Purpose. The aim of the paper is to examine whether – and to what extent – the concept of Media and Information Literacy (hereinafter: MIL) can be understood as a possible approach to critical pedagogy in practice by examining the adequacy and comprehensibility of the content of its curriculum, previously adapted to the BiH (Bosnian and Herzegovinian) context and its fragmented education system. Approach/methodology. The first part of the paper presents a brief framework of the concept of critical pedagogy, its relationship with media and information literacy, together with the specifics of the education system of Bosnia and Herzegovina. In the second part, the paper focuses on the case study of pilot training conducted at the Sarajevo Hasan Kikić elementary school, aiming to acquaint teachers and librarians with the concept and curriculum of MIL. Results. Although teachers and librarians have adopted skills to teach about MIL, the results point to a lack of emancipatory pedagogical practices in the existing education system which could counter various, primarily systemically produced forms of oppression. Originality/value. The value of this paper reflects the efforts to read the concept of MIL through the theoretical lenses of critical pedagogy. Although based on the 2011 UNESCO’s understanding of MIL, the originality of this approach also lies in the fact that the conducted workshops were set down on its curriculum adapted to the Bosnian and Herzegovinian context. Practical implications. The practical implications of this research could be seen through the further processes of researching and promoting collaborative teaching and learning, encouraging thus the development of critical thinking, and thinking individuals capable of combating domination and transforming reality through pedagogy. Social implications. Incorporating critical pedagogy while reading the adapted MIL curriculum can be used for promoting a comprehensive and active role of re-creating knowledge, enabling practices of critical attitude towards the existing social reality, and promoting and strengthening democratic practices.

The particles from the gas-saturated solutions (PGSS) process was employed to micronize brown algae pigments separated by different extraction techniques. The particle formation of pigments with a coating material, polyethylene glycol (PEG), was carried out by the PGSS process using supercritical CO2. Environmental scanning electron microscopy (ESEM) and Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) were performed to characterize the produced particles, while encapsulation efficiency was determined using spectrophotometric methods. The physical properties of obtained microparticles were also determined. The PGSS process enabled a high encapsulation yield in the range from 61.60 to 73.73%, and high encapsulation efficiency in terms of chlorophyll a, chlorophyll b, and carotenoid content. The release of CO2 during the PGSS process gave the microparticles their characteristic open and porous form, and enhanced the solubility and flow properties at the same time.

A curricularização da extensão possibilita a preparação dos acadêmicos para sua atuação no mercado de trabalho, a partir da realização das atividades de extensão nas disciplinas da matriz curricular do curso. O objetivo do estudo foi promover uma oficina como curricularização da extensão demonstrando como obter o extrato da C. arborea e usá-lo como bioherbicida, uma vez que metabólitos secundários encontrados na espécie podem ser utilizados como substitutos para os herbicidas sintéticos. A oficina contou com dois momentos sendo o primeiro teórico de maneira dialogada sobre o que são aleloquímicos e seu efeito nas plantas e qual dessas substâncias se encontra na espécie em estudo. O segundo momento foi prático, onde os alunos realizaram todas as etapas do experimento desde a produção do extrato até avaliação e interpretação dos dados. Verificou-se que o extrato da C. arborea reduziu a germinação da C. fistula, confirmando assim seu efeito bioherbicida.

The experience of Eastern European countries indicates that a country cannot simultaneously give up autonomy of monetary and fiscal policy and control of labour mobility without all three causing a reduction in potential GDP at the same time. Namely, if a country opts to peg its currency to the currency of a larger (more developed) country and pursues a restrictive fiscal policy, it will probably 2 lead the workforce to emigrate. This universal rule applies to both developing and developed countries. Nevertheless, the specificity of the developing countries' position is that once the labour force leaves the country, it will almost certainly never return. Therefore, labour mobility should be regarded as entirely different when it takes place between countries at distinct levels of development and when it serves as a mechanism for achieving an external balance between countries at similar income levels. As far as we understand, the just described experience of Eastern European developing countries has not yet been formalized anywhere as economic legality, i.e. trilemma. Thus, this paper can be an introduction to the theory of the impossible trinity of developing countries, explaining the basic concepts, connections between them and open questions.

