Ovarian hypoplasia in heifers due to germ cell weakness.
Ovarian hypoplasia due to germ cell weakness was found in 18 heifers of the Swedish Red and White breed simultaneously with a sharp increase of the same syndrome in bulls of the same breed. The heifers were examined because they had not shown estrus or had not become pregnant after several months on pasture together with a fertile bull. After palpation of the ovaries per rectum they were classified as normal, partially hypoplastic or totally hypoplastic. The heifers were slaughtered and the numbers of primordial follicles were counted in the serially sectioned ovaries. The average numbers of follicles per ovary in the 3 diagnostic groups were 18716, 6617 and 4761, respectively. The numbers of primordial follicles in hypoplastic ovaries were significantly lower than in normal ovaries but were still within normal limits for heifers. However, the hypoplastic ovaries were very small, and the totally hypoplastic ones weighed only 1 g or less. The growth of the primordial follicles was disturbed and very few developed into Graafian follicles. There were also many empty cortical cords and anovular follicles. The heifers had all been sired by bulls belonging to breeding lines where germ cell weakness had occurred.
Ovarian development in athymic nude mice III. The effect of PMSG and oestradiol upon the size and composition of the ovarian follicle population
The response of 1 month old congenitally athymic nude mice and their phenotypically normal littermates to exogenous pregnant mare serum gonadotrophin (PMSG) and oestradiol-17beta has been tested. An equal increase in the number of growing follicles was detected in both nudes and controls in response to PMSG. A specific increase occurred in the number of unilaminar follicles in the initial growth stages in addition to the increase in the number of multilaminar and vesicular follicles. Oestradiol depressed follicular growth equally in both nudes and controls. The contracted appearance of growing follicles in nudes disappeared under the influence of PMSG and was induced in ovaries of control mice treated with oestradiol. We conclude that the ability of the mouse ovary to respond to exogenous PMSG and the oestradiol is not impaired by congenital athymia as expressed in the nude genotype. The data suggest that the retardation of follicular growth already reported in 1 month old nudes arises from a deficiency of gonadotrophin.
Instrumentation and Automated Photometric Titration Procedure for Total Acidity Determination in Red Wine Employing a Multicommuted Flow System
An automated procedure for photometric titration of red wine and associated instrumentation is described. The procedure was based on the flow-batch approach implemented employing multicommutation. The photometric detection was carried out using a homemade LED-based photometer. The mixing device, LED, and photodetector were attached to the titration chamber in order to form a compact and small-sized unit. The flow system comprised an automatic injector and three-way solenoid valves, which were controlled by a microcomputer through an electronic interface card. The software, written in Quick BASIC 4.5, was designed with abilities to accomplish all steps of the titration procedure including data acquisition and real-time processing to decide about the course of titration in the following step and so forth, until the titration endpoint was reached. The usefulness of the proposed titration system was demonstrated by analyzing red wine samples. When results were compared with those obtained using the AOAC reference method, no significant difference was observed at the 95% confidence level. A relative standard deviation of ca  2% (n=9 ) was obtained when processing a typical red wine sample containing 7.3 gl -1 total acidity expressed as tartaric acid.