SummaryRetrospective surveys were carried out on two groups of patients who had survived a stay of at least 48 h in an Intensive Therapy Unit. One group had been kept in a unit without windows, and the other in a similar unit with translucent but not transparent windows.Survivors from the windowless unit had a less accurate memory of the length of their sfay, and were less well orientated in time during their stay. The incidence of hallucinations and delusions was more than twice as high in the windowless unit.The phenomenon of depersonalisation in the face o j life-threatening danger is described and discussed.

In this paper, we studied the organization and function of TUBBY Transcription Factor gene family in maize. Initially, using comparative approach, we discovered the Arabidopsis thaliana orthologs in Zea mays. We found in total 13 genes, 12 of which are orthologs and a unique paralog that exhibits the highest activity in maize. We studied the role of TUBBY gene family across different developmental stages using existing expression data, and discovered the binding motifs present in the promoter region of the genes.