Thanatosis in juvenile notolabrus celidotus, the New Zealand spotty wrasse

Children with behavioral health conditions often experience agitation when admitted to children's hospitals. Physical restraint should be used only as a last resort for patient agitation because it endangers the physical and psychological safety of patients and employees. At the medical behavioral unit (MBU) in our children's hospital, we aimed to decrease the weekly rate of physical restraint events per 100 MBU patient-days, independent of patient race, ethnicity, or language, from a baseline mean of 14.0 to <10 within 12 months. Using quality improvement methodology, a multidisciplinary team designed, tested, and implemented interventions including a series of daily deescalation huddles led by a charge behavioral health clinician that facilitated individualized planning for MBU patients with the highest behavioral acuity. We tracked the weekly number of physical restraint events per 100 MBU patient-days as a primary outcome measure, weekly physical restraint event duration as a secondary outcome measure, and MBU employee injuries as a balancing measure. Our cohort included 527 consecutive patients hospitalized in the MBU between January 2021 and January 2023. Our 2021 baseline mean of 14.0 weekly physical restraint events per 100 MBU patient-days decreased to 10.0 during our 2022 intervention period from January through July and 4.1 in August, which was sustained through December. Weekly physical restraint event duration also decreased from 112 to 67 minutes without a change in employee injuries. Multidisciplinary huddles that facilitated daily deescalation planning safely reduced the frequency and duration of physical restraint events in the MBU.

The need to better monitor coercion practices in psychiatric hospitals has been recognised. We aim to describe how physical restraint events occur in psychiatric hospitals and identify factors associated with physical-restraint use. A cohort register study was used. We analyzed physical restraint documents among 14 wards in two psychiatric hospitals in Hong Kong (1 July and 31 Dec. 2018). In total, 1798 incidents occurred (the rate of physical restraint event 0.43). Typically, physically restrained patients were in early middle-age, of both genders, diagnosed with schizophrenia-spectrum and other psychotic disorders, and admitted voluntarily. Alternate methods for physical restraint were reported, such as an explanation of the situation to the patients, time-out or sedation. A longer period of being physically restrained was associated with being male, aged ≥40 years, having involuntary status, and neurodevelopmental-disorder diagnosis. Our findings support a call for greater action to promote the best practices in managing patient aggression and decreasing the use of physical restraint in psychiatric wards. The reasons for the use of physical restraint, especially for those patients who are admitted to a psychiatric hospital on a voluntary basis and are diagnosed with neurodevelopmental disorders, needs to be better understood and analysed.

A mechanistic model for interpretation of hydrogen and oxygen isotope ratios in tree-ring cellulose

Tonic immobility is a widely used technique for the surgical implantation of acoustic tags in elasmobranchs (sharks, skates, and rays), yet it is still not broadly recognised as an acceptable procedure by many regulatory bodies, animal care committees, and even journal ethics standards. To highlight its regular use and applicability as a field procedure, a literature search was conducted on the anaesthetic technique adopted for all existing elasmobranch-focused acoustic telemetry papers, up to 31 December 2013. A total of 57 studies were identified that contained relevant details on surgical methodological procedures. Of these, the majority of studies (43, or 75.4%) employed tonic immobility, while 10 (17.6%) used general chemical anaesthetic and 4 (7%) used local chemical anaesthetic. These studies identify that tonic immobility provides an effective anaesthetic for surgical implantation in elasmobranchs, as it offers several benefits over chemical anaesthetics, both from a practical and from an animal welfare perspective. Practically, rapid induction and recovery optimizes the surgical procedure, desirable under often complex field conditions, where general chemical anaesthetics prolong duration and administration is often unfeasible because of the size of study animals. Benefits over chemical anaesthetic for animal welfare include no risk of overdose, no uptake of chemicals to body tissues, minimal disruption to respiration, thereby reducing potential for negative sublethal impacts that influence postrelease behaviour, and immediate and full recovery. Given these benefits and its long-standing use in field studies, it is recommended that tonic immobility be recognised as an acceptable anaesthetic technique for surgical procedures on elasmobranchs.

