Platinum Hour: Emergency Department Length of Stay and Trauma Patients' Outcomes.

Introduction: Trauma bay and emergency department (ED) length of stay (LOS) are important time measures in patient care. The data on this subject are inconclusive or specific to one condition. Our goal was to determine the relationship between ED LOS and outcomes or mortality of trauma patients.

Transmitter release site organization can predict synaptic function at the neuromuscular junction.

We have investigated the impact of transmitter release site (active zone; AZ) structure on synaptic function by physically rearranging the individual AZ elements in a previously published frog neuromuscular junction (NMJ) AZ model into the organization observed in a mouse NMJ AZ. We have used this strategy, purposefully without changing the properties of AZ elements between frog and mouse models (even though there are undoubtedly differences between frog and mouse AZ elements in vivo), to directly test how structure influences function at the level of an AZ. Despite a similarly ordered ion channel array substructure within both frog and mouse AZs, frog AZs are much longer and position docked vesicles in a different location relative to AZ ion channels.