Skin sensitization is a crucial endpoint in the safety assessment of chemicals, with the Direct Peptide Reactivity Assay (DPRA) emerging as a valuable in chemico method for evaluating a substance's sensitization potential. This review delves into the principles, applicability, and limitations of the DPRA within the context of the Adverse Outcome Pathway (AOP) framework for skin sensitization. We examine the DPRA'srole in addressing the molecular initiating event of skin sensitization, its integration into Integrated Approaches to Testing and Assessment (IATA), and its performance in predicting sensitizers. The review also highlights the challenges in testing certain categories of chemicals and the importance of considering the DPRA's results alongside other complementary methods. By providing a comprehensive overview of the DPRA, this review aims to inform researchers, regulators, and clinicians about its utility and limitations in the context of skin sensitization testing.

Background: The term stress refers to the internal state of the organism (sometimes labeled as "load"), an external event ("stressor"), an experience created by the transaction of a person and the environment. Stress is an extremely used term in all areas of human activity. It is a natural phenomenon and a companion of mankind since its very existence. Although a large number of professional and scientific articles related to the concept of stress and reaction to stress have been published during the last 60 years, various authors state that not all concepts are clearly and unambiguously defined in this field. Objective: The aim of this paper is to present different theories of stress and to familiarize the reader about the consequences of everyday stress on human health. Methods: The subject of research is stress and its impact on health in today's modern world. The type of research on this topic is based on a retrospective and descriptive method based on the use of published articles in the PubMed and Scopus index databases. Results and Discussion: Therefore, different theories of stress define differently the concept of stress, reactions to stress, coping with stress and the consequences of a stressful event. Studies on stress was started by Hans Selye in the thirties of the 20th century. Understanding stress as the organism's reaction to various physical and physiological stressors, Selye also became the originator of the first, so-called of the reductionist model in the study of stress. Another theoretical approach in the concepts of stress boils down to the explanation that stress is determined by the nature of the stressor. This paradigm has been offered since the late sixties of the 20th century and is called the interactionist model of stress. At the same time as the interactionist model, a third, transactional model in the study of stress appeared, created by Richard Lazarus. According to this model, the consequences of a stressful transaction are the result of the interplay of personal and external factors that continuously affect each other. Conclusion: The stress is a state in which the psychophysical balance of the organism is disturbed and which, in order to adapt, requires additional efforts. Circumstances that cause stress are also called stressors. Among the psychological changes characteristic of stress, the most pronounced are changes in the sphere of emotional processes. Emotional reactions characteristic of stress are most often anxiety, anger and sadness, and shame, guilt, oversaturation can also occur. After a traumatic or other intense stress (related to losses or diagnosed with an incurable disease), emotional flattening can occur. Changes in psychological functioning during stress can be so intense that they take on the dimensions of a psychological crisis.

The increased need for smart management of agricultural resources resulted in the preparation and implementation of H2020 project SMARTWATER. This publication aims to present the main outcomes of SMARTWATER in three years of implementation (2021-2023), to encourage relevant target groups to participate in the action in 2024 and to promote smart management of agricultural resources. During project implementation different results were obtained. SMARTWATER team will continue with different twinning activities in 2024 aiming to promote smart agriculture practices, increase the competencies of scientists and young researchers and disseminate the project outcomes.

Large language models (LLMs) have demon-001 strated powerful capabilities in natural lan-002 guage processing, yet their vast number of pa-003 rameters poses challenges for deployment and 004 inference efficiency. Structured model pruning 005 emerges as a viable approach to reduce model 006 size and accelerate inference, without requir-007 ing specialized operators and libraries for de-008 ployment. However, structured pruning often 009 severely weakens the model’s capability. De-010 spite repetitive fine-tuning can restore the capa-011 bility to a certain extent, it impairs LLMs’ util-012 ity as versatile problem solvers. To address this 013 issue, we propose a novel structured pruning 014 algorithm tailored for LLMs. It derives the im-015 portance of different components, namely rows 016 and columns in parameter matrices, based on in-017 termediate data dependencies. Then it removes 018 coupled components across different layers si-019 multaneously and preserves dependency rela-020 tionships within remaining parameters, avoid-021 ing significant performance degradation. The 022 pruned model requires only few epochs of fine-023 tuning to restore its performance, ensuring the 024 model’s ability to generalize. Empirical eval-025 uations on LLaMA, Vicuna, and ChatGLM3 026 demonstrate our algorithm’s efficacy, yielding 027 20% parameter reduction while retaining at 028 least 94.4% of original performance metrics. 029

