Apparatus and methods for supporting conduits within a sanitary environment. Also provided by the present invention is a method of treating cancer by administering to a patient in need of such treatment an effective amount of N-terminally truncated galectin-3 in a pharmaceutically acceptable carrier. Moreover, the apparatus comprises a measuring head configured to be contactlessly positioned adjacent the silicon wafer and configured to illuminate at least a portion of the silicon wafer with the coherent light and to receive at least a portion of radiation reflected by the silicon wafer. The principle is also extended to mixed-rate signals, where for example some input channels are sampled at 48 kHz and some are sampled at 96 kHz.