R E . 1995. Forty-eight strains of Carnobacterium were examined by pyrolysis mass spectrometry (PyMS). T h e effects of culture age and reproducibility over a 4 week period were also examined. T h e results were analysed by multivariate statistical techniques and compared with those from a previous numerical taxonomic study based on morphological, physiological and biochemical characteristics and with studies which used DNA-DNA and 16s rRNA sequence homologies. Taxonomic correlations were observed between the PyMS data and the previous studies. Culture age was observed to have little effect on the mass spectra obtained and the reproducibility study indicated that there was very little variation over the 4 week period. It was concluded that PyMS provides a reliable method for studying carnobacterial classification and provides a rapid way for clarifying and refining subgeneric relationships within the genus Carnobacterium. Further work may also show that it offers a potentially very rapid and accurate method for the identification of Carnobacterium.

It is possible to discern the following four distinct approaches to the study of electrically mediated bone regeneration, namely: observation of osteogenesis that results from the passage of electric current either injected percutaneously or produced by active implants; measurement of voltages generated by the stressing of bone; measurement of skin, periosteum, and bone surface potentials under normal and abnormal conditions; and microscopic examination of organ or tissue cultures under the influence of electric or magnetic fields.Experimentation of the first type has been conducted by many investigators; the most well-known results are those of Bassett and colleagues,l who produced clearly observable bone growth in dog femurs, particularly around the cathodes of active implants that had electrodes projecting into intermedullary cavities. Other workers repeated the procedure with varying degrees of success; O'Connor and associates* found that, in some cases, significant growth appeared near the anode of active implants. In 1969, Lavine and coworkers3 deplored the lack of controls employed during such experimentation and attempted to apply more rigorous physical constraints. In I97 1, Hambury and collaborators' continued the quantification of such investigation by utilizing a radioactive strontium uptake method for assessing the actual amount of new bone formed. The experiments were performed on rabbits rather than on dogs, and the bone growth at electrically active, as opposed to inactive control, implants was not demonstrably greater. In addition, quantitative 508