The spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, taking on pandemic proportions, is placing extraordinary and unprecedented demands on healthcare systems worldwide. The increasing number of critical patients who, experiencing respiratory failure from acute respiratory distress syndrome, need respiratory support, has been leading countries to race against time in arranging new Intensive Care Units (ICUs) and in finding affordable and practical solutions to manage patients in each stage of the disease. The simultaneous worldwide emergency caused serious problems for mechanical ventilators supply. This chaotic scenario generated, indeed, a frenetic race to buy life-saving ventilators. However, the variety of mechanical ventilators designs, together with the limitations in time and resources, make the decision-making processes on ventilators procurement crucial and not counterbalanced by the evaluation of devices quality. This paper aimed at offering an overview of how evidence-based approach for health technologies evaluation, might provide support during Corona Virus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic in ICUs management and critical equipment supply. We compared and combined all the publicly available indications on the essential requirements that ICU ventilators might meet to be considered acceptable for treating COVID-19 patients in severe to critical illnesses. We hope that the critical analysis of these data might help readers to understand how structured decision-making processes based on evidence, evaluating the safety and effectiveness of a given medical device and the effects of its introduction in a healthcare setting, are able to optimize time and resources allocation that should be considered essential, especially during pandemic period.

The aim of this article is developing a formal system suitable for reasoning about the distance between propositional formulas. We introduce and study a formal language which is the extension of the classical propositional language obtained by adding new binary operators D≤s and D≥s, s ∈ Range, where Range is a fixed finite set. In our language it is allowed to make formulas of the form D≤s(α; β) with the intended meaning ’distance between formulas α and β is less than or equal to s’. The semantics of the proposed language consists of possible worlds with a distance function defined between sets of worlds.

We revisit the physics of neutrino magnetic moments, focusing in particular on the case where the right-handed, or sterile, neutrinos are heavier (up to several MeV) than the left-handed Standard Model neutrinos. The discussion is centered around the idea of detecting an upscattering event mediated by a transition magnetic moment in a neutrino or dark matter experiment. Considering neutrinos from all known sources, as well as including all available data from XENON1T and Borexino, we derive the strongest up-to-date exclusion limits on the active-to-sterile neutrino transition magnetic moment. We then study complementary constraints from astrophysics and cosmology, performing, in particular, a thorough analysis of BBN . We find that these data sets scrutinize most of the relevant parameter space. Explaining the XENON1T excess with transition magnetic moments is marginally possible if very conservative assumptions are adopted regarding the supernova 1987 A and CMB constraints. Finally, we discuss model-building challenges that arise in scenarios that feature large magnetic moments while keeping neutrino masses well below 1 eV. We present a successful ultraviolet-complete model of this type based on TeV-scale leptoquarks, establishing links with muon magnetic moment, B physics anomalies, and collider searches at the LHC.

Abstract Objective The aim of this research was to examine the attitudes and perceptions of dentofacial aesthetics among different age groups. Materials and Methods The sample consisted of elementary-school students from the city of Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and their parents. This study included 314 subjects: 157 children and 157 parents. The children’s group consisted of 85 (54.14%) males and 72 (45.85%) females, aged 9 to 15 years. Statistical Analysis Descriptive statistics were used to determine frequency distribution and percentages for all variables. A chi-squared (x 2) test was used to determine the association between variables and a p-value < 0.05 was considered significant for all the differences and associations. Results For the dentofacial appearance with no teeth irregularity or with severe teeth irregularity, an analysis of variance (ANOVA) (post-hoc tests—Tukey’s HSD) indicated that the difference is not statistically significant (p = 0.06) relative to rank matching between all three subject groups. For dentofacial appearance with mild teeth irregularity, an ANOVA (post-hoc tests—Tukey’s HSD) showed statistical difference (p = 0.07) between the teenage group of subjects relative to pre-teenage group of subjects and adult group of subjects. Conclusion Attitudes about desirable and acceptable dental aesthetics differ in younger children compared with older children and parents. Ten years old children find good function with poor aesthetics more pleasing, while 14 years old children find aesthetics with bad function as more pleasing.

