Safe Driving? Recently Toyota unveiled a new self-driving Lexus – joining a very long list of manufacturers working on self-directed transport. We may need self driving cars soon. People are falling asleep at the wheel – all the time. The CDC and You Recently the Centers for Disease Control conducted a large telephone survey. Nearly […]
Noisy, sleepless hospitals (and how to rest in them – 1/25/12)
When You’re Ill You Really Need Rest Rest is as necessary to life as food. Without it the body does not restore and regenerate. Hospitals don’t seem to fully understand that connection. A new study of noise in hospital rooms, published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, was not good news. The average hospital room […]
Overcoming a bad night’s sleep (12/7/11)
Bad Night Who’s a perfect sleeper? Gaze in a mirror and you’re probably not looking at one. In Gallup polls, perhaps only 5% of the population says they sleep well every night. Yet lots of people have bad nights, with perhaps one third of Americans complaining of insomnia that goes on and on and on. […]
Confessions of an air traffic controller (10/28/11)
Asleep in the Tower What caused a senior air traffic controller to fall asleep at Reagen Airport in Washington, D.C. this April, causing two planes to land unassisted and provoking a national transport scandal? Travel – his own. In a report by Rebecca Ruiz at MSNBC, the unnamed supervisor last remembered thinking he should splash […]
How to get the perfect nap Part II (5/16/11)
Sleep Inertia Ever wake up feeling that you’re not waking up? That parts of your brain do not want to and cannot rise from slumber, that alertness is far away? Welcome to the problem of sleep inertia. Sleep inertia can and often occurs when people wake up not feeling fully rested. In theory, if we’re […]