bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
A Comparative Analysis of the Power of Selected European Countries.
The Economic Determinants
Authors: Paluch Alicja , Spustek Henryk
Published: September 2021

The ever-increasing need for in-depth analysis and quantification of the national power, in particular ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ power-generating factors as well as difficulties in identifying a comprehensive and effective method for scientific determination of the national power, have given rise to research in the indicated scientific issues within this article. The presented considerations aim to define the assumptions for a descriptive sub-model that would enable a comparison of Poland’s power in the economic sphere (which is a component of the non-military sphere) with the power of selected European countries. The research hypothesis is that, among the variety of descriptive variables in the economic sphere of the national power, there is a subset of mutually independent variables, at the same time strongly correlated with the national power, which make it possible to define assumptions for the sub-model of the national power. The steps of the research procedure were carried out using the method of system analysis (multi-criteria comparative analysis) and statistical analysis. The research activities undertaken have shown that the factors that are strongly correlated with the national power in the economic area of the European countries adopted for the analysis are: dynamics of industrial production, private sector credit flows and economic freedom index. The comparative analysis carried out demonstrates that the greatest increase in the economic power in the analysed period took place in Germany (0.68). Slightly smaller growth was recorded in the Czech Republic (0.62) and Poland (0.60), while the lowest value of increase was in Romania (0.23). The conducted qualitative comparative analysis of the economic power of selected European countries allowed to conclude that the independent variables identified are crucial for the formation of the economic power of the analysed countries. At the same time, a fairly strong position of the Czech Republic and Poland in relation to the economic power of Germany was found. The performed quantification of the economic power of the European countries provides a basis for the correct determination of changes in the power distribution of political units, assessment of the power and resources held by the state.
Violence Resembling Terrorism: Adaptive Challenges and Technical Problems in First Responder Collaboration
Authors: Ihatsu Tero
Published: September 2021

In situations that involve violence resembling terrorism (VRT), flexible management and collaboration between authorities are the keys to successful operations. As previous researches have stated, poor communication and poor procedures are the main challenges. All challenges should be divided into adaptive challenges and technical problems, in order to gradually help the first responders to conquer them. If their differences are not recognised, first responders tend to try and solve adaptive challenges wrongly by using technical measures. In this paper, the selected incidents are examined through a multiple-case study. The findings are tied to Heifetz, Grashow, and Linsky’s model of adaptive challenges and technical problems. It is concluded that without adequate training and guidelines, first responders tend to maintain old practices, which can compromise the efficiency and safety of rescue operations.
European Security
– Islamist terrorist network in Bosnia and Herzegovina (original research)
Authors: Trifunovic Darko , Piwowarski Juliusz
Published: September 2021

Radical Islamic ideas, individuals, movements, organizations, but also states that have greatly contributed to the radicalization of the existing Muslim population of the Balkans and Bosnia and Herzegovina are not new. Ever since the Middle Ages, with the aggression and genocide committed by the Ottomans, the ideas of jihad have been present in various forms, especially in environments that interpret Islam as a great world religion in such a radical way. There is a noticeable connection between the bearers of jihadist ideas from World War II until today. This article not only provides a historical analysis of the preconditions for the widespread jihadist network that today produces jihad warriors who threaten the entire world but also provides an authentic overview of the preconditions of this global terrorist network to better understand elements such as this network – it’s functions, how it recruits new terrorists and how it uses the ideology of radical Islamists as a motive for committing serious crimes around the world. The schematic structure of the mujahedeen unit with command staff is shown, as well as the fact that the terrorists welcomed the authorities of Bosnia and Herzegovina who tried to hide their presence and to relativize all the worst crimes committed by the mujahedin.
Solar Hybrid Hatching Machine Applying a Thermal Accumulator with a Reflective Array Method
Authors: Setiawan Budhy , Wakidah Riska Nur
Published: September 2021

In this research, a hybrid egg hatcher machine applied two types of energy for heating, namely solar thermal energy and an electric (fossil) heater. Solar energy was the main energy, and the electric heater was the secondary energy. This hybrid system was related to Indonesian geography, with high solar energy of an average of 5 kWh/m2/day in one year. Therefore, solar thermal energy storage will be effectively used in Indonesia to reduce fossil energy exploitation. The solar thermal energy was stored in an accumulator with a 4 m2 collector.  The solar thermal accumulator was an insulated vessel with high reflectivity and insulation.  The heat energy was stored and kept in some water bars. In maximizing absorption capability, the collector used a reflective array method that was operated by opening or closing the arrays. The arrays were controlled by an electronic controller, which compared the thermal energy inside with the energy of sunlight. The array’s movement to charge the accumulator was done automatically by using the hysteresis switching method. The electric heater will be used only if the accumulator temperature is less than 40 °C. The capacity of the egg hatcher machine accumulator was 300 eggs. Raw data were collected using a data logger of DAQ (Data Acquisition Interface) DT9813 to determine and analyze the performance of system parameters.  From the data collected, the solar thermal accumulator showed its capability for storing thermal energy up to 7.07 kWh. However, its average absorption efficiencies were 54–58 % by direct solar and 60–70 % by diffuse solar. Experiments verified the effectiveness of the designed accumulator. The experimental results showed that the electrical energy consumption was reduced up to 64 %.
Sugar Industry Waste for Bioelectricity Generation
Authors: Rojas Flores Segundo , Nazario-Naveda Renny , Betines Santiago M. , De La Cruz–Noriega M. , Cabanillas-Chirinos L. , Valdiviezo-Dominguez F.
Published: September 2021

