The hypothesis that the observed fluid annulus outside the wall of some capillaries is the reservoir of plasma responsible for ratios of organ hematocrit to large vessel hematocrit less than 1 is examined hydrodynamically. The extent to which the hematocrits can be reconciled on the basis of flow through a single capillary is examined. Results show that ratios between 0.5 and 1.0 can be account...

STUDY DESIGN Mechanically induced annular disruption of lumbar intervertebral discs followed by microstructural investigation. OBJECTIVE To investigate the role that elevated nuclear pressures play in disrupting the lumbar intervertebral disc's annulus fibrosus. SUMMARY OF BACKGROUND DATA Compound mechanical loadings have been used to recreate clinically relevant annular disruptions in vitr...

BACKGROUND Previous studies have shown cross-sectional 3-dimensional (3D) transesophageal echocardiographic (TEE) measurements to severely underestimate multidetector row computed tomographic (MDCT) measurements for the assessment of aortic annulus before transcatheter aortic valve replacement. This study compares annulus measurements from 3D-TEE using off-label use of commercially available so...

Chondroitin sulphate chains on cell and extracellular matrix proteoglycans play important regulatory roles in developing systems. Specific, developmentally regulated, sulphation motifs within the chondroitin glycosaminoglycan structure may help bind, sequester or present bioactive signalling molecules to cells thus modulating their behaviour. Using monoclonal antibodies 3B3(-), 4C3, 6C3 and 7D4...

Scales (n = 552) of chum salmon (Oncorhynchus keta) collected in the North Pacific Ocean in May 1998 and 1999 and April 1999 were used to compare time of annulus formation between years, regions, and ages. May samples were collected from approximately the same location and time, during two years of very different ocean conditions, 1998 a strong EI Nino year and 1999 a strong La Nina year. Sea s...

Male infertility has become a worldwide health problem, but the etiologies of most cases are still unknown. SEPT12, a GTP-binding protein, is involved in male fertility. Two SEPT12 mutations (SEPT12(T89M) and SEPT12(D197N)) have been identified in infertile men who have a defective sperm annulus with a bent tail. The function of SEPT12 in the sperm annulus is still unclear. Here, we found that ...

This paper proposes a method to measure the inclined angle of an objective image based on the most frequent edge direction. This paper also describes a relation between the measured inclined angles by the proposal method and the visual inclined angles. An edge direction is changed according to the inclination of an objective image. The most frequent edge direction is supposed to show the global...

BACKGROUND To allow performance of "stand-alone" mitral annuloplasty with minimal invasiveness, percutaneous techniques consisting of delivery into the coronary sinus (CS) of devices intended to shrink the mitral valve annulus have recently been tested in animal models. These techniques exploit the anatomic proximity of the CS and mitral valve annulus in ovine or dogs. Knowledge of a detailed a...

We show that the number of lattice points lying in a thin annulus has a Gaussian value distribution if the width of the annulus tends to zero sufficiently slowly as we increase the inner radius.

Background Imaging of the aortic annulus is paramount for the success of transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI) to obviate prosthesis size mismatch. The aortic annulus is a dynamic structure with alterations of its ellipsoid shape during the cardiac cycle. The objective of this study was to investigate with cine-MRI the changes of the sagittal and coronal diameter of the aortic annulus ...