University of Maribor
UniversityMaribor, Maribor City Municipality, Slovenia
Research output, citation impact, and the most-cited recent papers from University of Maribor (Slovenia). Aggregated across the NobleBlocks index of 300M+ scholarly works.
Top-cited papers from University of Maribor
<para xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">We describe an efficient technique for adapting control parameter settings associated with differential evolution (DE). The DE algorithm has been used in many practical cases and has demonstrated good convergence properties. It has only a few control parameters, which are kept fixed throughout the entire evolutionary process. However, it is not an easy task to properly set control parameters in DE. We present an algorithm-a new version of the DE algorithm-for obtaining self-adaptive control parameter settings that show good performance on numerical benchmark problems. The results show that our algorithm with self-adaptive control parameter settings is better than, or at least comparable to, the standard DE algorithm and evolutionary algorithms from literature when considering the quality of the solutions obtained.</para>
autophagic responses. Here, we critically discuss current methods of assessing autophagy and the information they can, or cannot, provide. Our ultimate goal is to encourage intellectual and technical innovation in the field.
We report the observation of a narrow charmoniumlike state produced in the exclusive decay process ${B}^{\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}{K}^{\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}}{\ensuremath{\pi}}^{+}{\ensuremath{\pi}}^{\ensuremath{-}}J/\ensuremath{\psi}$. This state, which decays into ${\ensuremath{\pi}}^{+}{\ensuremath{\pi}}^{\ensuremath{-}}J/\ensuremath{\psi}$, has a mass of $3872.0\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}0.6\mathrm{(}\mathrm{s}\mathrm{t}\mathrm{a}\mathrm{t}\mathrm{)}\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}0.5\mathrm{(}\mathrm{s}\mathrm{y}\mathrm{s}\mathrm{t}\mathrm{)}\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{M}\mathrm{e}\mathrm{V}$, a value that is very near the ${M}_{{D}^{0}}+{M}_{{D}^{*0}}$ mass threshold. The results are based on an analysis of 152M $B$-$\overline{B}$ events collected at the $\ensuremath{\Upsilon}(4S)$ resonance in the Belle detector at the KEKB collider. The signal has a statistical significance that is in excess of $10\ensuremath{\sigma}$.
Humans express a wide array of ideal mate preferences. Around the world, people desire romantic partners who are intelligent, healthy, kind, physically attractive, wealthy, and more. In order for these ideal preferences to guide the choice of actual romantic partners, human mating psychology must possess a means to integrate information across these many preference dimensions into summaries of the overall mate value of their potential mates. Here we explore the computational design of this mate preference integration process using a large sample of n = 14,487 people from 45 countries around the world. We combine this large cross-cultural sample with agent-based models to compare eight hypothesized models of human mating markets. Across cultures, people higher in mate value appear to experience greater power of choice on the mating market in that they set higher ideal standards, better fulfill their preferences in choice, and pair with higher mate value partners. Furthermore, we find that this cross-culturally universal pattern of mate choice is most consistent with a Euclidean model of mate preference integration.
Domain-specific languages (DSLs) are languages tailored to a specific application domain. They offer substantial gains in expressiveness and ease of use compared with general-purpose programming languages in their domain of application. DSL development is hard, requiring both domain knowledge and language development expertise. Few people have both. Not surprisingly, the decision to develop a DSL is often postponed indefinitely, if considered at all, and most DSLs never get beyond the application library stage.Although many articles have been written on the development of particular DSLs, there is very limited literature on DSL development methodologies and many questions remain regarding when and how to develop a DSL. To aid the DSL developer, we identify patterns in the decision, analysis, design, and implementation phases of DSL development. Our patterns improve and extend earlier work on DSL design patterns. We also discuss domain analysis tools and language development systems that may help to speed up DSL development. Finally, we present a number of open problems.
This review summarizes the corrosion inhibition of steel materials in acidic media. Numerous corrosion inhibitors for steels in acidic solutions are presented. The emphasis is on HCl solutions, lower-grade steels, and elevated temperatures. This review is also devoted to corrosion inhibitor formulation design – mixtures of corrosion inhibitors with (mainly) surfactants, solvents, and intensifiers to improve the effectiveness of individual compounds at elevated temperatures. The information presented in this review is useful for diverse industrial fields, primarily for the well acidizing procedure, and secondly for other applications where corrosion inhibitors for steel materials are needed.
“Exploration and exploitation are the two cornerstones of problem solving by search.” For more than a decade, Eiben and Schippers' advocacy for balancing between these two antagonistic cornerstones still greatly influences the research directions of evolutionary algorithms (EAs) [1998]. This article revisits nearly 100 existing works and surveys how such works have answered the advocacy. The article introduces a fresh treatment that classifies and discusses existing work within three rational aspects: (1) what and how EA components contribute to exploration and exploitation; (2) when and how exploration and exploitation are controlled; and (3) how balance between exploration and exploitation is achieved. With a more comprehensive and systematic understanding of exploration and exploitation, more research in this direction may be motivated and refined.