Microbial fuel cells are presented as the promise of technology to generate electricity by using organic waste. In this research, molasses waste from Laredo Agroindustrial Company was used as fuel, as well as graphite and zinc electrodes, managing to build low-cost cells. It was possible to generate voltage and current peaks of 0.389 ± 0.021 V and 1.179 ± 0.079 mA, respectively. The cells showed that acid pH levels and conductivity values were around 100 mS/cm during the period of the highest bioelectricity generation. The maximum power density was 3.76 ± 0.62 W/cm2 for a current density of 247.55 mA/cm2, showing a peak voltage of 0.459 ± 0.52 V. The yeasts showed a logarithmic phase up to day 25 reflecting an increase in cell growth. Microbial fuel cells are projected to be the most viable solution for organic waste and clean energy generation problems.
COVID-19 recommender system based on an annotated multilingual corpus
Authors: Barros Márcia , Ruas Pedro , Sousa Diana , Bangash Ali Haider , Couto Francisco M.
Published: September 2021

Tracking the most recent advances in Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)‒related research is essential, given the disease's novelty and its impact on society. However, with the publication pace speeding up, researchers and clinicians require automatic approaches to keep up with the incoming information regarding this disease. A solution to this problem requires the development of text mining pipelines; the efficiency of which strongly depends on the availability of curated corpora. However, there is a lack of COVID-19‒related corpora, even more, if considering other languages besides English. This project's main contribution was the annotation of a multilingual parallel corpus and the generation of a recommendation dataset (EN-PT and EN-ES) regarding relevant entities, their relations, and recommendation, providing this resource to the community to improve the text mining research on COVID-19‒related literature. This work was developed during the 7th Biomedical Linked Annotation Hackathon (BLAH7).
LitCovid-AGAC: cellular and molecular level annotation data set based on COVID-19
Authors: Ouyang Sizhuo , Wang Yuxing , Zhou Kaiyin , Xia Jingbo
Published: September 2021

Currently, coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) literature has been increasing dramatically, and the increased text amount make it possible to perform large scale text mining and knowledge discovery. Therefore, curation of these texts becomes a crucial issue for Bio-medical Natural Language Processing (BioNLP) community, so as to retrieve the important information about the mechanism of COVID-19. PubAnnotation is an aligned annotation system which provides an efficient platform for biological curators to upload their annotations or merge other external annotations. Inspired by the integration among multiple useful COVID-19 annotations, we merged three annotations resources to LitCovid data set, and constructed a cross-annotated corpus, LitCovid-AGAC. This corpus consists of 12 labels including Mutation, Species, Gene, Disease from PubTator, GO, CHEBI from OGER, Var, MPA, CPA, NegReg, PosReg, Reg from AGAC, upon 50,018 COVID-19 abstracts in LitCovid. Contain sufficient abundant information being possible to unveil the hidden knowledge in the pathological mechanism of COVID-19.
O-JMeSH: creating a bilingual English-Japanese controlled vocabulary of MeSH UIDs through machine translation and mutual information
Authors: Soares Felipe , Tateisi Yuka , Takatsuki Terue , Yamaguchi Atsuko
Published: September 2021

Previous approaches to create a controlled vocabulary for Japanese have resorted to existing bilingual dictionary and transformation rules to allow such mappings. However, given the possible new terms introduced due to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and the emphasis on respiratory and infection-related terms, coverage might not be guaranteed. We propose creating a Japanese bilingual controlled vocabulary based on MeSH terms assigned to COVID-19 related publications in this work. For such, we resorted to manual curation of several bilingual dictionaries and a computational approach based on machine translation of sentences containing such terms and the ranking of possible translations for the individual terms by mutual information. Our results show that we achieved nearly 99% occurrence coverage in LitCovid, while our computational approach presented average accuracy of 63.33% for all terms, and 84.51% for drugs and chemicals.
Improving classification of low-resource COVID-19 literature by using Named Entity Recognition
Authors: Lithgow-Serrano Oscar , Cornelius Joseph , Kanjirangat Vani , Méndez-Cruz Carlos-Francisco , Rinaldi Fabio
Published: September 2021

