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This article presents the development, implementation and results of the project “An interdisciplinary approach to the treatment of overweight children” under the name “My Challenge” camp. It is a 2-week multidisciplinary programme involving a physician, a dietitian, a psychologist, an occupational therapist or physiotherapist and a kinesiologist. The children stay in camp for 2 weeks and are actively involved in the daily preparation of healthy meals, participate in cooking workshops and interactive nutrition lessons, and are active outdoors throughout the programme.

Introduction: With couples' increasing postponement of pregnancy to later in life and the associated rising infertility rates, healthcare professionals need to be proactive in counselling on the risk factors affecting reproduction. To do so, they need specific counselling skills and evidence-based information. The aim of this study was to assess and compare participants' knowledge of fertility issues before and after an educational intervention on preconception health care. Methods: A cross-sectional observational study was conducted, using the same questionnaire to assess the pre- and post-intervention status. The questionnaire was developed on the basis of a literature review on infertility risk factors. The survey was conducted in a conference setting. Participation in the survey was voluntary and confidentiality was assured to all participants (midwives, nurses and healthcare students). The differences in participants' pre- and post-intervention knowledge were calculated using the Wilcoxon signed rank test. Results: The results of our study show an improvement in participants' overall knowledge on infertility risk factors. These improvements were statistically significant in the sections of 'Age and Fertility' and 'Environmental Hazards', while in the sections 'Pre-existing Medical Conditions' and 'Lifestyle Factors Affecting Fertility', participants already possessed comprehensive knowledge prior to the educational intervention. Discussion and conclusion: Health professionals can improve their knowledge on preconception health through continuous education. Further studies need to test the long-term effects of different educational approaches.

Statistical postprocessing of medium-range weather forecasts is an important component of modern forecasting systems. Since the beginning of modern data science, numerous new postprocessing methods have been proposed, complementing an already very diverse field. However, one of the questions that frequently arises when considering different methods in the framework of implementing operational postprocessing is the relative performance of the methods for a given specific task. It is particularly challenging to find or construct a common comprehensive dataset that can be used to perform such comparisons. Here, we introduce the first version of EUPPBench (EUMETNET postprocessing benchmark), a dataset of time-aligned forecasts and observations, with the aim to facilitate and standardize this process. This dataset is publicly available at https://github.com/EUPP-benchmark/climetlab-eumetnet-postprocessing-benchmark (31 December 2022) and on Zenodo (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7429236, Demaeyer, 2022b and https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7708362, Bhend et al., 2023). We provide examples showing how to download and use the data, we propose a set of evaluation methods, and we perform a first benchmark of several methods for the correction of 2 m temperature forecasts.

Ensemble forecast post‐processing is a necessary step in producing accurate probabilistic forecasts. Many post‐processing methods operate by estimating the parameters of a predetermined probability distribution; others operate on a per‐lead‐time or per‐station basis. All of the aforementioned factors either limit the expressive power of the methods in question or require additional models, one for each lead time and station. We propose a novel, neural network‐based method that produces forecasts for all lead times jointly and requires a single model for all stations. We incorporate normalizing spline flows as flexible parametric distribution estimators, which enables us to model complex forecast distributions. Furthermore, we demonstrate the effectiveness of our method in the context of the EUPPBench benchmark, where we conduct 2‐m temperature forecast post‐processing for stations in a subregion of Europe. We show that our novel method exhibits state‐of‐the‐art performance on the benchmark, improving upon other well‐performing entries. Additionally, by providing a detailed comparison of three variants of our novel post‐processing method, we elucidate the reasons why our method outperforms per‐lead‐time‐based approaches and approaches with distributional assumptions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Temperature inversions prevent the mixing of air near the surface with the air higher in the atmosphere, contributing to high concentrations of air pollutants. Inversions can be identified by sampling temperature data at different heights, usually done with radiosondes. In our study, we propose using the SMIXS clustering algorithm to cluster radiosonde temperature data as longitudinal data into clusters with distinct temperature profile shapes. We clustered 8 years of early morning radiosonde data from Ljubljana, Slovenia, into 15 clusters and investigated their relationship to PM10 pollution. The results show that high PM10 concentrations (above 50 g/m3, which is the daily limit value) are associated with early morning temperature inversions. The highest concentrations are typical for winter days with the strongest temperature inversions (temperature difference of 5 ∘C or more in the inversion layer) while the lowest concentrations (about 10 g/m3) are typical for days with no early morning temperature inversion. Days with very strong temperature inversions are quite rare. We show that clustering temperature profiles into a distinct number of clusters adds to the interpretability of radiosonde data. It simplifies the characterization of temperature inversions, their frequency, occurrence, and their impact on PM10 concentrations.