Background Implementation of psychosocial interventions in mental health services has the potential to improve the treatment of psychosis spectrum disorders (PSD) in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) where care is predominantly focused on pharmacotherapy. The first step is to understand the views of key stakeholders. We conducted a multi-language qualitative study to explore the contextual barriers and facilitators to implementation of a cost-effective, digital psychosocial intervention, called DIALOG+, for treating PSD. DIALOG+ builds on existing clinician-patient relationships without requiring development of new services, making it well-fitting for healthcare systems with scarce resources. Methods Thirty-two focus groups were conducted with 174 participants (patients, clinicians, policymakers and carers), who were familiarized with DIALOG+ through a presentation. The Southeast European LMICs included in this research were: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, (Kosovo is referred throughout the text by United Nations resolution) North Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia. Framework analysis was used to analyse the participants’ accounts. Results Six major themes were identified. Three themes (Intervention characteristics; Carers’ involvement; Patient and organisational benefits) were interpreted as perceived implementation facilitators. The theme Attitudes and perceived preparedness of potential adopters comprised of subthemes that were interpreted as both perceived implementation facilitators and barriers. Two other themes (Frequency of intervention delivery; Suggested changes to the intervention) were more broadly related to the intervention’s implementation. Participants were exceedingly supportive of the implementation of a digital psychosocial intervention such as DIALOG+. Attractive intervention characteristics, efficient use of scarce resources for its implementation and potential to improve mental health services were seen as the main implementation facilitators. The major implementation barrier identified was psychiatrists’ time constrains. Conclusions This study provided important insights regarding implementation of digital psychosocial interventions for people with PSD in low-resource settings by including perspectives from four stakeholder groups in five LMICs in Southeast Europe – a population and region rarely explored in the literature. The perceived limited availability of psychiatrists could be potentially resolved by increased inclusion of other mental health professionals in service delivery for PSD. These findings will be used to inform the implementation strategy of DIALOG+ across the participating countries. The study also offers insights into multi-country qualitative research.

Leptospirosis is an acute, subacute and chronical contagious disease of animals and humans. Causative agents of this disease belong to the genus Leptospira, family Leptospiraca. As a disease of wild animals, leptospirosis is widespread through Europe. Certain wild animals (rodents, fox and wild boars) are important reservoirs and highly probable vectors for the spread of infection into domestic animals and humans. During the hunting season, hunting dogs are often in direct or indirect contact with wild animals that could be carriers of this disease, and the possibility of appearance and spreading within this cohort of dogs is very high. The main reasons for this study on the prevalence of Leptospirosis in Bosnia and Herzegovina are the regular contact between hunting dogs and wild animals (carriers), and the lack of dataaboutLeptospirosisinhuntingdogs.In total, 175 serum samples from 15 towns of Bosnia and Herzegovina were tested. Twelve serovars of L. interrogans were used in the microscopic agglutination test. Presence of antibodies of four serovars was confirmed. Prevalence of seropositive dogs was 15.4% (27/175). Most positive dogs had a reaction to the Pomona serovar 51.8% (n=14), while the prevalence of the Sejroe serovar was 33.3%, Icterohaemorrhagiae serovar 11.1% and Bratislava serovar 3.7%. The highest number of positive reactions 55.5% (n=15) was with serum dilution of 1:200. This study showed that most infections in dogs were caused by serovars that are currently not included in commercial vaccines. One of the most efficient preventive measure could be vaccination with the serovars most often found in wild animals, as they appear to be the most common source of the infection.

In this paper, the influence of biological acid dough with a strain of lactic acid bacteria (Lactobacillus plantarum) on the properties of the dough and the addition of sourdough on the quality of crackers was investigated. Changes in total titratable acidity and pH were monitored during the fermentation of the sourdough (24 hours). In the dough for the production of gluten-free crackers, the influence of the addition of sourdough on the total titratable acidity and pH value was examined. The content of water, protein, fat, starch, crude fiber, pH value and total titratable acidity was determined by flour samples for the production of gluten-free crackers and gluten-free crackers. The influence of sourdough on the sensory properties of crackers was examined. The mineral composition of zinc was determined and the contribution of the daily recommended intake was assessed. In samples of crackers subjected to storage for 5, 10, 20 and 30 days, a change in water content was monitored. The length of fermentation had a significant impact on the dynamics of pH change and on the total titratable acidity during the fermentation of sourdough. The results of the study showed that the control sample has a higher pH value than the samples with sourdough. The reason for that is the development of acetic acid during fermentation. The change in water content in the crackers over 30 days was significantly higher in the control sample compared to the samples with sourdough. Crackers with sourdough contain a significantly higher percentage of protein, ash, fiber, zinc at the expense of reducing carbohydrates.