The Penn Cove Roundup

Ted griffin awoke with a start, but he wasn’t sure why. It was a warm night in August 1970, and all seemed calm and quiet. Water lapped against the boat’s hull as the lights of Coupeville flickered a mile and a half away. Yet something wasn’t right. The breathing of the whales behind the capture nets sounded clipped and nervous. “How long have they been blowing that way?” he asked the two men on watch. “Blowing? What way?” they answered. “All night I guess.” Straining his eyes in the dark, Griffin scanned the enormous pen, anchored just off the old Standard Oil dock. Everything seemed to be in order—except on the north side. The marker lights there were too far apart. He roused Goldsberry, and the partners jumped into a skiff to investigate. When they reached the floating lights, Griffin stared down at a loose cork line, puzzled. The net looked split. “Not split—cut!” yelled Goldsberry. “And in more than one place.” Griffin couldn’t believe it. Suddenly the orcas’ anxious breathing made sense. During the night, someone had slashed a section of the net. Large portions of loose mesh now drifted in the current, threatening to drown any whales nearby. Griffin and Goldsberry shouted for their crew, and in the following hours everyone worked feverishly in the dark—reattaching lines, mending mesh, anchoring nets. Had they reacted in time? Had the animals managed to avoid danger? Griffin needed to find out. Donning his wetsuit, he slipped over the cork line and into Penn Cove’s murky waters. At first, he was hopeful. All the whales seemed to be swimming near the surface. But a moment later, his eye caught a shimmer of white—perhaps a shark caught in the net? No, it was a tiny orca calf, no more than eight feet long. Ensnared in a floating portion of mesh, the little whale hung lifeless, head down. Other divers found two more, also calves. Initially, Griffin felt only nausea, but that soon gave way to rage. He wanted to lash out at those responsible.

Evaluation of Electrospun Nanofiber-Anchored Silicone for the Degenerative Intervertebral Disc

The nucleus pulposus (NP) substitution by polymeric gel is one of the promising techniques for the repair of the degenerative intervertebral disc (IVD). Silicone gel is one of the potential candidates for a NP replacement material. Electrospun fiber anchorage to silicone disc, referred as ENAS disc, may not only improve the biomechanical performances of the gel but it can also improve restoration capability of the gel, which is unknown. This study successfully produced a novel process to anchor any size and shape of NP gel with electrospun fiber mesh. Viscoelastic properties of silicone and ENAS disc were measured using standard experimental techniques and compared with the native tissue properties. Ex vivo mechanical tests were conducted on ENAS disc-implanted rabbit tails to the compare the mechanical stability between intact and ENAS implanted spines. This study found that viscoelastic properties of ENAS disc are higher than silicone disc and comparable to the viscoelastic properties of human NP. The ex vivo studies found that the ENAS disc restore the mechanical functionality of rabbit tail spine, after discectomy of native NP and replacing the NP by ENAS disc. Therefore, the PCL ENF mesh anchoring technique to a NP implant can have clinical potential.