Science News - Sleep, Travel, and Second Life
Scientists want to see how traveling in space affects germs. So they took them for a little ride in the space shuttle and then let them come back (because leaving them in space would be cruel). The poor little earth bound mice were fed the well traveled germs because no researcher was willing to risk his life for humanity. Guess what happened? The mice became green and developed large oval heads and then took over earth? Good guess but no. They were more likely to get sick than the mice that where fed the same germs that never left Earth. To sum it up: germs taken into space came back meaner, stronger and deadlier. Scientists caution that children not try this experiment at home.
Fetuses and babies spend up to 75 per cent of their sleeping time in REM, the neurologically active dream state. I would just love to know what fetuses dream about.
Talking about sleep, did you know the the less sleep you get the more you will dream the next time you sleep? If you miss a few dreams from lack of sleep you will see greater sleep intensity — dreaming is increased and is more vivid when you go to sleep. It seems that if you miss REM sleep (the dream phase) alone, but still get the other stages of sleep, you will still experience REM deprivation and have the subsequent rebound. REM can be suppressed by alcohol, nicotine, blood pressure meds, antidepressants, and mad researchers. Researchers have deprived rats of REM sleep for four weeks causing them to die. Very sad.
On a happier note: Giorgio Armani the fashion designer has opened up a shop in Second Life, the virtual world where you have avatars and using avatars, you can do pretty much anything that you can do in the real world, and more (like flying). Armani is going to be selling items to Second Life residents and his avatar will be there to greet the fashionistas. I can’t wait to be able to dress well, easily.
Commuting takes its toll on humans. I don’t see any evidence that they have tested commuting on rodents to see how they fare before subjecting humans to hours of traveling every day, but they have found that commuting does cause considerable stress to humans. Each extra minute traveled correlates to an increase in health problems. Studies show that long-distance commuters suffer from more psychosomatic disorders than people who have shorter trips to work. I am curious to see if traveling for work is as equally stressful as traveling for pleasure. If there is going to be a study for this I would like to be in the second group please…. I am long over due to travel…somehow I will … even if I have to be a guinea pig.
ps Tama, you should have a lot fewer psychosomatic disorders than me 
September 26th, 2007 at 3:44 pm
Isn’t it odd that it appears as if a lot of people are heading the opposite way to work from home? Why doesn’t some smart person start a business that connects these people so that eventually we all stay put and save on time, gas and stress????
I think we all sanitize too much and in the long run this will only hurt us as our bodies aren’t going to be immune to every day germs. We need to toughen up our bodies…needless to say, there is much to be said about such but those chatty girls probably aren’t listening anyway. I find most people are poor listeners anyway….seems, like they are thinking of what to say next instead of listening to you.
Finally, I find most studies as a waste of time and money. I laugh when they FINALLY come up with a solution or idea that has always seem logical and common sense to me.