Background Cigarette use is one of the major risk factors for non-communicable diseases in Bosnia and Herzegovina, with 41.1% of adults being current smokers in 2019 and almost half of current smokers using more than 20 cigarettes per day. Methods This study applies the prevalence-based, cost-of-illness approach to estimate the annual economic cost of smoking in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2019. Results The study estimates that cigarette use by adults in Bosnia and Herzegovina caused between 24.4% and 42.8% of all deaths in 2019 and a total economic cost of between €367.5 and €635.1 million (2.0%–3.5% of gross domestic product). The direct costs represent the largest share of the total cost (between 1.0% and 1.7% of gross domestic product). Conclusion Cigarette use imposes a significant health and economic burden in the society of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Various tobacco control measures can be implemented to prevent and reduce tobacco consumption and the negative health consequences of tobacco use. Numerous studies have shown taxes on tobacco products are very effective in reducing tobacco use, especially among certain demographic groups, such as youth and low-income individuals. Smoke-free laws have also shown benefits. Other policy measures that can be implemented include restrictions to advertising, limitations on who can purchase tobacco products, how and where they can be purchased, etc. In addition, governments could also implement various education programmes on the negative health consequences of smoking. The results of this study provide information that calls for prompt and strengthened implementation of tobacco control measures to reduce cigarette consumption in the country and improve the health outcomes and productivity of its inhabitants.

Abstract COVID-19 had undoubtedly speeded up adoption of digital technologies. Most of the theoreticians agree that changes that happened in the pandemic period would not happen in the next several years or even decades. There is almost no business operation that has not been affected by the pandemic, from customer relation and sales to supply chain. It influenced different business sectors leaving permanent change and making a significant proportion of organizations working in at least hybrid mode: combining digital and traditional pre-pandemic ways of working. COVID-19 had significantly changed the workplace and way of working. Workplace has shifted to digital or at least hybrid and employees and companies have adopted new ways of working, including usage of digital technologies but also accepting more agile and flexible procedures and rules. The research community has followed this phenomenon and tried to provide best possible recommendation to it accordance to recognized research methods. The paper provides a systematic literature review of the most significant scientific and industry publication in the years after the pandemic start. It is based on Kitchenham methodology of the systematic review with selected publication from recognized bibliographic databases. First part provides general effects of the pandemic to digital transformation of businesses all over the globe, mostly connected to analysis of the employees’ workplace preference. The second part is focused on digital workplace transformation and presents key theoretical and professional findings in the post-pandemic workplace. This part is consisted of the preview of benefits of the digital workplace transformation, identification of critical success factors and the most significant challenges of the process.

Background Tobacco tax policy in Bosnia and Herzegovina (B&H) assumes a gradual annual increase in specific excise taxes on cigarettes. However, it is insufficient to reduce significantly consumption. This paper examines effects of the increase in cigarette prices and disposable income on cigarette demand in B&H by different income consumer groups. Methods Based on the Household Budget Surveys and microdata from 2007, 2011 and 2015, we employed logit model to estimate prevalence and Deaton’s model to estimate intensity elasticity of cigarette demand for the sample of 21 424 households (9953 are smoking households) by different income groups. We used obtained elasticities and estimated the impact of tax increase on cigarette consumption and government revenue in three tax increase scenarios. Results Ten per cent price increase would reduce the consumption of low-income households by 14%, as opposed to 9.9% for middle-income and 7% for high-income households. Low-income households would significantly increase the demand for cigarettes compared with high-income households if income increased. Increase in the specific excise tax by 25% would reduce cigarette consumption and increase government revenue, while the low-income group would experience a reduction in tax burden. Conclusions Changes in prices have different impacts on tobacco prevalence and consumption of low-income compared with middle-income and high-income socioeconomic groups. Low-income households are most responsive to changes in prices and income. Thus, the poor in B&H would benefit from an increase in tobacco excise taxes and price.

