The method of preparation of bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BALF) for cytological examination can significantly affect the results of cellular quantitation. Investigations have shown that cytocentrifugation leads to an underestimation of the number of lymphocytes and membrane filter preparation to an underestimation of the number of neutrophils. As a simple alternative to these two techniques, B...

Background: Quantitative bacteriologic workup of BAL fluid (BALF) has evolved as a sensitive and specific technique for the diagnosis of bacterial pneumonia. Conventional quantitative cultures are expensive, time-consuming, and often unavailable on a 24-h basis. Therefore, we evaluated a dip slide method for the semiquantitative measurement of bacterial cultures in BALF specimens and com¬ pared...

A Legionella-like organism (strain 1762-AUS-E) was isolated from a cooling tower of an air-conditioning system in Adelaide, South Australia, Australia. The isolate was presumptively identified as a Legionella strain by its growth requirement for L-cysteine and its cellular branched-chain fatty acids. Strain 1762-AUS-E was serologically distinct in the slide agglutination test with absorbed anti...

A two year aerobiological survey for culturable and non-culturable fungi was conducted at human height at five different sites in Delhi metropolis. Burkard Personal Volumetric Sampler for petriplates and slide exposures were used for sampling the air. With simultaneous petriplate and slide exposure a total of 98 fungal forms were recorded. Cladosporium contributed for 25-40% of total airborne f...

1) Skin or mucosal biopsy specimens are usually obtained by 3-5 mm punch or surgical biopsy. 2) Biopsy specimens are snap frozen. If there is a delay between biopsy and snap freezing, the specimen should be kept in cold saline. 3) Frozen 4-6μ sections are cut on a cryostat and placed on a glass slide before being air-dried for 15 minutes. 4) After rinsing in phosphate buffered saline (PBS), pH ...

A method has been developed for collecting air-water interface (AWI) microbes and biofilms that enables analysis of the same sample with various combinations of bright-field and fluorescence light microscopy optics, scanning and transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and atomic force microscopy. The identical sample is then subjected to molecular analysis. The sampling tool consists of a micro...

Pump design analysis has come a long way f rom the days of slide rules and draft ing tables. The next step, claims Jim Spann of Blue Ridge Numerics, is putt ing computational f lu id dynamics (CFD) and f lu id f low simulation capabilities into the hands of pump design engineers. Over the past year, upfront CFD has made its mark on the pump industry, reducing the need for expensive physical tes...

During the September 23, 2004 Board hearing on the proposed AB 1493 regulation, a representative of Sierra Research, Inc. (SRI) commented that the Air Resources Board (ARB) staff had overestimated the miles traveled (VMT) in a vehicle’s average lifetime. The assertion was that this had in turn resulted in an overestimation of lifetime fuel savings and an underestimation of the payback period fo...

Recently, a variety of robotic systems have been studied under the umbrella term of modular reconfigurable robotics [7,6]. Unlike conventional fixedmorphology robots, whose performance is usually confined by the operating environment and their own size, modular reconfigurable robots have the potential advantage of being able to change their morphology by rearranging the connectivity of their mo...