: Integrating inverter-based resources into power systems increases their complexity, and makes their operation more challenging. The conventional approach for simulating power systems neglects transients of the power grid, using steady-state phasors and considering only fundamental frequency values. However, to accurately predict the dynamic behavior of systems with high shares of inverter based resources, electromagnetic transient simulations (EMTSs) are necessary. The primary limitation of classical time-domain EMTSs is their frequent time-consuming nature, making them impractical for larger systems. In this work, we explore the use of dynamic phasors (DPs) as a technique to accelerate EMTSs. For this purpose, we first adapt the power grid and inverter model to DP simulation. Subsequently, we assess the effectiveness of this approach through three numerical examples, demonstrating a reduction in the simulation times by a factor of 4 to 40.

Background/Aim: Basal cell carcinoma (BCC) is the most common cancer of the skin. It is believed that increased UV radiation from the sun accounts for almost 90 % of the risk of BCC. There is a growing trend in the incidence of BCC in a younger population. The aim of study was to analyse the initial clinical symptoms of BCC that may be important for the early detection of this skin tumour. Method: The study was a prospective, multicentre study performed in the period from March 2017 to February 2022. A total of 69 respondents with BCC were analysed. Respondents applied for a targeted examination to examine a suspicious skin lesion (due to certain symptoms) or were diagnosed with BCC by accident, when examining other skin changes. Respondents were divided into 2 groups. The first, Group I (35 respondents), consisted of respondents with nodular BCC. The second, Group II (34 respondents), consisted of respondents with superficial spreading BCC. Initially, a careful history and data on the characteristics, shape and character of the tumour were taken from all respondents. Data on all (even the smallest) initial symptoms and relevant signs of evolution, as well as subjective problems related to the tumour were noted. All respondents underwent dermoscopy of suspected skin changes. Results: A significant difference was found between the examined groups in the characteristics of bleeding, crust formation and tendency to injury in lesions, where they occur more often in patients with nodular BCC. Symptoms such as burning and flaking occurred significantly more often in patients with superficial spreading BCC (p < 0.01), as well as the diameter of lesions over 5 mm (p < 0.05). Conclusion: Early clinical diagnosis of BCC is possible with a tumour diameter of only a few mm. The predominant initial (highly susceptible) symptoms of nodular BCC were initial bleeding and / or scab formation on the lesions, as well as propensity to injury. The superficial spreading form of BCC was often larger than 5 mm in diameter, with more frequent scaling of the lesion, as well as burning and stinging sensations in the tumour area. Itching was observed to be a very common previous occurrence in the BCC initial focus zone in subjects of both study groups. Dermsocopy is a highly reliable diagnostic method for early detection of BCC.

The aim of the research was to examine the prevalence of unpleasant emotional states among students. An online survey was conducted in the month of April, 2023, and the participants were students of public universities in Bosnia and Herzegovina (N=170). Among the measuring instruments used was the DASS-21questionnaire (The Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale-21, Lovibond and Lovibond 1995) and a sociodemographic questionnaire, constructed for the purposes of this research. It is expected that students will experience unpleasant emotional states such as anxiety, depression and stress, and that there will be certain differences in the manifestation of symptoms with regard to gender and age. The obtained findings showed that 34.3% of the subjects are in the category of moderate, severe and extremely severe depressive symptoms, then 49,9% of the subjects feel moderate, severe or extremly severe anxiety, while 38.2% of the subjects show moderate, severe and extremly severe symptoms of stress. As for gender and age differences, the results show that female students are more susceptible to the prevalence of unpleasant emotional states, while the hypotesis related to age differences was not confirmed. Namely, the findings indicate that there are no age differences in the manifestation of unpleasant emotional states. Considering the obtained findings, we believe that it is necessary to raise awareness about the significant growing problems of mental health among students and to highlight the need for preventive and intervention programs at universities.