How Did You Sleep Tonight? The Relevance of Sleep Quality and Sleep-Wake Rhythm for Procrastination at Work.

Recent studies have highlighted the relevance of sleep for procrastination at work. Procrastination at work is defined as the irrational delay of the initiation or completion of work-related activities. In line with recent studies, we offer a self-regulation perspective on procrastination. We argue that procrastination is an outcome of depleted self-regulatory resources and that the restoration of self-regulatory resources during high-quality sleep at night would prevent procrastination. Aims: In an attempt to further develop this line of research, the current study aimed to achieve a broader understanding of the relevance of sleep and circadian rhythm for procrastination. Therefore, we explored the effect of sleep quality on procrastination for different chronotypes. We also considered the shift to daylight saving time as a phenomenon that aggravates circadian misalignment and thereby later chronotypes' dependence on high-quality sleep. Specifically, we hypothesized that compared to employees with an earlier chronotype (morning types), employees with a later chronotype (evening types) are more dependent on good sleep at night to prevent procrastination the next day. This effect would be especially pronounced after the shift to daylight saving time. Methods: For this repeated-measures study, participants were 101 full-time employees. They completed a general questionnaire and day-specific questionnaires on the Monday before and the Monday following the shift to daylight saving time. Results: The multilevel analyses showed that employees procrastinated less on days following nights during which they slept better and that later chronotypes experienced more procrastination than earlier chronotypes. Our findings also supported the hypothesis that the relationship between sleep quality and procrastination is stronger for later chronotypes compared to earlier chronotypes on the Monday following the shift to daylight saving time. In other words, the lower the sleep quality of later chronotypes during the previous night, the more they procrastinated on the Monday following the shift to daylight saving time. Discussion: Our findings further corroborate the existing findings on the relevance of sleep and chronotype for well-being and performance at work.

MALT1 Protease Activity Controls the Expression of Inflammatory Genes in Keratinocytes upon Zymosan Stimulation.

The protease activity of the paracaspase mucosa-associated lymphoid tissue lymphoma translocation gene 1 (MALT1) plays an important role in antigen receptor-mediated lymphocyte activation by controlling the activity of the transcription factor nuclear factor-κB and is thus essential for the expression of inflammatory target genes. MALT1 is not only present in cells of the hematopoietic lineage, but is ubiquitously expressed. Here we report that stimulation with zymosan or Staphylococcus aureus induced MALT1 protease activity in human primary keratinocytes. Inhibition of the Src family of kinases or novel protein kinase C isoforms as well as silencing of CARMA2 or BCL10 interfered with activation of MALT1 protease. Silencing or inhibition of MALT1 protease strongly decreased the expression of important inflammatory genes such as TNFα, IL-17C, CXCL8 and HBD-2. MALT1-inhibited cells were unable to mount an antimicrobial response upon zymosan stimulation or phorbolester/ionomycin treatment, demonstrating a central role of MALT1 protease activity in keratinocyte immunity and suggesting MALT1 as a potential target in inflammatory skin diseases.