Wasted Biomaterials from Crustaceans as a Compliant Natural Product Regarding Microbiological, Antibacterial Properties and Heavy Metal Content for Reuse in Blue Bioeconomy: A Preliminary Study.

The compliance of crab shells traditionally used as a complex natural product for agricultural soil amendment with modern biofertilizers' quality and safety requirements was investigated. Shells waste from the Blue crab, and the Green crab, were tested for macronutrients, heavy metals, bacteria content, and antimicrobial properties. Such information is crucial for further utilization of the biogenic powders for any composite formulation in added-value by-products.

PHY, MAC, and RLC Layer Based Estimation of Optimal Cyclic Prefix Length.

This work is motivated by growing evidence that the standard Cyclic Prefix (CP) length, adopted in the Long Term Evolution (LTE) physical layer (PHY) specifications, is oversized in propagation environments ranging from indoor to typical urban. Although this ostensibly seems to be addressed by 5G New Radio (NR) numerology, its scalable CP length reduction is proportionally tracked by the OFDM symbol length, which preserves the relative CP overhead of LTE. Furthermore, some simple means to optimize fixed or introduce adaptive CP length arose from either simulations or models taking into account only the bit-oriented PHY transmission performance.

A global-scale screening of non-native aquatic organisms to identify potentially invasive species under current and future climate conditions.

The threat posed by invasive non-native species worldwide requires a global approach to identify which introduced species are likely to pose an elevated risk of impact to native species and ecosystems. To inform policy, stakeholders and management decisions on global threats to aquatic ecosystems, 195 assessors representing 120 risk assessment areas across all six inhabited continents screened 819 non-native species from 15 groups of aquatic organisms (freshwater, brackish, marine plants and animals) using the Aquatic Species Invasiveness Screening Kit. This multi-lingual decision-support tool for the risk screening of aquatic organisms provides assessors with risk scores for a species under current and future climate change conditions that, following a statistically based calibration, permits the accurate classification of species into high-, medium- and low-risk categories under current and predicted climate conditions.

Insular Pharmacopoeias: Ethnobotanical Characteristics of Medicinal Plants Used on the Adriatic Islands.

The Adriatic islands in Croatia, usually divided into two archipelagos - the Kvarner and Dalmatian islands - is one of the largest groups of islands in Europe. Over 40 islands are still inhabited. Unfortunately the traditional use of medicinal plants was never properly documented there.

Wireless technologies for the connectivity of the future.

This Special Issue originates from the international conference EuCNC 2020 (European Conference on Networks and Communications), which was planned to be held in June 2020 in Dubrovnik (Croatia), but due to the COVID-19 pandemic was changed to an Online Conference. The Technical Programme Chairs of the conference have selected the best papers and invited authors to submit an extended version of their paper, by at least one third of their length. Only the top ranked papers were invited to this Special Issue, in order to fulfil its purpose.

Promoting hidden natural design templates in wasted shells of the mantis shrimp into valuable biogenic composite.

The mineralized cuticle of the mantis shrimps Squilla Mantis which serve as natural hammers, spears and armors, have attracted research attention from various fields due to its amazing mechanical properties which were studied from evolutionary and ecological points of view. Here we aimed to valorize the astonishing mantis shrimp shell waste resulted from fishery and seafood industry as valuable biogenic composite derived from nature, potentially re-usable for novel, smart materials or added-value by-products, aspect which was not deeply considered before. Employing multi-laser Raman spectroscopy and imaging, supported by x-ray diffraction and high-resolution electron microscopy, we discover that the peripheral segments anatomically known as claws and telson, featured completely different composition and morphology, suggesting different applicability.

Attitudes and concerns of undergraduate university health sciences students in Croatia regarding complete switch to e-learning during COVID-19 pandemic: a survey.

Background: Croatia has closed all educational institutions after 32 cases of SARS-CoV-2 infection were confirmed and switched to exclusive e-learning. Health sciences university students may have been particularly affected with this change due to a lack of practical education. It is not known how health sciences students and schools have adjusted to exclusive e-learning.

Biodiversity of carapace epibiont diatoms in loggerhead sea turtles ( Linnaeus 1758) in the Aegean Sea Turkish coast.

Background: The Aegean Sea coast of Turkey hosts one of the most important nesting grounds for loggerhead sea turtles () in the Mediterranean Sea. Previous studies have revealed that the sea turtle carapace provides favourable conditions for various epibiontic organisms. Epibionts occurring on the carapace have been examined from different locations in the oceans.

