American trypanosomiasis is a chronic and endemic disease which affects millions of people. Trypanosoma cruzi, its causative agent, has a life cycle that involves complex morphological and functional transitions, as well as a variety of environmental conditions. This requires a tight regulation of gene expression, which is achieved mainly by post-transcriptional regulation. In this work we cond...

1423 Stage Transition Mechanism for Ultradian Rhythm—Kishi et al neurons themselves. Although further modifications of the original reciprocal interaction model, e.g., the incorporation of selfinhibitory cholinergic autoreceptors and excitatory interactions between cholinergic and non-cholinergic REM-on neurons, have been proposed over the past 30 years with new findings of synaptic details of ...

Many species of harmful algae transition between a motile, vegetative stage in the water column and a non-motile, resting stage in the sediments. Physiological and behavioral traits expressed during benthic-pelagic transition potentially regulate the timing, location and persistence of blooms. The roles of key physiological and behavioral traits involved in resting cell emergence and bloom form...

We study dynamical aspects of sleep micro-architecture. We find that sleep dynamics exhibits a high degree of asymmetry, and that the entire class of sleep-stage transition pathways underlying the complexity of sleep dynamics throughout the night can be characterized by two independent asymmetric transition paths. These basic pathways remain stable under sleep disorders, even though the degree ...

Rufous-collared sparrows (Zonotrichia capensis peruviensis) from valleys in the Atacama Desert of Chile, live in an extremely stable environment, and exhibit overlap in molt and reproduction, with valley-specific differences in the proportion of birds engaged in both. To better understand the mechanistic pathways underlying the timing of life-history transitions, we examined the relationships a...

BACKGROUND Many efforts are undertaken in Switzerland to enable older and/or chronically ill patients to stay home longer at the end-of-life. One of the consequences might be an increased need for hospitalisations at the end-of-life, which goes along with burdensome transitions for patients and higher health care costs for the society. AIM We aimed to examine the health care utilisation in th...

Previous analyses of diapause in insects have most often focused on the timing of the switch from non-diapausing to diapausing offspring in bivoltine populations and have assumed that diapause is irreversible or that the insect cannot survive winter if not in diapause. Many insects exhibit more flexibility in their life cycles, such as the age at which diapause begins, and facultative diapause,...

BACKGROUND Spirometrically-defined chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is considered progressive but its natural history is inadequately studied. We hypothesized that spirometrically-defined COPD states could undergo beneficial transitions. METHODS Participants in the Lovelace Smokers' Cohort (n = 1553), primarily women, were longitudinally studied over 5 years. Spirometric states in...

Sleep is a vital physiological process with important restorative functions. Parasomnias are characterized by undesirable physical or verbal behaviors, such as walking or talking during sleep and occur in association with sleep, specific stages of sleep or sleep-wake transitions. The category of parasomnias comprises some of the most exceptional behavior disorders because complex and apparently...