Elements of Good Training in Anatomic Pathology

The American College of Veterinary Pathologists’ (ACVP’s) 2007–2012 strategic plan recognized the crisis confronting academic training programs and formed a task force to address these concerns. One area of concern identified by the ACVP Training Program Development Task Force was the lack of guidelines to make training more consistent across all programs and provide justification for maintaining or increasing faculty numbers and training resources. Training guidelines for clinical pathology have been outlined in three publications.1,2,4 The current document addresses the need for training guidelines in veterinary anatomic pathology

Ultrastructural study of Helicobacter pylori adherence properties in gnotobiotic piglets

Ultrastructural examination of gastric mucosa from Helicobacter pylori-infected gnotobiotic piglets identified four general adherence patterns comparable to those observed in human patients. Intimate associations between the bacterial and mucosal cell membranes, including cuplike invaginations and adherence pedestals, were present and were accompanied by alterations to microvilli and cell membrane morphology.</jats:p

Structural and chemical investigations of CBD- and PVD-CdS buffer layers and interface in Cu(In,Ga)Se2-based thin film solar cells.

It is known that high-efficiency thin film solar cells based on Cu(In,Ga)Se-2 (CIGS) can be obtained using US buffer layers grown by chemical bath deposition (CBD). The highest efficiencies achieved with US buffer layers produced by physical vapor deposition (PVD) are significantly lower. To find reasons for this difference, structural and chemical properties of CBD- and PVD-CdS buffer layers and their interfaces with CIGS were investigated by means of bright-field (BF-TEM), high-resolution (HR-TEM) and energy-filtered transmission electron microscopy (EF-TEM), and also by energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). PVD-CdS grains were shown to be clearly larger than the CBD-CdS grains. Also, a large defect density was detected at the PVD-CdS/CIGS interface, which is attributed to the larger lattice mismatch than at the CBD-CdS/CIGS interface. Cu diffusion from CIGS into CdS was found for the CBD- and the PVD-CdS sample. The PVD-CdS/CIGS interface turned out to be quite abrupt, whereas the CBD-CdS/CIGS interface is rather diffuse. The differences in efficiencies of solar cells with CBD- and PVD-CdS buffer layers can partly be explained by referring to the higher defect density and the probable absence of an inversion of the near-interface region from p- to n-type at the PVD-CdS/CIGS interface

Dispersal and microsite limitation of a rare alpine plant

Knowledge on the limitation of plant species’ distributions is important for preserving alpine biodiversity, particularly when the loss of alpine habitats because of global warming or land use changes is faster than colonization of new habitats. We investigated the potential of the rare alpine plant Campanula thyrsoides L. to colonize grassland sites of different suitability on a small mountain plateau in the Swiss Alps. A total of 15 experimental sites were selected according to their differences in habitat suitability for adult C. thyrsoides, which was measured by the Beals index. At each site we applied a disturbance treatment, added seeds at different densi- ties and monitored the survival of seedlings over two consecutive years. The number of surviving seedlings was not positively related to habitat suitability for adult C. thyrsoides. Furthermore, C. thyrsoides appears to be strongly dispersal limited at the regional scale because seed addition to unoccupied habitats resulted in successful germination and survival of seedlings. Since an increase of seed density in already occupied sites did not affect the number of seedlings, we suggest that C. thyrsoides is microsite limited at the local scale. Microsite limitation is supported by the result that seedling survival of the species was enhanced in vegetation gaps created by disturbance. We conclude E. S. Frei (&) J. F. Scheepens, J. Sto ̈cklin Section of Plant Ecology, Institute of Botany, University of Basel, Scho ̈nbeinstrasse 6, 4056 Basel, Switzerland e-mail: [email protected] that C. thyrsoides may become endangered in the future if environmental changes cause local extinction of populations. An appropriate management, such as a disturbance regime for enhancing recruitment in existing populations, may ensure the long-term sur- vival of this rare alpine plant species