Ophthalmia Neonatorum, Helen Keller, and the Social Dimensions of Eye Disease.

Purpose: The aim of this study was to describe how an early 20th-century American celebrity attempted to influence public perception of ophthalmic neonatorum.

Methods: This study reviews the editorial written by Helen Keller in the 1909 Ladies' Home Journal and related historical documents about the prevention of blindness from neonatal conjunctivitis.

Results: Although blind, deaf, and nulliparous, Helen Keller at the age of 29 sensed that the newborn children of many American women were being denied preventative treatment for ophthalmia neonatorum.

Conjunctivitis: A Primer on Conjunctival Biopsy and Approach to Histopathologic Diagnosis.

Conjunctivitis, or inflammation of the mucosal covering the anterior third of sclera and inner eyelid, is a common clinical condition of varied causation. Most cases are self-limited due to infection or allergy and rarely necessitate biopsy. Inflammation of the conjunctiva, however, is one of the most common principal histopathologic diagnoses rendered when the tissue is biopsied.

Abundance and seasonality of phoronid larvae in coastal temperate waters: More abundant than previously thought?

Unlabelled: In zooplankton surveys, many smaller taxa or species considered less important are often overlooked. One such example is the actinotrocha larvae of phoronid worms that are rarely quantified in zooplankton samples yet may play important roles in marine food webs. To gain a better understanding of phoronid ecology in coastal waters, we retrospectively analysed 145 plankton samples collected from two coastal sites in Ireland (Lough Hyne and Bantry Bay).

Capture heats up sharks.

Catch-and-release fishing is an important component of ecotourism industries and scientific research worldwide, but its total impact on animal physiology, health and survival is understudied for many species of fishes, particularly sharks. We combined biologging and blood chemistry to explore how this fisheries interaction influenced the physiology of two widely distributed, highly migratory shark species: the blue shark () and the tiger shark (). Nineteen sharks were caught by drum line or rod-and-reel angling; subcutaneous body temperature measurements were taken immediately upon capture, with six individuals also providing subsequent subcutaneous body temperature measurements via biologging as they swam freely for several hours post-release.