The outermost nanometres of a poly(vinylidene difluoride) (PVdF) based coil coating have been investigated using X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry (ToF-SIMS). A reference PVdF based coating formulation and three variations of this formulation were characterised by XPS. The addition of flow agent and/or acrylic co-polymers induced significa...

The objective of this study was to compare (i) the intracytoplasmic sperm injection outcomes among groups with different total motile sperm count ranges, (ii) the intracytoplasmic sperm injection outcomes between groups with normal and abnormal total motile sperm count, and (iii) the predictive values of WHO 2010 cut-off values and pre-wash total motile sperm count for the intracytoplasmic sper...

Impressive gains have been made in thermal spray coatings through material development and coating parameter selection. Nevertheless, it is usually up to shop personnel to develop a robot program to achieve the final coating. Coating programs are often developed using trial and error. Some motion and deposit analysis programs are available [1], [2]. However, they can be costly and require a lev...

Sperm morphology evolves rapidly, resulting in an exceptional diversity of sperm size and shape across animal phyla. This swift evolution has been thought to prevent fertilizations between closely related species. Alternatively, recent correlative analyses suggest that competition among sperm from more than one male may cause sperm diversity, but these hypotheses have not been tested. Here, we ...

OBJECTIVE The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effect of tooth coating material and finishing agent on bleached enamel surfaces after using KTP laser with 27% hydrogen peroxide. BACKGROUND DATA There have been few reports on the effects of tooth coating materials and finishing agents after bleaching. METHODS After 40 crowns of human extracted maxillary incisors were bleached by KTP...

This paper aims to explore the antibacterial property of nano Ag/TiO2 coating bracket for the common bacteria in oral cavity, and discuss its biocompatibility. Micro morphology in the surface of nano Ag/TiO2 coating bracket was detected by scanning electron microscope (SEM), and surface roughness of ordinary mental bracket, nano TiO2 coating bracket and nano Ag/TiO2 coating bracket were measure...

Interspecific comparative studies have shown that, in most taxa, postcopulatory sexual selection (PCSS) in the form of sperm competition drives the evolution of longer and faster swimming sperm. Work on passserine birds has revealed that PCSS also reduces variation in sperm size between males at the intraspecific level. However, the influence of PCSS upon intra-male sperm size diversity is poor...

This study investigated the relationship between acrosin activation and pig sperm proacrosin binding protein (sp32) phosphorylation levels. Differently processed pig spermatozoa (fresh semen sperm, capacitation sperm, acrosome reaction sperm, capacitation-like sperm, and thawed sperm) were subjected to sodium dodecyl sulfate polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis and Western blot analysis. The fres...