By illuminating the conflict-resolving mechanisms inherent in the relationships between democracies, Bruce Russett explains one of the most promising developments of the modern international system: the striking fact that the democracies that it comprises have almost never fought each other.By illuminating the conflict-resolving mechanisms inherent in the relationships between democracies, Bruce Russett explains one of the most promising developments of the modern international system: the striking fact that the democracies that it comprises have almost never fought each other.
Faruk Alam, Surabhi Mandal, Bhupendra Shrestha
et al.
Background: Liposomes are widely used as drug delivery systems because of their reduced systemic toxicity. Over the past few decades, numerous drug-loaded liposomes have been approved for clinical use in the treatment of cancer, viral, and fungal infections. Various liposomal formulations have progressed to later phases of clinical trials. Liposomes are spherical vesicles composed of a single or multiple phospholipid bilayers surrounding an aqueous core. Drug-loaded liposomes can exhibit controlled or targeted drug delivery, low immunogenicity, high biocompatibility, biodegradability, prolonged drug half-life, increased efficiency, reduced systemic toxicity, and enhanced pharmacokinetic properties. Methodology: This review article addresses the characteristics and types of liposomes; novel methods for their preparation, such as the Supercritical Anti-solvent Method and the Dual Asymmetric Centrifugation Method; lipid preferences; future directions for liposomes; marketed liposomal formulations; and associated patents. Results and Discussion: It has the potential to protect the drug against degradation. The aforementioned drug delivery system increases in vivo drug distribution toward target sites. PEGylated liposomes can prolong circulation time. It requires expertise in techniques, such as thin-film hydration and reverse-phase evaporation, for preparation. It has been utilized in nanomedicine. This particular delivery system requires characterizations like size, drug loading, drug release, etc. Conclusion: Liposome-embedded delivery systems advance nanotechnology and biopharmaceutics. The role of modern medicine has continued to expand, particularly in the management of chronic diseases.
Pharmacy and materia medica, Therapeutics. Pharmacology
The article substantiates the idea of the need for advanced professional training of cadets of a modern military university to meet the requirements for the information competence of an officer during the period of change in military-professional activity under the influence of informatization. The essence of the information perspective as a leading factor of influence determining the advance is revealed. The author's understanding of the structure of the officer's information competence in the aggregate of operational, subjective, axiological and reflexive components is presented. The process of forming the cadet's information competence is shown as a consistent change in the stages of solving the advanced professional task and achieving the expected results of professional and personal development: the stage of problematization, the stage of modeling, the stage of solution and the reflexive stage. The presented content, forms and methods of work that organize the process of forming the information competence of cadets are designed to ensure its integrity and effectiveness.
Education (General), Theory and practice of education
Aim: The aim of the research was to assess the state of library activities and provide recommendations for improvement in accordance with the Library Activity Law of Tuzla Canton and international standards.
Methodology: The methodological approach is entirely innovative and the first of its kind in Tuzla Canton, and it can serve as a model for other cantons in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. This methodological approach combines: quantitative analysis (statistical data, numerical indicators), qualitative assessment (field visits, interviews), formalized documentation (minutes with recommendations), and systematic monitoring of implementation.
Results: The result of the analysis of the collected data indicates significant deficiencies in the functioning of libraries, including inadequate funding, insufficient number of professional staff, and weak connectivity with modern library-information systems, as prerequisites for compliance with legal regulations.
Social significance: By achieving social significance, it is expected that this work will encourage similar initiatives in other cantons, serve as reference material for policy makers, contribute to the standardization of approaches to coordinating library services in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and be cited in future library research, as the work proposes specific measures to improve the overall state of libraries and their integration into the COBISS system.
Practical application: From a practical application perspective, the work proposes systemic measures through urgent, medium-term, and long-term interventions, including increasing budgetary expenditures, technological modernization, and staff strengthening.
