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    Sleeping

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    Sleeping sickness

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    Artyicle approval pendingHuman African trypanosomiasis (HAT), or sleeping sickness, is a vector-borne disease that flourishes in impoverished, rural parts of sub-Saharan Africa. It is caused by infection with the protozoan parasite Trypanosoma brucei and is transmitted by tsetse flies of the genus Glossina. The majority of cases are caused by T. b. gambiense, which gives rise to the chronic, anthroponotic endemic disease in Western and Central Africa. Infection with T. b. rhodesiense leads to the acute, zoonotic form of Eastern and Southern Africa. The parasites live and multiply extracellularly in the blood and tissue fluids of their human host. They have elaborated a variety of strategies for invading hosts, to escape the immune system and to take advantage of host growth factors. HAT is a challenging and deadly disease owing to its complex epidemiology and clinical presentation and, if left untreated, can result in high death rates. As one of the most neglected tropical diseases, HAT is characterized by the limited availability of safe and cost-effective control tools. No vaccine against HAT is available, and the toxicity of existing old and cumbersome drugs precludes the adoption of control strategies based on preventive chemotherapy. As a result, the keystones of interventions against sleeping sickness are active and passive case-finding for early detection of cases followed by treatment, vector control and animal reservoir management. New methods to diagnose and treat patients and to control transmission by the tsetse fly are needed to achieve the goal of global elimination of the disease

    Sleeping Mindfully

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    Insomnia is a disorder of hyperarousal that affects up to 30% of adults. Insomnia is based on cognitive dysfunction that causes us to worry and neuroendocrine factors that upregulate our autonomic nervous system. Studies have shown that just 10 minutes of daily mindfulness practice can improve sleep. Mindfulness is able to work at the root of both causes of insomnia. It improves our ability to relax through increasing attentional factors that impart control over stress hormones and helps reduce ruminative thoughts.https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/fmclerk/1520/thumbnail.jp

    The origins of a new Trypanosoma brucei rhodesiense sleeping sickness outbreak in eastern Uganda.

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    BACKGROUND: Sleeping sickness, caused by two trypanosome subspecies, Trypanosoma brucei gambiense and Trypanosoma brucei rhodesiense, is a parasitic disease transmitted by the tsetse fly in sub-Saharan Africa. We report on a recent outbreak of T b rhodesiense sleeping sickness outside the established south-east Ugandan focus, in Soroti District where the disease had previously been absent. Soroti District has been the subject of large-scale livestock restocking activities and, because domestic cattle are important reservoirs of T b rhodesiense, we investigated the role of cattle in the origins of the outbreak. METHODS: We identified the origins of cattle entering the outbreak area in the 4 years preceding the outbreak. A matched case-control study was conducted to assess whether the distance of villages from the main market involved with restocking was a risk factor for sleeping sickness. We investigated the spatial clustering of sleeping sickness cases at the start of the outbreak. FINDINGS: Over 50% (1510 of 2796) of cattle traded at the market were reported to have originated from endemic sleeping sickness areas. The case-control study revealed that distance to the cattle market was a highly significant risk factor for sleeping sickness (p<0.001) and that there was a significant clustering of cases (27 of 28) close to the market at the start of the outbreak (p<0.001). As the outbreak progressed, the average distance of cases moved away from the cattle market (0.014 km per day, 95% CI 0.008-0.020 km per day, p<0.001). INTERPRETATIONS: The results are consistent with the disease being introduced by cattle infected with T b rhodesiense imported to the market from the endemic sleeping sickness focus. The subsequent spread of the disease away from the market suggests that sleeping sickness is becoming established in this new focus. Public health measures directed at controlling the infection in the animal reservoir should be considered to prevent the spread of sleeping sickness

    The Sleeping Giant

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    Sleeping beauty overture

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    The Allocation of Time in Sleep: A Social Network Model with Sampled Data

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    We analyze peer effects in sleeping behavior using a representative sample of U.S.teenagers from the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health. The sampling design of the survey causes the conventional 2SLS estimator to be inconsistent. We extend the NLS estimator in Wang and Lee (2013a) to estimate network models with sampled observations on the dependent variable. When accounting for sampling, we find that the sleeping behavior of the friends is important to shape own sleeping behavior, besides the impact of individual, family and friend characteristics
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