There have been a significant number of publications about digital workplace transformation. This is due to technological developments in the last decades as well as the COVID-19 pandemic. However, there is no adequate overall definition of the term. This leads to misunderstandings and confused interpretation of the digital workplace, sometimes even narrowing it down to a set of tools or a platform. Given the complexity of digital workplace transformation, there is a need to have an integrated prospective and analyze it not just from a technological perspective, but from an organizational and processes point of view as well. Therefore, this paper is an attempt to review the concept and offer a comprehensive definition of the digital workplace. This includes all the important aspects of the transformation including tools and platforms as well as personal issues, organization, processes and management. The paper provides a systematic literature review of the publications in leading bibliographic and citation bases, starting from Web of Science and Scopus to SpringerLink, IEEE Xplore and Association for Information Systems eLibrary. The review includes not only journal papers, but also leading proceedings, books and other referent publications. It addresses the authors' approaches, perspectives, terminologies, focusses and understanding of workplace transformation over the last decade by a comprehensive review of the state of art of the literature in the field of digital workplace. Finally, a set of recommendations are made to further research in increasingly important subject of digital workplace transformation.

In today’s modern world, more than ever before, students are faced with entrepreneurship based on the use of information and communication technology (ICT) as a reasonable and justified career choice. Whether their career choice would be successful or not depends a lot on the level of system support through entrepreneurial ecosystem during their education. The main objective of this paper is to present the current assessment, indicate the problems and possible solutions regarding the entrepreneurial infrastructure, culture and potential of higher education institutions in Banja Luka, Bosnia and Herzegovina. To achieve this, we have researched the level of the system support to students for development and launch of their ICT based start-ups during and after their university education respecting different educational profiles and demographic characteristics. The research covers the sample of 436 students from seven higher education institutions in Banja Luka at their bachelor studies and includes focus groups, survey, descriptive and inferential statistical methods. We have found significant discrepancy between university ICT programs and infrastructure and student needs. For instance, a quite large number of students interested in ICT industry attended some kind of informal education from this domain and at the same time they were unaware that those and similar programs were freely available at their universities. In this paper we have identified those and similar gaps and compared our research results with similar results in other countries.

Modern economy, in first order Retail sector, are introducing new and modern technologies which improve sales, communication with customers as well as marketing decision process. Retail sector is more and more oriented to technologies which improve not just communication with possible customers but also information gathering for better decision making process. Among those technologies special place is given to Indoor Positioning Systems (IPS) technologies, specialized technologies which are used for locating the people and objects but also their movement as well as for communication with clients in the store. These technologies follows customers in the store, follow their movement across, communicate with them about offers and promotions but also are base for predictive marketing of retail sector which has a goal to achieve „offer to customers what they look for and what they really need“. These technologies are in limited usage in Banja Luka area but potential for their use is present. There is no enough demand from retails industry but having in mind that these technologies are raising in modern economies as well as predictions and trends it is to be expected that those technologies will be implemented in retail sector in this region too.

Summary Digital transformation as integration of digital technology into business results in fundamental changes of way world does business, communicate and develops on national and international level. There is increase of high-tech public spending which is connected with increase of need for high-tech as well as importance and benefits that it brings to development of economy. This so called digital or high-tech sector is one of the strategic sectors in the leading world economies, starting from the US and the European Union. EU recognized it in strategic document “Europe 2020” which sees this sector as key factor in smart growth based on tech knowledge and innovation. Europe, especially western and northern Europe, is trying to keep its competitiveness in global tech arena with USA and fast developing countries such as China and India as well as Asian tech giants such are Japan, South Korea and Singapore. There is increase of European countries investment in digital transformation through private and public ICT sector development which usually has positive impact on economic growth as well as key indicators such are GDP, productivity and employment. This paper provides basic review of digital transformation and high-tech sector in Europe as well as comparison between EU and Western Balkan countries. Additionally, there is analysis of influence of ICT spending on GDP growth. Paper could serve as basic for further research in area of influence of tech investment on key macroeconomics indicators.

Project management in modern IT companies is often based on agile methodologies which have several advantages compared to traditional methodologies such is waterfall. Having in mind that clients sometimes change project during development it is crucial for an IT company to choose carefully which methodology is going to implement and is it going to be mostly based on one or is it going got be combination of several. There are several modern and often used methodologies but among those Scrum, Kanban and XP programming are usually the most common. Sometimes companies use mostly tools and procedures from one but quite often they use some of the combination of those methodologies. Having in mind that those methodologies are just a framework they allow companies to adapt it for their specific projects as well as for other limitations. These methodologies are in limited usage Bosnia but more and more IT companies are starting to use agile methodologies because it is practice and common not just for their clients abroad but also starting to be the only option in order to deliver quality product on time. However it is always challenging which methodology or combination of several companies should implement and how to connect it to its own project, organizational framework and HR management. This paper presents one case study based on local IT start up and delivers solution based on theoretical framework and practical limitations that case company has.

