REM sleep and muscle atonia in brainstem stroke: A quantitative polysomnographic and lesion analysis study.

Important brainstem regions are involved in the regulation of rapid eye movement sleep. We hypothesized that brainstem stroke is associated with dysregulated rapid eye movement sleep and related muscle activity. We compared quantitative/qualitative polysomnography features of rapid eye movement sleep and muscle activity (any, phasic, tonic) between 15 patients with brainstem stroke (N = 46 rapid eye movement periods), 16 patients with lacunar/non-brainstem stroke (N = 40 rapid eye movement periods), 15 healthy controls (N = 62 rapid eye movement periods), and patients with Parkinson's disease and polysomnography-confirmed rapid eye movement sleep behaviour disorder. Further, in the brainstem group, we performed a magnetic resonance imaging-based lesion overlap analysis. The mean ratio of muscle activity to rapid eye movement sleep epoch in the brainstem group ("any" muscle activity 0.09 ± 0.15; phasic muscle activity 0.08 ± 0.14) was significantly lower than in the lacunar group ("any" muscle activity 0.17 ± 0.2, p < 0.05; phasic muscle activity 0.16 ± 0.19, p < 0.05), and also lower than in the control group ("any" muscle activity 0.15 ± 0.17, p < 0.05). Magnetic resonance imaging-based lesion analysis indicated an area of maximum overlap in the medioventral pontine region for patients with reduced phasic muscle activity index. For all groups, mean values of muscle activity were significantly lower than in the patients with Parkinson's disease and polysomnography-confirmed REM sleep behaviour disorder group ("any" activity 0.51 ± 0.26, p < 0.0001 for all groups; phasic muscle activity 0.42 ± 0.21, p < 0.0001 for all groups). For the tonic muscle activity in the mentalis muscle, no significant differences were found between the groups. In the brainstem group, contrary to the lacunar and the control groups, "any" muscle activity index during rapid eye movement sleep was significantly reduced after the third rapid eye movement sleep phase. This study reports on the impact of brainstem stroke on rapid eye movement atonia features in a human cohort. Our findings highlight the important role of the human brainstem, in particular the medioventral pontine regions, in the regulation of phasic muscle activity during rapid eye movement sleep and the ultradian distribution of rapid eye movement-related muscle activity

Relationship between job stress, temperament and depressive symptoms in female nurses

Objectives: A casual relationship between temperament, job stress and depressive symptoms has not been established yet. The purpose of this study was to assess the relationships between job stress, temperament and depressive symptoms in female nurses at a Japanese general hospital. Material and Methods: A self-report survey was conducted among 706 nurses. We measured job stress, temperament, and depressive symptoms using the Brief-Job Stress Questionnaire, the TEMPS-A and a screening scale of items from the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare of Japan. In order to examine the causal relationship between the measures the stepwise multiple regression and path analyses were used. Results: Depressive symptoms were modestly correlated with job stress (γ = -0.23-0.30). Except for hyperthymic temperament measures, the correlations between depressive symptoms and temperament types were significant and moderate (γ = 0.36-0.50). Overtime, job control as well as depressive and cyclothymic types of temperament were significantly correlated with depressive symptoms (β = 0.15, p < 0.05; β = 0.19, p < 0.01; β = 0.26, p < 0.001; β = 0.32, p < 0.001, respectively). Path-analysis revealed that depressive and cyclothymic types of temperament influenced depressive symptoms both directly (β = 0.67, p < 0.001) and indirectly via job stress (β = 0.35, p < 0.001 from temperament to job stress; β = 0.20, p < 0.05 from job stress to depressive symptoms). Irritable and anxious types of temperament and quantitative job overload did not contri­bute to the path-analytic model. Conclusions: Health care professionals should consider temperament, especially depressive and cyclothymic types, in order to help employees cope better with job stress factors. We need further research about the effective intervention to help employees better cope with their job stress

Geometry of Time and Dimensionality of Space

One of the most distinguished features of our algebraic geometrical, pencil concept of space-time is the fact that spatial dimensions and time stand, as far as their intrinsic structure is concerned, on completely different footings: the former being represented by pencils of lines, the latter by a pencil of conics. As a consequence, we argue that even at the classical (macroscopic) level there exists a much more intricate and profound coupling between space and time than that dictated by (general) relativity theory. It is surmised that this coupling can be furnished by so-called Cremona (or birational) transformations between two projective spaces of three dimensions, being fully embodied in the structure of configurations of their fundamental elements. We review properties of some of the simplest Cremona transformations and show that the corresponding "fundamental" space-times exhibit an intimate connection between the extrinsic geometry of time dimension and the dimensionality of space. Moreover, these Cremonian space-times seem to provide us with a promising conceptual basis for the possible reconciliation between two extreme concepts of (space-)time, viz. physical and psychological. Some speculative remarks in this respect are made

Biocontrol Potential of Forest Tree Endophytes

Peer reviewe

The SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics' resources: focus on curated databases

The SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics (www.isb-sib.ch) provides world-class bioinformatics databases, software tools, services and training to the international life science community in academia and industry. These solutions allow life scientists to turn the exponentially growing amount of data into knowledge. Here, we provide an overview of SIB's resources and competence areas, with a strong focus on curated databases and SIB's most popular and widely used resources. In particular, SIB's Bioinformatics resource portal ExPASy features over 150 resources, including UniProtKB/Swiss-Prot, ENZYME, PROSITE, neXtProt, STRING, UniCarbKB, SugarBindDB, SwissRegulon, EPD, arrayMap, Bgee, SWISS-MODEL Repository, OMA, OrthoDB and other databases, which are briefly described in this article