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Endoscopic ultrasound-guided fine needle aspiration biopsy (EUS FNAB) is a well established diagnostic method in adult patients, but is rarely used in the paediatric population. The Clinical Department of Gastroenterology at the University Clinical Centre Ljubljana and the Department of Cytopathology at the Institute of Pathology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, have been closely collaborating on EUS FNAB since the introduction in 2010. The aim of the study was to review the cases of EUS FNAB of pancreatic neoplasms in children.

Every individual deserves access to healthy, affordable, and quality nutrition. Such access is hindered by deep inequalities stemming from unjust systems that structure everyday living conditions. The transformation of the food system into safe, improved, and healthy nutrition accessible to all is a crucial global issue. Healthy nutrition can play a significant role in the sustainability of the food system. Childhood obesity is a significant health problem in the developed world and affects many countries with low and middle incomes, particularly in urban areas. Unfortunately, obese children often remain obese in adulthood, increasing the likelihood of developing numerous chronic non-communicable diseases at a younger age. There is a clear link between infant and young child feeding practices and the socio-demographic characteristics of households. Breastfeeding up to the age of one is less common in wealthier households, urban environments, or among highly educated mothers. Combating malnutrition requires political dedication and simultaneous actions across multiple sectors, along with significant investments in program implementation and monitoring progress towards sustainable healthy nutrition.

Foreign direct investment (FDI) is an important factor in economic development. The impact of FDI on the host country is achieved by transferring capital, knowledge, technology, organisational structure, and strategies. In addition, FDI affects the condition of competition in host country markets, which is the focus of this study. Our purpose is to estimate the impact of FDI on market concentration and competition conditions using the example of the Serbian banking market. The autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach was used to test the long- and short-run relationship between market concentration, FDI, and the number of banks from Q4 2004 to Q2 2019. The results suggest that increases in FDI volume reduce the Serbian banking market’s concentration level in the long and short run. On the other hand, a decrease in the number of banks leads to an increase in market concentration in the long and short run. Our study’s recommendation for competition authorities is to pay more attention to the concentration of undertakings, especially in financial sectors such as the banking market. The process of concentration of undertakings carries a high risk of violating competition conditions, and authorities need to mitigate this risk.

Introduction: Respiratory diseases account for more than 25% of all pediatric examinations. The most common are asthma, acute bronchitis and respiratory infections. They are mostly accompanied by dyspnea, increased body temperature and cough. Objective: To examine the frequency, age differences and seasonal nature of respiratory diseases in the pediatric age. Materials and methods: The data were analyzed retrospectively, using the electronic database of the Novi Sad Emergency Medical Service (EMSNS) in the period from July 1, 2022 to July 1, 2023. The research included pediatric patients diagnosed with laryngitis (J04 according to ICD-10), acute bronchitis (J20 according to ICD-10), asthma (J45 according to ICD-10) and pneumonia (J18 according to ICD-10). 11259 patients of both sexes were analyzed. For data analysis we used descriptive statistical methods and standard deviation. Results: Out of a total of 11,259 examined children, 840 (7%) of them presented with respiratory problems. Of these, there were 519 (62%) boys and 321 (38%) girls. The average age of the children was 4 years (SD ± 3.2). The majority of children examined were aged 0-5 - 644 (77%). 472 (56%) children were diagnosed with laryngitis, 267 (32%) children had acute bronchitis, 81 (10%) children had asthma, 20 children (2%) had pneumonia. Most children were examined in October - 135 (16%), most often due to laryngitis - 73 (54%). 765 (91%) were treated on the spot, while 75 (9%) of them were referred to the IZZDIOV, of which 33 (44%) children were referred for acute bronchitis. The most frequently used therapy was Methylprednisolone - 368 (46%), mostly in 202 (24%) children diagnosed with laryngitis. Conclusion: Prevention, early diagnosis and therapy are necessary in order to prevent more serious complications of these diseases.

The existing empirical subject matter testifies to a significant correlation between life satisfaction and positive future expectations among high school students. However, there is a lack of research situating more concretely the role of satisfaction with various aspects of life in relation to positive future expectations. Hence, this research focuses on the importance of satisfaction with various aspects of life among Belgrade high school students for their positive future expectations, with a particular emphasis on examining the role of school satisfaction. This research was conducted during the second semester of the 2021/22 academic year, on a sample of 215 Belgrade high school students. The results indicate that satisfaction with different aspects of life and satisfaction with life in general, have significant positive correlations with positive future expectations. Positive future expectations have the strongest correlation with self-satisfaction, while their lowest correlation is with school satisfaction. Despite its weak correlation with positive future expectations, satisfaction with school has proven to be a significant moderator of the strongest relationship identified - self-satisfaction and positive future expectations. In other words, the findings reached in this research point to the conclusion that activities planned in the context of the development of school satisfaction can compensate for the negative impact of self-satisfaction, prompting more positive future expectations. Considering that empirical endeavors so far have focused mostly on identifying a link with positive developmental outcomes, this research can serve as a starting point for a more detailed understanding of the mechanisms for encouraging positive future expectations among high school students.

