The effects of three behavioral treatments on sleep difficulties of college students

Sixty college students who had sleep difficulties in the form of taking approximately 30 minutes or longer to get to sleep at night were treated in groups by either (1) Relaxation Training (RT), (2) Slef-Regulation of Thoughts (ST), a technique similar to "Thought Stopping,” where the individual learns how to stop and start his thoughts, (3) Combined Treatment (CT), a combination of RT and ST treatments, (4) Group Discussion (GD), a placebo control group in which no direct therapeutic techniques were employed, or (5) No-Treatment Control (NC), which received CT treatment subsequent to follow-up. There was a significant reduction from baseline to follow-up across all treatment groups for the following three dependent measures: latency to sleep onset, difficulty getting to sleep, and number of times awakened. There also was a significant increase in the degree of restedness from baseline to follow-up across all treatment groups. The subjects in the RT group reported significantly less difficulty getting to sleep than the NC subjects across all phases of the study. Furthermore the subjects in RT, GT, and ST conditions also reported significantly greater degrees of restedness upon awakening than subjects in NC group across all phases of the study

An analysis of sleep deprivation factors and consequences of staying awake in the stimulus control treatment of sleep disturbances

In this study two independent variables were manipulated: sleep deprivation and behaviors performed once out of bed. The sleep deprivation variable involved subjects sleeping for either seven or nine hours a night. The behaviors performed factor consisted of subjects performing either pleasant or aversive behaviors when they got out of bed after not being able to fall asleep within ten minutes. There were seven conditions in this study: high sleep-deprivation, unpleasant; low sleep-deprivation, unpleasant; high sleep-deprivation pleasant; low sleep-deprivation, pleasant; high sleep-deprivation, neutral; low sleep-deprivation neutral; and a placebo-control group. All treatment conditions except the placebo-control group received Bootzin'a (1972) stimulus control treatment of insomnia. After filling out one week of daily sleep forms, 48 college subjects who had average latency to sleep onsets of 60 minutes or greater for three or more days out of the week were selected for the study. The latency scores for these subjects were rank ordered and blocked; then the subjects were randomly blocked into treatment groups. The subjects were seen in individual therapy sessions once per week for five weeks

Expanding the diversity of mycobacteriophages: insights into genome architecture and evolution.

Mycobacteriophages are viruses that infect mycobacterial hosts such as Mycobacterium smegmatis and Mycobacterium tuberculosis. All mycobacteriophages characterized to date are dsDNA tailed phages, and have either siphoviral or myoviral morphotypes. However, their genetic diversity is considerable, and although sixty-two genomes have been sequenced and comparatively analyzed, these likely represent only a small portion of the diversity of the mycobacteriophage population at large. Here we report the isolation, sequencing and comparative genomic analysis of 18 new mycobacteriophages isolated from geographically distinct locations within the United States. Although no clear correlation between location and genome type can be discerned, these genomes expand our knowledge of mycobacteriophage diversity and enhance our understanding of the roles of mobile elements in viral evolution. Expansion of the number of mycobacteriophages grouped within Cluster A provides insights into the basis of immune specificity in these temperate phages, and we also describe a novel example of apparent immunity theft. The isolation and genomic analysis of bacteriophages by freshman college students provides an example of an authentic research experience for novice scientists