: In the regional historiography of World War II in Yugoslavia, written in both the socialist and post-socialist periods, Wehrmacht generals are mentioned almost exclusively in the context of war crimes. Almost nothing is known about their origin, personal life

Aim: The chief aim of this study was monitoring of laboratory parameters of chronic kidney failure in elderly patients. Methods: All samples were taken and processed by standard methods and according to the principles of good laboratory practice. Data were collected in an organized and systematic manner in the form of a questionnaire with respect to ethical principles and as such were analyzed by statistical tests and analyses (Student's t-test, Analysis of variance-ANOVA, Pearson's and Spearman's correlation coefficients). The limit of statistical significance was set at p < 0.05. Results: Mean values of creatinine clearance and proteinuria for the total study population were: 41.30 ± 21.43 mL/min, 1.5 ± 2.3 g/L/24 h, respectively. Hematological parameters did not significantly differ from normal values. The highest frequency of comorbidities was observed in subjects aged ≥ 80 years with an average of 2.03 comorbidities per subject. Serum creatinine and urea values as well as creatinine clearance are good indicators of disease progression. Conclusion: The results of the presented research suggest that old age is a predisposing risk factor for the development of chronic kidney disease, and that in combination with comorbidities (hypertension and/or diabetes), it contributes to poor prognosis or disease progression.

This paper presents a comprehensive treatment of the complex motion control systems in the the Sliding Mode Control (SMC) framework. The single and multi degrees of freedom (DOF) plants and applications to haptics and functionally related systems are discussed. The paper concentrates on presenting the designs that are easy to apply and tune. The proposed algorithms are based on the application of the equivalent control observer and the convergence term that guaranty stability of the closed loop in a Lyapunov sense and enforces the sliding mode on selected manifolds. Presented SMC design leads to a solution that easily could be modified to include majority of the algorithms presented in the literature.

The Western Balkan countries have been lagging behind in their transition process, which started more than 30 years ago. While some justification can be made in the fact that the countries went through wars in the 1990s, the real problem is that they have not been able to create efficient institutions. Inefficient institutions hamper economic growth, as the countries do not attract foreign direct investment (FDI) to the extent they could and should. A lack of FDI affects three aspects of the transition process in the region: developing a functioning market economy, competitiveness, and convergence. Improvements in these areas can only be done by building efficient institutions.

Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) held presidential and parliamentary elections on 2 October 2022, amid the most severe political crisis since the 1992-1995 war. Inefficient institutions and problems created by political leaders led the country to the bottom of economic and political statistics in Europe. While citizens were hoping for a change, it did not come as the nationalist parties won the majority again. The change of the election law imposed by the High Representative during the election night did not bring much hope either. The country is still stuck in its nationalist rhetoric and the lack of dialogue among the decisionmakers. It is difficult to see how the newly elected political leaders will be the ones finally taking responsibility for bringing change.

Croatia, the newest member of the European Union, is set to introduce the euro as its currency in January 2023. Although it was announced that Croatia had fulfilled the Maastricht criteria for monetary union membership in May 2022, the country did not meet the criterion on the general government debt rate. This paper analyses Croatia’s readiness to join the euro area beyond meeting the Maastricht criteria. While monetary union membership has its positive sides, by joining, a country loses one of the most important tools of managing its economy – monetary policy. If the economy is strong and competitive enough, with efficient institutions and stable fiscal policy, the loss of monetary policy can be mitigated. However, Croatia’s decision to join the euro area is hasty, as if the country just wanted to join a prestigious club. This lack of preparedness could have major negative effects on one of the least competitive economies in the EU.

This is the second volume of the official magazine of the European Federation for MedicalInformatics (EFMI) named as “EFMI Inside”, which was established as Newspaper in Lyon in August 2019, during “MEDINFO 2019” Conference and EFMI Council meeting. Idea for founding EFMI Inside was born by Catherine Chronaki, current President of EFMI and Izet Masic, Honorary Fellow of EFMI and Editor-in-Chief of the official journal of EFMI Acta Informatica Medica. EFMI Council members discussed and concluded to start with magazine in which we can record important and prompt facts and information about past of EFMI, with current and future activities of European Federation for Medical Informatics). After the first issue published in 2020 a lot of medical informaticians expressed their positive comments about usufull and informative magazine within medical informatics field worldwide. This publication became an important and useful resource of EFMI activities for everybody who wants to be familiar with Medical informatics development and achievements in all areas of this academic and scientific discipline in European countries, but also, worldwide. The second issue covered facts about 31st MIE 2021 Conference organized in Athens in May 2021, but also contains important facta about other EFMI activities and intreview with a pinoneer of Medica informatics, academician Gjuro Dezelic from Croatia, and finaly, obituaries of the three influential Medical informatics experts: Francis Roger France, Ragnar Nordberg and Peter Pharow. Some of chairs of Working Groups contributed with their reports in the past year who were actively involved in the development of Medical informatics in their countries, but also worldwide.