Sleep during the third trimester of pregnancy: the role of depression and anxiety

Depression has been associated with sleep disturbances in pregnancy; however, no previous research has controlled the possible confounding effect of anxiety on this association. This study aims to analyze the effect of depression on sleep during the third trimester of pregnancy controlling for anxiety. The sample was composed by 143 depressed (n = 77) and non-depressed (n = 66) pregnant women who completed measures of depression, anxiety, and sleep. Differences between groups in sleep controlling for anxiety were found. Depressed pregnant women present higher number of nocturnal awakenings and spent more hours trying falling asleep during the night and the entire 24 h period. Present findings point out the effect of depression on sleep in late pregnancy, after controlling for anxiety.This research was supported by FEDER Funds through the Programa Operacional Factores de Competitividade - COMPETE and by National Funds through FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia under the project: PTDC/SAU/SAP/116738/2010

100 Gbit/s electro-optic modulator and 56 Gbits/s wavelength converter for DQPSK data in silicon-organic hybrid (SOH) technology

CMOS-compatible silicon photonics combined with covers of chi (2) or chi (3)-nonlinear organic material allows electro-optic modulators and all-optical wavelength converters for data rates of 100 Gbit/s and beyond. The devices are not impaired by free carriers

Tunable self-action of light in optical rectification

We analyze the self-action of light waves mediated by cascaded optical rectification in a quadratic nonlinear crystal in the framework of the full local-field equations and show that the process can lead to a rich variety of self-effects. We put forward a general scheme to calculate the full nonlinear response mediated by the self-generated rectified fields and thus show that acting on the shape, the polarization of the light beam and the geometric arrangement of the nonlinear crystal allows tuning the sign, the strength, and the type of the induced nonlinearities, opening the door to the exploration of a variety of self- and cross-phase modulations, and solitary-waves. We also show configurations where even though the macroscopic rectified field vanishes, the macroscopic self-effects do not.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version