This paper presents the results of influence of extraction technique on phytochemical composition and biological activity of aqueous extracts of commercial apricot kernels. Three techniques were used for extraction: maceration, ultrasonic and Soxhlet extraction. The content of total phenols, flavonoids, bioelements, antioxidant and antimicrobial activity was analyzed in the extracts. Antioxidant activity was analyzed in vitro using DPPH and FRAP methods. Antimicrobial screening was performed by diffusion technique on reference strains from the ATCC collection. The content of total phenols and flavonoids is highest in extracts obtained by ultrasonic extraction and maceration. These techniques have proven to be the best for the extraction of macro and micronutrients. The aqueous extract obtained by maceration at 300 rpm for 3 hours showed a greater inhibitory effect against the tested microorganisms, compared to the extracts obtained by other techniques. The least efficient method of extracting bioactive components from apricot kernels is Soxhlet extraction, with the lowest dry extract yield of 5.5%.   

Laryngeal vestibule (LV) closure is a critical physiologic event during swallowing, since it is the first line of defense against food bolus entering the airway. Identifying the laryngeal vestibule status, including closure, reopening and closure duration, provides indispensable references for assessing the risk of dysphagia and neuromuscular function. However, commonly used radiographic examinations, known as videofluoroscopy swallowing studies, are highly constrained by their radiation exposure and cost. Here, we introduce a non-invasive sensor-based system, that acquires high-resolution cervical auscultation signals from neck and accommodates advanced deep learning techniques for the detection of LV behaviors. The deep learning algorithm, which combined convolutional and recurrent neural networks, was developed with a dataset of 588 swallows from 120 patients with suspected dysphagia and further clinically tested on 45 samples from 16 healthy participants. For classifying the LV closure and opening statuses, our method achieved 78.94% and 74.89% accuracies for these two datasets, suggesting the feasibility of implementing sensor signals for LV prediction without traditional videofluoroscopy screening methods. The sensor supported system offers a broadly applicable computational approach for clinical diagnosis and biofeedback purposes in patients with swallowing disorders without the use of radiographic examination.

The natural plant Cornus mas, sometimes called Cornelian cherry, has been known since ancient times and the fruit is used for various purposes. Cornus mas gives healthy fruits without the use of chemical protection, which are used as healthy, tasty and medicinal food. Cornus mas fruits can be used for eating fresh or in the form of numerous processed products: marmalade, jam, sweet, compote, syrup, juice, fruit yogurt, liqueur, wine and brandy. Due to its antioxidant, antiallergic, antimicrobial and antihistamine properties, it is increasingly used as a dietary supplement, as well as for medical purposes. Taking into account all the above, the aim of this paper is to examine samples of a mixture of honey and fresh wild Cornelian cherry, as well as a sample of honey and Cornelian cherry and determine the physical - chemical parameters: electrical conductivity, pH value, vitamin C content, HMF (hydroxy methyl furfural), as well as individual heavy metals such as iron, cadmium, lead, zinc, copper. Based on the obtained results, appropriate conclusions will be given and the possibility of registering these products as food supplements will be determined.  Based on the performed analyzes, it was shown that the sample of honey and Cornelian cherry mixture had the highest pH value and electrical conductivity, and that the honey sample had the lowest value. Also, the highest value of water activity had the sample of a mixture of honey and Cornelian cherry, while the highest content of hydroxymethylfurfural had the content of Cornelian cherry. The analysis showed the absence of manganese (Mn), cadmium (Cd) and lead (Pb) in all samples, while it was shown that the highest content of Cu and Zn has the sample of Cornelian cherry 2.665 mg/kg Cu ​​and 14.41 mg/kg Zn, followed by a mixture of Cornelian cherry and honey Cu 2.778 mg/kg, Zn 14.670 mg/kg, while the honey sample has the highest Fe content of 16.72 mg/kg. This shows that the samples are rich in zinc, iron and copper, and that they are a good source for those minerals that could meet daily needs.

Background: In the present study, the main goal was to establish whether the disciplines are equal and should the Code of Points (COP) women's artistic gymnastics be revised in terms of point standardization on apparatus. Material and methods: The sample included all-around senior female gymnasts who participated in the qualification (C-I) competitions at World Championships held in 2009-2019. Results: The biggest differences are even two points between the two apparatus vault and balance beam. Vault compared to other apparatus is different for 1.559 points. Presentation of correlations between each apparatus the evidence that nothing has changed significantly in recent years, whereas correlations of the difficulty values of elements are extremely high between the present COP. Conclusions: With this analysis, we have found that the results achieved at the vault and other apparatus were significantly different in terms of success in all-around competition.

