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Researchers applied a formulation which includes both elastic adhesion and sintering to the study of coalescence of a Maxwell viscoelastic sphere to a rigid flat surface. The initial coalescence is due to elastic adhesion then a zipping mechanism causes a transition to viscous sintering. This zipping mechanism is due to attractive forces outside the area of contact. The next stage in the process is a stretching mode of coalescence which is due to curvature-based tractions. The contact radius at which the transition from zipping to stretching modes occurs is related to the sphere radius.

A new parametric tip force-distance relation (PT/FDR) is shown for describing the probe-sample system in atomic force microscopy (AFM). A surface integration technique is designed to calculate the interactions between arbitrarily shaped bodies. The technique is based on the Hamaker pairwise in integration in a continuous fashion, reducing the six-dimensional integration to a four-dimensional procedure. The PT/FDR is derived and a nonlinear fitting process is utilized to extract the model parameters and the Hamaker constant from AFM force-distance data.

Both quantitative and qualitative aspects of the ovarian reserve are inversely related to age, hence the relationship existing between low quantity and low quality may be only indirect and depending on their strong relationship with the third variable, namely women's age. However the possibility exists that they may also be directly related. The objective of this study was to investigate the relationship between ovarian reserve and female reproductive outcome. Eight published studies reporting histological data on the human ovaries have been carefully reviewed. Only studies where the reproductive history of women was reported have been included for the analysis. The non-growing follicle count was plotted versus age and the best fit line through the data was calculated. All patients were assigned as to be above or below the calculated median hence differentiating women with high or low ovarian reserve for their age. A similar number of pregnancies ended in miscarriage in women with low and high ovarian reserve. The number of deliveries per woman in both the groups was not statistically different. The results of the study do not support the hypothesis that quality and quantity of the follicular pool are directly related. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]