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In 2022 the Serbian Orthodox Church managed to seal off two of its longstanding ecclesial conflicts in former Yugoslavia and put an end to open hostility. The end of the conflicts seems to have been prompted as a response to the War in Ukraine. This chapter explores the Orthodox diplomacy in Montenegro and Macedonia and how it relates to the geopolitical and ecclesial role of the Serbian Orthodox

The basement membrane (BM) is a specialized layer of extracellular matrix components that plays a central role in maintaining lung and kidney functions. Although the composition of the BM is usually tissue specific, the lung and the kidney preferentially use similar BM components. Unsurprisingly, diseases with BM defects often have severe pulmonary or renal manifestations, sometimes both. Excessiv

The extracellular matrix (ECM) increasingly emerges as an active driver in several diseases, including idiopathic pulmonary arterial hypertension (IPAH). The basement membrane (BM) is a specialized class of ECM proteins. In pulmonary arteries, the BM is in close contact and direct proximity to vascular cells, including endothelial cells. So far, the role of the BM has remained underinvestigated in

Rationale: Pulmonary hypertension (PH) is a common, severe comorbidity in interstitial lung diseases such as pulmonary fibrosis (PF), and it has limited treatment options. Excessive vascular fibrosis and inflammation are often present in PH, but the underlying mechanisms are still not well understood. Objectives: To identify a novel functional link between natural killer T (NKT) cell activation an

Copepods may contribute to harmful algal bloom formation by selectively rejecting harmful cells. Additionally, copepods and the chemical cues they exude, copepodamides, have been shown to induce increased toxin production in paralytic and amnesic toxin producing microalgae. However, it is unknown if diarrhetic shellfish toxin (DST) producers such as Dinophysis respond to copepods or copepodamides

Metal matrix composites (MMCs) possess excellent material properties due to the combination of metals and reinforcing phases, yet this reduces their machinability. Numerous studies have shown that, due to the ploughing effect of the cutting tool, the edge effect can directly impact the material removal mechanism and the generation of surface integrity. However, the influence of different cutting-e

BACKGROUND: The diagnostic role of signal-averaged ECG (SAECG) in arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy (ARVC) has lately been questioned. We assessed the value of SAECG-derived late ventricular potentials (LP) in ARVC diagnosis and its association with disease manifestations.METHODS AND RESULTS: Patients with definite ARVC diagnosis or genotype-positive family members who underwent SAEC

This paper connects insights from the literature on cosmopolitan worldviews and the effects of perspective-taking in political science, (intergroup) anxiety in social psychology, and identity economics in a vignette-style experiment. In particular, we asked German respondents about their attitudes towards a Syrian refugee, randomizing components of his description (N = 662). The main treatment des

The ability to predict the absorption of exenatide (Ex), a GLP-1 analogue, after oral dosing to rats in self-nanoemulsifying drug delivery systems (SNEDDS), using in vitro methods, was assessed. Ex was complexed with soybean phosphatidylcholine (SPC) prior to loading into SNEDDS. A design of experiments (DoE) approach was employed to develop SNEDDS incorporating medium-chain triglycerides (MCT), m

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is considered by some to be a critical climate change mitigation technology, and a key element in efforts to limit the global temperature increases in line with the goals of the Paris Agreement. Implementation of CCS in mitigation scenarios assumes that it provides cost-effective emission reductions, and/or can achieve negative emissions when combined with bioenerg

Background: Retention of study participants in observational studies is essential to maintaining the representativeness of the population, minimizing selection bias, and assuring sufficient statistical power. The aim of this report is to describe the structures and strategies used to retain participants in The Environmental Determinants of Diabetes in the Young (TEDDY) Study, an observational stud

Hypothesis: The oil phase controls the persistence length and aqueous channel diameter of reverse wormlike micelles (RWLMs), specifically by tuning the cohesive energy density of alkanes. Experiments: We explore the influence of alkanes with varying chain lengths on the rheological properties, structural parameters, and morphology of RWLMs. To establish a link between the solvent characteristics a

Ampullary composite gangliocytoma/neuroma and neuroendocrine tumor (CoGNET), previously called ampullary gangliocytic paragangliomas, is a rare entity, with only few reported cases in the literature. This is a multicentric retrospective cohort study of patients treated with endoscopy or surgery for ampullary CoGNET. A literature review of ampullary CoGNET was also performed. Fifteen patients were

Assessment of psychological constructs, such as the Big Five personality traits, has predominantly relied on standardized rating scales. While these scales have advantages, we propose that descriptive word-based responses analyzed with natural language processing (NLP) offer a promising alternative for assessing personality traits. We asked participants (N = 663) to describe either their own perso

Background/aim: Exertional breathlessness is a dominating symptom in cardiorespiratory disease, limiting exercise capacity. Multidimensional measurement has been proposed to capture breathlessness, but it is unknown whether it is useful to differentiate people with abnormal vs normal exertional breathlessness intensity. Methods: This was a secondary analysis of a randomized controlled trial of out

Network Function Virtualization (NFV) has shifted communication networks towards more adaptable software solutions, but this transition raises new security concerns, particularly in public cloud deployments. While Intel’s Software Guard Extensions (SGX) offers a potential remedy, it requires complex application adaptations. This paper investigates AMD’s Secure Encrypted Virtualization (SEV) as an

Neural radiance fields (NeRFs) have gained popularity in the autonomous driving (AD) community. Recent meth-ods show NeRFs' potential for closed-loop simulation, en-abling testing of AD systems, and as an advanced training data augmentation technique. However, existing meth-ods often require long training times, dense semantic su-pervision, or lack generalizability. This, in turn, hinders the appl