Sperm immobilization prior to intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) is thought to be necessary for efficient fertilization. A variety of methods of sperm immobilization (pipetting, squeezing and piezo application) are currently employed in ICSI. The effect of differences in immobilization method on the timing of initial Ca(2+) oscillations of oocytes in ICSI was investigated. Motile spermatoz...

Microwave-induced thermoacoustic tomography was explored to image biological tissue. Short microwave pulses irradiated tissue to generate acoustic waves by thermoelastic expansion. The microwave-induced thermoacoustic waves were detected with a focused ultrasonic transducer. Each time-domain signal from the ultrasonic transducer represented a one-dimensional image along the acoustic axis of the...

We report the electrical characterization and the field emission properties of CVD-grown 12 bilayers deposited on / substrate. Current-voltage characteristics are measured in the 13 back-gate transistor configuration, with contacts patterned by electron beam lithography. We 14 confirm the n-type character of as-grown and we report normally-on field effect transistors. 15 Local characterization ...

Ultrasonic vibrations have been used to cut tissues for two decades. However, it is only in the last five years that experimental applications have been used routinely for standard clinical applications in many different fields of surgery. Surgically decompressing optic nerve, with the use of conventional drills is associated with greater risk of damage to the optic nerve itself. Developing new...

In vitro screening assays are useful techniques for the determination of receptor-mediated activities in environmental samples. In order to define whether environmental chemicals act as an agonist or antagonist to the human estrogen receptor (hER), we have constructed a biosensor based on ligand-inducible interactions between hER and relative proteins on a quartz crystal microbalance (QCM). The...