A commentary on the intellectual health of the nation

The record of high-quality research at South African universities is not as impressive as we may have thought, according to some international rankings. Whatever we might think of these assessments, we have to take them seriously. We suggest ways in which our universities and other institutions of higher learning might raise the level of their game

The structure of epitaxial V2O3 films and their surfaces : a medium energy ion scattering study

Medium energy ion scattering, using 100 keV H+ incident ions, has been used to investigate the growth of epitaxial films, up to thicknesses of ~200 Å, of V2O3 on both Pd(111) and Au(111). Scattered-ion energy spectra provide a measure of the average film thickness and the variations in this thickness, and show that, with suitable annealing, the crystalline quality is good. Plots of the scattering yield as a function of scattering angle, so-called blocking curves, have been measured for two different incidence directions and have been used to determine the surface structure. Specifically, scattering simulations for a range of different model structures show poor agreement with experiment for half-metal (….V’O3V) and vanadyl (….V’O3V=O) terminations, with and without surface interlayer relaxations. However, good agreement with experiment is found for the modified oxygen-termination structure, first proposed by Kresse et al., in which a subsurface V half-metal layer is moved up into the outermost V buckled metal layer to produce a VO2 overlayer on the underlying V2O3, with an associated layer structure of ….O3VV’’V’O3

Registration and analysis of multispectral images acquired during uterine transplantation surgery

Organ transplant success is dependent on blood supply health. A multispectral imaging laparoscope has been used to monitor tissue oxygenation changes during a rabbit uterine transplant. A feature tracking algorithm was used to compensate for movement. © OSA 2012

Multispectral Imaging of Organ Viability during Uterine Transplantation Surgery

Uterine transplantation surgery has been proposed as a treatment for permanent absolute uterine factor infertility (AUFI) in the case of loss of the uterus. Due to the complexity of the vasculature correct reanastomosis of the blood supply during transplantation surgery is a crucial step to ensure reperfusion and viability of the organ. While techniques such as fluorescent dye imaging have been proposed to visualise perfusion there is no gold standard for intraoperative visualisation of tissue oxygenation. In this paper results from a liquid crystal tuneable filter (LCTF)-based multispectral imaging (MSI) laparoscope are described. The system was used to monitor uterine oxygen saturation (SaO) before and after transplantation. Results from surgeries on two animal models (rabbits and sheep) are presented. A feature-based registration algorithm was used to correct for misalignment induced by breathing or peristalsis in the tissues of interest prior to analysis. An absorption spectrum was calculated at each spatial pixel location using reflectance data from a reference standard, and the relative contributions from oxy- and deoxyhaemoglobin were calculated using a least squares regression algorithm with non-negativity constraints. Results acquired during animal surgeries show that cornual oxygenation changes are consistent with those observed in point measurements taken using a pulse oximeter, showing reduced SaO following reanastomosis. Values obtained using the MSI laparoscope were lower than those taken with the pulse oximeter, which may be due to the latter’s use of the pulsatile arterial blood signal. Future work incorporating immunological test results will help to correlate SaO levels with surgical outcomes

Developmental rate: A unifying mechanism for sympatric divergence in postglacial fishes?

Morphologically divergent ecotypes arise in fish populations on postglacial time scales, and resource polymorphisms are often invoked to explain their origin. However, genetic recombination can constrain the ability of divergent selection to produce reproductive isolation in sympatry. Recombination breaks up favorable combinations of traits (”adaptive suites”) if individual traits are affected by different loci. Recombination also breaks up any association between traits under divergent selection and traits contributing to reproductive isolation. Thus, ecological speciation in the absence of preexisting barriers to gene flow is more likely when pleiotropy minimizes the number of loci involved. Here, we revisit research conducted by Carl Hubbs in the early 1900s on the effects of developmental rate on morphological traits in fishes. Hubbs’ work provides a mechanism to explain how sympatric divergence by trophic polymorphism can occur despite the challenges of recombination. We consider the implications of Hubbs’ observations for ecological speciation with gene flow in fishes, as well as rapid evolution in captive fish populations [Current Zoology 58 (1): 21–34, 2012].This is the publisher’s final pdf. The published article is copyrighted by Current Zoology, Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences and can be found at: http://www.actazool.org/.Keywords: Resource polymorphism, Pleiotropy, Selection-recombination antagonismKeywords: Resource polymorphism, Pleiotropy, Selection-recombination antagonis