Ornamental plants adapted to urban ecosystem pollution: lawn grasses tolerating deicing reagents.

Deicing reagents are priority soil pollutants in urban ecosystems. Sodium chloride is one of the priority deicing reagents. Sodium chloride is limiting the spread of lawn grass. We first showed the possibility of using environmental biotechnology in urban greening to obtain lawn grasses tolerant of sodium chloride. We have developed a cell selection technology to obtain salt-tolerant lawn grasses. A cell selection scheme with 1% sodium chloride was used. Most of the tested regenerants were more tolerant to NaCl than original plants. The descendants of the studied regenerants demonstrated the preservation of salt resistance. Most of the descendants of the regenerants Agrostis stolonifera retained high decorative qualities under salinity conditions. The tolerance remained in the next five generations. The descendants of the most salt-tolerant clones Agrostis stolonifera demonstrated resistance to 1% sodium chloride concentration in soil. These plants can serve as the basis for the creation of new salt-tolerant varieties.

Cell selection for increasing resistance of ornamental plants to copper.

Cell selection was used to obtain copper-resistant plants. Developed technologies for obtaining copper-resistant plants Agrostis stolonifera and Chrysanthemum carinatum can be applied to other plant species. We obtained copper-resistant plants Festuca rubra, Brachycome iberidifolia and Linum perenne. The concept of obtaining plants resistant to copper has been developed. This concept consists of two methods. The first method is applicable when calli is highly sensitive to copper. The second method is applicable when calli are moderately sensitive to copper.

Not overstepping professional boundaries: the challenging role of nurses in simulated error disclosures.

This article provides findings on the role of the nurse in simulated team-based error disclosures. Triangulation of 3 qualitative data sets revealed that a tension exists for nurses in the error disclosure process as they attempt to balance professional boundaries. Study findings point to multilevel strategies including cultural, structural, and educational approaches to enhancing the key roles that nurses need to play in error disclosure to patients and families.

Ornamental plants adapted to urban ecosystem pollution: lawn grasses and painted daisy tolerating copper.

Lawns and flower are major aesthetical and environmental elements of the urban ecosystem. However, harsh urban conditions such as pollution by heavy metals are unfavorable for plants. For example, copper is toxic for ornamental plants, limiting the spread of lawn grass and flowering plants. Therefore, here we hypothesized that plants could be adapted to urban conditions by breeding. We first showed the possibility of using environmental biotechnology in urban greening to obtain, tolerating copper flowering plants and lawn grasses. We tested the adaptation of creeping bentgrass (Agrostis stolonifera L.) and painted daisy (Chrysanthemum carinatum Schousb.) to сopper. We measured Cu resistance in the next generations of those plant species. Results show that some next generations of plant regenerants have increased resistance up to 100 mg/kg Cu for Agrostis stolonifera, and up to 30 mg/kg for Chrysanthemum carinatum. Our findings thus imply that city plants may be adapted and improved by сell selection. Our approach thus represents a novel biotechnology consisting of adapting plants to pollution by сell selection.

Determination of antimony by surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy.

A highly sensitive method for the detection and quantitative evaluation of antimony(III) using the surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) technique is demonstrated. The method is based on the analysis of SERS spectra intensity of antimony bound to phenylfluorone (Sb-PhF). Phenylfluorone is widely used as an organic reagent for the spectrophotometric determination of some heavy metals. For the SERS experiment a Sb-PhF complex was adsorbed onto the silvered porous silicon substrate. The significant degradation of the SERS signal was observed during measurements in the air. The time evolution of SERS spectra at ambient and degassed conditions was investigated to find an optimal regime for SERS measurements. The limit of Sb detection in degassed samples was determined to be near 1 ng/mL, which is one order of magnitude less than that attainable by the photometric approach. The linear range of the method to Sb(III) was found to a mass concentration range of 1-10 ng/mL. This approach permits an absolute quantity of Sb(III) to be detected at the picogram level (∼50 pg). It is remarkable that a very small sample volume (50 µL) is required for SERS analysis. Moreover this technique offers high selectivity owing to the distinctive vibrational features for the metallorganic complex and to the resonance character of Raman spectra. The proposed SERS-based detection of Sb is a fast and highly sensitive method for use in environmental and industrial waste monitoring as well as for forensic science to determine gunshot residue. We expect that the approach reported herein can be further extended to develop new detection techniques for other heavy metals.