synchronous and asynchronous systems, respectively, with known channel attenuation formulas at the receiver. In Scenario~3, a synchronous system is considered but channel attenuation formulas are not known at the receiver. The derived CRLB expressions reveal the relations among distance/position estimation accuracies in the considered scenarios and lead to intuitive explanations for the benefits of using RGB LEDs. In addition, maximum likelihood (ML) estimators are derived in all scenarios, and it is shown that they can achieve close performance to the CRLBs in some cases for sufficiently high source optical powers.

Background: Arteriovenous malformation (bAVM) presents maldevelopment of the brain’s vessels with a direct connection between cerebral arteries and veins. By current data, patients from Spetzler Ponce A (SP) are found to benefit from the treatment. Considering the outcome, most of SP C and some of the SP B are the most debatable. Objective: Arteriovenous malformation presents maldevelopment of the brain’s vessels with a consequent direct connection between cerebral arteries and veins. The annual risk of hemorrhage in adults is reported for 2-3 %. They usually present with unilateral headaches seizures and intracranial hemorrhage. By current data, patients from Spetzler Ponce A (SP) are found to benefit from the treatment. Considering the outcome, most of SP C and some of the SP B are the most debatable. Methods: The study included a cohort of bAVM patients referred to Fujita Health University Bantane Hotokukai Hospital, Nagoya, Aichi, Japan where the main author (AA) has completed an international cerebrovascular fellowship under the mentorship of Professor Yoko Kato. Japanese Stroke Guidelines (JSG) were used for the treatment decision. Patients were graded according to the Spetzler Ponce (SP) system. Considering American Heart Association criteria (AHA), embolization was used as a part of multimodal treatment. Intraoperative microscopic video tools included Indocyanine green ICG, FLOW 800 and dual image video angiography DIVA. Clinical outcomes were measured using Modified Ranking Score (mRs). Results: A total of eleven patients with brain bAVM were studied with a median age of 32 years [IQR = 22-52]. There were ten patients presented with supratentorial and a single patient with infratentorial AVM. Patients were graded according to the Spetzler Ponce (SP) system. There were eight patients in SP A (72,7%), one in group B (9 %) while the rest of them were in C (18 %). Two patients had associated aneurysms that required treatment. The median size of the AVM nidus was 3,50 cm [IQR= 2-5]. Deep venous drainage was found in six patients while three were located in eloquent zones. Clinical outcomes were considered good by mRs <2 in eight patients, seven from the surgically treated group (72,7 % respectively). Surgery median length time was 427, 5 minutes; [IQR =320 - 463] with complete AVM resection in all patients and no mortality recorded in this cohort with the median follow up of 39,5 months [IQR = 19-59]. Conclusion: Ideal management of bAVM is still controversial. Those complex vascular lesions require multimodal treatment in a majority of cases in highly specialized centers. In SP A patients, surgery provides the best results with a positive outcome and a small number of complications. With the improvement of endovascular feeder occlusion SP B patients become prone to a more positive outcome. Nowadays, intraoperative microscopic tools such as FLOW 800, ICG and DIVA are irreplaceable while improving safety to deal with bAVM. For SP C patients, a combination of endovascular and stereotactic radiosurgery was found to be a good option in the present time.