A hallmark of the development of solid and hematological malignancies is the dysregulation of apoptosis, which leads to an imbalance between cell proliferation, cell survival and death. Halogenated boroxine [K2(B3O3F4OH)] (HB) is a derivative of cyclic anhydride of boronic acid, with reproducible anti‐tumor and anti‐proliferative effects in different cell models. Notably, these changes are observed to be more profound in tumor cells than in normal cells. Here, we investigated the underlying mechanisms through an extensive evaluation of (a) deregulated target genes and (b) their interactions and links with main apoptotic pathway genes upon treatment with an optimized concentration of HB. To provide deeper insights into the mechanism of action of HB, we performed identification, visualization, and pathway association of differentially expressed genes (DEGs) involved in regulation of apoptosis among tumor and non‐tumor cells upon HB treatment. We report that HB at a concentration of 0.2 mg·mL−1 drives tumor cells to apoptosis, whereas non‐tumor cells are not affected. Comparison of DEG profiles, gene interactions and pathway associations suggests that the HB effect and tumor‐‘selectivity’ can be explained by Bax/Bak‐independent mitochondrial depolarization by ROS generation and TRAIL‐like activation, followed by permanent inhibition of NFκB signaling pathway specifically in tumor cells.

Tobacco is both toxic and addictive. Mounting evidence shows that tobacco use has a detrimental impact on almost every aspect of human health, causing or worsening deadly public health crises from the cancer epidemic to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, while tobacco use is a threat to both personal and public health, it continues to surge across the world, especially in China and other low- and middle-income countries. To this end, this article argues in favor of using a ban on the sale of all tobacco products as a practical solution to the global tobacco use epidemic. It is our hope that insights provided by our work will inspire swift policy actions in countries such as China and beyond to curb the tide of rising tobacco consumption, so that populations around the world could be better shielded from the pervasive and long-lasting damage that tobacco products cause or compound.

This paper aims to investigate factors of profitability in the manufacturing sector in the Republic of Serbia. The research is based on the sample of 220 observations of financial statements of listed companies on the Belgrade stock exchange from sector C – manufacturing during 2017-2020. Profitability was measured as a return on assets (ROA) and return on equity (ROE) being the two most common ratios. Primarily, the descriptive statistics of ROA and ROE were conducted. The results showed that manufacturing companies achieve a positive rate of profitability but at a low level (ROA is 0,0263 and ROE is 0,0595). Furthermore, two regression models were conducted to investigate which internal factors significantly affected ROA and ROE as dependent variables. The independent variables were set: fixed assets ratio, size, current ratio, leverage, and growth. Results of the first model showed that size, current ratio, and growth have a significant positive impact on ROA, while leverage significantly negatively impacts ROA. Results of the second model show that size and growth have a significant positive impact on ROE, while leverage negatively impacts it.

The rapid development of information technology (IT) both forces and supports the transformation of universities in almost all their operations (strategic planning, budgeting, education, research, quality control, cooperation with business and society, etc.). The paper presents the research results related to the digitalization of different processes at universities – more specifically, teachers’ opinions on the effect of digitalization on different processes. The survey was conducted among the University of Mostar, Bosnia, and Herzegovina (BH) teachers. The authors identified processes at the university and investigated the perceived impact of information technology on them. The findings show that the impact of digitalization is positive on most processes, whereby a strong influence is determined for research projects financed by the Ministry of Education, quality management, teaching, and evaluation of acquired knowledge (examination).

A modern interdisciplinary analysis of social networks implies detecting and investigating relevant socio-psychological linguistic markers that carry insight on the nature and characteristics of the social discourse. Associating markers to specific words is a further important step, allowing for an even richer interpretation. By taking as a working example the social discourse in Twitter, we propose a scalable method called PageRank-like marker projection (PLMP) following a rationale inspired by PageRank to fully exploit the interdependencies in a semantic network, so as to meaningfully project markers from a social discourse level (tweets) to its semantic elements (words). The effectiveness of PLMP is shown with an application example on calls to online collective action.

The use of food additive nitrite as curing agents is common in meat products, but their concentration in these products has raised the interest of researchers, because of the possible toxicity to humans.  The aim of this study is to assess the nitrite concentration in meat products, which are highly used by all population groups in Kosovo. A total of 44 different meat products samples available on sale to the population, were assessed for residual nitrite using the spectrophotometric method that uses absorption in visible part of spectra. The amount of residual nitrites was detected in 19 (43%) of the samples, which included beef and chicken sausages, chicken & beef salami as well as beef prosciutto samples. The nitrite residue ranged between 0.1 and 11.5 mg/kg and was below the limits on the concentration of nitrites in meat products established by EU regulation 601/2014.  Although these findings show that, the nitrite residue in the analyzed meat products is within the permitted limits, the highest presence of residual nitrite in industrial and low-cost meat products indicates a need for further assessments of nitrite exposure among consumers.