Being secondary plant metabolites, polyphenols represent a large and diverse group of substances abundantly present in a majority of fruits, herbs and vegetables. The current contribution is focused on their bioavailability, antioxidative and anticarcinogenic properties. An overview of extraction methods is also given, with supercritical fluid extraction highlighted as a promising eco-friendly alternative providing exceptional separation and protection from degradation of unstable polyphenols. The protective role of polyphenols against reactive oxygen and nitrogen species, UV light, plant pathogens, parasites and predators results in several beneficial biological activities giving rise to prophylaxis or possibly even to a cure for several prevailing human diseases, especially various cancer types. Omnipresence, specificity of the response and the absence of or low toxicity are crucial advantages of polyphenols as anticancer agents. The main problem represents their low bioavailability and rapid metabolism. One of the promising solutions lies in nanoformulation of polyphenols that prevents their degradation and thus enables significantly higher concentrations to reach the target cells. Another, more practiced, solution is the use of mixtures of various polyphenols that bring synergistic effects, resulting in lowering of the required therapeutic dose and in multitargeted action. The combination of polyphenols with existing drugs and therapies also shows promising results and significantly reduces their toxicity.
Probiotics are defined as live microorganisms, which when administered in adequate amounts, confer a health benefit on the host. Health benefits have mainly been demonstrated for specific probiotic strains of the following genera: Lactobacillus, Bifidobacterium, Saccharomyces, Enterococcus, Streptococcus, Pediococcus, Leuconostoc, Bacillus, Escherichia coli. The human microbiota is getting a lot of attention today and research has already demonstrated that alteration of this microbiota may have far-reaching consequences. One of the possible routes for correcting dysbiosis is by consuming probiotics. The credibility of specific health claims of probiotics and their safety must be established through science-based clinical studies. This overview summarizes the most commonly used probiotic microorganisms and their demonstrated health claims. As probiotic properties have been shown to be strain specific, accurate identification of particular strains is also very important. On the other hand, it is also demonstrated that the use of various probiotics for immunocompromised patients or patients with a leaky gut has also yielded infections, sepsis, fungemia, bacteraemia. Although the vast majority of probiotics that are used today are generally regarded as safe and beneficial for healthy individuals, caution in selecting and monitoring of probiotics for patients is needed and complete consideration of risk-benefit ratio before prescribing is recommended.
Despite not recording directly from neural cells, the surface electromyogram (EMG) signal contains information on the neural drive to muscles, i.e., the spike trains of motor neurons. Using this property, myoelectric control consists of the recording of EMG signals for extracting control signals to command external devices, such as hand prostheses. In commercial control systems, the intensity of muscle activity is extracted from the EMG and used for single degrees of freedom activation (direct control). Over the past 60 years, academic research has progressed to more sophisticated approaches but, surprisingly, none of these academic achievements has been implemented in commercial systems so far. We provide an overview of both commercial and academic myoelectric control systems and we analyze their performance with respect to the characteristics of the ideal myocontroller. Classic and relatively novel academic methods are described, including techniques for simultaneous and proportional control of multiple degrees of freedom and the use of individual motor neuron spike trains for direct control. The conclusion is that the gap between industry and academia is due to the relatively small functional improvement in daily situations that academic systems offer, despite the promising laboratory results, at the expense of a substantial reduction in robustness. None of the systems so far proposed in the literature fulfills all the important criteria needed for widespread acceptance by the patients, i.e. intuitive, closed-loop, adaptive, and robust real-time ( 200 ms delay) control, minimal number of recording electrodes with low sensitivity to repositioning, minimal training, limited complexity and low consumption. Nonetheless, in recent years, important efforts have been invested in matching these criteria, with relevant steps forwards.
Interactions among living organisms, from bacteria colonies to human \nsocieties, are inherently more complex than interactions among particles \nand non-living matter. Group interactions are a particularly important and \nwidespread class, representative of which is the public goods game. In \naddition, methods of statistical physics have proved valuable for studying \npattern formation, equilibrium selection and self-organization in evolution- \nary games. Here, we review recent advances in the study of evolutionary \ndynamics of group interactions on top of structured populations, including \nlattices, complex networks and coevolutionary models. We also compare \nthese results with those obtained on well-mixed populations. The review \nparticularly highlights that the study of the dynamics of group interactions, \nlike several other important equilibrium and non-equilibrium dynamical \nprocesses in biological, economical and social sciences, benefits from the \nsynergy between statistical physics, network science and evolutionary \ngame theory.
