Redefinition of gestational diabetes mellitus: implications for laboratory practice in Croatia

An increasing prevalence of gestational diabetes has become a very challenging task in prenatal care worldwide. International Association of Diabetes and Pregnancy Study Groups (IADPSG) has recently issued recommendations on the diagnosis and classification of hyperglycaemia in pregnancy. These recommendations, the first to provide harmonised, evidence-based criteria for the diagnosis and classification of diabetes in pregnancy, are currently being discussed and accepted worldwide by the relevant authorities. As the acceptance of the proposed criteria has major implications for both clinical and laboratory settings, a concerted action towards necessary changes in practice has to be carefully planned and adjusted to national health-care specificities.IADPSG criteria have been strongly advocated by the Croatian Perinatology Society, resulting in a new strategy for the detection and diagnosis of hyperglycaemic disorders in pregnancy.To address the respective laboratory requirements, in April 2012, the Croatian Chamber of Medical Biochemists appointed a Working Group to provide a standardised procedure for the diagnosis of gestational diabetes, applicable to all laboratories involved in prenatal care, in both primary and specialised health-care facilities.In this paper we discuss key laboratory-related issues regarding succesful implementation of the IADPSG criteria in Croatia.     

Skeleton Changes Induced by Horse Riding on Medieval Skeletal Remains from Croatia

Skeletal remains of 35 individuals from the Croatian excavation site Kamen Most – Kaldrma from the fourteenth to fifteenth centuries were analyzed anthropologically. Due to specific skeletal characteristics, eight of them were analyzed in great detail in this study. The results of additional analysis indicated that all bone elements, except pelves, of all eight persons belonged to males. All pelvic girdle have characteristics of female sex and pronounced muscle attachments that are both indicative of horse riding. All eight persons had at least two of six changes on femora indicative of horse riding. Vertebrae of seven persons (one person did not have preserved vertebrae) have Schmorl's nodes. Signs of advanced osteoarthritis were found on all joints in all eight persons. All of them also have visible signs of periostitis especially on lower extremities. Pathological signs of trauma were found in five persons. Two of them had skull fractures and the rest had fractures of extremities which are also characteristic for horse riders. The average age of all eight persons was above 45 years at death. DNA analysis confirmed male sex for seven individuals. The results were additionally confirmed by later archeological findings of tombstones with illustrations of horse riders.     

Improved sentence retrieval using local context and sentence length

In this paper we propose improved variants of the sentence retrieval method TF–ISF (a TF–IDF or Term Frequency–Inverse Document Frequency variant for sentence retrieval). The improvement is achieved by using context consisting of neighboring sentences and at the same time promoting the retrieval of longer sentences. We thoroughly compare new modified TF–ISF methods to the TF–ISF baseline, to an earlier attempt to include context into TF–ISF named tfmix and to a language modeling based method that uses context and promoting retrieval of long sentences named 3MMPDS. Experimental results show that the TF–ISF method can be improved using local context. Results also show that the TF–ISF method can be improved by promoting the retrieval of longer sentences. Finally we show that the best results are achieved when combining both modifications. All new methods (TF–ISF variants) also show statistically significant better results than the other tested methods.     

The role of parents and peers in understanding female adolescent sexuality – testing perceived peer norms as mediators between some parental variables and sexuality

Previous research has confirmed peers and parents as significant agents of socialisation with respect to young people’s sexuality. The aim of this cross-sectional cohort study was to examine how parental and peer variables predict young women’s sexual behaviour and sexuality-related thoughts and emotions, and whether perceived peer influences mediate the relationship between parental variables and young person sexuality. A total of 560 female high school students of 1st (mean age 15.56 years) and 3rd grade (mean age 17.55 years), selected by means of two-stage stratified probability sampling participated in the research. Results confirmed that peer variables explained considerably more variance in participant sexuality than parental variables. Indirect parental communication about sexuality was a significant positive predictor of sexual behaviour and sexuality-related thoughts and emotions in both subsamples. The strength of direct and indirect influences of parents and peers on young people’s sexuality is determined by the age of the young person and specific aspects of adolescent sexuality. Perceived percentage of sexually active peers was the only mediator in older participants, while in the younger subsample, additional peer variables mediated the association between some parental and sexuality variables. In the discussion, special attention is given to implications of these results for planning future forms of comprehensive sexual education.     

Ultrasound and cadaveric prosections as methods for teaching cardiac anatomy: a comparative study

This study compared the efficacy of two cardiac anatomy teaching modalities, ultrasound imaging and cadaveric prosections, for learning cardiac gross anatomy. One hundred and eight first-year medical students participated. Two weeks prior to the teaching intervention, students completed a pretest to assess their prior knowledge and to ensure that groups were equally randomized. Students, divided into pre-existing teaching groups, were assigned to one of two conditions; "cadaver" or "ultrasound." Those in the cadaver group received teaching on the heart using prosections, whereas the ultrasound group received teaching using live ultrasound images of the heart. Immediately after teaching, students sat a post-test. Both teaching modalities increased students' test scores by similar amounts but no significant difference was found between the two conditions, suggesting that both prosections and ultrasound are equally effective methods for teaching gross anatomy of the heart. Our data support the inclusion of either cadaveric teaching or living anatomy using ultrasound within the undergraduate anatomy curriculum, and further work is needed to compare the additive effect of the two modalities.     

Evaluation of mobile assessment in a learning management system

This article discusses the problem of using and delivering educational content from the Moodle learning management system to mobile devices. The primary goal of this study was to investigate the students' habits, motivations and technical possibilities in order to incorporate mobile‐learning activities in the e‐learning process. A mobile quiz has been chosen as an activity to be delivered on mobile devices. The developed mobile quiz application was integrated into Moodle. The application interface was tailored to various types of mobile devices aiming to foster mainstreaming of mobile technologies in e‐learning. For the purposes of the evaluation, an experiment was conducted within the e‐learning system at the Faculty of Organizational Sciences, the University of Belgrade. Data were obtained from the students who attended e‐learning courses in the area of e‐business. Research findings have shown that integration of the mobile quiz application into Moodle improves students' results and increases satisfaction and motivation for using mobile devices in their learning process.     

University access and after: explaining the social composition of degree programmes and the contrasting expectations of students

University expansion in higher education has been hierarchically differentiated. There is some concentration of certain social profiles in some degrees of study, so social composition between degrees can vary considerably. This article describes in terms of social composition 10 degrees of four public universities in the metropolitan area of Barcelona. We analyse 857 questionnaires filled in by mid-career students. From the perspective of agent’s decision on the choice of studies, we explore what were the factors that made them choose a concrete degree. We examine several variables that can indicate whether their expectations have been met or not. The results show that the factors predicted by the theory by which working-class (WC) students choose degrees—instrumental motivations and conditions that minimize the risk—are often met. In this regard, the recent structural reform related with the implementation of the European Higher Education Area that removes short-cycles degrees (3 years) could lead to a problem of access for WC students.