28 Report on the use of Warm Stages in UK Fertility Laboratories to Assess Sperm Viability


Animal fertility assessment is crucial for animal husbandry in the UK: farmers need to know that their breeding animals are healthy before the breeding season so that lambing and calving can be organised effectively. Linkam warms stages are designed to hold a specified temperature to +/- 0.1°C from ambient to 60°C. They are an accurate temperature control platform for inverted or upright microscope applications where it is crucial to maintain at 0.1°C stable temperature in the sample whether mounted in a petri dish or on a microscope slide.


Sperm motility is temperature dependent. To establish in-vivo fertility, observations need to be carried out at body temperature to mimic conditions within the body: for humans, bulls and rams is exactly 37°C. The use of a precise, accurate heated warm stage is an essential part of the assessment. This is to ensure the assessment is conducted at a stable and specific temperature. Within the design of this Linkam warm stage, a platinum resistor temperature sensor is used for higher accuracy and stability. A sophisticated CAD designed bi-filar heating element covers the entire working surface which provides a uniform temperature distribution in the sample slide.


A sample is placed onto a clean glass slide and covered with a coverslip to provide a chamber. The weight of the cover slip spreads the sample evenly. Scientists initially look for aggregation or agglutination, and the presence of non-spermatozoa cells. The preparation is then observed at 400x magnification with a phase contrast microscope to observe motility. Each Linkam-designed warm plate is incredibly thin, as little as 0.5mm. This ensures that high resolution objective and condenser lenses can be used. Approximately 200 spermatozoa are counted and categorised to determine the percentage of each category. Spermatozoa can be classified as progressively motile, non-progressively motile or non-motile. The percentage of progressively motile sperm is important to fertility assessment.


Linkam warm stages are found in cell biology labs, veterinary hospitals, hospitals and IVF clinics all over the world. The Linkam warm stages provide a simple, accurate, low cost temperature controlled platform that can heat/cool samples from ambient to 60°C.


MICROSCOPY MORE INFO. 609


Disc Centrifuge System Used for Nanoparticle Characterisation


Analytik report on the use of the CPS Instruments Disc Centrifuge in the Surface and Nanoanalysis group at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL), Teddington, UK. NPL supplies a range of measurement services, reference materials, and software, which underpin quantitative surface analysis. Among the measurement services offered is nanoparticle sizing for which a suite of particle sizing techniques are employed.


One of the techniques used is Differential Centrifugal Sedimentation or DCS. DCS is used to obtain ultra-high resolution size distributions of particles in the nano- and micron- range. The size range of the particles that can be analysed by DCS depends on the density of their constituent materials.


Group member Nia Bell described how she uses DCS. "We have used DCS to size particles and check for aggregation. We have also combined the density dependent information from DCS to density independent information from other techniques to investigate particle porosity and the functionalisation of particle surfaces. I have looked at silica and gold particles while other members of the group have looked at cerium oxide, titanium dioxide and zinc oxide particles amongst others."


Bell then continued to describe the density measurements in more detail: "DCS was used to investigate the adsorption of protein on gold nanoparticles. With increasing protein shell thickness the effective density of the particles decreased. For accurate interpretation of the DCS data this variable effective density had to be considered. Either the density of the shell was assumed to be equal to some constant value and the shell thickness extracted from the DCS data, or the shell thickness was assumed to be that measured using a density independent technique and DCS used to calculate the density of the shell. From the density and thickness of the protein shell, the amount of protein adsorbed could be estimated."


The CPS Instrument performs nanoparticle size analysis utilising the Differential Centrifugal Sedimentation method. This offers the unique ability to resolve very close multimodal particle distributions and to distinguish extremely small shifts in particle size. Rather than using a predictive algorithm, the instrument physically separates the nanoparticles and then measures them as they pass a light source detector and thus provides full characterisation in real time.


LAB PRODUCTS MORE INFO. 610


Spectroscopy Development Platform Updated with New Features


Ocean Optics has released an update to its OmniDriver Spectroscopy Development Platform. The platform-neutral Java based OmniDriver Version 2.20 provides a simple interface for programming of USB spectrometers, accessories and devices in optical sensing systems, and is available with an optional set of spectral processing math algorithms. New features have improved the platform’s high-speed data acquisition, spectral processing, data analysis, data visualisation and data transfer options.


With native libraries included for a variety of Linux, Macintosh and Windows operating systems, OmniDriver users can develop robust control applications without knowing Java; the wrapper libraries provide an interface for most languages to link against. The OmniDriver’s platform- and spectrometer- independent programming means the same code works with any Ocean Optics USB spectrometer. With Version 2.20’s new ‘SpeedTest’ feature, users can determine the maximum performance possible for a spectrometer model on the Windows operating system.


Also, OmniDriver Version 2.20 has more robust algorithms for photometry and colourimetry. This is an especially useful feature when measuring samples with sharp peaks, such as in narrowband sources like those used in laser projection systems.


For OEMs, two new command line parameters have been added to the installer for customisation of the company and driver name. Drivers for three additional Ocean Optics’ devices have now been certified by Windows Hardware Quality Labs, meaning drivers for most of the company’s devices will install automatically when connected to a Windows 7 PC.


The OmniDriver’s wrapper libraries include Dynamic Link Library (Windows), Shared Object (Linux) and a .NET object (Windows). The software is compatible with a variety of operating systems: Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7, 64-bit versions of XP, Vista, and Windows 7; Mac OSX 10.3 or later; plus many Linux x86 distributions (Kernel 2.4.20 and libusb 0.1.10 or later are required).


SPECTROSCOPY MORE INFO. 611


Soundproof Enclosures and Mobile Benches


For noisy vacuum pumps, water chillers, ultrasonic baths and nitrogen generators, ATG Scientific now offers an extensive range of soundproofing products for laboratories operating electron microscopy, mass spectrometry and semiconductor manufacturing equipment. Noise reduction enclosures are guaranteed to reduce noise by up to 75%, equivalent to about 15 dB(A). The enclosures are built for installation on the floor, thus precious bench space is not wasted. They can also be supplied with a range of options including an overheating temperature alarm and oil drain valve.


The Company is also supplying specially designed mobile benches and elevating tables for use in pharmaceutical, environmental, clinical and university laboratories using many types of scientific instrument including MS, ICP, HPLC, LC/GC, SFC and AFM.


LAB PRODUCTS MORE INFO. 612


LABMATE UK & IRELAND - JANUARY 2013


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