As a country in transition and development, committed to the path towards membership in the European Union, Bosnia and Herzegovina encounters many challenges and obstacles in terms of fulfilling the tasks set before it. Quite complicated governmental and legal arrangement determines the pace of achieving the tasks that are prerequisites for the European Union membership status. By signing the Stabilisation and Association Agreement, Bosnia and Herzegovina assumed the obligation to gradually harmonise the national legislation with the EU legislation in the most important areas related to the internal market. In this context, one of highly important ones is the area of competition law. This paper analyses the quality of solutions provided by the normative and institutional framework of the market competition protection in Bosnia and Herzegovina by using the normative, historical, comparative, and content analysis methods. Basic features of the Stabilisation and Association Agreement between Bosnia and Herzegovina and the EU are presented through a chronological summary of the integration process of BiH into the EU. The primary hypothesis of the paper is that recent legal solutions in the area of competition do not follow the current legal standards of the competition regulations in the EU. Analytical overview of annual reports on the operation of the Council of Competition as regulatory body in Bosnia and Herzegovina shows that competition is a typical example of the ‘crawling’ integration of Bosnia and Herzegovina to the EU. It is quite obvious that the lack of political will of the ruling structures slows the integration processes down. This area requires an efficient enforcement of competition regulations whose implementation enables the companies to act in line with the law. Without adequate and prompt amending of the Law on Competition and related by-laws there can be no positive evaluation of the European Commission concerning the progress of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

In this paper, the central part presents the solution of the criminal-procedural task, that is, the clarification and solution of a specific criminal matter in criminal proceedings of Bosnia and Herzegovina by criminal-law entities, with special attention to restrictive legal conditions of a criminal-procedural nature, as well as certain problems and dilemmas of a practical nature. The extremely dynamic development of modern criminal procedural law in the last two decades is also characterized by the adoption of new criminal procedural solutions with a pronounced tendency of humanization, which directly relates to the catalog of the rights of the suspect or accused person. In order to understand the nature of the criminal proceedings, the conceptual determination and differentiation of the criminal matter as the main subject of the criminal proceedings was made to the criminal matter in an unfair and fair sense, with reference to the practical aspect of the efficient conduct of the criminal proceedings and the illumination and settlement of the criminal matter, respecting the standards of proof. Given the nature of the criminal proceedings, in addition to the criminal matter as the main case, other secondary or ancillary issues are included which do not constitute a criminal offense but relate to the criminal matter (property claim, so-called prejudicial or preliminary issues and costs of the proceedings).

This study examined the concentrations of 16 polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in soil and groundwater at a former cellulose factory in the city of Banja Luka, Republic of Srpska, Bosnia and Herzegovina. The objective of the study was to determine the concentrations of 16 PAHs in soil and groundwater at the site. The research area consisted of four representative locations in the industrial complex where the soil was sampled at depths of 0.3, 1, 2, 3, and 4 m and groundwater was sampled at 3.10, 2.50 and 3 m for two samples. In addition to the 16 PAHs, soil organic matter content and pH were also measured. The sum of the 16 PAHs (Σ16PAHs) in soil ranged from 0.99 to 2.24, 0.34 to 0.46, 0.24 to 0.32, 0.13 to 0.27 and 0.13 to 0.47 mg/kg for the 0.3, 1, 2, 3, and 4 m depths, respectively. Mean values were 1.70, 0.40, 0.28, 0.20 and 0.26 mg/kg, respectively. The Σ16PAHs in groundwater ranged from 0.23 to 4.50 mg/m3, with a mean value of 1.42 mg/m3. The concentrations of all 16 PAHs in the soil decreased with depth and there was no significant correlation between the concentrations of PAHs in the soil and groundwater. The concentrations of PAHs in the soil surface (0.3 m) and groundwater indicate that this industrial site is heavily contaminated and might need remedial action. Factor analysis indicates three sources of contamination, i.e. principal component (PC) PC1 (pyrogenic), PC2 (petrogenic) and PC3 (biomass), with 52.39%, 26.14% and 8.46% of the total variance, respectively. The results of this study reflect the effects of coal combustion (pyrogenic origin), petrogenic and biomass origin and may provide basic data for the remediation of PAHs in the location.

