One year of passive weapons detection and deterrence at an academic emergency department: A mixed-methods study.

Objective: Acts of violence occurring in the healthcare setting that involve weapons result in significant morbidity and mortality. New passive weapons screening technology (PWST) offers a potential protective measure. Our objective was to quantify the volume of weapons detected and deterred from our emergency department (ED) over a 12-month period and determine whether it led to weapon-carrier hostility towards frontline staff.

Triple Rule Out CT in the Emergency Department: Clinical Risk and Outcomes (Triple Rule Out in the Emergency Department).

Rationale And Objectives: Triple rule out CT protocols (TRO-CT) have been advocated as a single test to simultaneously evaluate major causes of acute chest pain, in particular acute myocardial infarction (MI), acute pulmonary embolism (PE), and acute aortic syndrome. However, it is unclear what patient populations would benefit from a such comprehensive exam and current guidelines recommend tailoring CT protocols to the most likely diagnosis.

Methods: We retrospectively reviewed TRO-CT scans performed from the Emergency Department (ED) at our institution from April 2021 to April 2022.

A Sixth Mass Extinction? How Linguistic Uncertainty Shapes Our Understanding of the Biodiversity Crisis.

The term 'sixth mass extinction' has become synonymous with the current biodiversity crisis. However, despite a general agreement that current biodiversity declines are severe, no consensus has been reached on whether this constitutes a 'mass extinction event', and thus, whether our current situation is comparable to the catastrophic extinction events of deep time. Here, we suggest that our inability to gauge whether the current biodiversity crisis is a mass extinction event may lie less in quantifiable evidence and more in the language used to define such events.

Synergistic effects of plastic debris and elevated nitrate concentrations on the proliferation of Ulva lactuca micro-propagules.

Ulva lactuca is a versatile intertidal and blooming green macroalga with a global distribution, undergoing a lifecycle that consists of critical phases. The effects of surface physical properties and elevated nitrate concentrations on the growth of Ulva spores were evaluated using ATR-FTIR analysis, water contact angle measurements and fluorescence microscopy. The weathering process conducted with seawater led to the emergence of new functional groups such as CO, CH (rock), and CH, alongside a reduction in existing groups on the polymers, as evidenced by ATR-FTIR.