In recent years plastination has begun to revolutionize the way in which human and veterinary gross anatomy can be presented to students. The study reported here assessed the efficacy of plastinated organs as teaching resources in an innovative anatomy teaching/learning system. The main objective was to evaluate whether the use of plastinated organs improves the quality of teaching and learning of anatomy. For this purpose, we used an interdepartmental approach involving the departments of Veterinary Anatomy, Human Anatomy, Veterinary Surgery, and Education Development and Research Methods. The knowledge base of control and experimental student groups was examined before and after use of the fixed or plastinated resources, respectively, to gather information evaluating the effectiveness of these teaching resources. Significant differences (p < 0.001) between control and experimental groups of Human and Veterinary Anatomy were observed in the post-test results. The Veterinary Surgery students had the most positive opinion of the use of plastinated specimens. Using these data, we were able to quantitatively characterize the use of plastinated specimens as anatomy teaching resources. This analysis showed that all the plastinated resources available were heavily used and deemed useful by students. Although the properties of plastinated specimens accommodate student needs at various levels, traditional material should be used in conjunction with plastinated resources.

Previous work has shown that higher incubation temperatures produce newly hatched salmon (Salmo salar) with fewer but larger muscle fibres than salmon incubated at colder temperatures. Our purpose was to study the effect of differing incubation temperatures on the development of muscle cellularity in posthatch salmon. Eggs from a single pair of Atlantic salmon were incubated at either the stream ambient temperature (fluctuating around 5 °C prehatch and gradually rising to around 10 °C posthatch) or at 11 °C. From each group, samples were taken at hatching, first feeding, and at 3 weeks after first feeding. During the period of exogenous feeding under study, the ambient group grew faster. The number of muscle fibres remained lower in the 11 °C fish but there was more muscle fibre hypertrophy in the ambient group so that the difference in muscle fibre size seen at hatching was eliminated by 3 weeks after first feeding. It is suggested that reduced number of nuclei in the 11 °C fish at hatching may contribute to the relatively reduced fibre hypertrophy in these fish. The results indicate that embryonic myogenesis can affect the posthatch growth of salmon at least up to 3 weeks after first feeding.