An evaluation of the standardized Romanowsky stain of Marshall et al. has been made in a routine haematology laboratory. It was noted that this stain had several advantages over the May-GrUnwald Giemsa stain used in most British laboratories. These advantages include ease and speed of preparation, a shorter staining time, and reproducibility of results. These results are described in detail. Th...

AIMS To determine the sensitivity, specificity and predictive values of potassium hydroxide (KOH) wet mount, Gram stain, Giemsa stain and Kinyoun's acid-fast stain in the diagnosis of infective keratitis. METHODS A retrospective analysis of all patients with clinically diagnosed infective keratitis presenting between September 1999 and September 2002 was carried out. Corneal scrapes were take...

Environmental concerns related to perfluoroctanoic acid (PFOA) led to a re-examination of the methods for imparting stain resistance and stain repellency to textiles. Non-PFOA fluoropolymer finishes have been formed on cotton knits by admicellar polymerization, a surface analogue of emulsion polymerization. Fabric samples were characterized by a drop test, contact angle measurements, SEM, eleme...

This research investigated the longevity of functional connections between leaf traces and stem xylem in 16 species of conifers to better understand the spatial use of sapwood for water transport. The first question was which ring(s) stained when a vacuum was applied to the distal end of the cut surface of a needle attached to a short stem segment. The vacuum was applied to either 1- or 2-yr-ol...

Cryogen spray cooling is used to prevent epidermal thermal damage during port-wine stain laser therapy, despite the limited understanding of the fluid dynamics, thermodynamics, and heat transfer characteristics of cryogen sprays. In recent studies, it has been suggested that the heat flux through human skin could be increased by changing physical parameters such as nozzle-to-skin distance, nozz...

Electrosurgical vessel sealing has been demonstrated to have benefits for both patients and practitioners, but significant variation in the strength of the seal continues to be a concern. This study aims to examine the variation in electrosurgical seal quality along the length of a porcine common carotid artery and explore the relationships between seal quality, vessel size and morphology. Addi...

The Papanicolaou stain is a gold-standard staining method for tumor diagnosis in human cytology. However, it has not been used routinely in veterinary cytology, because of its complicated multistep procedure and requirement for wet fixation. Currently, a rapid Papanicolaou stain using air-dried smears is utilized in human cytology, but usefulness of this rapid-air-dry Papanicolaou (RAD-Pap) sta...

In a meta-analysis examining respiratory specimen Gram stain for diagnosis of ventilator-associated pneumonia, absence of bacteria on Gram stain had a high negative predictive value, but a positive Gram stain correlated poorly with organisms recovered in culture. Rapid and accurate diagnosis of ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) is a major challenge and no generally accepted gold standard ex...