The purpose of this study was to establish the validity, reliability, and usefulness of a low-cost contact mat equipment (CM) with a force plate (FP) as the reference. Eleven female (18.6 ± 3.67 yrs.) and male (18.2 ± 2.71 yrs.) basketball athletes performed hands-on-waist countermovement jump (CMJ) and squat jump (SJ) trials. Flight time (FT) and jump height (JH) in CMJ and SJ were subjected for analysis. Relative error expressed as percentage (%RE) was utilized to examine criterion validity between CM and FP. Concurrent validity was also established using Pearson moment correlation (r). Absolute reliability was determined using coefficient of variation (%CV). Relative reliability was identified using intra-class correlation coefficient (ICC). Usefulness was established by comparing typical error (TE) vs. smallest worthwhile change (SWC). Results revealed that CMJ and SJ from a low-cost CM can be used as an alternative tool in assessment of jump performance.

In addition to soda, the Solway production process yields large amounts of waste sludge that contains a high percentage of CaCO3 and Ca(OH)2. In this paper, solid waste sludge from a soda factory in Bosnia and Herzegovina of a certain granulation was used to remove metal ions from the binary system initial concentrations of 500 mg/L. The research results showed that the precipitation efficiency for the binary system Cu - Ni was 99.810% at a pH of 11.42 for Cu2+ and 99.896% for Ni2+ at a pH of 10.86, while for the binary system Pb - Zn it was 99.84% at the same pH value of 10.64. This research has shown that it is very difficult to separate and remove metal precipitation from binary systems because the optimal pH for one metal does not correspond to another metal.

The concept of Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) brings the opportunity to adjust both the study content, and the context, based on the teaching needs. Therefore, in this paper, we present our best practices on enabling remote networking laboratories via Blackboard platform, including the Blackboard Collaborate Ultra extension, in order to efficiently react to the challenges of imminent campus closure imposed by COVID-19 breakout. We present an extensive survey as a feedback from students, which allowed us to measure and to quantify students’ experience and satisfaction with the remote teaching setup that successfully served 45 enrolled students. As the results bring the positive attitude towards practices presented in this paper, such teaching practices will foster some of the critical skills nowadays, such as collaboration, self-driven learning, and problem solving, and they can also serve as a successful example on how to efficiently cope with the limited access to traditional classroom resources within various courses.

Objective COVID-19 pandemic led to major life changes. We assessed the psychological impact of COVID-19 on dental academics globally and on changes in their behaviors. Methods We invited dental academics to complete a cross-sectional, online survey from March to May 2020. The survey was based on the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB). The survey collected data on participants’ stress levels (using the Impact of Event Scale), attitude (fears, and worries because of COVID-19 extracted by Principal Component Analysis (PCA), perceived control (resulting from training on public health emergencies), norms (country-level COVID-19 fatality rate), and personal and professional backgrounds. We used multilevel regression models to assess the association between the study outcome variables (frequent handwashing and avoidance of crowded places) and explanatory variables (stress, attitude, perceived control and norms). Results 1862 academics from 28 countries participated in the survey (response rate = 11.3%). Of those, 53.4% were female, 32.9% were <46 years old and 9.9% had severe stress. PCA extracted three main factors: fear of infection, worries because of professional responsibilities, and worries because of restricted mobility. These factors had significant dose-dependent association with stress and were significantly associated with more frequent handwashing by dental academics (B = 0.56, 0.33, and 0.34) and avoiding crowded places (B = 0.55, 0.30, and 0.28). Low country fatality rates were significantly associated with more handwashing (B = -2.82) and avoiding crowded places (B = -6.61). Training on public health emergencies was not significantly associated with behavior change (B = -0.01 and -0.11). Conclusions COVID-19 had a considerable psychological impact on dental academics. There was a direct, dose-dependent association between change in behaviors and worries but no association between these changes and training on public health emergencies. More change in behaviors was associated with lower country COVID-19 fatality rates. Fears and stresses were associated with greater adoption of preventive measures against the pandemic.

In this paper we discuss several elements of importance for securing QoS in multimedia networks. Firstly, we present the first factor, which refers to understanding the characteristics of multimedia traffic in order to define and implement the QoS requirements. Secondly, factor refers to translation between QoS parameters that implies the distribution of system and network resources, and thirdly the factor establishes the appropriate QoS architecture that can provide the required QoS guarantees for multimedia applications. We have been analyzing security-critical applications such as remote operation, which may require a guaranteed level of availability (hard QoS). There are basically two ways to secure a guaranteed QoS. The first is simply to provide a lot of resources, enough to meet the expected peak (peak) requirements with a significant security margin. This approach generously oversupplies the (over provisioning) network. We gave a detailed security analysis as features of WiMAX. More precisely, our analysis is based on the claim that its key feature of the WiMAX network is that the security layer is built into the protocol leg instead of being added later, i.e. the security layer is complex between PHY and MAC layers.