Ever higher rates of infertility among the population add to the importance of promoting fertility awareness. A digital didactic toolkit was therefore developed for use as educational material. The cross-sectional observational study aimed to test and evaluate a didactic toolkit on reproductive health in the context of nursing and midwifery students. A convenience sample consisted of 88 nursing and 61 midwifery students, all studying full-time. An evaluation questionnaire was developed based on a literature review. The evaluation included 36 didactic tools within the toolkit, divided into 6 categories: Age and Fertility (n = 3), Understanding Reproduction (n = 2), Lifestyle Factors Affecting Fertility (n = 13), Infection Risks (n = 4), Environmental Hazards (n = 1), and Social Environment Issues (n = 13). MATLAB R2017b and SPSS v.26 were used to organize and analyze the data. A web platform providing information on preconception health received positive feedback and was reported to be 'very good' for 5 statements and 'excellent' for 3 items. The participants identified several groups that could be interested in the didactic toolkit, such as their peers, students, and couples planning a family. The participants already possessed a considerable amount of information about preconception health when they assessed the didactic tools, hence they focused more on its form and design than its content. Social media should be considered as a platform for the ongoing development of the toolkit. To ensure the content is comprehensible, future studies should include participants who are not healthcare professionals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accurately predicting air pollutant levels is very important for mitigating their effects. Prediction models usually fail to predict sudden large increases or decreases in pollutant levels. Conventional measures for the assessment of the performance of air pollutant prediction models provide an overall assessment of model behavior, but do not explicitly address model behavior when large changes are observed. In our work, we propose a method to automatically label the observed large changes. We also propose two visualization methods and two measures that can help assess model performance when sudden large changes in pollutant levels occur. The developed measures enable the assessment of model performance only for large changes (MAE of large changes), or weigh the model residuals by the rate of change (WErr), making the evaluation measures “cost-sensitive”. To show the value of the novel evaluation and visualization methods, we employ them in the evaluation of three empirical examples—different statistical models used in real-life settings and a popular atmospheric dispersion model. The proposed visualizations and measures can be a valuable complement to conventional model assessment measures when the prediction of large changes is as important as (even if they are rare) or more important than predictions of other levels.