Automatic document classification for highly interrelated classes is a demanding task that becomes more challenging when there is little labeled data for training. Such is the case of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) Clinical repository—a repository of classified and translated academic articles related to COVID-19 and relevant to the clinical practice—where a 3-way classification scheme is being applied to COVID-19 literature. During the 7th Biomedical Linked Annotation Hackathon (BLAH7) hackathon, we performed experiments to explore the use of named-entity-recognition (NER) to improve the classification. We processed the literature with OntoGene’s Biomedical Entity Recogniser (OGER) and used the resulting identified Named Entities (NE) and their links to major biological databases as extra input features for the classifier. We compared the results with a baseline model without the OGER extracted features. In these proof-of-concept experiments, we observed a clear gain on COVID-19 literature classification. In particular, NE’s origin was useful to classify document types and NE’s type for clinical specialties. Due to the limitations of the small dataset, we can only conclude that our results suggests that NER would benefit this classification task. In order to accurately estimate this benefit, further experiments with a larger dataset would be needed.
Chromosome-specific polymorphic SSR markers in tropical eucalypt species using low coverage whole genome sequences: systematic characterization and validation
Authors: Patturaj Maheswari , Munusamy Aiswarya , Kannan Nithishkumar , Kandasamy Ulaganathan , Ramasamy Yasodha
Published: September 2021

Eucalyptus is one of the major plantation species with wide variety of industrial uses. Polymorphic and informative simple sequence repeats (SSRs) have broad range of applications in genetic analysis. In this study, two individuals of Eucalyptus tereticornis (ET217 and ET86), one individual each from E. camaldulensis (EC17) and E. grandis (EG9) were subjected to whole genome resequencing. Low coverage (10×) genome sequencing was used to find polymorphic SSRs between the individuals. Average number of SSR loci identified was 95,513 and the density of SSRs per Mb was from 157.39 in EG9 to 155.08 in EC17. Among all the SSRs detected, the most abundant repeat motifs were di-nucleotide (59.6%–62.5%), followed by tri- (23.7%–27.2%), tetra- (5.2%–5.6%), penta- (5.0%–5.3%) and hexa-nucleotide (2.7%–2.9%). The predominant SSR motif units were AG/CT and AAG/TTC. Computational genome analysis predicted the SSR length variations between the individuals and identified the gene functions of SSR containing sequences. Selected subset of polymorphic markers was validated in a full-sib family of eucalypts. Additionally, genome-wide characterization of single nucleotide polymorphisms, InDels and transcriptional regulators were carried out. These variations will find their utility in genome-wide association studies as well as understanding of molecular mechanisms involved in key economic traits. The genomic resources generated in this study would provide an impetus to integrate genomics in marker-trait associations and breeding of tropical eucalypts.
High-accuracy quantitative principle of a new compact digital PCR equipment: Lab On An Array
Authors: Lee Haeun , Lee Cherl-Joon , Kim Dong Hee , Cho Chun-Sung , Shin Wonseok , Han Kyudong
Published: September 2021

Digital PCR (dPCR) is the third-generation PCR that enables real-time absolute quantification without reference materials. Recently, global diagnosis companies have developed new dPCR equipment. In line with the development, the Lab On An Array (LOAA) dPCR analyzer (Optolane) was launched last year. The LOAA dPCR is a semiconductor chip-based separation PCR type equipment. The LOAA dPCR includes Micro Electro Mechanical System that can be injected by partitioning the target gene into 56 to 20,000 wells. The amount of target gene per wells is digitized to 0 or 1 as the number of well gradually increases to 20,000 wells because its principle follows Poisson distribution, which allows the LOAA dPCR to perform precise absolute quantification. LOAA determined region of interest first prior to dPCR operation. To exclude invalid wells for the quantification, the LOAA dPCR has applied various filtering methods using brightness, slope, baseline, and noise filters. As the coronavirus disease 2019 has now spread around the world, needs for diagnostic equipment of point of care testing (POCT) are increasing. The LOAA dPCR is expected to be suitable for POCT diagnosis due to its compact size and high accuracy. Here, we describe the quantitative principle of the LOAA dPCR and suggest that it can be applied to various fields.
Rapid and sensitive detection of Salmonella species targeting the hilA gene using a loop-mediated isothermal amplification assay
Authors: Chu Jiyon , Shin Juyoun , Kang Shinseok , Shin Sun , Chung Yeun-Jun
Published: September 2021

Salmonella species are among the major pathogens that cause foodborne illness outbreaks. In this study, we aimed to develop a loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) assay for the rapid and sensitive detection of Salmonella species. We designed LAMP primers targeting the hilA gene as a universal marker of Salmonella species. A total of seven Salmonella species strains and 11 non-Salmonella pathogen strains from eight different genera were used in this study. All Salmonella strains showed positive amplification signals with the Salmonella LAMP assay; however, there was no non-specific amplification signal for the non-Salmonella strains. The detection limit was 100 femtograms (20 copies per reaction), which was ~1,000 times more sensitive than the detection limits of the conventional polymerase chain reaction (PCR) assay (100 pg). The reaction time for a positive amplification signal was less than 20 minutes, which was less than one-third the time taken while using conventional PCR. In conclusion, our Salmonella LAMP assay accurately detected Salmonella species with a higher degree of sensitivity and greater rapidity than the conventional PCR assay, and it may be suitable for point-of-care testing in the field.
Clinical, Laboratory, and Short-Term Outcomes in Neonatal Nonketotic Hyperglycinemia
Authors: Celik Muhittin , Akdeniz Osman
Published: September 2021