OBJECTIVE The goal of our study was to discover and analyze possible risk factors for and possible protective factors against the occurrence of potential drug-drug interactions (pDDIs) in a hospitalized patient with community-acquired pneumonia. MATERIALS AND METHODS The central outcome was the incidence of pDDIs in patients with community-acquired pneumonia checked by Lexicomp and Micromedex interaction checkers. RESULTS The most severe pDDIs (Consider therapy modification D/Avoid combination X/Major/Contraindicated) were found in 19 (20%) and 54 (58%) patients, according to Lexicomp and Micromedex, respectively. Patients with community-acquired pneumonia who were older, smokers, and with more prescribed drugs by more than a few independent prescribers had a higher risk to experience pDDIs. Possible protective factors were longer length of hospitalization, transfer from the Emergency Department, antiarrhythmic drugs as well as an anticoagulant therapy. CONCLUSION In conclusion, community-acquired pneumonia patients with the above-mentioned factors should have their treatment more deeply monitored for pDDIs.

The rapid development of technology is directly affecting the growth and development of e-commerce shipments, especially in the Business to Customer segment. An increase in e-commerce shipments has a strong impact on the express delivery industry. In these conditions, a very significant challenge is how to organize a postal network. The problem that arises is how many postal centers, and at what locations, should be implemented in a specific geographical area in order to optimize the level of service for the users. Solving this challenge has latterly received increased attention in both industry and academia. The aim of this paper is to firstly provide a concise overview of current approaches in the process of determining the optimal location of postal centers. The second part of the paper will focus on proposing an approach that will rely on machine learning methods for clustering in defined conditions and specific geographical environment using appropriate geographic information tools for spatial data analysis and visualization.

In this paper, empirical research about Passenger Car Equivalents (PCEs) on the longitudinal downgrade of two-lane roads in Bosnia and Herzegovina has been conducted in order to determine the influence of vehicle structure under free traffic flow conditions. The research has been carried out considering the classes of vehicles at cross-sections on the downgrade of two-lane roads. As a result, the negative influence of vehicle structure under free traffic flow conditions using passenger car equivalents (PCEs) has been determined. The results show that on the downgrade of two-lane roads, the value of passenger car equivalent decreases from the level terrain to the boundary minimum value for the determined downgrade g = −3.00%, after which its value starts to increase slightly. Based on the obtained values, the models calibrated with a second-degree polynomial have been developed to determine the average value of passenger car equivalent as a function of its boundary value. The paper also compares the results obtained by the developed models with the models from the Highway Capacity Manual under free traffic flow conditions. In addition, models for the percentage values of PCE15%, PCE50% and PCE85% have been established.

Many public figures, companies and associations are planning events in different cities and at the same time have active profiles on social media. The planning process requires processing a large amount of data and different parameters when choosing the best event venue. Social media captures a large number of fan actions per day. This paper describes the process of selecting the most appropriate cities to organize events, aided by data collected from social media. The problem is defined as a combinatorial optimization problem. A modified metaheuristic Bat algorithm was proposed, implemented, and described in detail to solve the problem. Although the original Bat algorithm is designed to solve continuous optimization problems, the implemented bat algorithm is adapted to solve the defined problem. The algorithm is compared to the exhaustive search method for smaller instances, and to the greedy and genetic algorithm for larger instances. The algorithm was tested on benchmark data on cities in 20 European countries, as well as on real data collected from pages on the social network Facebook. Bat algorithm has shown superior results compared to other techniques, both in time and in the quality of the solutions generated.

Each company aims to remain competitive in the market and provides the services that their clients seek, all in accordance with the cost-effectiveness and fulfillment of customer expectations. In order to do the same, companies are looking for the best practices that help in organizing their work and delivery of their services, as well as maintaining and determining the competitive advantage. In this paper an example of such practice is explained in the ITIL framework. The purpose of the SWOT analysis is to identify strategies that match the resources and capabilities of the company with the needs of the environment in which it competes. The purpose of this analysis is to use the company advantages, to explore its capabilities, to correct weaknesses, and to counteract the threats of the environment. The aim of the paper is to demonstrate the benefits of SWOT analysis with companies with the implemented ITIL framework, which is mainly reflected in simplicity, flexibility, low cost, but with tremendous efficiency, good estimates, and finding negativity and positivism in business.