Abstract Community mobility involves walking with physical and cognitive challenges. In older adults (N=116; results here from initial analyses: N=29, Age=75±5 years, 51% females), we assessed gait speed and smoothness (harmonic-ratio) while walking on even and uneven surfaces, with or without an alternate alphabeting dual-task (ABC). ANOVA assessed surface and dual-task effects; Pearson correlations compared gait with global cognition and executive function composite z-scores. The four conditions (even, uneven, even-ABC and uneven-ABC) affected speed(m/s) (0.97±0.14 vs 0.90±0.15 vs 0.83±0.17 vs 0.79±0.16). Smoothness (2.19±0.48 vs 1.89±0.38 vs 1.92±0.53 vs 1.7±0.43) was affected by only surface (controlled for speed). Greater speed was associated with better global cognition(ρ=0.47 to 0.49, p<0.05) for all conditions and with better executive function for even-ABC(ρ=0.39, p=0.04) and uneven-ABC(ρ=0.40, p=0.03). Executive function was associated with smoothness during even(ρp=-0.42, p=0.03) and uneven(ρp=-0.39, p=0.04) walking. Type of walking challenge differentially affects gait quality and associations with cognitive function.
Dual-task balance studies explore interference between balance and cognitive tasks. This study is a descriptive analysis of accelerometry balance metrics to determine if a verbal cognitive task influences postural control after the task ends. Fifty-two healthy older adults (75 ± 6 years old, 30 female) performed standing balance and cognitive dual-tasks. An accelerometer recorded movement from before, during, and after the task (reciting every other letter of the alphabet). Thirty-six balance metrics were calculated for each task condition. The effect of the cognitive task on postural control was determined by a generalized linear model. Twelve variables, including anterior–posterior centroid frequency, peak frequency and entropy rate, medial-later entropy rate and wavelet entropy, and bandwidth in all directions, exhibited significant differences between baseline and cognitive task periods, but not between baseline and post-task periods. These results indicate that the verbal cognitive task did alter balance, but did not bring about persistent effects after the task had ended. Traditional balance measurements, i.e., root mean square and normalized path length, notably lacked significance, highlighting the potential to use other accelerometer metrics for the early detection of balance problems. These novel insights into the temporal dynamics of dual-task balance support current dual-task paradigms to reduce fall risk in older adults.
Institute for Mathematics and Democracy The Institute for Mathematics and Democracy (IMD)1 was created to help cast light on the important role that mathematics plays in our political systems. Founded in 2019, it is housed at Wellesley College, a liberal arts institution with a strong interest in interdisciplinary work. The mission of IMD is to promote a deeper understanding of the mathematics that underlies many socioeconomic forces and political processes so that citizens can make informed political decisions and effect meaningful change. It supports research, teaching, and outreach in mathematics and democracy, and brings together educators and activists who recognize the importance of political quantitative literacy. It acts as a facilitator, a repository, and nexus to bring research and pedagogy of disparate individuals who synthesize mathematics and democracy in their research and teaching. The timeliness of these efforts is apparent as IMD is finding a wide and growing audience among students, researchers, educators, activists, and the public at large. Over thirty mathematicians now serve as scholars and affiliates for IMD, many of whom have pursued or supervised research, run summer programs, or created curricula at the intersection of politics and mathematics. The institute has also supported over twenty student researchers, almost half of them from underrepresented groups. The activities of IMD are rooted and motivated by mathematics, but they lie at the unique interdisciplinary interface of mathematics, statistics, political science, economics, and history. Not only do they fill an evident educational and research gap, but they serve a social purpose: political
Abstract Although research of intra-industry trade (IIT) has been intensive in the last several decades, the empirical literature focusing on this phenomenon in the Western Balkans countries remains limited, especially in agricultural sector. Aiming to contribute to the existing literature, the paper analyses patterns and country-specific determinants of IIT in agri-food products between Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) and the European Union (EU) during the period of their mutual trade liberalisation (2008-2018). The analysis employs Grubel-Lloyd indices and Greenaway-Hine-Milner methodology for measurement of IIT, and applies an econometric panel data model using a Poisson Pseudo-maximum likelihood approach in order to estimate effects of IIT determinants. The findings suggest that intra-industry agri-food trade of BiH with the EU is of low intensity and mainly of vertical nature, viewed totally and bilaterally. We found significant positive effects of trading countries’ sizes, common border and history on IIT, and negative effects of the geographic distance and differences in agricultural productivity.
