Adaptive immune responses have been studied extensively in the course of mRNA vaccination against COVID-19. Considerably fewer studies have assessed the effects on innate immune cells. Here, we characterized NK cells in healthy individuals and immunocompromised patients in the course of an anti-SARS-CoV-2 BNT162b2 mRNA prospective, open-label clinical vaccine trial. See trial registration description in notes. Results revealed preserved NK cell numbers, frequencies, subsets, phenotypes, and function as assessed through consecutive peripheral blood samplings at 0, 10, 21, and 35 days following vaccination. A positive correlation was observed between the frequency of NKG2C + NK cells at baseline (Day 0) and anti-SARS-CoV-2 Ab titers following BNT162b2 mRNA vaccination at Day 35. The present results provide basic insights in regards to NK cells in the context of mRNA vaccination, and have relevance for future mRNA-based vaccinations against COVID-19, other viral infections, and cancer. Trial registration : The current study is based on clinical material from the COVAXID open-label, non-randomized prospective clinical trial registered at EudraCT and clinicaltrials.gov (no. 2021–000175-37). Description: https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04780659?term=2021-000175-37&draw=2&rank=1 .

Adaptive immune responses have been studied extensively in the course of mRNA vaccination against COVID-19. Considerably fewer studies have assessed the effects on innate immune cells. Here, we characterized NK cells in healthy individuals and immunocompromised patients in the course of an anti-SARS-CoV-2 BNT162b2 mRNA prospective, open-label clinical vaccine trial. See trial registration description in notes. Results revealed preserved NK cell numbers, frequencies, subsets, phenotypes, and function as assessed through consecutive peripheral blood samplings at 0, 10, 21, and 35 days following vaccination. A positive correlation was observed between the frequency of NKG2C+ NK cells at baseline (Day 0) and anti-SARS-CoV-2 Ab titers following BNT162b2 mRNA vaccination at Day 35. The present results provide basic insights in regards to NK cells in the context of mRNA vaccination, and have relevance for future mRNA-based vaccinations against COVID-19, other viral infections, and cancer. Trial registration: The current study is based on clinical material from the COVAXID open-label, non-randomized prospective clinical trial registered at EudraCT and clinicaltrials.gov (no. 2021–000175-37). Description: https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04780659?term=2021-000175-37&draw=2&rank=1.

Here, from macrophylogeographic mtDNA empirical data, we proposed a scenario of the evolution and speciation of two important forest trees, European Black Pine and Scotch Pine, and their multiple subspecies and varieties. Molecular clock simulations revealed that INDELs variability in the Pinus mitochondrial genome is relatively old, i.e., from the Pliocene-Miocene epoch, and related to historical tectonic continental fluctuations rather than climate change on a large geographic scale. Special attention is paid to the relationships between different speciation models and historical migration patterns and between peripheral and central populations. Species evolution involves the mixing of different speciation modes rather than only one of them, and one speciation mode has different results/effects on different DNA types (e.g., mitochondrial vs. chloroplast vs. nuclear DNA). The misbalance between different meta-population census size vs. effective population size contributions for asymmetric migration pattern is a result of different genotypes (and sub-phylogenetic lines) responding to selection pressing and adaptive evolution.

Time series prediction is a widespread and well studied problem with applications in many domains (medical, geoscience, network analysis, finance, econometry etc.). In the case of multivariate time series, the key to good performances is to properly capture the dependencies between the variates. Often, these variates are structured, i.e. they are localised in an abstract space, usually representing an aspect of the physical world, and prediction amounts to a form of diffusion of the information across that space over time. Several neural network models of diffusion have been proposed in the literature. However, most of the existing proposals rely on some a priori knowledge on the structure of the space, usually in the form of a graph weighing the pairwise diffusion capacity of its points. We argue that this piece of information can often be dispensed with, since data already contains the diffusion capacity information, and in a more reliable form than that obtained from the usually largely hand-crafted graphs. We propose instead a fully data-driven model which does not rely on such a graph, nor any other prior structural information. We conduct a first set of experiments to measure the impact on performance of a structural prior, as used in baseline models, and show that, except at very low data levels, it remains negligible, and beyond a threshold, it may even become detrimental. We then investigate, through a second set of experiments, the capacity of our model in two respects: treatment of missing data and domain adaptation.

Artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques have progressed dramatically and become powerful tools required to solve complicated tasks, such as computer vision, speech recognition, and natural language processing. Since these techniques have provided promising and evident results in these fields, they emerged as valuable methods for applications in human physiology and healthcare. General physiological recordings are time-related expressions of bodily processes associated with health or morbidity. Sequence classification, anomaly detection, decision making, and future status prediction drive the learning algorithms to focus on the temporal pattern and model the nonstationary dynamics of the human body. These practical requirements give birth to the use of recurrent neural networks (RNNs), which offer a tractable solution in dealing with physiological time series and provide a way to understand complex time variations and dependencies. The primary objective of this article is to provide an overview of current applications of RNNs in the area of human physiology for automated prediction and diagnosis within different fields. Finally, we highlight some pathways of future RNN developments for human physiology.

ABSTRACT In ethnically divided consociational societies small minorities opt for different channels of political participation. They may do so to increase the importance of their group or challenge the consequences of limited participation channels, thus navigating the exclusion-amid-inclusion dilemma. However, it remains unclear how and why individuals belonging to small ethnic minorities with limited political opportunities, engage in politics. This article aims to explore and explain the levels of political participation of Jews and Poles in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It seeks to understand why some members of these communities choose to participate actively while others engage only in voting practices or refrain from getting involved. This is outlined using four different criteria: whether the act communicates a message about an individual's political preference, the potential degree of conflict, the effort put into the activity and the degree of cooperation with other people involved in the action. The qualitative analysis of this study relies on a series of semi-structured interviews and focus-groups conducted among the two ethnic communities.

Cilj istraživanja je da se utvrdi jačina veze između dostignutog nivoa tehnološkog razvoja i inovacija sa jedne strane, te bruto domaćeg proizvoda per capita, razvoja finansijskog tržišta, indeksa ljudskog razvoja i indeksa pranja novca sa druge strane. Korišteni su relevantni podaci za period od 2012. do 2021. godine za sve zemlje za koje su navedeni pokazatelji dostupni. Korištene metode za ovaj proces su komparativna metoda, analiza i regresiona analiza te analiza varijanse, odnosno prosta linearna regresija, te sinteza prethodnih istraživanja i teoretskih nalaza da bi zaključci bili izvučeni metodom indukcije - od pojedinačnog ka opštem. Dobijeni rezultati podvrguti su suštinskoj i statističkoj analizi. Rad pokazuje da postoji značajna veza između posmatranih varijabli, tj. da postoji direktan uticaj nivoa inovacija u zemlji na BDP, razvoj finansijskog tržišta, indeksa ljudskog razvoja te indeks pranja novca. Ograničenja u istraživanju uslovljena su definisanim problemom i metodama koje su primijenjene u radu, uzimajući u obzir standardne probleme kod istraživanja korelacija. Dalja istraživanja treba usmjeriti u pravcu u kojem je potrebno istražiti da li finansijsko ulaganje u inovacije ima efekta na rezultate posmatranih varijabli.