Esters are organic compounds that are widely used even on an industrial scale, so their production has been extensively investigated. The aim of this work is to carry out the optimization process of esterification of propionic acid with lower monohydric alcohols. The influence of the amount of catalyst (H2SO4), the size and structure of the alcohol, the influence of the a-substituent, the molar acid/alcohol ratio and temperature on the esterification process were investigated. The descending order of reactivity tested alcohol is: 1-butanol> 1-propanol> ethanol> 2-propanol. As the acid/alcohol molar ratio increases, the rate and yield of the esterification reaction increase. The maximum yield of n-propyl propanoate in our experiments was 96.9%, achieved at a molar ratio of propanoic acid/1-propanol/catalyst 1/10/0.20 and a temperature of 65°C for 210 minutes of reaction.

Research background: Economic relations between countries members of the EU and EU candidates are very strong. Germany and France have the leading economies of the EU, are in the top ten economies worldwide, and drivers of EU development. Serbia has strong economic relations with Germany and France, especially with Germany. Therefore, it is necessary to examine whether Germany and France impact the development of Serbia.

Summary: The purpose of this study was to improve the prognostic value of tumour histopathology image analysis methodology by image preprocessing. Key image qualities were modified including contrast, sharpness and brightness. The texture information was subsequently extracted from images of haematoxylin/eosin‐stained tumour tissue sections by GLCM, monofractal and multifractal algorithms without any analytical limitation to predefined structures. Images were derived from patient groups with invasive breast carcinoma (BC, 93 patients) and inflammatory breast carcinoma (IBC, 51 patients). The prognostic performance was indeed significantly enhanced by preprocessing with the average AUCs of individual texture features improving from 0.68 ± 0.05 for original to 0.78 ± 0.01 for preprocessed images in the BC group and 0.75 ± 0.01 to 0.80 ± 0.02 in the IBC group. Image preprocessing also improved the prognostic independence of texture features as indicated by multivariate analysis. Surprisingly, the tonal histogram compression by the nonnormalisation preprocessing has prognostically outperformed the tested contrast normalisation algorithms. Generally, features without prognostic value showed higher susceptibility to prognostic enhancement by preprocessing whereas IDM texture feature was exceptionally susceptible. The obtained results are suggestive of the existence of distinct texture prognostic clues in the two examined types of breast cancer. The obtained enhancement of prognostic performance is essential for the anticipated clinical use of this method as a simple and cost‐effective prognosticator of cancer outcome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction/Objective. Nuclear Medicine Section of IAEA has developed the software for dynamic renal scintigraphy, which allows calculation of advanced parameters of drainage: renal output efficiency (OE) and normalized residual activity (NORA). The aim of this study was to validate IAEA software by comparing results of parameters of renal drainage in normal subjects against their established reference values and to assess diagnostic accuracy of OE and NORA in distinguishing between obstruction/unobstruction. Methods. Fifty-five patients with suspected obstruction and 36 kidney donors were investigated. Group A consisted of 24 obstructed kidneys, Group B of 37 kidneys with dilated urinary tract, and Group C of 72 normal kidneys. Forty-minute acquisition was applied. Furosemide was administered after 20 minutes. Post-micturition image was acquired at 50 minutes. The analyzed parameters were as follows: OE at 20 minutes (OE20) and at the end of the furosemide test (OE40), NORA at 20 minutes (NORA20) and after micturition (NORAPM). One-way ANOVA was used for evaluating the differences between the groups. Ability of OE40 and NORAPM to distinguish between obstruction/unobstruction was determined by ROC curve analysis. The sensitivity, specificity, area under the curve, and cut-off values were analyzed. Results. Excellent agreement of our results with established OE and NORA values was found. The difference between the groups was significant for OE20, OE40, NORA20, and NORAPM (p < 0.001). Cut-off values for obstruction were 82% and 0.11 for OE40 and NORAPM, respectively. Conclusion. IAEA software gives reliable analysis of diuretic renography and helps to better diagnose obstruction. IAEA should be encouraged to produce final version of the software and to release it online.

In this work, the essential oils (EOs) obtained by hydrodistillation from the aerial parts of five Artemisia species: A. alba Turra, A. pontica L., A. scoparia Waldst. & Kitam., A. vulgaris L., originating from Serbia and A. umbelliformis Lam. subsp. eriantha (Ten.) Vallès-Xirau & Oliva Brañas, originating from Montenegro were analyzed by gas chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry (GC/MS). In total, 91 compounds were detected, and 78 were identified. Even though a high number of compounds were detected, each sample had only 18 to 35, attesting to a great diversity of compounds within these taxa. Depending on the species and the locality (geographical origin), the EO was dominated by either monoterpenes or sesquiterpenes, with artemisia ketone, 1,8-cineole (eucalyptol), fragranol, α-thujone, β-thujone and myrcene being the dominant compounds. The obtained results were coupled with extensive literature data and used in multivariate chemometric approach to assess the chemophenetic significance of the EO.