This paper focuses on the analysis of Slovenian films with special emphasis on topics related to spirituality, Church, and religiosity. The sample, which includes 427 units, represents the entire Slovenian film production between 1991 and 2022, was analysed using the content analysis method of film descriptions. The results showed that the topics of spirituality compared to topics of Church and religion are dominant and show an increasing trend. The topics of spirituality are relatively peripheral in the thematic field, but are important, as they provide a spiritual component to dominant topics, especially topics related to personality, family, partnership, work, friendship, and solidarity. Metadata analysis also showed that a) themes of spirituality are dispersed relatively equally between documentaries and feature films, while themes related to religion appear predominantly in feature films, and that b) themes of spirituality and religiosity from the point of view of authorship are in the domain of women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary Chemokines are key signals in the immune system and play an important role as proinflammatory mediators in the pathology of inflammatory bowel disease and colorectal cancer, making them an important target for therapy. Recombinant lactic acid bacteria (LAB) were engineered to bind CC and CXC chemokines by displaying chemokine‐binding proteins evasin‐1, evasin‐3 and evasin‐4 on their surface. Evasin genes were cloned into lactococcal surface display vector and overexpressed in L. lactis NZ9000 and NZ9000ΔhtrA in fusion with secretion signal and surface anchor. Evasin‐displaying bacteria removed from 15% to 90% of 11 different chemokines from the solution as determined with ELISA and Luminex multiplexing assays, whereby L. lactis NZ9000ΔhtrA proved more efficient. Lactobacillus salivarius ATCC 11741 was coated with L. . lactis‐expressed evasin fusion protein, and its ability to bind chemokines was also confirmed. Evasin‐3‐displaying L. lactis removed 76.0% of IL‐1β‐induced CXCL8 from the supernatant of Caco‐2 epithelial cells. It also prevented secretion of CXCL8 from Caco‐2 cells in a time‐dependent manner when added before induction with IL‐1β. Evasin‐displaying LAB have the ability to bind multiple chemokines simultaneously and exert synergistic activity. This innovative treatment approach therefore has the potential for mucosal therapy of inflammatory bowel disease or colorectal cancer.

Birth of an ill or premature infant and early separation from the mother on behalf of admission to a neonatal intensive care unit was found to be one of the most important predictors of postpartum depression. The goals of the study were to examine the postpartum depression symptoms frequency in the group of mothers of infants in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) at Pediatric Clinic of Ljubljana, and to examine the clinical use of the Neonatal Behavioral Assessment Scale (NBAS) to support the mother-infant bonding and to promote parental competencies. 63 mothers of infants in NICU participated in the study about postpartum depression symptoms frequency and 26 infants and their parents participated in the assessment of the neonatal behavior (12 mothers participated in both parts of the study). The results showed that early hospitalization of the newborn increases the risk of postnatal depression in mothers. The percent of mothers who scored 10 or more points on the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS) was higher than the incidence of postpartum depression in Slovenia. Results support the need of a postpartum depression screening tool for mothers of infants at NICU and show that the use of NBAS is a potentially useful tool to promote parent-infant interaction.

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Uvod: Zdrava prehrana in telesna aktivnost sta neločljivo povezani določilnici zdravja mladostnikov. Namen raziskave je bil (1) ovrednotiti prehranski status ter prehranjevalne navade dijakov 3. letnikov srednješolskega izobraževanja v primorsko-notranjski regiji in (2) preučiti navade njihove telesne aktivnosti ter (3) raziskati povezavo med njihovimi indeksi telesne mase (kg/m2) in prehranskimi navadami. Metode: Raziskava je bila opravljena spomladi 2015 na vzorcu dijakov 3. letnikov (n = 166) v primorskonotranjski regiji. Njihova povprečna starost je bila 18,2 let. Uporabljen je bil anonimni spletni vprašalnik 1KA s 44 vprašanji. S programom SPSS verzija 22 je bila izvedena opisna in inferenčna statistika. Rezultati: Dijaki ne uživajo sadja in zelenjave vsak dan (74 % fantov in 63 % deklet), pri čemer je primanjkljaj skupnega vnosa zelenjave (fantje: 151,3 g, dekleta: 166,7 g) in stročnic (fantje: 138,2 g, dekleta: 141,8 g) večji, kot je pri vnosu sadja (fantje: 172,4 g, dekleta: 170,9 g). Tudi uživanje rib je glede na priporočila premajhno, priporočene količine dosega le 5,4 % deklet in 4,5 %. Dijaki tudi niso dovolj telesno aktivni. Diskusija in zaključek: Kljub številnim ukrepom prehranske politike je med dijaki še vedno premajhen vnos sadja in zelenjave. Šolski obroki bi morali pogosteje vsebovati zelenjavo, stročnice in ribe. Za spodbujanje telesne aktivnosti bi morali mladim šport približati kot vrednoto, dostopno vsem mladostnikom.