U nekim fazama svog razvoja, kod kompanija se vrlo èesto pojavljuje potreba da se privuku spoljni izvori finansiranja. Jedan od naèina za privlaèenje novca za finansiranje neke kompanije ili investicionog projekta su pozajmice. Te pozajmice mogu biti u obliku vlastitih izvora finansiranja, u vidu emisije akcija i u obliku pozajmljenih izvora finansiranja u vidu emisije obveznica ili kredita od banaka. Meðutim, jedno od osnovnih pitanja koje se postavlja jeste: koji je optimalan odnos duga i akcijskog kapitala u finansiranju kompanije, odnosno kako se odreðuje optimalna struktura kapitala neke kompanije? Dakle, ovdje je rijeè o strukturiranju pasive bilansa stanja preduzeæa, odnosno o uspostavljanju optimalnog odnosa sopstvenog kapitala i dugova (obaveza). Istraživanje je obuhvatilo analizu godišnjih finansijskih izvještaja 612 nefinansijskih akcionarskih društava koja jesu ili su bila listirana na Banjaluèkoj berzi hartija od vrijednosti u periodu od 2011. do 2020. godine. Istraživaèko pitanje glasi: "Kako menadžeri listiranih akcionarskih društava u Republici Srpskoj komponuju strukturu kapitala?" Kao zavisna varijabla u modelu posmatran je odnos kratkoroènog duga prema ukupnom zaduženju. Kao nezavisne varijable korišteni su sljedeæi fundamentalni pokazatelji poslovanja: povrat na akcijski kapital, povrat na aktivu, fiksna imovina, tekuæi racio, tekuæa aktiva prema ukupnoj aktivi, ukupan dug prema ukupnom kapitalu i velièina firme. Ukupan broj opservacija iznosio je 2.905. Svrha rada je identifikovati faktore specifične za privredna društva koja posluju u zemljama u razvoju, a koji značajno utiču na odluke o zaduživanju, odnosno finansiranju, te uzimajući u obzir te faktore konstruisati odgovarajući ekonometrijski model. Rezultati istraživanja pokazali su da su najjači uticaj na zavisnu varijablu, tj. kratkoročni dug prema ukupnim obavezama, zabilježile sljedeće nezavisne varijable: fiksna aktiva/ukupna aktiva i neto dobit/prosječan kapital (ROE). Sa druge strane, negativan uticaj na zavisnu varijablu imale su ostale varijable. Kada se uzorak podijeli na društva u većinskom javnom i u većinskom privatnom vlasništvu, zaključak je da kod obje vrste društava najveći uticaj ima odnos fiksna aktiva/ukupna aktiva ali da su ostali pokazatelji različitog uticaja.

: Several methodologies based on the international standard ISO/IEC 27001 have been developed for modelling information security management systems within higher education. This paper transformed the ISO/IEC 27001 standard into a questionnaire, which was sent digitally to about 100 universities in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and to the EU, Norway and the USA. The questions are arranged by levels, and the levels have their numerical weights, derived from individual questions in the levels themselves. Otherwise, the questions are asked with Yes or No and thus are reduced to binary variables. The rules necessary for the functioning of the system have been calculated. The fuzzy logic method represents a new approach to the problems of managing complex systems, which is very difficult to describe with a certain mathematical model, as well as in systems with a large number of inputs and outputs where there are unclear interactions. Risk assessment is a major part of the ISMS process. Traditional risk calculation models are based on the application of probability and classical set theory. Here, we have converted the risk assessment into a system rating of 5 to 10 numerically or from five to ten descriptively. We perform fuzzy optimization by finding the values of the input parameters of a complex simulated system, which results in the desired output. We use the fuzzy logic controller to execute fuzzy inference rules from the fuzzy rule database in determining congestion parameters, obtaining warning information and appropriate action. Simulating the situation of an advanced system that evaluates the protection quality of such a system with fuzzy logic, we use MATLAB. The paper combines the original Visual Basic programming language and MATLAB's Fuzzy Toolbox, to solve the complex problem of assessing compliance with the ISO/IEC 27001 standard, as one of the main standards for information systems security modelling. University information systems were used, but it is also applicable to all other information systems. The evaluation has been done for several universities and it has been proven that the system evaluates correctly, but these universities must not be publicly named. There was no such approach in the use of fuzzy logic and on such systems, and that is the originality of this work.

Salt stress results from excessive salt accumulation in the soil can lead to a reduction in plant growth and yield. Due to climate change, in the future climatic pressures, changed precipitation cycles and increased temperature will increase the pressures on agriculture, including increasing severity of salt stress. Brassica species contains oilseed and vegetable crops with great economic importance. Advances in understanding the mechanisms of salt stress in Brassica plants have enabled the development of approaches to better induce plant defense mechanisms at the time of their occurrence through the use of beneficial microorganisms or molecules. Both endophytic and rhizospheric microbes contribute to the mitigation of abiotic stresses in Brassica plants by promoting the growth of their host under stress conditions. In this review we summarized so far reported microorganisms with beneficial effects on Brassica plants and their mode of action. Another approach in mitigating the harmful effect of soil salinity may involve the application of different molecules that are involved in the stress response of Brassica plants. We reviewed and summarized their potential mode of action, methods of application and pointed out further research directions.