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Background: Emotional labour is an integral part of the role of nurses with surface and deep acting as the core emotional labour strategies. Surface acting involves the regulation of emotional expression with the aim of bringing it in line with organizational display rules, whereas deep acting aims at modifying the situation or perception of situations in order to change felt emotions, accordingly., Objectives: Since surface acting is thought to consume more cognitive control resources than deep acting, the study examines whether nurses' cognitive control deficits as a stable personal vulnerability factor exert stronger adverse interactive influences with surface acting on job strain than with deep acting., Design: A cross-sectional questionnaire survey was conducted in combination with absence data referring to a time period of 12 months after administration of the questionnaires., Setting: A hospital and three nursing homes for the elderly located in a federal state in Germany., Participants: Questionnaires were distributed to the whole nursing staff of which 195 nurses filled in the questionnaire and permitted collecting their absence data (73% participation rate)., Methods: In addition to descriptive statistics and bivariate correlations, confirmatory factor analyses and hierarchical moderated regression analyses were performed., Results: Findings revealed significant positive relations of surface acting and cognitive control deficits with indicators of job strain, whereas deep acting was unrelated to strain. In addition, surface acting was found to interact stronger with cognitive control deficits in its relation to strain than deep acting. Compared to nurses with low levels of cognitive control deficits, the adverse influences of surface acting on burnout, depressive symptoms, and sum of days absent were much stronger when high levels of cognitive control deficits were reported., Conclusions: Consequently, interventions are needed to inform nurses on the detrimental influences of surface acting and train them in the daily use of deep acting as the healthier emotional regulation strategy. In addition, interventions targeted at the enhancement of the individual capacity for self-control would be beneficial to nurses' health., (Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

The VH5 human antibody gene was analyzed using a computer program (mfg) which simulates transcription, to better understand transcription-driven mutagenesis events that occur during "phase 1" of somatic hypermutation. Results show that the great majority of mutations in the non-transcribed strand occur within loops of two predicted high-stability stem-loop structures, termed SLSs 14.9 and 13.9. In fact, 89% of the 2505 mutations reported are within the encoded complementarity-determining region (CDR) and occur in loops of these high-stability structures. In vitro studies were also done and verified the existence of SLS 14.9. Following the formation of SLSs 14.9 and 13.9, a sustained period of transcriptional activity occurs within a window size of 60-70 nucleotides. During this period, the stability of these two SLSs does not change, and may provide the substrate for base exchanges and mutagenesis. The data suggest that many mutable bases are exposed simultaneously at pause sites, allowing for coordinated mutagenesis., (Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Background: According to the influential Job Demands-Control (JD-C) model developed by Karasek (1979; Karasek and Theorell, 1990), job strain is expected to result from high job demands and low job control as well as an interaction between both job characteristics. Previous research, however, has found such an interaction only rarely or inconsistently.It has been suggested that the conceptualization of the control variable (formerly referred to as decision latitude) may be particularly responsible for the lack of supportive findings., Objectives: The present study aimed at clarifying this issue by contrasting a focused measure of control with a traditional measure of decision latitude in their relations to job strain of health care workers. The measure of decision latitude encompassed a wide range of job characteristics including control, task variety, and learning opportunities., Design: A cross-sectional questionnaire survey was conducted with job satisfaction, psychosomatic complaints and emotional exhaustion as criterion measures of job strain., Setting: A supra-regional organization for residential elderly care with 11 nursing homes located in a federal state in Germany., Participants: Questionnaires were distributed to the whole nursing staff, of which 379 filled in the questionnaire during normal working hours (68% participation rate)., Methods: In addition to confirmatory factor analyses, descriptive statistics, and bivariate correlations, hierarchical multiple regression analyses were performed for testing the corresponding interaction effects., Results: Findings confirmed the assumption that the focused measure of control and the traditional measure of decision latitude represent distinct, yet correlated factors. Furthermore, findings revealed a significant interaction effect between job demands and control on all outcomes considered. By way of contrast, there was no equivalent interaction effect between job demands and decision latitude. In line with the JD-C model, the adverse influence of increasing demands on job satisfaction, psychosomatic complaints and emotional exhaustion were reduced with increasing job control., Conclusions: Extending the opportunities of health care workers to control work scheduling and the way of performing given tasks can make them less vulnerable against the adverse effects of high job demands., (Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Background: Formerly unconnected lines of research have shown that both the perceived incongruence between personal and organizational goals and meeting self-control demands at work exert adverse influences on indicators of job strain., Objectives: Going beyond this research and drawing on recently developed theoretical notions on self-control depleting a limited control resource, the present study examines - in addition to main effects - also interactive effects of both stressors on various indicators of strain that include not only self-report measures (dimensions of burnout, psychosomatic complaints) but also absence data (sum of days absent, absence frequency) as behavioural outcome., Design: A cross-sectional questionnaire survey was conducted in combination with absence data referring to a time period of 12 months after administration of the questionnaires., Setting: A municipal organization for residential elderly care with six nursing homes located in a large German city., Participants: Questionnaires were distributed to the whole nursing staff of which 242 staff members filled in the questionnaire and permitted collecting their absence data (67% participation rate)., Methods: In addition to descriptive statistics and bivariate correlations, hierarchical moderated regression analyses were performed., Results: Findings revealed significant main effects of both predictors on the criterion measures with signs corresponding to expectations. Over and above these main effects, the two-way interaction between goal incongruence and self-control demands added a significant amount of incremental variance to the prediction of exhaustion, depersonalization, psychosomatic complaints as well as the time lost index of absenteeism. In the measure of absence frequency, this interaction failed to reach significance. As hypothesized, the form of the interactions indicated that the adverse influences of self-control demands are strengthened with an increase in the perceived mismatch between personal and organizational goals., Conclusions: Improving the fit between personal and organizational goals and strengthening the individual control resource could make health care workers less vulnerable against the depleting effects of meeting self-control demands at work., (Copyright 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

During the adaptive immune response, antigen challenge triggers a million-fold increase in mutation rates in the variable-region antibody genes. The frequency of mutation is causally and directly linked to transcription, which provides ssDNA and drives supercoiling that stabilizes secondary structures containing unpaired, intrinsically mutable bases. Simulation analysis of transcription in VH5 reveals a dominant 65nt secondary structure in the non-transcribed strand containing six sites of mutable ssDNA that have also been identified independently in human B cell lines and in primary mouse B cells. This dominant structure inter-converts briefly with less stable structures and is formed repeatedly during transcription, due to periodic pauses and backtracking. In effect, this creates a stable yet dynamic "mutability platform" consisting of ever-changing patterns of unpaired bases that are simultaneously exposed and therefore able to coordinate mutagenesis. Such a complex of secondary structures may be the source of ssDNA for enzyme-based diversification, which ultimately results in high affinity antibodies.

The role of secondary structures and base mutability at different levels of transcription and supercoiling is analyzed in variable region antibody genes VH5, VH94 and VH186.2. The data are consistent with a model of somatic hypermutation in which increasing levels of transcription and secondary structure stability correlate with the initial formation of successive mutable sites. Encoded differences exist in stem length and the number of GC pairs at low versus high levels of transcription in CDRs. These circumstances simplify the complexities of coordinating mutagenesis by confining this process to each mutable site successively, as they form in response to increasing levels of transcription during affinity maturation.