Preprints (not yet peer-reviewed)

Background. Code review is a cognitively demanding and time-consuming process. Previous qualitative studies hinted at how decomposing change sets into multiple yet internally coherent ones would improve the reviewing process. So far, no quantitative analysis of...

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a kind of cancer with high incidence and often accompanied by intestinal flora imbalance. Many studies have shown that probiotics such as anthocyanins can regulate gut microbiome and improve disease. This study was designed to...

In illustrating vertebrae, it is important to consistently depict their orientation, so we can objectively assess and compare the slope of the neural arch, neural canal, or articular surfaces. However, differing vertebral shapes across taxa and across regions of...

Acute toxicity testing (lethal dose and lethal concentration for 50% of the population; LD50 and LC50) is a required component of the first level of pesticide risk assessment. A review of peer-reviewed and ECOTOX database toxicity values was conducted to assess...

The phenology, or timing of life history events, of organisms affects both ecological and evolutionary dynamics. Recent work has illustrated the effects of climate change on the phenology for many species. Changing selective pressures on phenology can have consequences...

In the constrained max k-cut problem on hypergraphs, we are given a weighted hypergraph H=(V, E), an integer k and a set c of constraints. The goal is to divide the set V of vertices into k disjoint partitions in such a way that the sum of the weights of the hyperedges...

The random to explain the emergence of variations in sequence of the alleles is the current scientific paradigm of evolutionary biology. Here is argued that interactions between instincts and transcription factors (TFs) are the main cause of emergence of such variations....

Based on two years of in-water observations of a high-density spawning aggregation of the squaretail grouper in the Lakshadweep Archipelago, we described a previously unreported inverse size assortment with large males courting several small females that shoaled...

The rapid increase in zebrafish use needs to be accompanied by research into refinement of procedures, such as euthanasia. The EU directive lists three possible euthanasia methods for fish: anaesthetic overdose, electrical stunning and concussion. However, for...

A partial skeleton of a sauropod dinosaur, Museum of Western Colorado 8028, was recovered from the Upper Jurassic Morrison Formation near Snowmass, Colorado, USA, and in 2014 it was referred to Haplocanthosaurus sp. The material includes four proximal caudal vertebrae,...

The oldest feathers known to date have been found in archosaurs capable of flight. However, some of them (scansoriopterygids) flew by the use of a membrane rather than feathers. We therefore propose a new mechanism for the origin of avian flight by the use of membranous...

Blue mold is a postharvest rot of pomaceous fruits caused by Penicillium expansum and a number of other Penicillium species. The genome of the highly aggressive P. expansum strain R19 was re-sequenced and analyzed together with the genome of the less aggressive...

Abstract Biological soil crusts (BSCs) are known to affect plants’ germination and seedling establishment in arid ecosystems, but their ecological role in more mesic climates is not so well-known. We tested the effects of moss-crusted versus uncrusted soils on...

An empirical understanding of how DNA read features affect read mapping and alignment quality could be useful in designing better read mapping and alignment software, read trimmers, and sequence masks. Many programs appear to use arbitrarily chosen features that...

Background. A number of recent high-profile cases have focused attention on scientific misconduct and other problematic issues with the peer review process. The retraction of journal publications is an important part of the scientific publishing process that serves...