Mechanical massage and mental training programmes affect employees' anxiety, stress susceptibility and detachment-a randomised explorative pilot study.

Background: Working people's reduced ability to recover has been proposed as a key factor behind the increase in stress-related health problems. One not yet evidence-based preventive method designed to help employees keep healthy and be less stressed is an armchair with built-in mechanical massage and mental training programmes, This study aimed to evaluate possible effects on employees' experience of levels of "Anxiety", "Stress Susceptibility", "Detachment" and "Social Desirability" when using mechanical massage and mental training programmes, both separately and in combination, during working hours.

Methods: Employees from four different workplaces were randomly assigned to one of the following groups: i) Massage and mental training (sitting in the armchair and receiving mechanical massage while listening to the mental training programmes, n=19), ii) Massage (sitting in the armchair and receiving mechanical massage only, n=19), iii) Mental training (sitting in the armchair and listening to the mental training programmes only, n=19), iv) Pause (sitting in the armchair but not receiving mechanical massage or listening to the mental training programmes, n=19), v) Control (not sitting in the armchair at all, n=17).

Dynamic modelling of cell death during biofilm development.

Biofilms are currently recognised as the predominant bacterial life-style and it has been suggested that biofilm development is influenced by a number of different processes such as adhesion, detachment, mass transport, quorum sensing, cell death and active dispersal. One of the least understood processes and its effects on biofilm development is cell death. However, experimental studies suggest that bacterial death is an important process during biofilm development and many studies show a relationship between cell death and dispersal in microbial biofilms.

Effects of fibre type and diffusion distance on mouse skeletal muscle glycogen content in vitro.

In vitro incubation of isolated rodent skeletal muscle is a widely used procedure in metabolic research. One concern with this method is the development of an anoxic state during the incubation period that can cause muscle glycogen depletion. Our aim was to investigate whether in vitro incubation conditions influence glycogen concentration in glycolytic extensor digitorum longus (EDL) and oxidative soleus mouse muscle.

3D computation modelling of the influence of cytokine secretion on Th-cell development suggests that negative selection (inhibition of Th1 cells) is more effective than positive selection by IL-4 for Th2 cell dominance.

Th-cell development has been suggested to include selective mechanisms in which certain cytokines select either Th1 or Th2 cells to proliferate and grow. The selective theory is based on the observation that Th2 cells secrete IL-4, a cytokine that promotes Th2 development, whereas Th1 cells secrete interferon-gamma (IFN-gamma) that favours Th1 development, and both positive and negative selective influences have been suggested to operate. In this study, we investigate the role of autocrine secretion and utilization of IL-4 by Th2 cells and address the question of whether an activated Th2 cell can be positively selected by IL-4 secreted from other Th2 cells.