Two outstanding features of the flowering plant family Winteraceae are the occlusion of their stomatal pores by cutin plugs and the absence of water-conducting xylem vessels. An adaptive relationship between these two unusual features has been suggested whereby stomatal plugs restrict gas exchange to compensate for the presumed poor conductivity of their vesselless wood. This hypothesized conne...

BACKGROUND Crystalline-matrix urethral plugs have not been previously reported in dogs. HYPOTHESIS/OBJECTIVES To report the composition of urethral plugs in dogs, describe clinical features of the disease, and identify overrepresented breeds. METHODS Retrospective case series. A Minnesota Urolith Center (MUC) record search was performed for urethral plugs in dogs submitted during a 6-year p...

Sulfated acidic mucopolysaccharides have been found to be significant components of "protein plugs" in patients with chronic pancreatitis. The precise identification of the mucopolysaccharides and their distribution within the protein plugs may clarify the pathogenesis of the plugs. Pure pancreatic juice from five patients with chronic pancreatitis was obtained by endoscopic retrograde catheter...

This paper illustrates a plug-based microfluidic approach combining the technique of the chemistrode and the principle of stochastic confinement, which can be used to i) starting from a mixture of cells, stochastically isolate single cells into plugs, ii) incubate the plugs to grow clones of the individual cells without competition among different clones, iii) split the plugs into arrays of ide...

PURPOSE To evaluate the therapeutic effects of atelocollagen absorbable punctal plugs. METHOD Seventy-four eyes in 37 patients with dry eye disease (DED) underwent punctal plug occlusion using atelocollagen plugs and were followed up for 24 weeks. Subjective symptoms were evaluated using the ocular surface disease index (OSDI) questionnaire. Ocular surface disease parameters, including the Sc...

Protein crystallization is important for determining protein structures by X-ray diffraction. Nanoliter-sized plugs--aqueous droplets surrounded by a fluorinated carrier fluid--have been applied to the screening of protein crystallization conditions. Preformed arrays of plugs in capillary cartridges enable sparse matrix screening. Crystals grown in plugs inside a microcapillary may be analyzed ...

The efficacy of the technique of semicircular canal plugging in selectively blocking the function of individual semicircular canals was evaluated in rabbits. The horizontal and vertical vestibuloocular reflexes (HVOR, VVOR) and the horizontal optokinetic reflex (HOKR) were measured before the horizontal or anterior semicircular canals (HSCs, ASCs) were plugged bilaterally with small spindles of...

BACKGROUND Males usually produce mating plugs to reduce sperm competition. However, females can conceivably also produce mating plugs in order to prevent unwanted, superfluous and energetically costly matings. In spiders-appropriate models for testing plugging biology hypotheses-mating plugs may consist of male genital parts and/or of amorphous covers consisting of glandular or sperm secretions...