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“Sleep disturbances are prevalent in patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD), being one of the most troubling symptoms during the progression of disease. However, little research has been made to determine if impaired sleep patterns appear years before AD diagnosis. This study tries to shed light on this issue by performing polysomnographic recordings in healthy elders and patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI). We further investigated whether

changes in sleep patterns parallel memory decline as well as its relationship with the Apolipoprotein E (ApoE) epsilon 4 genotype. Results showed a significant CHIR-99021 purchase shortening of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep together with increased fragmentations selleckchem of slow-wave sleep in MCI patients relative to healthy elders. Interestingly, we further showed that reduction of REM sleep in MCI patients with ApoE epsilon 4 was more noticeable than in epsilon 4 non-carriers. Contrary to our initial hypothesis, changes in sleep patterns were not correlated with memory performance in MCI patients. Instead, increased REM sleep accompanied

enhanced immediate recall in MCI epsilon 4 non-carriers. Taken together, these results suggest that sleep disruptions are evident years before diagnosis of AD, which may have implications for early detection of dementia and/or therapeutic management of sleep complaints in MCI

patients.”
“In this work, fabrication, electrical characterization, and modeling of fully porous pn junctions (FPJs) consisting of elemental mesoscopic crystalline junctions operating in parallel, is XMU-MP-1 presented. FPJs are fabricated by anodic etching of a pn crystalline substrate and show a rectifying behavior strongly dependent on PS surface termination, as proved by electrical measurements performed after both room-temperature aging and thermal-oxidation treatment. Modeling of FPJs is performed using a lumped equivalent circuit consisting of a diode, taking into account the elemental mesoscopic junctions, and two resistances acting one in series and one in parallel to the diode, the latter taking into account conduction paths at the silicon mesocrystal surface. Best fitting of experimental data results in good agreement between theoretical and measured I-V curves, thus corroborating the proposed model. (C) 2011 American Institute of Physics. [doi: 10.1063/1.3622150]“
“Previous studies of blood pressure and mortality in haemodialysis have yielded mixed results, perhaps due to confounding by comorbid conditions. We hypothesized that after improved accounting for confounding factors, higher systolic blood pressure (SBP) would be associated with higher all-cause mortality.