Synovitis of the knee synovium is proven to be a precursor of knee osteoarthritis (OA), leading to a radiologically advanced stage of the disease. This study was conducted to elucidate the expression pattern of different inflammatory factors—NF-kB, iNOS, and MMP-9 in a subpopulation of synovial cells. Thirty synovial membrane intra-operative biopsies of patients (ten controls, ten with early OA, and ten with advanced OA, according to the Kellgren–Lawrence radiological score) were immunohistochemically stained for NF-kB, iNOS, and MMP9, and for different cell markers for macrophages, fibroblasts, leukocytes, lymphocytes, blood vessel endothelial cells, and blood vessel smooth muscle cells. The total number of CD68+/NF-kB+ cells/mm2 in the intima of early OA patients (median = 2359) was significantly higher compared to the total number of vimentin+/Nf-kB+ cells/mm2 (median = 1321) and LCA+/NF-kB+ cells/mm2 (median = 64) (p < 0.001 and p < 0.0001, respectively). The total number of LCA+/NF-kB+ cells/mm2 in the subintima of advanced OA patients (median = 2123) was significantly higher compared to the total number of vimentin+/NF-kB+ cells/mm2 (median = 14) and CD68+/NF-kB+ cells/mm2 (median = 29) (p < 0.0001). The total number of CD68+/iNOS+ cells/mm2 in the intima of both early and advanced OA patients was significantly higher compared to the total number of vimentin+/iNOS+ cells/mm2 and LCA+/iNOS+ cells/mm2 (p < 0.0001 and p < 0.001, respectively). The total number of CD68+/MMP-9+ cells/mm2 in the intima of both early and advanced OA patients was significantly higher compared to the total number of vimentin+/MMP-9+ cells/mm2 and CD5+/MMP-9+ cells/mm2 (p < 0.0001). Macrophages may have a leading role in OA progression through the NF-kB production of inflammatory factors (iNOS and MMP-9) in the intima, except in advanced OA, where leukocytes could have a dominant role through NF-kB production in subintima. The blocking of macrophageal and leukocyte NF-kB expression is a possible therapeutic target as a disease modifying drug.

The study’s primary purpose was to explore the abrasive water jet (AWJ) cut machinability of stainless steel X5CrNi18-10 (1.4301). The study analyzed the effects of such process parameters as the traverse speed (TS), the depth of cut (DC), and the abrasive mass flow rate (AR) on the surface roughness (Ra) concerning the thickness of the workpiece. Three different thicknesses were cut under different conditions; the Ra was measured at the top, in the middle, and the bottom of the cut. Experimental results were used in the developed feed-forward artificial neural network (ANN) to predict the Ra. The ANN’s model was validated using k-fold cross-validation. A lowest test root mean squared error (RMSE) of 0.2084 was achieved. The results of the predicted Ra by the ANN model and the results of the experimental data were compared. Additionally, as TS and DC were recognized, analysis of variance at a 95% confidence level was used to determine the most significant factors. Consequently, the ANN input parameters were modified, resulting in improved prediction; results show that the proposed model could be a useful tool for optimizing AWJ cut process parameters for predicting Ra. Its main advantage is the reduced time needed for experimentation.

The most recent development in the underlying QUIC transport protocol has revived the interest in HTTP over QUIC (HTTP/3) as a communication protocol solution in cloud and edge computing. This development is notable especially given the rise in implementations of IoT edge/cloud continuum, a new computing paradigm that extends the cloud computing IoT via edge computing systems. In IoT cloud/edge continuum, benchmarking performance of the communication protocol of choice is critical. We focus for the first time on experimental benchmarking of HTTP/3 performance in an IoT cloud/edge continuum system. To benchmark the performance in terms of scalability and latency, we first implement HTTP/3 from a set of non-standardized open-source libraries, - which is challenge, and use the implementation in two main IoT scenarios: edge computing only (IoT devices running HTTP/3 clients and edge devices running an HTTP/3 server), and cloud/edge continuum (based on Google Firebase). Experimental results show that latency and scalability remain a challenge for HTTP/3, but its appeal also remains, in its wide adoption, embedded security and compatibility with existing networked systems.