The diversity in wealth and social status is present not only among humans, but throughout the animal world. We account for this observation by generating random variables that determine the social diversity of players engaging in the prisoner's dilemma game. Here the term social diversity is used to address extrinsic factors that determine the mapping of game payoffs to individual fitness. These factors may increase or decrease the fitness of a player depending on its location on the spatial grid. We consider different distributions of extrinsic factors that determine the social diversity of players, and find that the power-law distribution enables the best promotion of cooperation. The facilitation of the cooperative strategy relies mostly on the inhomogeneous social state of players, resulting in the formation of cooperative clusters which are ruled by socially high-ranking players that are able to prevail against the defectors even when there is a large temptation to defect. To confirm this, we also study the impact of spatially correlated social diversity and find that cooperation deteriorates as the spatial correlation length increases. Our results suggest that the distribution of wealth and social status might have played a crucial role by the evolution of cooperation amongst egoistic individuals.
The cross section for ${e}^{+}{e}^{\ensuremath{-}}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}{\ensuremath{\pi}}^{+}{\ensuremath{\pi}}^{\ensuremath{-}}J/\ensuremath{\psi}$ between 3.8 and 5.5 GeV is measured with a $967\text{ }\text{ }{\mathrm{fb}}^{\ensuremath{-}1}$ data sample collected by the Belle detector at or near the $\ensuremath{\Upsilon}(nS)$ ($n=1,2,\dots{},5$) resonances. The $Y(4260)$ state is observed, and its resonance parameters are determined. In addition, an excess of ${\ensuremath{\pi}}^{+}{\ensuremath{\pi}}^{\ensuremath{-}}J/\ensuremath{\psi}$ production around 4 GeV is observed. This feature can be described by a Breit-Wigner parametrization with properties that are consistent with the $Y(4008)$ state that was previously reported by Belle. In a study of $Y(4260)\ensuremath{\rightarrow}{\ensuremath{\pi}}^{+}{\ensuremath{\pi}}^{\ensuremath{-}}J/\ensuremath{\psi}$ decays, a structure is observed in the $M({\ensuremath{\pi}}^{\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}}J/\ensuremath{\psi})$ mass spectrum with $5.2\ensuremath{\sigma}$ significance, with mass $M=(3894.5\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}6.6\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}4.5)\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{MeV}/{c}^{2}$ and width $\ensuremath{\Gamma}=(63\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}24\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}26)\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{MeV}/{c}^{2}$, where the errors are statistical and systematic, respectively. This structure can be interpreted as a new charged charmoniumlike state.
Qualinet White Paper on Definitions of Quality of Experience Output from the fifth Qualinet meeting, Novi Sad, March 12, 2013
We report a measurement of the branching fraction ratios $R({D}^{(*)})$ of $\overline{B}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}{D}^{(*)}{\ensuremath{\tau}}^{\ensuremath{-}}{\overline{\ensuremath{\nu}}}_{\ensuremath{\tau}}$ relative to $\overline{B}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}{D}^{(*)}{\ensuremath{\ell}}^{\ensuremath{-}}{\overline{\ensuremath{\nu}}}_{\ensuremath{\ell}}$ (where $\ensuremath{\ell}=e$ or $\ensuremath{\mu}$) using the full Belle data sample of $772\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{10}^{6}B\overline{B}$ pairs collected at the $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Upsilon}}(4S)$ resonance with the Belle detector at the KEKB asymmetric-energy ${e}^{+}{e}^{\ensuremath{-}}$ collider. The measured values are $R(D)=0.375\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}0.064(\text{stat})\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}0.026(\text{syst})$ and $R({D}^{*})=0.293\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}0.038(\text{stat})\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}0.015(\text{syst})$. The analysis uses hadronic reconstruction of the tag-side $B$ meson and purely leptonic $\ensuremath{\tau}$ decays. The results are consistent with earlier measurements and do not show a significant deviation from the standard model prediction.
Blockchain technology enables the creation of a decentralized environment, where transactions and data are not under the control of any third party organization. Any transaction ever completed is recorded in a public ledger in a verifiable and permanent way. Based on the blockchain technology, we propose a global higher education credit platform, named EduCTX. This platform is based on the concept of the European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System (ECTS). It constitutes a globally trusted, decentralized higher education credit, and grading system that can offer a globally unified viewpoint for students and higher education institutions (HEIs), as well as for other potential stakeholders, such as companies, institutions, and organizations. As a proof of concept, we present a prototype implementation of the environment, based on the open-source Ark Blockchain Platform. Based on a globally distributed peer-to-peer network, EduCTX will process, manage, and control ECTX tokens, which represent credits that students gain for completed courses, such as ECTS. HEIs are the peers of the blockchain network. The platform is a first step toward a more transparent and technologically advanced form of higher education systems. The EduCTX platform represents the basis of the EduCTX initiative, which anticipates that various HEIs would join forces in order to create a globally efficient, simplified, and ubiquitous environment in order to avoid language and administrative barriers. Therefore, we invite and encourage HEIs to join the EduCTX initiative and the EduCTX blockchain network.
