The lattice <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mathcal {L}(\boldsymbol{A})$</tex-math></inline-formula> of a full-column rank matrix <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\boldsymbol{A}\in \mathbb {R}^{m\times n}$</tex-math></inline-formula> is defined as the set of all the integer linear combinations of the column vectors of <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\boldsymbol{A}$</tex-math></inline-formula>. The successive minima <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\lambda _i(\boldsymbol{A}),\,1\leq i\leq n,$</tex-math></inline-formula> of lattice <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mathcal {L}(\boldsymbol{A})$</tex-math></inline-formula> are important quantities since they have close relationships with the following problems: shortest vector problem, shortest independent vector problem, and successive minima problem. These problems arise from many practical applications, such as communications and cryptography. This paper first investigates some properties of <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\lambda _i(\boldsymbol{A})$</tex-math></inline-formula>. Specifically, we develop lower and upper bounds on <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\lambda _i(\boldsymbol{A})$</tex-math></inline-formula>, where <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\boldsymbol{A}$</tex-math></inline-formula> are, respectively, the Cholesky factor of <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\boldsymbol{G}_1+\boldsymbol{G}_2$</tex-math></inline-formula> and <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$(\boldsymbol{G}_1+\boldsymbol{G}_2)^{-1}$</tex-math></inline-formula> for two given symmetric positive definitive matrices <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\boldsymbol{G}_1$</tex-math></inline-formula> and <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\boldsymbol{G}_2$</tex-math></inline-formula>. The bounds are, respectively, expressed as the successive minima of <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mathcal {L}(\boldsymbol{A}_1)$</tex-math></inline-formula> and <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mathcal {L}(\boldsymbol{A}_2)$</tex-math></inline-formula>, and <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mathcal {L}(\hat{\boldsymbol{A}}_1)$</tex-math></inline-formula> and <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mathcal {L}(\hat{\boldsymbol{A}}_2)$</tex-math></inline-formula>, where <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\boldsymbol{A}_1, \boldsymbol{A}_2, \hat{\boldsymbol{A}}_1$</tex-math></inline-formula> and <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\hat{\boldsymbol{A}}_2$</tex-math></inline-formula> are, respectively, the Cholesky factors of <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\boldsymbol{G}_1, \boldsymbol{G}_2, \boldsymbol{G}_1^{-1}$</tex-math></inline-formula>, and <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\boldsymbol{G}_2^{-1}$</tex-math></inline-formula>. Then, we show how some properties of <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\lambda _i(\boldsymbol{A})$</tex-math></inline-formula> are used to design a suboptimal integer-forcing strategy for cloud radio access network. Our approach provides much higher time efficiency while keeping the same achievable rate as the algorithm reported by Bakoury and Nazer (I. E. Bakoury and B. Nazer, “Integer-forcing architectures for uplink cloud radio access networks,” in <italic>Proc. 55th Annu. Allerton Conf. Commun. Control Comput.</italic>, Oct. 2007, pp. 67–75). Simulation tests are performed to illustrate our main results.

This research was conducted with the purpose of determining to what extent and how the dance program affects  the pre-school children coordination. The sample comprised 65 children of pre-school age (the control group consisted of 31 children, experimental of 34 children), aged 6 years ± 6 months. The experimental group performed dance activities over a period of 8 weeks (2X35 minutes each week). The control group performed regular activities in the kindergarten. The level of coordination in children was determined applying BOT-2 test battery (the Bruininks-Oseretsky test of Motor Proficiency). By analyzing the obtained research results, it was found a statistically significant difference between the dance and the control group in three variables: Jumping Jacks (0.000), Jumping in place-same sides synchronized (0.012) and Tapping feet and fingers- opposite sides synchronized (0.011), respectively. Statistically significant differences between the groups indicate the positive effect of the applied dance program on the development of motor coordination in pre-school children using an experimental dance program for twelve weeks. Dance program influences the coordination of the pre-school age children. The results showed that children participating in the dance program achieved better results in investigated bilateral coordination in three variables, thus recommending its application in the regular preschool children curriculum.