Between March 5th and July 25th, 2020, the total number of SARS-CoV-2 confirmed cases in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BH) was 10,090, corresponding to a cumulative incidence rate of 285.7/100,000 population. Demographic and clinical information on all the cases along with exposure and contact information were collected using a standardized case report form. In suspected SARS-CoV-2 cases, respiratory specimens were collected and tested by real-time reverse-transcriptase polymerase chain reaction assay. The dynamic of the outbreak was summarized using epidemiological curves, instantaneous reproduction number Rt, and interactive choropleth maps for geographical distribution and spread. The rate of hospitalization was 14.0% (790/5646) in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (FBH) and 6.2% (267/4299) in the Republic of Srpska (RS). The death rate was 2.2% (122/5646) in FBH and 3.6% in the RS (155/4299). After the authorities lifted mandatory quarantine restrictions, the instantaneous reproduction number increased from 1.13 on May 20th to 1.72 on May 31st. The outbreak concerns both entities, FBH and RS, and it is more pronounced in those aged 20-44 years. It is important to develop the communication and emergency plan for the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak in BH, including the mechanisms to allow the ongoing notification and updates at the national level.

For a long time, poor channel quality and shortage of frequency resources often restrict its development. An adaptive shortwave communication is considered as an effective method while channel quality estimation (CQE) is essential for the shortwave adaptive communication system. Currently, deep learning (DL) based CQE methods are proposed to achieve a good identification performance. However, existing methods are hard to extract full features from baseband signals, due to the fact that their deep neural networks are trained from the limited length of signal samples. In order to avoid this problem, we consider two training models. The first one is transforming baseband signals into constellation diagrams and three kinds of DL algorithms (i.e., AlexNet, ResNet, DenseNet) are applied respectively for training. The second one is slicing IQ signals into multi-slices signals and convolutional neural network (CNN) is applied and CQE is a joint multi-slice and cooperative decision. Experimental results show that the proposed methods are robust, and joint multi-slice and cooperative detection aided DL-based CQE method achieves better performance even up to 100%.

Porous silicon layers on wafers are commonly converted into particles by mechanical milling or ultrasonic fragmentation. The former technique can rapidly generate large batches of microparticles. The latter technique is commonly used for making nanoparticles but processing times are very long and yields, where reported, are often very low. With both processing techniques, the porosity and surface area of the particles generated are often assumed to be similar to those of the parent film. We demonstrate that this is rarely the case, using air-dried high porosity and supercritically dried aerocrystals as examples. We show that whereas ball milling can more quickly generate much higher yields of particles, it is much more damaging to the nanostructures than ultrasonic fragmentation. The latter technique is particularly promising for silicon aerocrystals since processing times are reduced whilst yields are simultaneously raised with ultrahigh porosity structures. Not only that, but very high surface areas (> 500 m2/g) can be completely preserved with ultrasonic fragmentation.

In the last few years, gambling and betting opportunities have been increasing in Bosnia and Herzegovina, leading to an increase in  pathological gambling. Pathological gambling is considered by experts to be an instinct control disorder, i.e. the inability to refrain from an instinct that at the same time causes pleasure to a person, but is also dangerous for them and the people around them as it seriously disrupts not only the physical, emotional, mental and material state of the individual, but affects their families and friends also. In order to examine the most common forms of gambling and betting as well as socio-demographic aspects and their characteristics among Bosniaks in BiH, in the period April-May 2019, on a sample of N = 1520 respondents, a survey was conducted in 62 municipalities in BiH. Respondents ranged from 18-77 years old, of whom 568 were women and 927 were men. While defining the sample for the purposes of this research, a two-stage stratification was performed, namely: stratification at the administrative level of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the type of settlement, respecting the principle of proportional representation of municipalities within entity/cantons. Data was collected via a structured face-to-face interviews with closed questions to which handwritten answers were given. The data collection was done through the Network of Youth and Directorate for Religious Affairs of the Riyasat of the Islamic Community in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The results suggest persisting differences in the perception of the most common forms of gambling and betting, where bingo, disposable lottery tickets/scrapers, lotto and sports betting are perceived to be the most common. The most widespread types of gambling are influenced by the socio-demographic variables such as gender, place of residence, level of education, age and monthly household income.

