A lack of sleep may affect the performance of airport employees, which can, in turn, compromise the safety of airline passengers. Sleep deprivation can impair the ability of airport baggage screeners to visually search for and detect infrequently occurring or low prevalence targets that may ultimately pose a threat to an airline and its passengers, according to a research abstract that will be presented Monday at SLEEP 2007, the 21st Annual Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies (APSS).
Nayantara Santhi, MD, of Brigham & Women’s Hospital in Boston, surveyed 31 healthy subjects, who participated in a 36-hour constant routine. A visual search task was administered every two hours. The subjects reported whether a target was present in a set of simultaneously presented distractors. According to the results, sleep deprivation induced a speed/accuracy trade-off, in that the search rate sped up with time awake, but errors increased, indicating decision stage impairments.
“These results suggest that safety and performance in socially critical low target prevalence search tasks may be especially vulnerable to the detrimental effects of sleep deprivation,” said Santhi.
The amount of sleep a person gets affects his or her physical health, emotional well-being, mental abilities, productivity and performance. Recent studies associate lack of sleep with serious health problems such as an increased risk of depression, obesity, cardiovascular disease and diabetes.
Experts recommend that adults get between seven and eight hours of sleep each night to maintain good health and optimum performance.
Persons who think they might be suffering from a sleep disorder are encouraged to consult with their primary care physician, who will refer them to a sleep specialist.
Source: American Academy of Sleep Medicine
Related stories:
Sleepy Fruit Flies Provide Clues to Learning and Memory
Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine have discovered that a brain region previously known for its role in learning and memory also serves as the location of sleep regulation in fruit flies. Through further examination of this brain structure, researchers hope to shed light on sleep regulation and its role in memory.
Researchers identify sleep gene
Zeroing in on the core cellular mechanisms of sleep, researchers at University of Wisconsin Medical School have identified for the first time a single gene mutation that has a powerful effect on the amount of time fruit flies sleep.
Pitt research shows NASA sleep-wake scheduling guide may need to be changed
New research from the University of Pittsburgh shows the human body has difficulty adjusting to dramatic time changes such as those experienced by working shifts or traveling across time zones.
The NASA-funded study, detailed in this month's Aviation, Space and Environmental Medicine, was designed to examine the protocols the space agency uses to assign sleep-wake schedules that ensure astronauts are always able to handle their demanding tasks at peak performance. The findings suggest changes should be made in the way
NASA schedules sleep periods on missions, but also have meaning for anyone who has had to deal with a significant time change and still function.
Intel Boosts Mobile Intel Pentium 4 Processor Family
Intel Corporation today introduced the
Mobile Intel® Pentium® 4 processor 548 supporting Hyper-Threading Technology for the portability market segment. This
processor is designed for larger-sized
notebook PCs, also known as "desktop replacements," that typically feature large screens, full-size keyboards and multiple drives. Notebooks based on the Mobile Intel Pentium 4 processor 548 supporting HT Technology allow users to take advantage of multithreaded and processor-intensive multimedia applications in a portable form factor.
Philips delivers Universal Asynchronous Receiver/ Transmitters in compact packaging
Meeting requirements of space-constrained applications such as mobile phones, PDAs, PC peripherals and new generation consumer devices,
Royal Philips Electronics today expanded its family of 16C Universal Asynchronous Receiver/ Transmitters (UARTs) with four new devices in compact lead-free HVQFN
packaging. Philips' SC16CxxB single- and dual-channel UARTs are ideally suited for advanced portable and electronic systems requiring high speed, low voltage, low power use and high data rates.
Show Must Go On: Intel Keeps Moore's Law on Track with 65 nm Technology
A significant
milestone in developing next-generation chip manufacturing technology has been achieved by Intel Corporation. The company has built fully functional 70-megabit static random access memory (
SRAM)
chips with more than half a billion transistors using the world's most advanced
65 nanometer (nm) process technology. The achievement extends Intel's effort to drive the development of new manufacturing process technology every two years, in accordance with Moore's Law.
Pill that boosts productivity gaining favor, raising concerns among medical ethicists
In a place like Silicon Valley, where career prospects often hinge on a person's intelligence and ability to work hellishly long hours, "brain doping" probably was inevitable.
What a sleep study can reveal about fibromyalgia
Research engineers and sleep medicine specialists from two Michigan universities have joined technical and clinical hands to put innovative quantitative analysis, signal-processing technology and computer algorithms to work in the sleep lab. One of their recent findings is that a new approach to analyzing sleep fragmentation appears to distinguish fibromyalgia patients from healthy controls.