Flamboyant cuttlefish behavior: Camouflage tactics and complex colorful reproductive behavior assessed during field studies at Lembeh Strait, Indonesia

Tonic immobility is an antipredator defence in which the prey animal remains motionless after physical contact with the predator, pretending to be dead. This behaviour has been observed among a variety of taxa but has received only little attention in amphibian larvae. During our field studies with fire salamander larvae, we observed that larvae from different habitats display tonic immobility after handling. In our study site, we find larvae in pond and stream habitats, that differ in several aspects such as their stress response and their risk-taking behaviour, likely caused by the very different habitat conditions. We measured the time that the tonic immobility behaviour was displayed but found no difference between larvae from the two habitat types. Likewise, we also found no correlation between the size of the larvae and the duration of displaying the behaviour. In conclusion, we found that fire salamander larvae show tonic immobility, but found no evidence that the different habitat conditions influence the tonic immobility behaviour.

A model is described that explains the evolution of adult butterfly settling posture. The role of climate and the activity of butterflies is fundamental in determining the effectiveness of primary and secondary visual defence systems based on wing colour and pattern. Both dorsal (open winged) and lateral (closed wing) postures can be regarded as evolutionarily conservative; common postures are found within almost all sub-families. Lateral postures tend to be associated with cool temperate and arctic climates. Conditions that are marginal for activity place an emphasis on the development of underside primary defence, uncompromised by secondary visual defences. In turn, any primary defensive function of the upper surface is reduced but secondary defence may be emphasized. There is interaction between segregation of functions on different wing surfaces and the development of lateral posture. The use of predictable hostplant-habitat structures reduces the role of visual communication in mate-location and facilitates the adoption of a lateral resting posture and a cryptic underside wing pattern. When hostplant-habitat structures are unpredictable but a lateral posture is adopted, primary defence is more important than visual communication for the resting insect. Adjustments of wing morphology facilitate postural conservatism, allowing species to retain particular postures in new hostplant-habitats and climatic zones.

Minimising formal coercion, such as seclusion, physical restraint, and forced medication, remains a global priority in acute mental health units. However, key drivers beyond individual-level features are poorly understood. This exploratory analysis was intended to identify the top functional, contextual, and interventional features linked to formal coercion in three Australian acute adult mental health inpatient units. Nested within a mixed concurrent control study, this feature analysis examined nurses' reports of 2955 de-escalation events over 324 days, from March 2024 to April 2025, including nurses' commentaries on the behavioural functions that triggered de-escalations. Fifteen inductively coded functional features were analysed alongside 15 contextual and 16 interventional features. Studied target variables included seclusion and physical restraint events and their durations, as-needed intramuscular psychotropic events, physical injury events, and Code Black activations. Features were analysed using bivariate statistics and machine learning techniques, including the Boruta algorithm for feature selection and random forest regressions for predictive modelling. Top drivers for the use of formal coercion included behavioural 'Responses to Challenging, Physical and External Stimuli,' incidents of self-harm, incidents directed towards nurses, and the application of specific de-escalation techniques. A hierarchy of behavioural functions is proposed as a by-product of this analysis. These findings provide nuanced insights into the drivers of formal coercion and the underlying value arrangements, as well as elevate the merit of ecological, bottom-up approaches in early warning signs work.

Recent empirical studies have documented the importance of tropical mountainous rivers on global silicate weathering and suspended sediment transport. Such field studies are typically based on limited temporal data, leaving uncertainty in the strength of observed relationships with controlling parameters over the long term. A deficiency of long-term data also prevents determination of the impact that multi-year or decadal climate patterns, such as the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), might have on weathering fluxes. Here we analyze an 18-year hydrochemical dataset for eight sub-basins of the Panama Canal Watershed of high-temporal frequency collected between 1998 and 2015 to address these knowledge gaps. We identified a strongly positive covariance of both cation (Ca2+, Mg2+, K+, Na+) and suspended sediment yields with precipitation and extent of forest cover, whereas we observed negative relationships with temperature and mosaic landcover. We also confirmed a statistical relationship between seasonality, ENSO, and river discharge, with significantly higher values occurring during La Niña events. These findings emphasize the importance that long-term datasets have on identifying short-term influences on chemical and physical weathering rates, especially, in ENSO-influenced regions.