Modern software development requires usage of just one or combination of traditional and agile software development methodologies in order to reach full efficiency and effectiveness. However, difference between those two is not just in project management, documentation and roles. Those differences effect project success, satisfaction of clients, motivation and interest of development team members as well as easiness of client project requirements. Paper analyses those differences in several characteristic project development phases and identifies key challenges in planning and implement appropriate development methodology. It is combination of literature review as well as expert knowledge in both, traditional and agile, methodologies with outcome of review of above mention key differences in order to achieve as much as effective project outcome.

Short-chain fatty acid (SCFA) transport across the colon may occur by nonionic diffusion and/or via apical membrane SCFA-/[Formula: see text]exchange. To examine the relative importance of these processes, stripped segments of rat ( Ratus ratus) proximal and distal colon were studied in Ussing chambers, and the unidirectional fluxes of radiolabeled SCFA butyrate, propionate, or weakly metabolized isobutyrate were measured. In N-2-hydroxyethylpiperazine- N'-2-ethanesulfonic acid (HEPES) or 1 or 5 mM [Formula: see text] Ringer, decreases in mucosal pH stimulated mucosal-to-serosal flux ( J m→s) of all SCFA, decreases in serosal pH stimulated serosal-to-mucosal flux ( J s→m), and bilateral pH decreases stimulated both fluxes equally. These effects were observed whether the SCFA was present on one or both sides of the tissue, in both proximal and distal colon, in the absence of luminal Na+, and in the presence of either luminal or serosal ouabain. Changes in intracellular pH or intracellular [[Formula: see text]] did not account for the effects of extracellular pH. Luminal Cl- removal, to evaluate the role of apical membrane Cl-/SCFA-exchange, had no effect on J m→s but decreased J s→m 32% at pH 6.5 and 22% at 7.2. Increasing SCFA concentration from 1 to 100 mM, at pH 6.4 or 7.4, caused a linear increase in J m→s. We conclude that SCFA are mainly transported across the rat colon by nonionic diffusion.

Short-chain fatty acid (SCFA) transport across the colon may occur by nonionic diffusion and/or via apical membrane SCFA-/HCO3- exchange. To examine the relative importance of these processes, stripped segments of rat (Ratus ratus) proximal and distal colon were studied in Ussing chambers, and the unidirectional fluxes of radiolabeled SCFA butyrate, propionate, or weakly metabolized isobutyrate were measured. In N-2-hydroxyethylpiperazine-N'-2-ethanesulfonic acid (HEPES) or 1 or 5 mM HCO3- Ringer, decreases in mucosal pH stimulated mucosal-to-serosal flux (Jm-->s) of all SCFA, decreases in serosal pH stimulated serosal-to-mucosal flux (Js-->m), and bilateral pH decreases stimulated both fluxes equally. These effects were observed whether the SCFA was present on one or both sides of the tissue, in both proximal and distal colon, in the absence of luminal Na+, and in the presence of either luminal or serosal ouabain. Changes in intracellular pH or intracellular [HCO3-] did not account for the effects of extracellular pH. Luminal Cl- removal, to evaluate the role of apical membrane Cl-/SCFA- exchange, had no effect on Jm-->s but decreased Js-->m 32% at pH 6.5 and 22% at 7.2. Increasing SCFA concentration from 1 to 100 mM, at pH 6.4 or 7.4, caused a linear increase in Jm-->s. We conclude that SCFA are mainly transported across the rat colon by nonionic diffusion.

Background Tobacco tax policy in Bosnia and Herzegovina currently assumes a gradual annual increase in the specific excise tax on cigarettes (0.15 BAM per year per pack). However, since 2019 policy makers in Bosnia and Herzegovina have frozen the increase in specific excise taxes. The Indirect Taxation Authority (ITA) increased the minimum excise in 2023 to 3.35 Bosnia-Herzegovina convertible marks (BAM) per pack, which is a change of 0.02 BAM compared to 2022. This research examines the effects of the increase in cigarette prices on government revenues from excise and indirect taxes, as well as the health impacts of tobacco tax increases. Methods Based on the data on legal cigarette sales and the tax structure, we employ tobacco tax simulation modeling to estimate revenue change and the impact on public health. The baseline year for our analysis is 2023, and we conduct forecasts for the period of 2024 – 2025. The estimations of the impact of the proposed increased excise on government revenues are done by applying different scenarios regarding price and income elasticities on different price segments. We analyze the impact of the increased prices on public health through the decrease in prevalence and number of smokers.