Background: Nonketotic hyperglycinemia (NKH) is a rare metabolism disorder with autosomal recessive transmission. Newborn infants characteristically present with hypotonia, lethargy, convulsions, and apnea and are generally lost within the first year of life. Objectives: The aim of this study was to evaluate the clinical characteristics, laboratory findings, and short-term results of infants diagnosed with NKH. Methods: The retrospective study included 10 infants diagnosed with NKH between August 2013 and July 2020. The clinical characteristics, laboratory findings, treatment methods, and short-term outcomes of the patients were evaluated. Results: The age range of patients (50% males vs. 50% females) was 2 - 8 days on presentation. The complaints on presentation were decreased breastfeeding, lethargy, convulsions, hiccups, apnea, and respiratory problems. In the physical examination, significant hypotonia and reduced or absence of newborn reflexes were predominant. Mechanical ventilation (MV) was required for nine patients. The cerebral spinal fluid/serum glycine ratio was > 0.08 in all patients, with median value of 0.19 (range: 0.12 - 0.30). The presence of a burst suppression pattern on electroencephalography and an increase in the glycine peak in magnetic resonance spectroscopy were the supportive diagnostic findings. Mutation analysis was performed on one patient. Seizures resistant to treatment were controlled with levetiracetam in three patients and dextromethorphan in one patient. Conclusions: According to the results, the most common clinical findings in NKH were severe hypotonia, seizure, and encephalopathy. In some cases, with resistant seizures, levetiracetam was found to be effective.
Electro-Kinetic Degradation of Diesel Originated from a Costal Crude Oil Terminal
Authors: Darabi Babak , Tabatabaei Tayyebeh , Amiri Fazel , Jorfi Sahand
Published: September 2021

: The present study evaluated the effect of the integration of electro-kinetic (EK) oxidation with sonication degradation of diesel in a hydrocarbon contaminated wastewater. The effect of operational parameters including initial pH (3 - 9), sonication (100 - 300 W), voltage (0.5 - 3 V/cm), and reaction time (60 - 150 min) were studied consecutively. The highest total petroleum hydrocarbon (TPH) destruction rate of 40% was achieved at pH 5. Also, increasing the sonication intensity up to 300 W improved the removal rate to 70%. The pseudo-first-order kinetic model was selected due to higher correlation coefficient. Considering the obtained integration of EK oxidation with sonication is a viable and efficient technology for treatment of diesel contaminated wastewaters.
A Hybrid Human–Machine Learning Approach for Screening Prostate Biopsies Can Improve Clinical Efficiency Without Compromising Diagnostic Accuracy
Authors: Dov David , Assaad Serge , Syedibrahim Ameer , Bell Jonathan , Huang Jiaoti , Madden John , Bentley Rex , McCall Shannon , Henao Ricardo , Carin Lawrence , Foo Wen-Chi
Published: September 2021

Context.—

Prostate cancer is a common malignancy, and accurate diagnosis typically requires histologic review of multiple prostate core biopsies per patient. As pathology volumes and complexity increase, new tools to improve the efficiency of everyday practice are keenly needed. Deep learning has shown promise in pathology diagnostics, but most studies silo the efforts of pathologists from the application of deep learning algorithms. Very few hybrid pathologist–deep learning approaches have been explored, and these typically require complete review of histologic slides by both the pathologist and the deep learning system.

Objective.—

To develop a novel and efficient hybrid human–machine learning approach to screen prostate biopsies.

Design.—

We developed an algorithm to determine the 20 regions of interest with the highest probability of malignancy for each prostate biopsy; presenting these regions to a pathologist for manual screening limited the initial review by a pathologist to approximately 2% of the tissue area of each sample. We evaluated this approach by using 100 biopsies (29 malignant, 60 benign, 11 other) that were reviewed by 4 pathologists (3 urologic pathologists, 1 general pathologist) using a custom-designed graphical user interface.

Results.—

Malignant biopsies were correctly identified as needing comprehensive review with high sensitivity (mean, 99.2% among all pathologists); conversely, most benign prostate biopsies (mean, 72.1%) were correctly identified as needing no further review.

Conclusions.—

This novel hybrid system has the potential to efficiently triage out most benign prostate core biopsies, conserving time for the pathologist to dedicate to detailed evaluation of malignant biopsies.
Histologic Findings in Gynecologic Tissue From Transmasculine Individuals Undergoing Gender-Affirming Surgery
Authors: Lin Lawrence Hsu , Hernandez Andrea , Marcus Alan , Deng Fang-Ming , Adler Esther
Published: September 2021

Context.—

Gender-affirming surgery is part of a multidisciplinary approach in gender transitioning. Deeper histologic examination may strengthen care for transmasculine individuals and increase the understanding of the influence of hormonal therapy in specific organs.