The Effects of PAH Contamination and Grazing on the Abundance and Composition of Microphytobenthos in Salt Marsh Sediments (Pass Fourchon, LA, U.S.A.): II: The Use of Plant Pigments as Biomarkers

Children hospitalized in medical hospitals are at risk of agitation. Physical restraint may be used to maintain patient and staff safety during de-escalation, but physical restraint use is associated with physical and psychological adverse events. We sought to better understand which work system factors help clinicians prevent patient agitation, improve de-escalation, and avoid physical restraint. We used directed content analysis to extend the Systems Engineering Initiative for Patient Safety model to clinicians working with children at risk for agitation at a freestanding children's hospital. We conducted semistructured interviews to examine how five clinician work system factors affected patient agitation, de-escalation, and restraint: person, environment, tasks, technology and tools, and organization. Interviews were recorded, transcribed, and analyzed until saturation. Forty clinicians participated in this study, including 21 nurses, 15 psychiatric technicians, 2 pediatric physicians, 1 psychologist, and 1 behavior analyst. Work system factors that contributed to patient agitation were medical tasks like vital signs and the hospital environment including bright lights and neighboring patients' noises. Supports that helped clinicians de-escalate patients included adequate staffing and accessible toys and activities. Participants indicated that organizational factors were integral to team de-escalation, drawing connections between units' teamwork and communication cultures and their likelihood of successful de-escalation without the use of physical restraint. Clinicians perceived that medical tasks, hospital environmental factors, clinician attributes, and team communication influenced patients' agitation, de-escalation, and physical restraint. These work system factors provide opportunities for future multi-disciplinary interventions to reduce physical restraint use.

The Defender's Vision-Gaze Behavior of One-on-One Defenders in Basketball.

Metabolite profiles based on GC/MS were used to study the temporal dynamics of metabolites in potato leaves following pathogen inoculation. In the polar and non-polar plant extracts a total of 106 consistent peaks were detected, of which 95 metabolites were tentatively identified. Following pathogen inoculation, the abundances of 42 metabolites were significantly increased or decreased, and these metabolites were designated as Pathogenesis-Related (PR) Metabolites. Factor analysis of the abundance of 106 metabolites identified four plant–pathogen interaction functions: (i) homeostasis; (ii) primary defence; (iii) secondary defence; (iv) collapse of primary and secondary defence responses. During the primary and secondary defence phases, dramatic changes in the amino acids, known precursors of several plant defence-related metabolites, were observed. Plausible satellite-networks of metabolic pathways leading to the up-regulation of these families of amino acids and other secondary metabolites, and their potential application for the evaluation of horizontal resistance in potato against the late blight pathogen is discussed.

Tonic immobility, a temporary cessation of voluntary movements, is a widespread phenomenon within the animal kingdom. While commonly regarded as an ‘anti-predator’ defence strategy, empirical evidence supporting this hypothesis is predominantly limited to terrestrial vertebrates. In Chondrichthyes (i.e., sharks, rays, and chimaeras), tonic immobility has also been proposed as an anti-predator mechanism, despite a dearth of evidence and fundamental physiological distinctions from terrestrial counterparts. Here, we present data regarding tonic immobility induced by dorsoventral inversion across 13 chondrichthyan species. We also perform a review of the existing literature to identify temporal, taxonomic, and methodological trends in TI research. Then, using phylogenetic comparative methods, we demonstrate that this trait is plesiomorphic to Chondrichthyes and has been independently lost multiple times throughout chondrichthyan phylogeny. Contrary to expectations, we find no significant correlation between the evolutionary transitions in tonic immobility and major ecological axes of variation in Chondrichthyes. Our findings challenge existing hypotheses and suggest that tonic immobility may lack adaptive significance in extant chondrichthyans, persisting through chondrichthyan phylogeny due to minimal net fitness costs. Additionally, we propose an association between the loss of tonic immobility and entanglement risk in shallow-water benthic ecosystems. Our results provide unprecedented insights into the evolutionary history of this enigmatic behaviour within Chondrichthyes and across the phylogeny of jawed vertebrates.

Control of sexual behaviour pattern ‘secondary defence’ in the female grass-hopper, Chorthippus curtipennis