Blockchain technology enables a decentralized and distributed environment with no need for a central authority. Transactions are simultaneously secure and trustworthy due to the use of cryptographic principles. In recent years, blockchain technology has become very trendy and penetrated different domains, mostly due to the popularity of cryptocurrencies. One field where blockchain technology has tremendous potential is healthcare, due to the need for a more patient-centric approach to healthcare systems and to connect disparate systems and increase the accuracy of electronic healthcare records (EHRs). In this systematic review, an analysis of state-of-the-art blockchain research in the field of healthcare is conducted. The aim is to reveal the potential applications of the technology and to highlight the challenges and possible directions of blockchain research in healthcare. First, background information is discussed, followed by a description of the exact methodology used in this paper. Next, an analysis of the results is given, which includes a bibliometric overview, an analysis of gathered data and its properties, and the results of a literature quality assessment. Lastly, there is a discussion of the results from the analysis. The findings indicate that blockchain technology research in healthcare is increasing and it is mostly used for data sharing, managing health records and access control. Other scenarios are very rare. Most research is aimed at presenting novel structural designs in the form of frameworks, architectures or models. Findings also show that technical details about the used blockchain elements are not given in most of the analyzed publications and that most research does not present any prototype implementation or implementation details. Often even with a prototype implementation, no details about blockchain elements are given.
The promise of punishment and reward in promoting public cooperation is debatable. While punishment is traditionally considered more successful than reward, the fact that the cost of punishment frequently fails to offset gains from enhanced cooperation has lead some to reconsider reward as the main catalyst behind collaborative efforts. Here we elaborate on the "stick versus carrot" dilemma by studying the evolution of cooperation in the spatial public goods game, where besides the traditional cooperators and defectors, rewarding cooperators supplement the array of possible strategies. The latter are willing to reward cooperative actions at a personal cost, thus effectively downgrading pure cooperators to second-order free-riders due to their unwillingness to bear these additional costs. Consequently, we find that defection remains viable, especially if the rewarding is costly. Rewards, however, can promote cooperation, especially if the synergetic effects of cooperation are low. Surprisingly, moderate rewards may promote cooperation better than high rewards, which is due to the spontaneous emergence of cyclic dominance between the three strategies.
OBJECTIVE: The study of motor unit behavior has been classically performed by selective recording systems of muscle electrical activity (EMG signals) and decomposition algorithms able to discriminate between individual motor unit action potentials from multi-unit signals. In this study, we provide a general framework for the decomposition of multi-channel intramuscular and surface EMG signals and we extensively validate this approach with experimental recordings. APPROACH: First, we describe the conditions under which the assumptions of the convolutive blind separation model are satisfied. Second, we propose an approach of convolutive sphering of the observations followed by an iterative extraction of the sources. This approach is then validated using intramuscular signals recorded by novel multi-channel thin-film electrodes on the Abductor Digiti Minimi of the hand and Tibilias Anterior muscles, as well as on high-density surface EMG signals recorded by electrode grids on the First Dorsal Interosseous muscle. The validation was based on the comparison with the gold standard of manual decomposition (for intramuscular recordings) and on the two-source method (for comparison of intramuscular and surface EMG recordings) for the three human muscles and contraction forces of up to 90% MVC. MAIN RESULTS: The average number of common sources identified for the validation was 14 ± 7 (averaged across all trials and subjects and all comparisons), with a rate of agreement in their discharge timings of 92.8 ± 3.2%. The average Decomposability Index, calculated on the automatic decomposed signals, was 16.0 ± 2.2 (7.3-44.1). For comparison, the same index calculated on the manual decomposed signals was 15.0 ± 3.0 (6.3-76.6). SIGNIFICANCE: These results show that the method provides a solid framework for the decomposition of multi-channel invasive and non-invasive EMG signals that allows the study of the behavior of a large number of concurrently active motor units.
<para xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> This paper studies a novel decomposition technique, suitable for blind separation of linear mixtures of signals comprising finite-length symbols. The observed symbols are first modeled as channel responses in a multiple-input–multiple-output (MIMO) model, while the channel inputs are conceptually considered sparse positive pulse trains carrying the information about the symbol arising times. Our decomposition approach compensates channel responses and aims at reconstructing the input pulse trains directly. The algorithm is derived first for the overdetermined noiseless MIMO case. A generalized scheme is then provided for the underdetermined mixtures in noisy environments. Although blind, the proposed technique approaches Bayesian optimal linear minimum mean square error estimator and is, hence, significantly noise resistant. The results of simulation tests prove it can be applied to considerably underdetermined convolutive mixtures and even to the mixtures of moderately correlated input pulse trains, with their cross-correlation up to 10% of its maximum possible value. </para>