After signing the consent form, an interview was carried out using a structured questionnaire and a venous blood sample of 8 ml was collected in a Microtainer evacuated blood collection system with additives (K2EK2EDTA Greiner bio-one, USA).
Blood was drawn from the femoral vein into an evacuated plasma collection tube (Becton, Dickinson and Company, Inc, Franklin Lakes, NJ, USA) and kept cool until processing.
Blood was drawn from the extradural venous sinus into sterile evacuated blood collection Monovette® tubes (serum tubes for Hg analysis, EDTA tubes for RT-PCR and heparinised tubes for functional tests and proteomics analysis).
Whole blood was drawn into 10 mL CPT tubes (Becton Dickinson, Franklin Lakes, NJ), which is an evacuated blood collection tube system containing sodium citrate anticoagulant and blood separation media composed of a thixotropic polyester gel and a FICOLL™ Hypaque™ solution.
Samples were collected by jugular venipuncture into sterile, evacuated blood-collection tubes (Venoject; Terumo Europe N.V.3001 Leuven, Belgium) with sodium heparin (100 IU) as anticoagulant.
During the last 7 d of each period, rumen contents were subsampled over a 24-h period, rumen contents were completely evacuated, and total collection of feces and urine was made over 4 d.
Blood was sampled in single-use evacuated fluoride/oxalate blood collection tubes containing 10 mg sodium fluoride and 8 mg potassium oxalate (BD VACUTAINER®) supplied by BD (Franklin Lakes, NJ, USA).
In the last weeks before Soviet troops conquered Berlin in 1945, the best works in the 19th-century collection were evacuated and ended up in the West.
In the days immediately after the hurricane, officials even considered evacuating the entire collection.
For days, aquarium officials were uncertain whether they would need to evacuate the entire collection of 12,000 fish and marine mammals to other aquariums on the East Coast.