Objective.—

To evaluate and catalogue histologic findings of tissue obtained from gender-affirming gynecologic surgery and cervical cytology specimens.

Design.—

This is an institutional review board–approved retrospective study that included transmasculine individuals who underwent gender-affirming gynecologic surgery from January 2015 to June 2020. All surgical gynecologic pathology and cervical cytology slides were reviewed by 2 pathologists.

Results.—

Fifty-five patients were included, which represented 40 uteri, 35 bilateral ovaries, 15 vaginectomy specimens, and 24 cervical cytology results. The median age was 27 years (range, 18–56), and 94% (50 of 53) of patients were receiving testosterone for at least 1 year. Seventy-five percent (30 of 40) of endometria were inactive, while 25% (10 of 40) showed evidence of cycling. Transitional cell metaplasia was the most common finding in the cervix (17 of 40) and vagina (15 of 15), reflecting a high percentage (4 of 24) of unsatisfactory or ASC-US (atypical squamous cells of undetermined significance) cervical cytologies. Prostatic-type glands were identified in 20% (8 of 40) of cervices and 67% (10 of 15) of vaginectomy specimens. Multiple bilateral cystic follicles and evidence of follicular maturation were present in 57% (20 of 35) of cases. Four cases showed paratubal epididymis-like mesonephric remnant hypertrophy.

Conclusions.—

A comprehensive evaluation of tissue from gender-affirming surgery increases knowledge of the changes following androgen therapy in transmasculine individuals and may contribute to optimal patient care by raising awareness of normal histologic variations in this population.
Impact of COVID-19 on Endoscopy Training: Perspectives from a Global Survey of Program Directors and Endoscopy Trainers
Authors: Vignesh Shivakumar , Butt Amna Subhan , Alboraie Mohamed , Martins Bruno Costa , Piscoya Alejandro , Tran Quang Trung , Yew Damien Tan Meng , Ghazanfar Shahriyar , Alavinejad Pezhman , Kamau Edna , Verma Ajay M , Mendelsohn Robin B , Khor Christopher , Moss Alan , Liao David Wei Chih , Huang Christopher S , Tsai Franklin C
Published: September 2021

Background/Aims: The coronavirus disease of 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has impacted the training of medical trainees internationally. The aim of this study was to assess the global impact of COVID-19 on endoscopy training from the perspective of endoscopy trainers and to identify strategies implemented to mitigate the impact on trainee education.Methods: Teaching faculty of gastroenterology (GI) training programs globally were invited to complete a 36-question web-based survey to report the characteristics of their training programs and the impact of COVID-19 on various aspects of endoscopy training, including what factors decisions were based on.Results: The survey response rate was 52.6% (305 out of 580 individuals); 92.8% reported a negative impact on endoscopy training, with suspension of elective procedures (77.1%) being the most detrimental factor. Geographic variations were noted, with European programs reporting the lowest percentage of trainee participation in procedures. A higher proportion of trainees in the Americas were allowed to continue performing procedures, and trainers from the Americas reported receiving the greatest support for endoscopy teaching.Conclusions: This study demonstrated that the COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant negative impact on GI endoscopy training internationally, as reported by endoscopy trainers. Focus-optimizing endoscopy training and assessment of competencies are necessary to ensure adequate endoscopy training.
Document Network and Conceptual and Social Structures of Clinical Endoscopy from 2015 to July 2021 Based on the Web of Science Core Collection: A Bibliometric Study
Authors: Huh Sun
Published: September 2021

Background/Aims: The present study investigated the relevance and network of institutions, keywords, and authors’ countries of the articles in Clinical Endoscopy published from 2015 to May 2021 based on the Web of Science Core Collection.Methods: The Web of Science Core Collection was searched with the term Clinical Endoscopy as the publication title on July 12, 2021. All 776 citations published from 2015 to May 2021 and 2,964 articles citing those 776 articles were analyzed using Biblioshiny.Results: The corresponding authors were from 73 countries. Document coupling showed that the colorectal cancer-colonoscopyrandomized controlled trial cluster had the most significant impact and highest centrality. There were 442 articles with corresponding authors from Korea (57.0%). The number of collaborative works by Korean authors with the authors of other countries was 33 (7.5%). The articles were cited 2,964 times by corresponding authors from 37 countries.Conclusions: The above results show that Clinical Endoscopy has published several studies on gastrointestinal endoscopy. A large proportion of citations (84.7 %) were from outside Korea, indicating that the journal content is useful for global physicians. Collaborative work between authors from Korea and other countries should be encouraged to promote the journal.
Correcting the bias of the Root Mean Squared Error of Approximation under missing data
Authors: Fitzgerald Cailey E. , Estabrook Ryne , Martin Daniel P. , Brandmaier Andreas M. , von Oertzen Timo
Published: September 2021