Efficient Estimation of CFO-Affected OFDM BER Floor in Small Cells with Resource-Limited IoT End-Points.

Contemporary wireless networks dramatically enhance data rates and latency to become a key enabler of massive communication among various low-cost devices of limited computational power, standardized by the Long-Term Evolution (LTE) downscaled derivations LTE-M or narrowband Internet of Things (NB IoT), in particular. Specifically, assessment of the physical-layer transmission performance is important for higher-layer protocols determining the extent of the potential error recovery escalation upwards the protocol stack. Thereby, it is needed that the end-points of low processing capacity most efficiently estimate the residual bit error rate (BER) solely determined by the main orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) impairment-carrier frequency offset (CFO), specifically in small cells, where the signal-to-noise ratio is large enough, as well as the OFDM symbol cyclic prefix, preventing inter-symbol interference.

Color-specific porosity in double pigmented natural 3d-nanoarchitectures of blue crab shell.

3D-engineered nano-architectures with various functionalities are still difficult to obtain and translate for real-world applications. However, such nanomaterials are naturally abundant and yet wasted, but could trigger huge interest for blue bioeconomy, provided that our understanding of their ultrastructure-function is achieved. To date, the Bouligand pattern in crustaceans shell structure is believed to be unique.

Zooplankton in Adriatic port environments: Indigenous communities and non-indigenous species.

The zooplankton community was analyzed in ten Adriatic ports as part of the port biological baseline surveys carried out within the framework of the BALMAS project. We provide the first inventory of resident zooplankton taxa and five detected non-indigenous zooplankton species (NIS), and their spatial and seasonal distribution patterns. Copepoda and meroplankton larvae, particularly of Mollusca, dominated the zooplankton in all sampled ports.

No-Reference Objective Video Quality Measure for Frame Freezing Degradation.

In this paper we present a novel no-reference video quality measure, NR-FFM (no-reference frame-freezing measure), designed to estimate quality degradations caused by frame freezing of streamed video. The performance of the measure was evaluated using 40 degraded video sequences from the laboratory for image and video engineering (LIVE) mobile database. Proposed quality measure can be used in different scenarios such as mobile video transmission by itself or in combination with other quality measures.

Fishers and groupers (Epinephelus marginatus and E. morio) in the coast of Brazil: integrating information for conservation.

Background: Groupers are a vulnerable but economically important group of fish, especially for small-scale fisheries. We investigated catches and local ecological knowledge (LEK) of diet, habitat, and past fishing experiences.

Methods: Landings, prices, interviews, and restaurants demand for two species, Epinephelus marginatus (dusky grouper) and Epinephelus morio (red grouper), were registered.

Plants in alcoholic beverages on the Croatian islands, with special reference to rakija travarica.

Background: This paper aims to record the species used for flavouring and making alcoholic drinks, mainly rakija, on the islands of the Adriatic (Croatia).

Methods: Our data comes from 295 interviews performed on 36 islands, in both the Dalmatian and Kvarner areas of the Adriatic.

Results: Altogether, 114 species are used-46% from wild locations only, 15% both wild and cultivated, 38% only cultivated and two species are imported.

Microbial diversity and long-term geochemical trends in the euxinic zone of a marine, meromictic lake.

Hypoxic and anoxic niches of meromictic lakes are important sites for studying the microbial ecology of conditions resembling ancient Earth. The expansion and increasing global distribution of such environments also means that information about them serves to understand future phenomena. In this study, a long-term chemical dataset (1996-2015) was explored together with seasonal (in 2015) information on the diversity and abundance of bacterial and archaeal communities residing in the chemocline, monimolimnion and surface sediment of the marine meromictic Rogoznica Lake.

Complete chloroplast genome of the tiny marine diatom (Bacillariophyta) from the Adriatic Sea.

We report the chloroplast genome sequence of , a tiny araphid pennate diatom collected from the Adriatic Sea. The 160,994-bp . genome displays a quadripartite structure and its gene repertoire resembles those of other diatom chloroplast genomes.

Prospective Analysis of Prevalence, Trajectories of Change, and Correlates of Cannabis Misuse in Older Adolescents from Coastal Touristic Regions in Croatia.

