Investigating the distribution and regional occurrence of anthropogenic litter in English marine protected areas using 25 years of citizen-science beach clean data.

Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are designated to enable the management of damaging activities within a discrete spatial area, and can be effective at reducing the associated impacts, including habitat loss and over-exploitation. Such sites, however, may be exposed to the potential impacts from broader scale pressures, such as anthropogenic litter, due to its diffuse nature and lack of constraint by legislative and/or political boundaries. Plastic, a large component of litter, is of particular concern, due to increasing evidence of its potential to cause ecological and socio-economic damage.

Ecological regime shift drives declining growth rates of sea turtles throughout the West Atlantic.

Somatic growth is an integrated, individual-based response to environmental conditions, especially in ectotherms. Growth dynamics of large, mobile animals are particularly useful as bio-indicators of environmental change at regional scales. We assembled growth rate data from throughout the West Atlantic for green turtles, Chelonia mydas, which are long-lived, highly migratory, primarily herbivorous mega-consumers that may migrate over hundreds to thousands of kilometers.

Extubation after anaesthesia: a randomised comparison of three techniques.

The mode of ventilation used during awake extubation has not previously been studied. We conducted a randomised controlled trial comparing spontaneous respiration, intermittent positive pressure ventilation, and pressure support ventilation (each n = 13) for incidence and severity of peri-extubation complications following routine elective surgery. We found the severity of peri-extubation cough was significantly affected by mode of ventilation used at extubation (p = 0.