Emergency department (ED) overcrowding threatens healthcare quality. Ambulance diversion (AD) may relieve ED overcrowding; however, diverting patients from an overcrowded ED will load neighboring EDs with more patients and may result in regional overcrowding. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the impact of different diversion strategies on the crowdedness of multiple EDs in a region. Th...

The vascular type of Ehlers-Danlos syndrome (EDS), EDS type IV (Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man [MIM] #130050) is characterized by thin, translucent skin, easy bruising, and arterial, intestinal, and/or uterine fragility during pregnancy, which may lead to sudden death. It is an autosomal dominant inherited disorder caused by type III procollagen gene (COL3A1: MIM #120180) mutations. Approx...

BACKGROUND Excessive daytime sleepiness (EDS) often occurs as a result of insufficient sleep, sleep apnea, illicit substance use, and other medical and psychiatric conditions. This study tested the hypothesis that blacks exhibiting EDS would have poorer self-reported adherence to hypertensive medication using cross-sectional data from the Counseling African-Americans to Control Hypertension (CA...

INTRODUCTION Telemedicine connects emergency departments (ED) with resources necessary for patient care; its use has not been characterized nationally, or even regionally. Our primary objective was to describe the prevalence of telemedicine use in New England EDs and the clinical applications of use. Secondarily, we aimed to determine if telemedicine use was associated with consultant availabil...

BACKGROUND Endocrine disruptors (EDs) are defined by the World Health Organization (WHO) as exogenous compounds or mixtures that alter function(s) of the endocrine system and consequently cause adverse effects in an intact organism, or its progeny, or (sub)populations. European regulations on pesticides, biocides, cosmetics, and industrial chemicals require the European Commission to establish ...

BACKGROUND Many individuals with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (EDS) are hypermobile, suffer from long term pain, and have complex health problems. Since these sometimes have no objective physical signs, individuals with EDS sometimes are referred for psychiatric evaluation. The aim was therefore to identify the level of anxiety and quality of life in a Swedish group of individuals with EDS. METHODS...

OBJECTIVE To examine 24/7 access to services and consultants in a sample of Canadian rural emergency departments (EDs). DESIGN Cross-sectional study-mixed methods (structured interview, survey and government data bases) with random sampling of hospitals. SETTING Canadian rural EDs (rural small town (RST) definition-Statistics Canada). PARTICIPANTS 28% (95/336) of Canadian rural EDs provid...

OBJECTIVES Excessive daytime sleepiness (EDS) is a common sleep complaint in the population and is increasingly recognised as deleterious for health. Simple and sensitive tools allowing identifying individuals at greater risk of EDS would be of public health importance. Hence, we determined trajectories of body silhouette from early childhood to adulthood and evaluated their association with ED...

-Electrodynamic screens (EDS) have proved to be an efficient method for dust removal from a variety of surfaces including photovoltaic (PV) cells. An EDS is composed of a series of parallel electrodes on a substrate that is energized by a three phase high-voltage amplifier. This technology would be critical for deployment of PV arrays in remote, dusty atmospheres such as the surface of mars. As...

This collection of ten essays (several co-authored) by an international group of philosophers and biologists aims to explore the implications of neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory for our understanding of ethics. In keeping with the interdisciplinary spirit of the volume, 'ethics' is here understood very broadly, such that the study of ethics includes everything from philosophical inquiry into t...