The prevalence of illicit drug misuse, including cannabis, in Croatian touristic regions is alarming. This study aimed to identify the prevalence of cannabis consumption (CC), to identify associations between sociodemographic and sport factors and CC, and to evaluate the predictors of CC initiation in adolescents residing in touristic regions. This study enrolled 644 adolescents from two touristic regions in Croatia (Split-Dalmatia and Dubrovnik-Neretva County) who were tested at baseline (16 years of age) and follow-up (18 years of age).

Mal de Meleda: A great imitator.

Mal de Meleda is an hereditary palmoplantar keratoderma named for the Mljet Island in Croatia. The lives of those affected by this disease represent a complex situation that encompasses members of a vulnerable group. They require enlightenment and should be approached with awareness, taking into account their overall psychophysical status and the environment of each patient.

The ethnobotany and biogeography of wild vegetables in the Adriatic islands.

Background: Archipelagos of islands have played an important role in shaping some of the paradigms of biology, including the theory of the evolution of species. Later, their importance in biology was further emphasised by the theory of island biogeography, which contributed to a better understanding of the shaping of species richness not only on real islands, but on isolated habitat islands as well. Although ethnobotany is a well-established discipline, patterns of knowledge about plant uses in archipelagos have never been quantitatively analysed, and the whole concept has been only briefly mentioned in the ethnobiological context.

Bacterial community analysis of marine recirculating aquaculture system bioreactors for complete nitrogen removal established from a commercial inoculum.

An experimental recirculating aquaculture system was constructed under ambient seawater conditions to compare microbial community diversity of nitrifying and denitrifying biofilters that were derived from a commercial inoculum used for aquarium applications. Next generation sequencing revealed distinct and diverse microbial communities in samples analyzed from the commercial inoculant and the denitrification and nitrification biofilters. In all samples, communities were represented by a few dominant operational taxonomic units (OTUs).

Bacteria associated with moon jellyfish during bloom and post-bloom periods in the Gulf of Trieste (northern Adriatic).

Jellyfish are a prominent component of the plankton community. They frequently form conspicuous blooms which may interfere with different human enterprises. Among the aspects that remain understudied are jellyfish associations with microorganisms having potentially important implications for organic matter cycling.

Oceanographic characteristics of the Adriatic Sea - Support to secondary HAOP spread through natural dispersal.

Vessels, specifically ballast water and hull fouling, are a major vector for the introduction of non-indigenous species (NIS) in European seas. The Mediterranean is one of the world's marine regions where their invasion is heaviest. The shallow Adriatic basin is a highly sensitive area that is already experiencing its consequences.

Strategy of port baseline surveys (PBS) in the Adriatic Sea.

Port baseline surveys (PBS) provide species inventories in and around ports, with a focus on non-indigenous species that may have been introduced by vessels, primarily via ballast water. PBS are an essential tool to support effective management strategies for non-indigenous as well as native harmful aquatic organisms and pathogens (HAOP). This paper describes the methodology of PBS that were conducted in 12 Adriatic ports.

Lipophilic marine biotoxins SERS sensing in solutions and in mussel tissue.

To detect and recognise three structurally related marine biotoxins responsible for the diarrheic shellfish poisoning (DSP) symptom, namely okadaic acid (OA), dinophysistoxin-1 (DTX-1) and dinophysistoxin-2 (DTX-2) respectively, as well as the structurally different yessotoxin (YTX), we developed a novel surface-enhanced micro-Raman scattering (micro-SERS) approach to investigate for the first time their micro-SERS signalling in solution and jointly analysed them in conjunction with the normal and toxic mussel tissue. YTX provided the main SERS feature surprisingly similar to DTX-1 and DTX-2, suggesting similar molecular adsorption mechanism with respect to the AgNPs. A fingerprint SERS band at 1017 cm characteristic for the C-CH stretching in DTX-1 and DTX-2 and absent in OA SERS signal, allowed direct SERS discrimination of DTX-1,2 from OA.

Evidencing Protective and Risk Factors for Harmful Alcohol Drinking in Adolescence: A Prospective Analysis of Sport-Participation and Scholastic-Achievement in Older Adolescents from Croatia.

: The prevalence of alcohol drinking (AD) in Croatian adolescents is alarming, but there is an evident lack of prospective analyses of the protective/risk factors of AD. This study aimed to prospectively investigate the relationships between scholastic and sport factors and harmful alcohol drinking (HD) in older adolescents. : The participants (n = 644, 53.