Originality: This professional paper represents the first comprehensive analysis of the state of the library network in Tuzla Canton based on professional supervision conducted in the period 2023–2024. The research covers 22 libraries of different types: nine public libraries, three special libraries, and thirteen organizational units of the University Library, as well as continuous monitoring of over 131 libraries through dossiers.
Bibliography. Library science. Information resources
Background. Chronic pancreatitis (CP) is a complex progressive disease of the pancreas, which is accompanied by significant metabolic disorders, exocrine insufficiency, maldigestion, and malabsorption. Patients with CP often face nutritional deficiencies, which include protein, vitamin, and mineral deficiencies. This leads to weight loss, anemia, and deterioration in the quality of life. One of the key elements in the treatment of such patients is diet therapy aimed at correcting nutrient deficiencies and compensating for impaired digestive system functions. In modern gastroenterological practice, functional food products manufactured using extrusion technology are attracting increasing attention. It allows creating products with high bioavailability, easy digestibility, and an optimal balance of proteins, fats, and carbohydrates. In particular, thermoplastically extruded products based on wheat, buckwheat, and rice cereals, enriched with chicken fillet, carrots, apples, and pumpkin, show high potential in correcting the nutritional status of patients with CP. The purpose of the study was to assess the effectiveness of using thermoplastic extruded products in diet therapy of patients with CP. Materials and methods. The study involved 110 patients, who were divided into two groups: the main (70 participants with CP who received the proposed mixture for enteral nutrition) and the comparison one (40 people with isolated CP who were fed a standard diet). The assessment of nutritional status included determining the level of albumin, hemoglobin, body mass index, as well as the content of pancreatic elastase-1 in feces. For 12 weeks, patients in the main group received extruded products as the main element of the diet. Results. A significant improvement in the nutritional status of the patients was noted. The albumin level increased from 32.1 ± 1.8 g/l to 38.5 ± 2.1 g/l, and hemoglobin from 112 ± 5 g/l to 125 ± 6 g/l. The patients’ body mass index increased 1.7 times. All changes were statistically significant. The organoleptic evaluation of the products showed that 91 % of the patients rated them as “tasty” or “very tasty”, which ensures a high level of the diet acceptability. In addition, the products are well tolerated, which increases compliance with therapy. Conclusions. The use of thermoplastic extruded products in diet therapy for patients with CP is a promising direction in the treatment of this disease. It allows to ensure the correction of nutritional status, improve the quality of life, and also contribute to reducing the risk of developing complications associated with metabolic disorders.
Diseases of the endocrine glands. Clinical endocrinology
Sourav Kumar Das, Md. Julkar Naeen, MD. Jahidul Islam
et al.
Bangla or Bengali is the national language of Bangladesh, people from different regions don't talk in proper Bangla. Every division of Bangladesh has its own local language like Sylheti, Chittagong etc. In recent years some papers were published on Bangla language like sentiment analysis, fake news detection and classifications, but a few of them were on Bangla languages. This research is for the local language and this particular paper is on Sylheti language. It presented a comprehensive system using Natural Language Processing or NLP techniques for translating Pure or Modern Bangla to locally spoken Sylheti Bangla language. Total 1200 data used for training 3 models LSTM, Bi-LSTM and Seq2Seq and LSTM scored the best in performance with 89.3% accuracy. The findings of this research may contribute to the growth of Bangla NLP researchers for future more advanced innovations.
Archaeologists deploy a variety of models and theories, often tailored to specific questions or situations, in making sense of the material record we study. The concept of the community of practice, originally developed in the context of modern work and learning situations, describes among other things how participation in shared activities can create and shape social relationships. It therefore offers a powerful and flexible framework for the many archaeological research agendas in which group dynamics play a role. Some archaeologists have already begun to use the community of practice approach (CoP) as an interpretive framework, and this essay argues that a wider embrace would be a benefit to individual archaeologists and to the field as a whole.
