PROFILES OF RECREATIONAL ACTIVITIES OF DAILY LIVING (RADL) IN PATIENTS WITH MENTAL DISORDERS

Background: Activities of daily living, play a key role in the measurement of functional health as defined by the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) and in prevention and treatment of mental or somatic illnesses. From a clinical context it is important to discriminate between basic “activities of daily living, ADL”, “intentional activities of daily living, IADL”, and “recreational activities of daily living, RADL”. While ADL and IADL have gained much attention in dementia, the elderly, or severe somatic illnesses, there is a lack of research on RADL, which are important in depression, anxiety, or other neurotic disorders. Subjects and methods: 154 unselected inpatients of a department of behavioral and psychosomatic medicine filled in the “Check List of Recreational Activities” to assess the rates and profiles of RADL. Results: Patients reported on average 19.3 (s.d. 7.0) activities (range 4 – 40), i.e. males 21.3 (s.d. 6.5, 9 – 34) and females 18.9 (s.d. 7.1, 4 – 40). Most frequent RADL were passive and unspecific activities like “watching tv” (93.4%). Least frequent were activities which need special skills or preparation like ”horse back riding” (0.7%). Low rates were also found for activities which are in the centre of inpatient occupational therapy like “ceramics” (4.7%) or “silk-painting” (2.6%). There are differences between sexes but not in respect to age (18 to 60), sick leave and unemployment, or diagnostic status. When patients were asked what they would like to do in the future, the same activity profile emerged as when looking at what they had done in the last month Conclusion: The data give a reference profile for recreational activities, help to define what can be considered a normal frequency and spectrum of RADL, and, by this, can guide therapeutic interventions

A synthetic growth switch based on controlled expression of RNA polymerase

International audienceThe ability to control growth is essential for fundamental studies of bacterial physiology and biotechnological applications. We have engineered an Escherichia coli strain in which the transcription of a key component of the gene expression machinery, RNA polymerase, is under the control of an inducible promoter. By changing the inducer concentration in the medium, we can adjust the RNA polymerase concentration and thereby switch bacterial growth between zero and the maximal growth rate supported by the medium. We show that our synthetic growth switch functions in a medium-independent and reversible way, and we provide evidence that the switching phenotype arises from the ultrasensitive response of the growth rate to the concentration of RNA polymerase. We present an application of the growth switch in which both the wild-type E. coli strain and our modified strain are endowed with the capacity to produce glycerol when growing on glucose. Cells in which growth has been switched off continue to be metabolically active and harness the energy gain to produce glycerol at a twofold higher yield than in cells with natural control of RNA polymerase expression. Remarkably, without any further optimization, the improved yield is close to the theoretical maximum computed from a flux balance model of E. coli metabolism. The proposed synthetic growth switch is a promising tool for gaining a better understanding of bacterial physiology and for applications in synthetic biology and biotechnology

A Polly Cracker system based on Satisfiability

This paper presents a public-key cryptosystem based on a subclass of the well-known satisfiability problem from propositional logic, namely the doubly-balanced 3-sat problem. We first describe the construction of an instance of our system starting from such a 3-sat formula. Then we discuss security issues: this is achieved on the one hand by exploring best methods to date for solving this particular problem, and on the other hand by studying (systems of multivariate) polynomial equation solving algorithms in this particular setting. The result of our investigations is that both types of method fail to break our instances. We end the paper with some complexity considerations and implementation results

Plasmonic Control of Radiative Properties of Semiconductor Quantum Dots Coupled to Plasmonic Ring Cavities

In recent years, a lot of effort has been made to achieve controlled delivery of target particles to the hotspots of plasmonic nanoantennas, in order to probe and/or exploit the extremely large field enhancements produced by such structures. While in many cases such high fields are advantageous, there are instances where they should be avoided. In this work, we consider the implications of using the standard nanoantenna geometries when colloidal quantum dots are employed as target entities. We show that in this case, and for various reasons, dimer antennas are not the optimum choice. Plasmonic ring cavities are a better option despite low field enhancements, as they allow collective coupling of many quantum dots in a reproducible and predictable manner. In cases where larger field enhancements are required, or for larger quantum dots, nonconcentric ring-disk cavities can be employed instead

Viral nanomotors for packaging of dsDNA and dsRNA

While capsid proteins are assembled around single-stranded genomic DNA or RNA in rod-shaped viruses, the lengthy double-stranded genome of other viruses is packaged forcefully within a preformed protein shell. This entropically unfavourable DNA or RNA packaging is accomplished by an ATP-driven viral nanomotor, which is mainly composed of two components, the oligomerized channel and the packaging enzymes. This intriguing DNA or RNA packaging process has provoked interest among virologists, bacteriologists, biochemists, biophysicists, chemists, structural biologists and computational scientists alike, especially those interested in nanotechnology, nanomedicine, AAA+ family proteins, energy conversion, cell membrane transport, DNA or RNA replication and antiviral therapy. This review mainly focuses on the motors of double-stranded DNA viruses, but double-stranded RNA viral motors are also discussed due to interesting similarities. The novel and ingenious configuration of these nanomotors has inspired the development of biomimetics for nanodevices. Advances in structural and functional studies have increased our understanding of the molecular basis of biological movement to the point where we can begin thinking about possible applications of the viral DNA packaging motor in nanotechnology and medical applications