An assessment of clinical laboratory performance for the determination of manganese in blood and urine.

Background: Proficiency testing or external quality assessment schemes (PT/EQASs) are an important method of assessing laboratory performance. As each scheme establishes assigned values and acceptable ranges for the analyte according to its own criteria, monitoring of participant performance varies according to the scheme and can lead to conflicting conclusions.

Methods: Standard deviations (SDs) for PT were derived from Thompson's and biological variation models applied to blood and urine manganese (Mn) robust data from four EQASs from North America and Europe.

Non-toxigenic Vibrio cholerae bacteraemia: case report and review of the literature.

Vibrio cholerae is a serious public health problem worldwide, but in the UK, V. cholerae infections are rare. Here, we report a case of V.

A xenon recirculating ventilator for the newborn piglet: developing clinical applications of xenon for neonates.

Context: The clinical applications of xenon for the neonate include both anaesthesia and neuroprotection. However, due to the limited natural availability of xenon, special equipment is required to administer and recapture the gas to develop xenon as a therapeutic agent.

Objective: In order to test the xenon recirculating ventilator for the application of neuroprotection in a preclinical trial, our primary objective was to test the efficiency, reliability and safety of administering 50% xenon for 24 h in hypoxic ischaemic piglets.

Wood properties and trunk allometry of co-occurring rainforest canopy trees in a cyclone-prone environment.

Premise Of Study: New Caledonia commonly experiences cyclones, so trees there are expected to have enhanced wood traits and trunk allometry that confer resistance to wind damage. We ask whether there is evidence of a trade-off between these traits and growth rate among species.

Methods: Wood traits, including density, microfibril angle (MFA), and modulus of elasticity (MOE), ratio of tree height to stem diameter, and growth rate were investigated in mature trees of 15 co-occurring canopy species in a New Caledonian rainforest.

Correlations between leaf toughness and phenolics among species in contrasting environments of Australia and New Caledonia.

Background And Aims: Plants are likely to invest in multiple defences, given the variety of sources of biotic and abiotic damage to which they are exposed. However, little is known about syndromes of defence across plant species and how these differ in contrasting environments. Here an investigation is made into the association between carbon-based chemical and mechanical defences, predicting that species that invest heavily in mechanical defence of leaves will invest less in chemical defence.