Urban communities rely on built utility infrastructures as critical lifelines that provide essential services such as water, gas, and power, to sustain modern socioeconomic systems. These infrastructures consist of underground and surface-level assets that are operated and geo-distributed over large regions where continuous monitoring for anomalies is required but challenging to implement. This article addresses the problem of deploying heterogeneous Internet of Things sensors in these networks to support future decision-support tasks, for example, anomaly detection, source identification, and mitigation. We use stormwater as a driving use case; these systems are responsible for drainage and flood control, but act as conduits that can carry contaminants to the receiving waters. Challenges toward effective monitoring include the transient and random nature of the pollution incidents, the scarcity of historical data, the complexity of the system, and technological limitations for real-time monitoring. We design a SemanTics-aware sEnsor Placement framework (STEP) to capture pollution incidents using structural, behavioral, and semantic aspects of the infrastructure. We leverage historical data to inform our system with new, credible instances of potential anomalies. Several key topological and empirical network properties are used in proposing candidate deployments that optimize the balance between multiple objectives. We also explore the quality of anomaly representation in the network through new perspectives, and provide techniques to enhance the realism of the anomalies considered in a network. We evaluate STEP on six real-world stormwater networks in Southern California, USA, which shows its efficacy in monitoring areas of interest over other baseline methods.
Yunusov Rustam, Yuldoshov Laziz, Jumayev Tolib
et al.
The article presents data on the soil and climatic process of Uzbekistan when growing cherries using green grafting. It has been established that cherries occupy a special place in the world due to their high content of pectins, pectins, and pectin. 0.39. 0.76 percent of pectin, pectins, and pectin. 0.39. 0.76 percent of cellulose, and 0.72. 32.22 mg percent of vitamin C. Reproduction in flavor and vitamin C. quality. It is determined that the fruits of cherries contain 8.08 .19.32 percent of total sugar, 0.58.2.32 percent of vitamin C. Development of modern technologies for rapid growth of seedlings by green cuttings. The technology of growing cherry seedlings by the method of green grafting provides the greatest stability of varietal grafting combinations and rooting of grafted cuttings.
The aim of the research is to determine the impact of innovations and Industry 4.0 solutions on the international competitiveness from the perspectives of representatives of food industry enterprises. The empirical layer used information collected on the basis of a survey using the CATI method conducted on a representative sample of representatives of food industry enterprises. Descriptive statistics, the Kruskal-Wallis test, Mann-Whitney test, multiple comparison test and box-plot plots were used to analyse the data. The study confirmed that implementing certain innovations and solutions, both intangible and tangible, is important for maintaining and improving competitiveness on the international market. This applies particularly innovative, modern ways of reaching the customer, developing innovative products, the use of IT systems and the use of innovative methods in advertising and promotion. The conclusions present direct implications for managers of food enterprises who formulate competitive strategies.
Active regions are the brightest structures seen in the solar corona, so their physical properties hold important clues to the physical mechanisms underlying coronal heating. In this work, we present a comprehensive study for a filament-embedding active region as determined from observations from multiple facilities including the Chinese H α Solar Explorer. We find three types of dynamic features that correspond to different thermal and magnetic properties, i.e., the overlying loops—1 MK cool loops, the moss region—2–3 MK hot loops’ footprints, and the sigmoidal filament. The overlying cool loops, which have a potential field, always show Doppler blueshifts at the east footprint and Doppler redshifts at the west, indicating a pattern of “siphon flow.” The moss-brightening regions, which sustain the hot loops that have a moderate sheared field, always show downward Doppler redshifts at the chromosphere, which could be a signature of plasma condensing into the inner region adjacent to the filament. The sigmoidal filament, which has strongly sheared field lines along the polarity inversion line, however, shows a different Doppler velocity pattern in its middle part, i.e., an upward Doppler blueshift at the double- J -shaped stage indicating tether-cutting reconnection during the filament channel formation and then a downward redshift showing the plasma condensation for the sigmoidal filament formation. The present work shows overall properties of the filament-embedding active region, constraining the heating mechanisms of different parts of the active region and providing hints regarding the mass loading of the embedded filament.
