Publications

Nowadays, computing calculations are becoming more and more demanding due to the huge pool of resources available. This demand must be satisfied in terms of computational efficiency and resilience, which is compromised in distributed and heterogeneous platforms. Not only this, data obtained are often either reused by other researchers or recalculated. In this work, a set of tools to overcome the problem of creating and executing fault tolerant distributed applications on dynamic environments is presented. Such a set also ensures the reproducibility of the performed experiments providing a portable, unattended and resilient framework that encapsulates the infrastructure-dependent operations away from the application developers and users, allowing performing experiments based on Open Access data repositories. In this way, users can seamlessly search and lately access datasets that can be automatically retrieved as input data into a code already integrated in the proposed workflow. Such a search is based on metadata standards and relies on Persistent Identifiers (PID) to assign specific repositories. The applications profit from Distributed Toolbox, a framework devoted to the creation and execution of distributed applications and includes tools for unattended cluster and grid execution, where a total fault tolerance is provided. By decoupling the definition of the remote tasks from its execution and control, the development, execution and maintenance of distributed applications is significantly simplified with respect to previous solutions, increasing their robustness and allowing running them on different computational platforms with little effort. The integration with Open Access databases and employment of PIDs for long-lasting references ensures that the data related to the experiments will persist, closing a complete research circle of data access/processing/storage/dissemination of results.

Overdominance (heterozygote advantage) for fitness is a form of balancing selection which supports the maintenance of genetic polymorphisms in the populations. This mode of selection is expected to generate a conspicuous footprint on neutral genetic variation in genomic regions of restricted recombination, which contrasts with the signature generated by other types of natural selection. In particular, gene diversity is expected to be increased at neutral sites tightly linked to overdominant sites, as opposed to background selection and selective sweeps. We produced extensive whole-genome sequencing data to analyse genetic diversity across regions exhibiting varying recombination patterns in a Drosophila melanogaster population with known demographic history. The results were compared with simulation data in order to quantify the magnitude of the contribution of overdominant loci to genetic diversity which could be compatible with observations. We analysed sequencing data from 51 individual male flies sampled from a large population and estimated the average nucleotide diversity (π) in 100-kb consecutive windows across the main autosomal chromosomes. By using the available recombination map in the species, we evaluated the changes in π in relation with the levels of recombination across genomic regions. We then carried out computer simulations following the demographic history, the genomic architecture and the recombination map of the main autosomal chromosomes assuming models which include deleterious (background selection) and advantageous (selective sweeps) mutations, or models also including increasing rates of overdominant mutations. By comparing the results obtained from simulations and the observed data, we conclude that a parsimonious model of background selection and adaptation to captivity explains the observed patterns of neutral variation in the studied population better than the models including overdominance.

The 40-year journey of ginseng clinical trials has experienced emerging, boom, and stable or transitional stages. The global network of ginseng clinical trials has relevant regional distribution in Asia, North America and Europe. South Korea makes a great contribution to building up large research clusters and strong cooperation links. Universities are the key contributors to ginseng clinical trials. The development of ginseng products could be focused on the clinical trial in diseases with higher effectiveness or effect size, such as sexual function and cognitive & behavior and require rigorous investigations and evidence to evaluate safety. More attention should be paid to different effects from different preparations. We believe this review will provide new insights into the understanding of global ginseng clinical trials and identifies potential future perspectives for research and development of ginseng.

This article has been retracted: please see Elsevier Policy on Article Withdrawal (https://www.elsevier.com/about/policies/article-withdrawal). <This article has been retracted at the request of the Editors-in-Chief. A journal-wide investigation by Elsevier's Research Integrity & Publishing Ethics team identified violations of the journal's policies on conflict of interest related to the submission and review of this paper. Review of this submission was handled by Guest Editor Hassan Karimi-Maleh despite an extensive record of collaboration, including co-publication, with one of the paper co-authors (Fatemeh Karimi). Acceptance of the article was solely based upon the positive advice of reviewers who were closely linked to two of the authors (Karimi, Mehdi Baghayeri). This compromised the editorial process and breached the journal's policies. The authors disagree with this retraction and dispute the grounds for it.>.

A Rayleigh light scattering technique to determine chloride ions in serum was developed. Chloride ions were found to bind Ag+ forming an AgCl aggregate that produced intense Rayleigh scattering light. The effects of factors such as acidity, ionic strength and coexisting interferents on the RLS of the AgCl aggregate were investigated. The solution pH almost did not affect the production of RLS, and few foreign biologically relevant species interfered with the detection of chloride ions. The Rayleigh scattering light intensity at the maximum peak of 571 nm was linear to the concentration of chloride ions in the range of 35.5–71.0 ng mL−1 with a detection limit of 14.2 ng mL−1. The method was applied to determine chloride ions in serum, showing high sensitivity and accuracy compared with the clinically used ion-selective electrode method.