The beginnings of Sokolism bind to the second half of the 19th century, namely to the Czech Miroslav Tyrš and its system of physical exercise. After the founding in the Czech Republic, Sokol movement began to spread in all Slavic countries as well as in those where Slavic nations lived. In this way, Sokolism arrived among Serbs who lived in America (USA), and they began to accept the idea of Sokolism in the mid-1907. In early 1909 began to appear the first initiatives for the establishment of Serbian Soko Societies. During 1909 two societies were founded, the in the next year five more, in 1911 three societies and in 1912 more than ten. In the second half of 1911 was established the union of Serbian Soko societies in America called Serbian Soko Parish in America (SSPA). Serbian Soko Society in Cleveland, Ohio, which is also the main subject of this research, was founded in the first half of 1912. The aim of the authors is to explore and present the exact date of the founding of this Society, the main initiators and founders, members and activities of the Society during its work. In this study authors used the historical method.

Humans can transfer knowledge previously acquired from a specific task to new and unknown ones. Recently, transfer learning (TL) has been extensively used in brain–computer interface (BCI) research to reduce the training/calibration requirements. BCI systems have been designed to provide alternative communication or control access through computers to individuals with limited speech and physical abilities (LSPA). These systems generally require a calibration session in order to train the BCI before each usage. Such a calibration session may be burdensome for the individuals with LSPA. In this article, we introduce a multimodal hybrid BCI based on electroencephalography (EEG) and functional transcranial Doppler ultrasound (fTCD) and present a TL approach to reduce the calibration requirements. In the hybrid BCI, EEG, and fTCD are used simultaneously to measure the electrical brain activity and cerebral blood velocity, respectively, in response to motor imagery (MI) tasks. Using the data we collected from ten healthy individuals, we perform dimensionality reduction utilizing regularized discriminant analysis (RDA). Using the scores from RDA, we learn class conditional probabilistic distributions for each individual. We use these class conditional distributions to perform TL across different participants. More specifically, in order to reduce the calibration requirements for each individual, we choose the recorded data from other individuals to augment the training data for that specific individual. We choose the data for augmentation based on the probabilistic similarities between the class conditional distributions. For the final classification, we use the RDA scores after TL as features input to three different classifiers: quadratic discriminant analysis (QDA), linear discriminant analysis (LDA), and support vector machines (SVMs). Using our experimental data, we show that TL decreases the calibration requirements up to $87.5\%$. Also by comparing SVM, LDA, and QDA, we observe that the SVM provides the best classification performance.

Sex differences have been observed in multiple facets of cancer epidemiology, treatment and biology, and in most cancers outside the sex organs. Efforts to link these clinical differences to specific molecular features have focused on somatic mutations within the coding regions of the genome. Here we report a pan-cancer analysis of sex differences in whole genomes of 1983 tumours of 28 subtypes as part of the ICGC/TCGA Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG) Consortium. We both confirm the results of exome studies, and also uncover previously undescribed sex differences. These include sex-biases in coding and non-coding cancer drivers, mutation prevalence and strikingly, in mutational signatures related to underlying mutational processes. These results underline the pervasiveness of molecular sex differences and strengthen the call for increased consideration of sex in molecular cancer research. There’s an emerging body of evidence to show how biological sex impacts cancer incidence, treatment and underlying biology. Here, using a large pan-cancer dataset, the authors further highlight how sex differences shape the cancer genome.

We demonstrate a distributed and a centralized 4G/5G compliant approach to minimize signaling and latency related to user mobility in cellular networks. This is crucial due to the densification of networks and the additional signaling introduced by the new 5G service-based architecture. By exploiting standardized protocols, our solutions dynamically reorganize the association between nodes in radio access network (RAN) and the core. We validated the proposed approaches using real user mobility datasets. Our results show that both our distributed and centralized solutions significantly reduce the signaling between core and RAN compared to the traditional approach based on geographical proximity. As a result, both approaches significantly reduce the average handover procedure processing time. Moreover, by relying on locally available information, the distributed approach can quickly adapt to changes in the user movement patterns as they happen.