The development of the internet of things (IoT) and smart cities, combined with the widespread usage of cooperative or independent air traffic surveillance systems such as automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast (ADS-B) bring about novel deployment paradigms in air-ground integrated vehicular net-works (AGVN). However, compared with the evolutional physical layer advancing, the communication protocols such as TCP/IP protocol, which are listed on the top of communication protocol stacks, have relatively constricted developments due to their fixed frameworks. The most obvious manifestation of this trend is that these protocols can hardly extend interfaces to maximize the benefits brought by bottom layer upgrades. In view of the above problems, in this paper, we propose a novel handover strategy based on side information of the ADS- B for AG VN. Firstly, a practical scheme of combination between TCP/IP protocol and ADS-B, which is implemented in the Network simulation, version-3 (ns-3), is proposed to adapt the AGVN handover tasks. Secondly, the configuration, timing sequence and parameters, as well as hand over strategies of the scheme are proposed in detail with the modules called by ns-3 simulator. Finally, the experimental results are provided to validate the handover strategies.
In this paper, a channel state information (CSI) feedback method is proposed based on deep transfer learning (DTL). The proposed method addresses the problem of high training cost of downlink CSI feedback network in frequency division duplexing (FDD) massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems. In particular, we obtain the models of different wireless channel environments at low training cost by fine-tuning the pre-trained model with a relatively small number of samples. In addition, the effects of different layers on training cost and model performance are discussed. Furthermore, a model-agnostic meta-learning (MAML)-based method is proposed to solve the problem associated with large number of samples of a wireless channel environment required to train a deep neural network (DNN) as a pre-trained model. Our results show that the performance of the DTL-based method is comparable with that of the DNN trained with a large number of samples, which demonstrates the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed method. At the same time, although there is a certain performance loss compared with the DTL-based method, the MAML-based method shows good performance in terms of the normalized mean square error (NMSE).
This paper proposes an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-aided full-duplex non-orthogonal multiple access (FD-NOMA) method to improve spectrum efficiency. Here, UAV is utilized to partially relay uplink data and achieve channel differentiation. Successive interference cancellation algorithm is used to eliminate the interference from different directions in FD-NOMA systems. Firstly, a joint optimization problem is formulated for the uplink and downlink resource allocation of transceivers and UAV relay. The receiver determination is performed using an access-priority method. Based on the results of the receiver determination, the initial power of ground users (GUs), UAV, and base station is calculated. According to the minimum sum of the uplink transmission power, the Hungarian algorithm is utilized to pair the users. Secondly, the subchannels are assigned to the paired GUs and the UAV by a message-passing algorithm. Finally, the transmission power of the GUs and the UAV is jointly fine-tuned using the proposed access control methods. Simulation results confirm that the proposed method achieves higher performance than state-of-the-art orthogonal frequency division multiple-access method in terms of spectrum efficiency, energy efficiency, and access ratio of the ground users.
Background: The pandemic of COVID-19 has affected all spheres of life, including education. Teachers at all levels were faced with numerous challenges during the pandemic. These challenges had an impact on their mental health. Objective: The goal of the present study was to examine the depression, anxiety, and stress levels in teachers in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Methods: The sample for this study consisted of 559 teachers (471 female teachers and 88 male teachers). We used the Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale (DASS 21) to measure teachers’ emotional states of depression, anxiety, and stress. Results: The findings of this study clearly indicate the high levels of depression, anxiety, and stress in teachers. We also identified that levels of support provided by family members and school administration served as protective factors in the time of crisis. Conclusion: Teachers in Bosnia and Herzegovina have a high prevalence of elevated depression, anxiety, and stress levels. The article concludes with some recommendations on how to improve the mental health of teachers.