A primary concern of public health researchers involves identifying and quantifying heterogeneous exposure effects across population subgroups. Understanding the magnitude and direction of these effects on a given scale provides researchers the ability to recommend policy prescriptions and assess the external validity of findings. Furthermore, increasing popularity in fields such as precision medicine that rely on accurate estimation of high-dimensional interaction effects has highlighted the importance of understanding effect modification. Traditional methods for effect measure modification analyses include parametric regression modeling with either stratified analyses and corresponding heterogeneity tests or including an interaction term in a multivariable model. However, these methods require manual model specification and are often impractical or not feasible to conduct by hand in high-dimensional settings. Recent developments in machine learning aim to solve this issue by automating heterogeneous subgroup identification and effect estimation. In this paper, we summarize and provide the intuition behind modern machine learning methods for effect measure modification analyses to serve as a reference for public health researchers. We discuss their implementation in R, provide annotated syntax and review available supplemental analysis tools by assessing the heterogeneous effects of drought on stunting among children in the Demographic and Health Survey data set as a case study.
Ramkrishna Mishan, Matthew Egan, Mohammed Ben-Idris
et al.
Modern power grids combine conventional generators with distributed energy resource (DER) generators in response to concerns over climate change and long-term energy security. Due to the intermittent nature of DERs, different types of energy storage devices (ESDs) must be installed to minimize unit commitment problems and accommodate spinning reserve power. ESDs have operational and resource constraints, such as charge and discharge rates or maximum and minimum state of charge (SoC). This paper proposes a linear programming (LP) optimization framework to maximize the unit-committed power for a specific optimum spinning reserve power for a particular power grid. Using this optimization framework, we also determine the total dispatchable power, non-dispatchable power, spinning reserve power, and arbitrage power using DER and ESD resource constraints. To describe the ESD and DER constraints, this paper evaluates several factors: availability, dispatchability, non-dispatchability, spinning reserve, and arbitrage factor. These factors are used as constraints in this LP optimization to determine the total optimal reserve power from the existing DERs. The proposed optimization framework maximizes the ratio of dispatchable to non-dispatchable power to minimize unit commitment problems within a specific range of spinning reserve power set to each DER. This optimization framework is implemented in the modified IEEE 34-bus distribution system, adding ten DERs in ten different buses to verify its efficacy.
Sukhpal Singh Gill, Minxian Xu, Panos Patros
et al.
ChatGPT, an AI-based chatbot, was released to provide coherent and useful replies based on analysis of large volumes of data. In this article, leading scientists, researchers and engineers discuss the transformative effects of ChatGPT on modern education. This research seeks to improve our knowledge of ChatGPT capabilities and its use in the education sector, identifying potential concerns and challenges. Our preliminary evaluation concludes that ChatGPT performed differently in each subject area including finance, coding and maths. While ChatGPT has the ability to help educators by creating instructional content, offering suggestions and acting as an online educator to learners by answering questions and promoting group work, there are clear drawbacks in its use, such as the possibility of producing inaccurate or false data and circumventing duplicate content (plagiarism) detectors where originality is essential. The often reported hallucinations within Generative AI in general, and also relevant for ChatGPT, can render its use of limited benefit where accuracy is essential. What ChatGPT lacks is a stochastic measure to help provide sincere and sensitive communication with its users. Academic regulations and evaluation practices used in educational institutions need to be updated, should ChatGPT be used as a tool in education. To address the transformative effects of ChatGPT on the learning environment, educating teachers and students alike about its capabilities and limitations will be crucial.
Claudio Canella, Sebastian Dorn, Daniel Gruss
et al.