To manage mobility, RAN nodes in both 4G and 5G are grouped into a hierarchy of geographical areas. We demonstrate a 4G/5G compliant Network Level Mobility Management Optimization solution based on User Equipment (UE) Mobility to minimize signaling (i.e., handover signaling, paging and tracking area updates) and handover latency by dynamically reconfiguring the association between nodes in the Radio Access Network (RAN) and nodes (e.g. Mobility Management Entity), functions (e.g. Access and Mobility Management Function) and Location Regions (e.g. Tracking Area, Registration Area, Tracking Area List) in the core network.

A significant number of old unreinforced load-bearing masonry (URM) buildings exist in many countries worldwide, but especially in Europe. In particular, Bosnia and Herzegovina has an important stock of masonry buildings constructed from the 1920s until the 1960s without application of any seismic code, due to their nonexistence at that time. With the 1963 Skopje earthquake, this class of buildings were shown to be rather vulnerable to seismic actions, which exhibited serious damage. This article assesses the seismic vulnerability of a typical multi-storey residential unreinforced load-bearing masonry building located in the heart of Sarajevo, which may be exposed to an earthquake of magnitude up to 6 by Richter’s scale. The buildings of this kind make up to 6% of the entire housing stock in the urban region of Sarajevo, while in Slovenia this percentage is much higher (around 30%). The analysis of a typical building located in Sarajevo revealed its drawbacks and the need for some kind of strengthening intervention to be implemented. Additionally, many structures of this type are overstressed by one to two additional floors (not the case of the analyzed structure) constructed from 1996 onwards. This was due to the massive population increase in the city center of Sarajevo and further increased the vulnerability of these buildings.

This paper presents a new technique of generation of convex polygon triangulation based on planted trivalent binary tree and ballot notation. The properties of the Catalan numbers were examined and their decomposition and application in developing the hierarchy and triangulation trees were analyzed. The method of storage and processing of triangulation was constructed on the basis of movements through the polygon. This method was derived from vertices and leaves of the planted trivalent binary tree. The research subject of the paper is analysis and comparison of a constructed method for solving of convex polygon triangulation problem with other methods and generating graphical representation. The application code of the algorithms was done in the Java programming language.

Summary Background HIV infection is characterized by progressive depletion of CD4+ T cells due to their reduced synthesis and increased destruction followed by marked activation and expansion of CD8+ T lymphocytes. CD4/CD8 ratio was traditionally described as a marker of immune system ageing in the general population, but it increasingly appears as a marker of different outcomes in the HIV-infected population. The main objective of this study is to examine the power of CD4/CD8 ratio in predicting the occurrence of metabolic syndrome (MetS) in HIV-positive patients receiving cART therapy. Methods 80 HIV/AIDS subjects were included in a retrospective case-control study. Flow cytometry was used to determine the percentage of CD4+ and CD8+ cells in peripheral blood of these patients. The values of biochemical parameters (triglycerides, HDL, blood sugar, blood counts), immunological parameters (CD4/CD8, PCR), anthropometric measurements and type of cART therapy were evaluated in this study. Results After six months of cART therapy 19 (23.8%) subjects had all the elements necessary for making the diagnosis of MetS. Using multivariate analysis CD4/CD8 ratio was statistically significant (p < 0.05) and had the largest effect on development of MetS (Wald = 9.01; OR = 0.45), followed by cART (Wald = 7.87; OR = 0.10) and triglycerides (Wald = 5.27; OR = 1.7). On the other hand, body weight and waist circumference showed no statistically significant effect on the development of MetS after six months of cART, p > 0.05. Conclusions CD4/CD8 ratio proved to be a significant marker for prediction of metabolic syndrome in HIV/AIDS patients.