Background Over a third of critical illness survivors suffer from mental health problems following hospitalization. Memories of delusional experiences are a major risk factor. In this project, ICU doulas delivered a unique positive suggestion intervention targeting the vulnerable time period during critical illness when these memories are formed. Methods Adult critically ill patients were recruited for this single-arm, prospective pilot study. These ICU patients received a positive suggestion intervention daily during their ICU stay in parallel with their medical treatment. The intervention was designed to be delivered over a minimum of two sessions. Feasibility was defined as intervention delivery on ≥ 70% of ICU days after patient enrollment. As a secondary analysis, psychometric questionnaires were compared to those of a historic control cohort of patients receiving standard care in the ICU using adjusted linear regression models. Results Of the 97 patients who received the intervention and were alive at the end of their ICU course, 54 were excluded from analyses mostly for having received only one session because of a short ICU length of stay of < 2 days, transitioning to comfort care or not wanting to answer the study questionnaires. Forty-three patients who completed 2 or more sessions of the positive therapeutic suggestion intervention provided by two trained ICU doulas received it for a median of 4 days (IQR 3, 5), with each session lasting for a median of 20 min (IQR 14, 25). The intervention was delivered on 71% of days, meeting our pre-determined feasibility goal. Compared to historical controls ( N = 299), patients receiving the intervention had higher severity of illness and longer length of stay. When adjusted for baseline differences, patients both with and without mechanical ventilation who received the intervention scored lower on the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS)—Depression subscale. The intervention was also associated with reduced HADS-Anxiety subscale among ventilated patients. Conclusions Positive therapeutic suggestion delivered by ICU doulas is feasible in the ICU setting. A randomized trial is warranted to better delineate the role that positive suggestion and ICU doulas may play in ongoing interprofessional efforts to humanize critical care medicine. The study was registered on clinicaltrials.gov (NCT03736954) on 03/14/2018 prior to the first patient enrollment https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03736954?cond=ICU+Doulas+Providing+Psychological+Support&draw=2&rank=1 .
It is very well known that science is world activity and that there is no good and bad work in the field of scientific research. Nowadays scientific productivity of the individuals, learned societies on regional or state level are measurable parameters. In most of the systems it does include the number of original scientifi papers, quality of journals measured by impact factor and scientific citation index (1-4). There are also additional measurable parameters but for the purpose of this meeting we will avoid discussion about them. New field of scientometrics using the help of impartial and ruthless machines (computers) do help very significantly in evaluation of scientific productivity anywhere in the world. Unfortunately, there are many misused conclusions and interpretation on the data offered by computers. It is clear that some vital important changes are urgently needed. Today’s conference should use rare opportunity having together experts in the field to discuss the problems visible now. This author intends to discuss facts and doubts in writing review articles and chapters in the book (5). Some important flexibility in citation, in particular self citation, should be analyzed. An illustrative examples from author’s own experience will be shown and discussed at the meeting.
12th Days of the Academy of Medical Sciences of Bosnia and Herzegovina (AMNuBiH) this year were organized together with the International Academy of Sciences and Arts in Bosnia and Herzegovina in Sarajevo on December 4, 2021. The title of the symposium was “Scientometry, Citation, Plagiarism and Predatory in Scientific Publishing”. Experiences in the scientific area covered by title of this conference were presented by some of the most influential scientists from Bosnia and Herzegovina, who are included between 2% of authors in the Stanford scientometric list, which was published in October 2021 in the journal Biology Plos. Some of the authors are former or current Editors-in-Chiefs of indexed biomedical journals in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, North Macedonia (Izet Masic, Asim Kurjak, Doncho Donev, Osman Sinanovic). Also, Sylwia Ufnalska and Izet Masic are or were members of the European Association of Science Editors (EASE) and they have great experiences about the topic of this conference. Science that analyzes scientific papers and their citation in the scientific journals – called scientometrics – day by day has become important for measuring scientific validity and quality of all kinds of publications deposited in the most important on-line scientific databases, like WoS, Scopus, Medline, PubMed Central, Embase, Hinari, etc., but also in academic platforms ResearchGate and Academia.edu. Scientometrics use the Impact and Echo factor for measuring the quality of publications in WoS journals, Scopus uses the h-Index, and the most common one used in the last 10 years is Google Scholar index. All of them have advantages and disadvantages, and also positive and negative influences in the academic praxis. One of the greatest, and sadly too common, problems which participants in the academic process encountered are plagiarism and predatory publishing. In order to prevent this severest form of academic fraud, authors must give credit to someone whose work has helped him/her by citing references correctly. This presentations of the symposium "SWEP 2021") analyzed the major components of scientometrics, the basic mechanisms of citations in medical publications and plagiarism, as an opposition to the primary goal of scientific enterprise: search for truth.
Abstract The security of using applications in cloud services and on the Internet is an important topic in the field of engineering. In this paper, two laboratory tests for data transmission protection, specifically designed for different security analysis techniques, are presented and explained. During lab tests on public Wi-Fi networks from the MIDM (“Man in the Middle”) attacks, various monitoring techniques were applied, using a special lab test scenario with Kali Linux penetration tools by creating an SSH tunnel on an Android mobile device. These test benches allow easy data capturing, and the captured data is processed using available software programs. Expected outcomes, practical improvement and security performance assessment are presented in detail, and considered in terms of their value in security engineering. The aim of this paper is to detect and overcome some of the weaknesses of the application of security protocols in a Wi-Fi network environment.
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