Missing data are ubiquitous in psychological research. They may come about as an unwanted result of coding or computer error, participants' non-response or absence, or missing values may be intentional, as in planned missing designs. We discuss the effects of missing data on χ²-based goodness-of-fit indices in Structural Equation Modeling (SEM), specifically on the Root Mean Squared Error of Approximation (RMSEA). We use simulations to show that naive implementations of the RMSEA have a downward bias in the presence of missing data and, thus, overestimate model goodness-of-fit. Unfortunately, many state-of-the-art software packages report the biased form of RMSEA. As a consequence, the scientific community may have been accepting a much larger fraction of models with non-acceptable model fit. We propose a bias-correction for the RMSEA based on information-theoretic considerations that take into account the expected misfit of a person with fully observed data. The corrected RMSEA is asymptotically independent of the proportion of missing data for misspecified models. Importantly, results of the corrected RMSEA computation are identical to naive RMSEA if there are no missing data.
Does rapid guessing prevent the detection of the effect of a time limit in testing?
Authors: Schweizer Karl , Krampen Dorothea , French Brian F.
Published: September 2021

Rapid guessing is a test taking strategy recommended for increasing the probability of achieving a high score if a time limit prevents an examinee from responding to all items of a scale. The strategy requires responding quickly and without cognitively processing item details. Although there may be no omitted responses after participants' rapid guessing, an open question remains: do the data show unidimensionality, as is expected for data collected by a scale, or bi-dimensionality characterizing data collected with a time limit in testing, speeded data. To answer this question, we simulated speeded and rapid guessing data and performed confirmatory factor analysis using one-factor and two-factor models. The results revealed that speededness was detectable despite the presence of rapid guessing. However, detection may depend on the number of response options for a given set of items.
La réconciliation à travers les séjours d’immersion à Kitcisakik
Authors: Friis Joseph , Arellano Alexandra
Published: September 2021

Depuis 2010, les Anicinapek de Kitcisakik ont mis sur pied une initiative de séjours de sensibilisation, où des voyages éducatifs et d’immersion se sont développés, principalement avec des groupes scolaires et universitaires allochtones. Ces séjours sont devenus des occasions privilégiées de dialogue qui favorisent non seulement la transmission intergénérationnelle et la distinction épistémologique du savoir local, mais aussi la compréhension de la situation sociohistorique et coloniale des peuples autochtones. Rejetant assidument le système de réserve et occupant leur terre ancestrale sans réelles assises juridiques à la lumière du droit positif canadien, les Anicinapek invitent des Allochtones à célébrer leur culture en s’imprégnant du lien à la terre, établissant ainsi la centralité des luttes territoriales dans les processus de réconciliation. Ancrée dans une approche théorique du « colonialisme de peuplement » (« settler-colonialism »), cette réflexion explore le cas particulier de Kitcisakik dans le contexte des séjours d’immersion, invitant les étudiants allochtones à partager leur expérience de sensibilisation. À travers un récit situant les luttes territoriales, le regard des Anicinapek et des étudiants allochtones est mis de l’avant. Les séjours d’immersion offerts par la communauté de Kitcisakik incarnent une ouverture à l’Autre qui offre une expérience privilégiée de réconciliation autocritique.
Out of the Closet and into Quarantine: Stories of Isolation and Teaching
Authors: Forrest Michelle , Joy Phillip
Published: September 2021

Being queer can be filled with moments of isolation: not fitting in to heteronormative rites of passage, not knowing if or when to come out in academia, and now, trying to cope with the difficulties induced by officially-mandated social distancing in a global pandemic. Although isolation is a common human experience, for queer people it is often an intimate part of their stories, leaving lasting scars. Experiences of isolation, loneliness, and being “othered” have serious consequences. Through autoethnographic queer inquiry, we explore isolation and how it shapes teaching and learning. Drawing on concepts of the outsider-within and the uncanny, and distinguishing isolation from loneliness and solitude, we share our personal stories of isolation through the perspective of a performative “I”, examining how our pedagogical philosophies and practices inevitably reflect our queer experiences. Coming from different disciplines of practice, we met because of the COVID-19 pandemic, which prompted this return to old and new forms of social isolation—the old being the experience of growing up queer and the new through teaching online. From our perspectives across a generational divide, we trace the unsettling experiences of being queer and teaching in our COVID bubbles, and we attempt to navigate ourselves and our students safely through disconnection and isolation.
Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina as Positive Legislator
Authors: Simović Vladimir M. , Simović Miodrag N.
Published: September 2021

The Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina was established on the basis of Article VI of the Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina as an independent guardian of the Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina and an institutional guarantor of the protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms established by this Constitution and instruments of Annex I to the Constitution. Assuming that it is not part of the legislative, executive and regular judicial power (as positioned by the Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina), the Constitutional Court acts as a separate, autonomous and independent authority and a corrective factor for the other three segments of government in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In this way, the Constitutional Court, as one of the key state institutions of Bosnia and Herzegovina, contributes to the promotion of democracy, rule of law and the affirmation of the rule of law, especially in the first years after its constitution when it was necessary to protect the foundations of a democratic state and resolve a number of questions that have in some ways remained vague in the Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The decisions of the Constitution are final and binding. In the end, the Constitutional Court has to seek and find out the ways for implementation of its decisions. If the legislator is not able to do that, the role of the guardian of the Constitution imposes on the Constitutional Court, even in the unpopular (realistically, rarely used) role of a positive legislator, to bring the procedure before the court to an end - by proclaiming a law on a temporary basis. The paper explains the concept of judicial activism, its limitations and self-limitations. Then, it points out some of the most impressive forms of its realization in the case-law of the Constitutional Court, taking into account mutual influences and differences. Special emphasis is placed on the constitutional framework of constitutional court activism of the Constitutional Court, which is also the basis for the interpretation of the Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Position of the Lessee of Business Premises During the COVID-19 Epidemic Virus
Authors: Pušac Jovana
Published: September 2021

The author explores the complex issue of whether the epidemic virus Covide-19 has the character of force majeure (vis maior) in terms of fulfilling contractual obligations in general, and in particular the obligations of the Lease of Business Premises. Force majeure means a circumstances arising after the conclusion of the contract that the debtor could not prevent, eliminate or avoid, while in the case of the ruling coronavirus epidemic it is a contagious disease of global proportions with consequences for the global economy, for which official medicine is still did not find a cure. In a situation when the lessee of business premises is affected by these circumstances which, undoubtedly, cannot be attributed to him, and which he could not prevent, eliminate or avoid, it is important to explore and analyze legal solutions that, in the absence of contractual provisions, protect the endangered position the lessee and relax his disrupted contractual relationship with the lessor.
Existence of Compliance in the Procedure of Application of the Law on Digital Signature of the Republic of Srpska and Harmonization With Eidas Regulations
Authors: Macan Siniša
Published: September 2021

Modern information and communication technologies have changed the paradigm of modern business, but also of social organization and life. Business, education, purchases and sales, but also social networks are becoming an integral part of the functioning of modern man. Cyberspace must also be regulated by the introduction of precise rules that govern the rule of law, and prevent abuse. In recent decades, international recommendations and standards have been intensively adopted to regulate ways of establishing identity and e-commerce through the Internet. They introduce methods that allow for the reliable integration of digital and legal identities. The European Union has adopted legislation on trust services and electronic identification using qualified digital signatures and seals. Electronic Identification and Confidentiality Regulations for Electronic Transactions in the Internal Market No. 910/14, popularly called eIDAS, introduces and accurately regulates qualified electronic signatures and stamps, qualified time stamps, qualified electronic delivery and other electronic business elements that allow legal validity of electronic document and e-commerce the same as traditional document and business. In such circumstances, it is of the utmost importance to perform a quality assessment of the compliance of the technical and organizational conditions performed by the legal entities providing the trust services and electronic identification. The paper analyzes the legislation of the Republic of Srpska regarding the assessment of compliance defined by the Law on Digital Signature of the Republika Srpska, and in particular the harmonization of legislation and practice in the Republika Srpska with respect to eIDAS regulations, in order to make the citizens and the economy of the Republika Srpska an integral part of the European space.
Stvarno pravo Republike Srpske
Authors: Babić Ilija
Published: September 2021

U izdanju Panevropskog univerziteta „Apeiron“ Banja Luka i Udruženja pravnika Republike Srpske, krajem 2019. godine pojavilo se četvrto izdanje obimne monografi je Stvarno pravo Republike Srp-ske, autora prof. dr Duška Medića, sudije Ustavnog suda Republike Srpske. Od izlaska iz štampe prethodnog, trećeg izdanja ove knjige koja je rasprodata, proteklo je kratko vreme ‒ nepuna godina dana. Tako je stručna i naučna javnost potvrdila korisnost i neophodnost ove knjige (prvi put štampane 2011. godine). Posle Komentara Za-kona o stvarnim pravima Republike Srpske iz 2011. i Komentara Zakona o stvarnim pravima Federacije BiH 2014. godine (Babić I. Medić D., Hašić E., Povlakić M., i Velić L.,), između kojih nema bitnih razlika, ovo je drugo delo koje detalјno, potpuno i tačno objašnjava, te sintetički i kritički analizira institute stvarnog prava.
Certain Solutions in the Law on Amendments to the Law on Criminal Procedure of the Republic of Srpska
Authors: Ikanović Veljko
Published: September 2021

The author deals with the new position of the injured party in criminal proceedings, persons who may refuse to testify and exceptions from the direct presentation of evidence due to the unavailability of witnesses after the amendments to the Criminal Procedure Code of Republika Srpska from 2021. Starting from the current regulation of this matter, pointing to the solutions in the comparative legislation, the analysis of these changes indicates the consequences of such inconsistent and in some institutes unnecessary and erroneous standardization of this sensitive matter. Attention is drawn to the contradiction between the decision on the privileged witness and juvenile legislation, which is in line with the conventions protecting their position, and the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. In that sense, the legislator is critically pointed out the shortcomings of certain solutions and suggests appropriate changes and additions in order to eliminate the problems that may arise during their practical application.
Legal Acceptability of the Security Level of the Electronic Identification System
Authors: Macan Siniša
Published: September 2021