Growing code bases of modern applications have led to a steady increase in the number of vulnerabilities. Control-Flow Integrity (CFI) is one promising mitigation that is more and more widely deployed and prevents numerous exploits. CFI focuses purely on one security domain. That is, transitions between user space and kernel space are not protected by CFI. Furthermore, if user space CFI is bypassed, the system and kernel interfaces remain unprotected, and an attacker can run arbitrary transitions. In this paper, we introduce the concept of syscall-flow-integrity protection (SFIP) that complements the concept of CFI with integrity for user-kernel transitions. Our proof-of-concept implementation relies on static analysis during compilation to automatically extract possible syscall transitions. An application can opt-in to SFIP by providing the extracted information to the kernel for runtime enforcement. The concept is built on three fully-automated pillars: First, a syscall state machine, representing possible transitions according to a syscall digraph model. Second, a syscall-origin mapping, which maps syscalls to the locations at which they can occur. Third, an efficient enforcement of syscall-flow integrity in a modified Linux kernel. In our evaluation, we show that SFIP can be applied to large scale applications with minimal slowdowns. In a micro- and a macrobenchmark, it only introduces an overhead of 13.1% and 1.8%, respectively. In terms of security, we discuss and demonstrate its effectiveness in preventing control-flow-hijacking attacks in real-world applications. Finally, to highlight the reduction in attack surface, we perform an analysis of the state machines and syscall-origin mappings of several real-world applications. On average, SFIP decreases the number of possible transitions by 38.6% compared to seccomp and 90.9% when no protection is applied.
Marian Gorynia, Piotr Banaszyk, Przemysław Deszczyński
et al.
Objectives
The authors posit the need for the modification or even revision of how economic sciences (ES) are practiced in ontological, epistemological, and methodological aspects. The need results from the impact of several factors that appeared even in the pre-pandemic period, for which Covid-19 may be a complementary and reinforcing circumstance that may even directly determine the change. The structure of the article follows its goal, which is the author’s reflection on the main thesis. To this end, the author’s selected four issues to exemplify the areas that require change, for which they propose a set of postulates that constitute the desired modifications in ES.
Material and methods
The main method we used was that of critical literature analysis and desk study – as for the scientific approach this article uses a qualitative design of research.
Results
This article discusses four sample research areas from ES. Namely, they are global supply chains, international competitiveness, globalization and development economics. The study perspective is therefore focused on the international aspects.
Conclusions
Since a radical change in economic policy and business practice is necessary, the approach and research methodology in ES should also change, which means the need to change the paradigm of these sciences. It is worth remembering that the task of ES is to model economic and business processes, because ES have both a cognitive-explanatory (positive) and directive-suggestive (normative) component. The latter component are patterns and recommendations related to the economic and business reality, and they should be different from those known from the past and to a large extent still practiced in the present.
Diego Rodriguez-Guerra, Gorka Sorrosal, Itziar Cabanes
et al.
The demand for collaborative robots is growing in industrial environments due to their versatility and low prices. Thus, more collaborative solutions are emerging for industrial scenarios. However, implementing scenarios where robots work autonomously while synchronizing their operations in a safe industrial environment with shopfloor workers is not easy. To fill the gap existing in the safe implementation of industrial collaborative scenarios, this manuscript presents a review based on five identified challenges that gathers the primary vital aspects to bear in mind while developing applications for them. Thus, a four-level classification is proposed, which collects the identified challenges and the previous developments in the field of human-robot interaction. The five identified challenges pretends to be the missing enabling key for implementing industrial collaborative scenarios in modern industrial plants. Lastly, a discussion and conclusion are exposed to analyze the degree of development in the field and its potential growth.
Abdellah El Mekki, Abdelkader El Mahdaouy, Kabil Essefar
et al.
Dialect and standard language identification are crucial tasks for many Arabic natural language processing applications. In this paper, we present our deep learning-based system, submitted to the second NADI shared task for country-level and province-level identification of Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) and Dialectal Arabic (DA). The system is based on an end-to-end deep Multi-Task Learning (MTL) model to tackle both country-level and province-level MSA/DA identification. The latter MTL model consists of a shared Bidirectional Encoder Representation Transformers (BERT) encoder, two task-specific attention layers, and two classifiers. Our key idea is to leverage both the task-discriminative and the inter-task shared features for country and province MSA/DA identification. The obtained results show that our MTL model outperforms single-task models on most subtasks.