BACKGROUND Influenza A virus has been detected in the blood of some infected individuals, and may pose a safety concern for collection, handling and transport of specimens for epidemiological and public health investigations if infectious virus is present in samples. Furthermore the effect of storage on virus stability and infectivity has not been well studied. METHODS We examined the stabili...

Coats disease is an idiopathic nonhereditary condition retinal vascular disorder characterized by telangiectasia with intraretinal and/ or subretinal exudation. Unilateral involvement in young males the typical presentation most cases being diagnosed first and second decade of life and, if untreated, can lead to total detachment secondary glaucoma, sometimes requiring enucleation. The common pr...

Abstract The risk of occupational exposure in abdominal angiography is reported to be high due not only to direct radiation, but also stray radiation from inspection tables, patients, the image intensifier, the beam limiting system (collimator), etc. The Japanese standard JISZ4831 prescribes protective coats of at least 0.25 mm lead equivalent and is the uniform thickness of lead equivalent. Th...

A mathematical approximation technique has been used for the analysis of pressure-volume and decay curves to see which of two concepts of the mechanical properties of the coats of the eye is the more valid. One concept—that the outer coats are nonlinear elastic—stems from the early work of Friedenwald* and is currently in use. The other concept—that the outer coats are nonlinear viscoelastic—st...

The optimal trade-off between offspring size and number can depend on details of the mode of reproduction or development. In marine organisms, broadcast spawning is widespread, and external coats are a common feature of spawned eggs. Egg jelly coats are thought to influence several aspects of fertilization and early development, including the size of the target for sperm, fertilization efficien...

Sperm limitation may be an important selective force influencing gamete traits such as egg size. The relatively inexpensive extracellular structures surrounding many marine invertebrate eggs might serve to enhance collision rates without the added cost of increasing the egg cell. However, despite decades of research, the effects of extracellular structures on fertilization have not been conclus...