Publications

Currently monitored microplastics pose negligible ecological risk to the global ocean

Administration–time-dependent effects of blood pressure-lowering medications: basis for the chronotherapy of hypertension

There is growing interest on how to best tailor blood pressure (BP)-lowering medications according to the circadian (24 h) BP pattern of individual patients, that is, chronotherapy. Significant and clinically meaningful treatment-time differences in the beneficial and/or adverse effects of at least six different classes of hypertension medications are now known. Generally, calcium channel blockers are more effective with bedtime than morning dosing, and in the case of dihydropyridine derivatives bedtime dosing significantly reduces the risk of edema. Scheduling angiotensin II receptor blockers and angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors at bedtime, as opposed to awakening, increases the proportion of patients with properly controlled BP, enhances the sleep-time relative BP decline towards a normal dipping pattern and best reduces urinary albumin excretion, a marker of functional renal status. The chronotherapy of conventional BP-lowering medications entails their correct scheduling with reference to the body's circadian rhythms, not only to achieve control of daytime and night-time systolic and diastolic BP but to normalize the dipping status of the 24 h pattern. Chronotherapy constitutes a cost-effective strategy for enhancing BP control during both nocturnal sleep and daytime activity and for potentially reducing the risk of cardiovascular disease and end-organ injury of the blood vessels and tissue of the heart, brain, kidney, eye and other organs.

Adapting Reproducible Research Capabilities to Resilient Distributed Calculations

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.

The efficacy of berries against lipopolysaccharide-induced inflammation: A review

Food production link to underground waters quality in A Limia river basin

Overdominance for fitness: A genomic comparison between empirical and simulated data with <i>Drosophila melanogaster</i>

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.

Ginseng: A bibliometric analysis of 40-year journey of global clinical trials

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.

Optical properties of metal nanoparticle coated silica spheres: a simple effective medium approach

The preparation of gold particle coated silica microspheres is described and the optical absorption spectra for various surface coverages of gold particles are presented. Onion-shell particles with the structure silica-gold-silica are also described. An effective medium model is used to quantify the surface plasmon shifts observed in such particles, which predicts the shifts in surface plasmon band for both solvent refractive index and surface coverage. The resultant microspheres exhibit absorption spectra resembling those of the isolated nanocrystals. However they possess extinction cross-sections orders of magnitude higher than the nanocrystals and can be centrifuged and redispersed more easily than the parent nanocrystals. The same effect can be obtained by coating silica spheres with gold nanorods, so that the plasmon absorption band can be tuned through the visible and NIR wavelength range. It is proposed that such micron-sized "nanoparticles" provide a practical means to amplify the unique optical properties of nanocrystals and make them more amenable to colloid processing.

The usefulness of a sediment bioassay with the gastropod Nassarius reticulatus in tributyltin monitoring programs

Polyphenols

Changes in polyphenols with harvesting time and berry position in three native red grapes grown in Galicia (N.W. Spain)

Technological aspects and stability of polyphenols

Stability of dietary polyphenols: It's never too late to mend?

Ficus virens proanthocyanidins induced apoptosis in breast cancer cells concomitantly ameliorated 5-fluorouracil induced intestinal mucositis in rats

Study on the separation and purification of ursolic acid from Ilex kudingcha

OBJECTIVE The separation and purification of ursolic acid from Ilex kudingcha C.J.Tseng was studied in order to exploit its resource.METHODS The effect of different factors on leaching rate was studied by orthogonal experiment and variance analysis. Ursolic acid was obtained by extraction, precipitation and macro-porous resin adsorption. The samples were analyzed by HPLC. The mobile phase consisted of alcohol and water, and the eluate was collected, in which, ursolic acid was detected at 220 nm. RESULTS The optimal conditions were obtained.The leaching rate of ursolic acid was up to 1.44% by reflux extraction using 90% alcohol for 2.5 h twice at 1:14 of Ilex kudingcha C. J. Tseng mass to solvent volume. The optimal conditions of separation and purification of D8 resin included: the ursolic acid concentration was 1-2 mg·mL-1 and the solution was pH 6.0-7.0, eluate was pH 11.0. After adsorpted for an hour, resin was eluted successively with water, four times volume 30% alcohol,four times volume 90% alcohol in the flow rate of 2-3 mL·min-1. Ursolic acid product was acquired from 90% alcohol eluate.The purity of product was over 95% and the recovery was up to 97.82% . CONCLUSION The product was obtained with high purity and high recovery. It can be utilized in industrial production.

Retraction notice to “Multifaceted role of polyphenols in the treatment and management of neurodegenerative diseases”[Chemosphere 307 (2022) 136020]

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.>.

Highly sensitive determination of chloride ions in serum using a Rayleigh light scattering technique

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.

Administration time-dependent effects of valsartan on ambulatory blood pressure in nondipper patients with grade 1?2 essential hypertension

Journal Article P-211: Administration time-dependent effects of valsartan on ambulatory blood pressure in nondipper patients with grade 1–2 essential hypertension Get access Ramon C. Hermida, Ramon C. Hermida 1Bioengineering and Chronobiology Labs., University of Vigo, Vigo, Spain; Hypertension and Vascular Risk Unit, Hospital Clinico Universitario, Santiago de Compostela, Spain. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic PubMed Google Scholar Carlos Calvo, Carlos Calvo 1Bioengineering and Chronobiology Labs., University of Vigo, Vigo, Spain; Hypertension and Vascular Risk Unit, Hospital Clinico Universitario, Santiago de Compostela, Spain. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic PubMed Google Scholar Diana E. Ayala, Diana E. Ayala 1Bioengineering and Chronobiology Labs., University of Vigo, Vigo, Spain; Hypertension and Vascular Risk Unit, Hospital Clinico Universitario, Santiago de Compostela, Spain. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic PubMed Google Scholar Maria J. Dominguez, Maria J. Dominguez 1Bioengineering and Chronobiology Labs., University of Vigo, Vigo, Spain; Hypertension and Vascular Risk Unit, Hospital Clinico Universitario, Santiago de Compostela, Spain. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic PubMed Google Scholar Manuel Covelo, Manuel Covelo 1Bioengineering and Chronobiology Labs., University of Vigo, Vigo, Spain; Hypertension and Vascular Risk Unit, Hospital Clinico Universitario, Santiago de Compostela, Spain. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic PubMed Google Scholar Artemio Mojon, Artemio Mojon 1Bioengineering and Chronobiology Labs., University of Vigo, Vigo, Spain; Hypertension and Vascular Risk Unit, Hospital Clinico Universitario, Santiago de Compostela, Spain. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic PubMed Google Scholar Jose R. Fernandez, Jose R. Fernandez 1Bioengineering and Chronobiology Labs., University of Vigo, Vigo, Spain; Hypertension and Vascular Risk Unit, Hospital Clinico Universitario, Santiago de Compostela, Spain. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic PubMed Google Scholar Jose E. Lopez Jose E. Lopez 1Bioengineering and Chronobiology Labs., University of Vigo, Vigo, Spain; Hypertension and Vascular Risk Unit, Hospital Clinico Universitario, Santiago de Compostela, Spain. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic PubMed Google Scholar American Journal of Hypertension, Volume 17, Issue S1, May 2004, Page 111A, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amjhyper.2004.03.286 Published: 01 May 2004