An effective aggregation of node features into a graph-level representation via readout functions is an essential step in numerous learning tasks involving graph neural networks. Typically, readouts are simple and non-adaptive functions designed such that the resulting hypothesis space is permutation invariant. Prior work on deep sets indicates that such readouts might require complex node embeddings that can be difficult to learn via standard neighborhood aggregation schemes. Motivated by this, we investigate the potential of adaptive readouts given by neural networks that do not necessarily give rise to permutation invariant hypothesis spaces. We argue that in some problems such as binding affinity prediction where molecules are typically presented in a canonical form it might be possible to relax the constraints on permutation invariance of the hypothesis space and learn a more effective model of the affinity by employing an adaptive readout function. Our empirical results demonstrate the effectiveness of neural readouts on more than 40 datasets spanning different domains and graph characteristics. Moreover, we observe a consistent improvement over standard readouts (i.e., sum, max, and mean) relative to the number of neighborhood aggregation iterations and different convolutional operators.

To examine the effects of 50 mg/kg and 150 mg/kg of propolis on ovarian folliculogenesis, p53 expression, and serum luteinising hormone (LH) and progesterone (P) levels in polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) modeled rats. Twenty-four Wistar female rats were divided into 4 experimental groups: Group 1 (G1, Control), Group 2 (G2, PCOS), Group 3 (G3, PCOS + 50 mg/kg propolis), and Group 4 (G4, PCOS + 150 mg/kg propolis). The PCOS model was induced via the administration of letrozole for 21 days. After 21 days, G3 and G4 received propolis (50 mg/kg or 150 mg/kg) by oral gavage for 10 days. Daily oestrous cycles were assessed to monitor PCOS formation. Histological examinations were carried out using haematoxylin and eosin (H&E) and Masson Trichrome (MT) staining. Ovarian follicles and corpus luteum (CL) structures were investigated. P and LH serum levels were determined by ELISA. A significant increase was observed in the number of cystic follicles in G2 compared to G1 (p < 0.001). Treatment with 50 mg/kg of propolis significantly ameliorated the elevated number of cystic and primary follicles seen in G2 (p < 0.001). Furthermore, G2 demonstrated a significant decrease in the number of CL structures (p < 0.05). Serum LH levels were significantly higher in G4 compared to both G1 and G2 (p < 0.01). No significant change was observed in circulating P levels. No p53 immunoreactivity was observed in any group. Low concentrations of propolis cannot completely improve the hormone profile and p53 expression associated with PCOS; however, these concentrations can control ovarian follicular cell architecture.

Introduction: Women are less likely than men to be promptly diagnosed with acute coronary syndrome (ACS) and have worse post-ACS outcomes. These diagnostic failures are partially due to ACS findings on surface ECG manifesting differently in women, which may result in unnecessary delays in treatment. To narrow health disparities, we aim to investigate the sex-specific signatures of ACS as they appear on ECGs. Methods: This was a prospective observational cohort study of chest-pain patients evaluated for suspected ACS at 3 UPMC-affiliated tertiary care hospitals. After featurization, all ECG data were separately fed into 7 machine learning classifiers to predict ACS. We examined the results by sex. We also investigated two other methods: (1) building two independent models based respectively on the female and male subgroups and (2) building a model based on the initial total sample supplemented by the patients’ sex. We used Shapley values to explain the decision-making criteria of the models. We report the results for random forest, the best performing classifier. Results: Our sample consisted of 4132 patients (Age 59 ± 16; 47% female; 15% ACS). Machine learning models continue to disproportionately underperform in females across all classifiers evaluated. The sensitivity, specificity and false negative rate in the global model blinded to sex were 82.89%, 76.22% and 17.11% for men, and 67.39%, 74.16% and 32.61% for women (p<0.0001). This statistically significant gap could not be alleviated by building sex-specific models or feeding sex to the input of the model. Indeed, the rate of false negatives in sex-specific models and global models with sex as input were 14.67% and 18.42% for men, and 34.04% and 32.61% for women (p<0.0001). The explainability analysis of the sex-specific models revealed that STT configuration in lateral leads is most informative in women, whereas STT configuration in all leads and particularly in anterolateral leads most informative in men. Conclusions: Machine learning models display crucial sex differences in the ACS signatures on the ECG that consistently put women in a detrimental situation. The alternative methods investigated here are not adequate solutions for this disparity. Thus, further investigations should be conducted.