A Portaria n. 443, de 17 de dezembro de 2014, reconhece 2.113 espécies da flora brasileira como ameaçadas de extinção e as classifica em quatro categorias de ameaça (extintas na natureza, criticamente em perigo, em perigo, vulnerável). As unidades de conservação desempenham importante papel para a manutenção das populações dessas espécies. Porém, essas populações podem ser afetadas mediante a influência antrópica. Nesse sentido, o presente trabalho teve por objetivo avaliar os padrões estruturais e ecológicos de espécies ameaçadas de extinção ocorrentes na Floresta Nacional do Jamari, RO, após exploração madeireira. Foram marcadas, de forma aleatória, 12 parcelas de 0,5ha em duas unidades de produção anual na unidade de manejo florestal III. Nas parcelas, inventariaram-se todos os indivíduos arbóreos com DAP ≥ 10,0cm. De posse da lista da composição florística obtida da amostra, foram selecionadas para o estudo as espécies constantes no livro vermelho de espécies ameaçadas de extinção e as espécies de importância econômica que ocorrem de forma restrita, de acordo com o plano de manejo da unidade de conservação. Foram gerados os descritores fitossociológicos para as espécies, taxa de mortalidade, ingresso, crescimento, padrões de distribuição espacial e estrutura diamétrica. Observaram-se na composição florística da amostra seis espécies classificadas como vulnerável (VU) e uma espécie de importância econômica com ocorrência restrita. As espécies, na sua maioria, apresentaram ocorrência rara. Não houve alterações significativas na estrutura após exploração, porém é importante monitorar e avaliar a necessidade de tratamentos silviculturais, principalmente para as espécies que constam no plano de manejo florestal.

Sison amomum L. (Apiaceae) was recorded for the first time in Bosnia and Herzegovina during a fieldwork in the vicinity of the city of Tuzla (northeast Bosnia) in September 2019. This study reports the newly discovered localities and presents a short morphological description of the species.

Blockchain (BC) and artificial intelligence (AI) are often utilized separately in energy trading systems (ETSs). However, these technologies can complement each other and reinforce their capabilities when integrated. This article provides a comprehensive review of consensus algorithms (CAs) of BC and deep reinforcement learning (DRL) in ETS. While the distributed consensus underpins the immutability of transaction records of prosumers, the deluge of data generated paves the way to use AI algorithms for forecasting and address other data analytic-related issues. Hence, the motivation to combine BC with AI to realize secure and intelligent ETS. This study explores the principles, potentials, models, active research efforts and unresolved challenges in the CA and DRL. The review shows that despite the current interest in each of these technologies, little effort has been made at jointly exploiting them in ETS due to some open issues. Therefore, new insights are actively required to harness the full potentials of CA and DRL in ETS. We propose a framework and offer some perspectives on effective BC-AI integration in ETS.

Ungrounded and high resistance grounded lines are utilized in distribution networks, and in special transmission networks. The fault current of a line to ground fault is not high enough to activate protective equipment, hence, the power delivery is not interrupted. Pre-fault and fault currents are available after fault occurs. Thus, used for compensation of pre-fault signals, then filtered using a low pass filter. This allows the introduction of a robust and accurate algorithm for locating single line to ground faults in such ungrounded networks. The algorithm uses symmetrical components extracted from filtered and compensated signals on both ends of a line for an initial estimate of fault location. The fine tuned location is determined by solving nonlinear least square problem that imposes equality constraints related to physical attributes of the fault. The details of the algorithm are already published. In this paper we provide an in depth overview of the algorithm and some numerical results.