Cyberspace is becoming the dominant global arena for the exchange of goods and services. In addition, cyberspace is playing an increasing role in meeting the social needs of the modern human being. Services provided by public administrations are moving to the Internet and modern information and communication technologies. In such an environment, the need for reliable identification of an individual in cyberspace becomes increasingly demanding. E-commerce, as well as e-business in most cases implies the possession of bancing cards as an instrument of non-cash payment transactions. Therefore, a banking card is recognized as an instrument that confirms the identity of an individual within electronic interactions, and the bank can also be seen as a provider of trust services in electronic identification procedures. In a large number of electronic transactions in cyberspace, there is often no need for identity verification via credit cards, because no financial transaction. At the same time, there is a need to reliably determine the identity of an individual in cyberspace. The intensive development of the Internet, the transfer of a large number of business and social activities in cyberspace has led to the need to adapt legal solutions that regulate some activities on the Internet, or the mentioned cyberspace. Thus, a system of reliable digital authentication of transactions and recognition of an individual’s identity when appearing in cyberspace has been developed. In the Republic of Srpska, but also in Bosnia and Herzegovina, legislation has been adopted that recognizes electronic signatures, as well as trust and electronic identification services. Back in 1999, the European Union adopted a regulation for digital signatures, which was replaced by the Regulation on electronic identification and trust services for electronic transactions in the internal market number 910/14, popularly called eIDAS. eIDAS regulations legally regulate the methods of digital identification, as well as the legal validity of electronic documents and electronic business with traditional documents and business. The paper studies the levels of electronic identifications, possible solutions in legislation and practice in the Republic of Srpska and Bosnia and Herzegovina and presents examples from neighboring countries.
Training of Drivers for Safe Transport of Dangerous Goods
Authors: Petrović Ljubomir , Jovanović Dragutin , Vujinović Tomislav , Petrović Radovan
Published: September 2021

The safety of transporting dangerous goods is conditioned by a number of factors, many of which are significantly influenced by drivers. Drivers, as the central component of human resources, are expected to react appropriately at all times during the performance of their professional activity, in order to prevent the occurrence of a traffic accident or reduce its consequences, thus contributing to the safe transport of dangerous goods. He is expected to assess the situation and make a valid decision in accordance with the set tasks. Due to irregularities and omissions in the work when making an independent decision on how to act in certain moments, the driver directly influenced the occurrence of a large number of accidents. In order to minimize the driver’s failures in the transport process, appropriate attention must be paid to their training.
Sustainability of outbound logistics in small businesses in Serbia
Authors: Arsić Siniša , Jovanović Dragutin , Arsić Miloš
Published: September 2021

A significant percentage of entrepreneurs, micro and small companies in Serbia do not have adequate outbound logistics capacities in order to register significant growth in business. The needs of everyday business and the demand for certain products and services is a reflection of the quality of products, and very often it is not realized in full potential, due to poorly dimensioned aspects of logistics function, or due to insufficient operational capacity of the company itself. The key problems of small companies from Serbia, which are trying to internationalize their products or services, lies in the fact that Serbia (as a country) generally has very poor outbound logistics and transport efficient solutions and capacities. In addition, transport costs and supply chain length have critical impact on the ability of a small company to meet demand outside the local market. The complexity of the problem is affected equally by internal capacities of micro and small companies, but also by weak external support for specialized outbound logistics services (transport, transshipment, etc.). These problems will be analyzed on a sample of small Serbian companies that deal with different fruit cultures processing, and are trying to conquer new markets. The result of the conducted research serves in an attempt of narrowing the problem to specific sectors of the industry, which are affected by inadequate logistics capacities. Future research could contain concrete measures to improve the delivery process and internationalization of goods for companies outside large systems (corporations), by defining concrete proposals to improve outbound logistics management capacities in Serbia.
[Finally, we meet.... and talk about groundwater!]
Authors: Ducci Daniela , Fabbri Paolo , Lasagna Manuela , Rusi Sergio
Published: September 2021

[Article in Italian]
Per-Pixel Extrusion Mapping with Correct Silhouette
Authors: Ouazzani Chahdi Adnane , Ragragui Anouar , Halli Akram , Satori Khalid
Published: September 2021

Per-pixel extrusion mapping consists of creating a virtual geometry stored in a texture over a polygon model without increasing its density. There are four types of extrusion mapping, namely, basic extrusion, outward extrusion, beveled extrusion, and chamfered extrusion. These different techniques produce satisfactory results in the case of plane surfaces, but when it is about the curved surfaces, the silhouette is not visible at the edges of the extruded forms on the 3D surface geometry because they not take into account the curvature of the 3D meshes. In this paper, we presented an improvement that consists of using a curved ray-tracing to correct the silhouette problem by combining the per-pixel extrusion mapping techniques and the quadratic approximation computed at each vertex of the 3D mesh.