The processes of salinisation and alkalinisation of soil that caused the formation of different types of saline (halomorphic) soils are characteristic of the northern part of Serbia — the area of Vojvodina. These soils are characterized by poor physical and chemical properties due to a high content of salt and/or adsorbed Na+ ions because of which are being used to a limited extent in agricultural production, and more as pastures. From the aspect of pedogenetic conditions, loess deposits and alluvial terraces of large rivers (Danube, Sava and Tisza) as aeolian-glacial sediments are the most widespread parent rock on which saline soils were formed. In addition, arid climate including geomorphological, hydrological and hydro-geochemical conditions were the main factors of the formation of saline areas of Vojvodina. These processes can also occur as a result of the poor irrigation. The increase in the average annual and summer air temperature during the period 1981–2017 compared to 1961−1990 was recorded as well as more inequality in the precipitation regime in spatial distribution and increased evapotranspiration. Under such conditions the areas of saline soils will be certainly further expanding. According to the results of previous pedological research, saline soils cover about 10% of the total soil surface of Vojvodina. In the last few decades the extensive research has been conducted on the process of soil salinisation in the area of Vojvodina including qualitative and quantitative composition of salt in various systematic soil units. They have shown the possibility of transforming saline soils into productive soils through the application of complex land reclamation measures which require substantial financial and long-term time investments.

Abstract Ion cyclotron resonance heating (ICRH) is one of the three additional heating schemes to be deployed on ITER. Its two antenna arrays, installed on the outboard midplane, will deliver 20 MW of RF power in the 40–55 MHz frequency range. The plasma-facing component of the antenna assembly is the Faraday screen, comprising beryllium (Be) tile armoured, actively cooled bars located only ~1 cm radially behind the innermost point of the shaped Be first wall panels (FWPs). As such they are in close proximity to the scrape-off layer (SOL) plasma and it is important to assess the maximum heat loads that the screen bars may experience during high power ITER operation. This paper provides a detailed assessment of these loads using the new 3D field line tracing and power deposition framework SMITER (Kos et al., 2019). The focus is on the H-mode, burning plasma scenario, taking into account both plasma heat loading (including average loading due to mitigated Type I ELMs) and the loads due to photonic impact (assessed with the optical ray-tracing package Raysect (Meakins and Carr, 2017)) from power radiated in the core obtained from integrated JINTRAC simulations. Calculations are also performed to assess the minimum allowed antenna to magnetic separatrix distances, for cases in which closer approach may be required to improve RF coupling.

Abstract Digital transformation has put tremendous pressure on employees to innovate with the use of information technology (IT). This paper explores the extent to which digital literacy and personal innovativeness contribute to individual’s innovative work behavior (IWB). To test our hypotheses, we apply double bootstrapping chained mediation analyses paired with relative importance analysis on a dataset collected from employees (N = 167) in a pharmaceutical company. The results showed the existence of a double-mediation chain whereby digital practices and attitude toward digitalized innovation mediate the positive relationship between digital literacy and IWB. Surprisingly, said chain was not supported for personally innovative individuals, indicating that digital literacy plays a relatively more important role in stimulating attitudes toward digitalized innovation and IWB. Our findings add further specificity to research on digital natives and may help organizations understand the role of digital literacy and personal innovativeness in organizationally-relevant outcomes, such as IWB.

Background: The use of computer assisted surgery, navigation (NAV) in shoulder arthroplasty is still under discussion, regarding the clinical outcome and prosthesis longevity, especially when combining these factors with cost, time and surgeon’s experience. Beside the NAV, there has been in use patient-specific instrumentation (PSI) as an additional tool for more precise glenoid implant position. Surgical NAV and PSI for glenoid implant positioning in anatomic and reverse total shoulder arthroplasty are in last years under observation and discussion. Objective: To critically review and evaluate the current literature regarding the use of computer navigation and PSI in shoulder arthroplasty. Methods: Critical review of the existing literature. Results: Cost-effectiveness, prosthesis longevity and revision arthroplasty rate have not yet been proven clinically. Moreover, heterogeneity is high in studies that include different positioning systems (NAV, PSI and standard instrumentation). Heterogeneity is due to differences in surgical technique, implants, surgeon’s expertise, radiographic image analysis technique. Conclusion: The use of navigation systems and PSI should be clinically proven in the shoulder arthroplasty. Independent experts’ opinion and independent high level studies lack at the moment. There will be still a lot of talk regarding this topic in future.