Modern society is characterised by clear and distinct demographic processes, such as the constant decline in the number of children born and the ageing population in developed countries, resulting from complex biological, economic, social, political, and other factors. Demographic changes observed through population ageing have an impact on the economy and inflation. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to examine the impact of population ageing on inflation in Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) countries. The paper’s authors used data from 1970 to 2016. The ARDL approach was used to test the long- and short-term relationship between population ageing and inflation. The results showed a positive relationship between population ageing and inflation in the long term and a negative relationship in the short term. The ageing population decreases inflation in the short term and increases inflation in the long term.

This paper presents an analysis of the poetic text of The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot through the empirical application of theoretical concepts of intertextuality, derived from the intertextual semiotic theory of poetry by Michael (Michel) Riffaterre. In the first part of this paper, we sought to provide a reliable framework for the theoretical definition of intertextuality, starting with the introduction of the neologism of intertextuality by Julia Kristeva, through the concept of general intertextuality considered in the light of postmodern poststructuralist and deconstructive theory of Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida, to consideration of the concept of specific intertextuality limited to the domain of literature within Riffaterre's intertextual semiotics of poetry. In the second part of the paper, we tried to apply on the poetic text of The Waste Land some of the basic theoretical postulates of Riffaterre's understanding of intertextuality, which include a referential interpretation of the text aimed at the reader on the basis of hermeneutic phenomenology that leads the interpretation of a literary poetic text to a specific meaning. When approaching the analysis of the poetic text of The Waste Land, we based our analysis on the premise set by Cleanth Brooks. More precisely, we focused on the central axis of the poetic meaning of the poem, according to which the Christian material is at the center, but the poet never deals with it directly. Therefore, Brooks' initial premise led our interpretation of the poetic text towards the recognition of adequate biblical hypograms as variants of the hidden matrix of the text, where we noticed ungrammaticalities as stylistic and semantic anomalies in relation to the initially established negative idiolect of the text on the mimetic level of interpretation, and then, by moving to the semiotic level of interpretation, we connected the observed grammaticalities through the biblical intertext with the unique intertextual structure of the poem and the matrix that represents the reduced poetic meaning of the poem. Thus, grammaticalities as deviations from the real became poetic signs that make the descriptive poetic text of The Waste Land, in which symbolic discourse is literarily dominant and, in accordance with the assumed matrix, profoundly religious. Thanks to the analysis of the deep semantic-verbal structure of the text, we realized that hypograms were recognized with the help of the polarization process, a variant of the matrix that spreads the poetic meaning to equivalent lexical-grammatical elements of the text, forming a common intertextual network. At the very end of this paper, it is important to emphasize that this analysis of the poetic text of The Waste Land was formed on the basis of a reader's sociolect based on the views of the Christian faith. Therefore, if there were no divine protagonist as the subject of our presumed variant of the matrix, then the presumed deep structure of this poem by T.S. Eliot would be unconvincing. However, the possible bias expressed through the influence of the Christian sociolect in this type of analysis of the poetic text is not a consequence of an arbitrary act of the reader, but it is derived from the receptivity of the poetic text of the poem The Waste Land for empirical application of Riffaterre's semiotic principles of intertextual theory of poetry, which brought the religious-metaphysical meaning of the poem to the surface beneath the layers of referential delusions.

Essential oils of many plants are widely used with a bias to have only positive effects on the body. Considering that terpenes are dominant ingredients of many essential oils, the influences of selected terpenes (geraniol, nerol, linalool, carvacrol) on the activities of the most important enzymes in clinical practice (creatine kinase, lactate dehydrogenase, amylase, alkaline phosphatase, gamma-glutamyltransferase, aspartate aminotransferase and alanine aminotransferase) are examined in this study. The survey was conducted in vitro with solutions of terpenes at concentrations in the range of 1.82-4.63 mmol/l and in commercial control human serum. Activities are measured by the standard clinical biochemical procedures. A decrease in activity of the enzyme to varying degrees was noted and it was ranged from 1/6 to slightly less than half of the enzyme activity, depending on the type of terpenes, the concentration of their solution, as well as the type of enzyme. The best inhibitor, in the described in vitro conditions, proved to be linalool (lavender), carvacrol (basil, oregano), geraniol (geranium) and the last nerol (orange). The results of this study confirm the initial hypothesis that the terpenes are, undoubtedly, those components of the essential oils that lead to significant inhibition of the clinical enzymes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]